Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12:

The Puppet Master of Souls

WHEN THE BLINDING LIGHT of the Grand Cross finally faded, the huge tree at the center of the Hobgoblin Forest had been all but incinerated down to its roots. All that remained was a gaping, smoldering hole at its base. 

“I…might have gone a little too far,” said Aaron. 

“No, I think that was just right,” I said.

A day earlier, I had ripped up a quarter mile of the forest in my attempt to kill the goblin shaman. By comparison, Aaron’s Grand Cross had hit its mark with pinpoint accuracy. The difference in our levels of control was obvious. It was clear to me that my fighting style was wild and unruly, and I was reminded that I needed to fix my bad habit of relying on Greed’s secret techniques. After all, not only did they take a heavy toll on my stats, but they were supposed to be finishing blows. 

The main problem is Greed, I thought. He’s always pushing me to use them. I couldn’t help but think of my partner as I gripped the holy sword in my hand.

“We’ve struck a strong first blow!” cried Miria.

Aaron laughed. “Indeed we have. Miria, can we leave the rest of the hobgoblins here to you?”

“Consider it done!”

“That’s the spirit!”

Miria looked overjoyed at Aaron’s praise, and she looked around at the monsters surrounding us as they prepared to attack. She briefly turned to me without a word and nodded with a knowing glance. She understood what she had to do, and her face wore the grit and determination of a true adventurer.

“Fate, we’ve no time to lose,” said Aaron.

“On my way.”

The magical energy of the goblin shaman had weakened, but the monster was still alive. That was clear enough due to the fact that I was still in Roxy’s body. Aaron and I leaped down into the hole as the sounds of battle erupted above us. 

We fell through darkness for a short while, but soon the floor came into sight, pulsing with a dull crimson light. We dropped to the ground prepared for an ambush, but none came. 

“What is this place?” I asked.

“By the looks of it, I’d say it’s some kind of ancient ruin. The floor is pulsing with light.”

“It kind of reminds me of the Galian technology they use in the Military District.”

“Hmm, it’s definitely similar…”

I couldn’t have imagined that a place like this was hidden beneath the Hobgoblin Forest. Even Aaron, who knew the history of the kingdom, was shocked. The pulsing light didn’t reveal all of the ruins, but I got the sense that they were very large. It reminded me of the cavern beneath the great canyon in Galia, a home to fossils of long-extinct monsters.

Does that mean that this place…? I thought. 

Aaron spoke the rest of my thoughts for me. “Why would there be ancient Galian ruins in a place like this?!”

“Perhaps Eris knows… But she’s away.”

“Then there’s no other choice. We keep moving.”

“I’m right behind you.”

When I looked more carefully at the floor, I noticed bloodstains. Fresh blood. Aaron knelt to examine one.

“These are very recent,” he said. “And they’re headed for the entrance to the ruins.”

He pointed ahead, where the trail of blood continued. The goblin shaman had already lost a lot of blood from the wound where its right arm had been. Now it had lost even more. Judging by the way the bloodstains scraped along the ground, it seemed the monster could barely even walk.

“It must be exhausted,” Aaron continued. “But don’t forget: A cornered monster is a monster at its most dangerous.”

“We also know that it has the ability to swap souls, so it could be hiding other dangerous tricks up its sleeve.”

“Exactly.”

We continued through the ruins, carefully watching our surroundings. The walls of the ruins, like the floor, pulsed with red light. It was like a frightening warning, warding off any who dared to visit. There was no trace of hobgoblins there. There was only silence, occasionally punctuated by the echo of water dripping from the earthen ceiling.

It was as though the ruins breathed through the pulsing light, but all traces of life were long gone. We pressed onward and inside.

“There’s nothing here,” said Aaron. “Fate, can you sense anything?”

“I can only sense one thing,” I said.

It was the goblin shaman. Its energy was growing weaker still, so weak that I wondered if it might die if we just left it alone.

“It’s very close to death,” Aaron said. “If it came to this place, then it came for a reason. I intend to find out what that reason is.”

“Perhaps there’s a way for it to heal its wounds?”

These were Galian ruins. We couldn’t rule out any possibility. But Aaron shook his head. “I’m not sure about that. There is no magic capable of healing, other than your fourth-level secret technique and the Health Regen skill some monsters carry. But do you know why such healing magic doesn’t exist?”

“I’ve heard that the gods did not grant humans that power.”

Aaron nodded, listening as I gave him the answer we had all been taught. “And why do you think the gods did not grant us such powers?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. I realized that I didn’t know. Aaron took my silence as my answer, and we continued into the ruins, looking out for traps as we walked.

“Nobody knows the truth,” Aaron said, “You may not believe what I’m about to tell you, but I have a theory…”

Aaron shared his thoughts. The world was full of skills that could be divided into attack, magic, and support. No matter what skills they possessed, even the mightiest warriors fell when they took enough damage. In a duel, the battle ended when one opponent yielded, but what about when kingdoms went to war? In a world with healing magic, injuries could be mended as soon as they were inflicted, and healed soldiers would be sent back out to battle. This would give rise to soldiers who could fight eternally, leading to potentially never-ending wars.

“I believe it’s possible that healing magic once existed in the time when Galia prospered,” Aaron said.

“That’s impossible…”

“Then what of your Twilight Healing? It is a fantastic power, imbued in a weapon from a time long, long ago. It seems your black sword is a weapon with a deep connection to Galia.”

“I can’t say much for certain. Greed isn’t one to talk much about himself.”

“Be that as it may, it would be wise for us to arrange an audience with Eris once she returns to ask her about Galia. The less we know, the more we’re left on the back foot.”

Was it really possible that healing magic had once existed? If that were true, and if it had continued to exist, would my parents still be alive? Perhaps Roxy’s father Lord Mason might not have met his maker in Galia either. 

Thinking about these possibilities was pointless, yet I couldn’t help but wonder where I would be had my parents not died when they did. What kind of life would I have been living now? Would I have still awakened the true power of my Gluttony? Or would I have become a simple farmer, living a simple life tilling the fields? Either way, I never would have met Roxy. Of that I was almost certain.

Aaron’s stride came to a halt upon the damp, rocky path. It was wet and slick from many long years of neglect. An unusual moss had grown over it, somehow feeding off the strange red light of the ruins. I was sure that I had seen it somewhere before. The memory came to me—it was the same moss in Galia, a strange plant that devoured people from within.

“Be careful, Aaron,” I said. “If you ingest the spores from that moss, it will start growing inside of you.”

“Just as I thought. I had a feeling I’d seen it somewhere before.”

I tried to burn away the moss with my Fireball spell, but then realized I was still stuck in Roxy’s body. 

Aaron grinned at my mistake. “If we can’t burn it down, then we hold our breath and pass through as quickly as possible.”

“Got it.”

Once we passed the moss, we found ourselves before a massive door made of some sort of strange metal. It was shut tight, not budging an inch no matter how hard we pushed. Aaron unsheathed his sword and began pouring the energy of the Grand Cross into its blade. The tech-art dramatically increased the power of his holy sword.

“I’m going to cut down the door,” Aaron said. “Be on guard when we head inside!”

As I unsheathed my own blade, Aaron cut through the door like it was butter, opening a way through. We burst inside, but were shocked to see what awaited us.

“Why… What…what is this?”

“This is awful…”

It was a sight we’d seen before in Rafale’s research facility. Glass canisters lined the floor, filled with a red liquid. Inside each was a naked human body, at least twenty of them. I walked closer to see if any still lived.

“They’re dead,” I said.

“But they still look alive,” said Aaron.

If the red liquid in the canisters was the same as what Rafale had used, then it was possible the liquid kept their bodies from rotting. Laine had made that discovery when she analyzed the liquid after the incident. We looked around the strange room until Aaron noticed something.

“I know these faces,” he said. “They’re all people who’ve recently gone missing. Sketches of their faces have been circulating the castle.”

Merchants had to pass by the Hobgoblin Forest to get to the kingdom, so it wasn’t surprising that many had found themselves on the wrong end of goblin attacks. However, the problem wasn’t that people had been attacked—it was that their bodies had been brought to this place and stored. What in the world were they trying to do, and why did it require so many bodies?

“It doesn’t look like they’re storing these bodies for food, does it?”

“If that were true, we’d have found traces of them when we entered. But there’s nothing like that here. It’s too clean.”

Monsters had a taste for human flesh. I didn’t know why, and it seemed that Aaron didn’t know either.

“When I was a boy, I was taught that monsters saw humans as their mortal enemies,” he said. “I think it was the same for all holy knights. I was told that if you placed a human and some kind of livestock in front of a monster, the monster would always attack the human. I always thought it was because humans are far more delectable to them, but if that’s the case…I don’t know what to make of this situation at all.”

“It doesn’t make sense for them to have done this to humans they’ve attacked. Goblins always eat their victims right there on the spot.”

We had both heard the rumors of monsters that, when driven to extremes by starvation, ate humans alive. It was admittedly true that the goblin shaman was different from the rest of its ilk, and it had used its intelligence to hex me and Roxy. But that had been in battle. Even if we were in its home, that didn’t explain the people stored in glass tubes. It was almost as if the goblin shaman knew this place’s true purpose. 

A shiver ran down my spine. There was too much we didn’t know about these ancient monsters. As I stared around at the agonized faces trapped in the canisters, the ruins suddenly lit up. The light blinded me momentarily because I’d been using my Night Vision.

Then, from the other side of the room, we heard a hoarse, rasping voice. “Do not…interfere…humans…”

Aaron and I looked in the direction of the voice.

“But that’s…” I gaped.

“I don’t believe it…” muttered Aaron. 

The voice had come from the goblin shaman, missing its right arm, and with one of its left eyes crushed. The socket was crusted with blood. Just as Laine had told me earlier, it had a gray body only slightly smaller than that of a hobgoblin. It also wasn’t as muscular as a hobgoblin, likely because it avoided close-range battle. Instead, it had long, lanky arms and legs, and it looked like it was quick on its feet. It had already proved its speed by dodging my Bloody Ptarmigan attack.

The goblin shaman held its staff in its left hand and looked to be readying a spell. The eye sockets of the skulls at the head of its staff lit up with blood-red light, and I felt a strange magic pierce the air, like it was trying to finish the soul-swap spell from earlier.

I was shocked to see a monster capable of human speech, but I readied my sword all the same. As Aaron and I raced toward it, the goblin shaman snarled at us, its remaining eyes filled with pure hatred. 

The way it glared at us felt uniquely human.