Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

Miria's Past

I HAD TO LESSEN THE SHOCK OF THE GLUTTONY running rampant through Roxy’s soul, and there wasn’t a moment to lose. With Roxy on my shoulder, I leaped out of the laboratory window. It was quite the drop, but for Roxy’s holy knight body, it wasn’t a problem, especially now that I was used to it. Roxy looked slim, but her body was more agile and powerful than I had imagined—clearly the result of daily training and stat building.

Without warning, Miria poked her head out from the broken window and did something unbelievable.

“I’m coming too!” she shouted and leapt from the window with a cry.

“Miria! Don’t be so reckless!”

She followed me, and as usual, she threw all caution to the wind. At first, I thought she’d done it without thinking, but I soon realized that it was her worry for Roxy that propelled her. Miria didn’t care how tall the building was—where Roxy went, she followed. She felt the same as I did, which meant I had to bring her with me. Without consciously realizing it, I had begun to feel a sudden sympathy for Miria.

“Grab hold of my back!” I shouted. “You can come along, but don’t blame me for whatever happens!”

“Roger!”

Because I had my hands full carrying Roxy, Miria hung from my back as we fell. She giggled mischievously as she hung tight. 

“Roxy’s body…it’s so soft.”

“Not the time, Miria!”

Miria rubbed her face into my back. Even at a time like this, she was the same as always. Granted, she did manage to lessen some of my stress, and for that I was grateful.

I turned my gaze to the building that stood alongside the laboratory. I knew Roxy and I could fall straight down and land safely from this height, but Miria didn’t have the stats of a holy knight. If we kept on this course, the fall would hurt her, maybe badly.

“Why do you have to go and make everything difficult, Miria?!”

“I’m worried about Roxy too! I’m not going to just leave her!”

“Yeah, I know. But you better hang on tight!”

“Okay!”

I kicked hard against the wall of the laboratory, slowing the speed of our descent as I headed for the building next to us. Then I kicked off of that one in the same fashion, slowing our fall as we bounced between the two buildings. It was slower than dropping straight down, but it was fast enough. 

All the same, I couldn’t help but think that if I’d known Miria was coming along, I could’ve just used the elevator.

“We’re about to land, Miria. Don’t let go!”

“Got it!”

“Wow, you’re not nearly as defiant and unruly as usual, huh?”

“At times like this, even I know how to behave myself.” Miria scowled. Honestly, it surprised me that she realized how selfish she usually was.

As soon as we landed, I dashed toward the wall separating the Military District from the Holy Knight District and jumped straight over it. With Roxy’s holy knight strength, I could clear it in a single bound. It was, of course, more common to actually go through the gates, but I didn’t have the time to slow down. I felt almost weightless as we soared through the air.

“Do you think… Will Lady Roxy be all right?” Miria asked, worry clear in her voice.

“She’ll be back to normal soon,” I said. “But first we have to take her to the manor. Once we’ve done that, I can hunt down the goblin shaman.”

“I’m coming too! Roxy means everything to me, which means I want to help take down that monster!”

“I can’t take you with us this time, Miria,” I said.

I planned on asking Aaron for help dealing with this monster. His stats were in the Domain of E, making him easily one of the two strongest warriors in the entire kingdom. I also would have enlisted the help of Eris’s two white knights, but they’d pledged loyalty to Eris alone, which made them difficult to work with. On top of that, they were responsible for the daily tasks of running the kingdom in Eris’s absence, which made it hard to simply ask them for favors. 

Compared to Aaron and the white knights, Miria wasn’t powerful enough. To fight an ancient monster, I needed people with strength at least on the level of a holy knight. 

When I told Miria she’d have to wait at the manor with Roxy, she gripped my shoulders tight.

“But I have to do something for her,” she said. “Lady Roxy was—she was the only one who ever tried to help me.” 

Those words stabbed at my heart. I remembered how, when I had been on the very brink of death working under the domineering Rafale, Roxy had been the only person who ever tried to help me too. Even though I’d originally gone to Galia to save her, when I ended up losing control of my Gluttony skill, I had looked to her once more to rescue me.

I wasn’t proud of that. I’d made a big deal out of acting heroic and saying that I’d keep her safe, but in the end, I was the one who’d needed saving. 

However, it seemed like Miria carried a different kind of debt of gratitude. As we ran toward the manor, she told me her story.

“I told you once that I was an orphan like you. Do you remember?”

“I do,” I said.

“So, I was an orphan, but I happened to have a magic sword skill. Because of that, a lot happened to me before I could totally make sense of the world.”

Miria’s first memories were of the orphanage. She didn’t know why her parents had abandoned a child with such a valuable skill, and perhaps she never would. She thought it likely this was because she had been born to a poor family. Hiring an appraiser to identify a newborn’s skill wasn’t exactly cheap, after all. On the other hand, perhaps if she had remained oblivious to her skill, she could have been spared from what happened next.

Her troubles began when a merchant visited the orphanage. He said he would identify all the children’s skills for free as an act of charity. On that day, the only child with a noteworthy skill was Miria, with her inborn talent for enchanting swords. 

The merchant’s eyes changed when he realized what he’d stumbled upon. He asked the nuns if he could adopt Miria. He could give her a brighter future, he said, free of constraints. On top of that, he offered to make a considerable donation to the orphanage. The nuns, who believed in the fundamental goodness of people, trusted him. They’d spent their lives looking after abandoned orphans, and they were themselves kind-hearted.

They reminded me of the nuns who had been so easily fooled by Rafale, when he had used the forsaken for his twisted experiments. Those nuns believed in salvation, so they looked for it wherever they could. It was simply who they were. 

Furthermore, this kind of predation happened all too often in the slums. That was why, even though so many lives had been lost to Rafale’s experiments, nobody ever blamed the nuns who had given the forsaken to him. Miria also didn’t feel any remorse or anger toward the nuns who essentially sold her.

However, the merchant who adopted Miria had taken her to a holy knight’s estate. There, a magical collar was placed around her neck, one which shot searing pain all through her body if she ever disobeyed orders. 

In this way, Miria spent the next five years as a slave. She was given a meager amount of food and was tasked with exterminating any monsters that entered the estate grounds. She was allowed no rest. 

“Because of that,” Miria said, “I earned a lot of spheres, and my level went way up.”

She said these words casually and easily, but it was hard to believe that anyone would force a child into ceaseless battle with monsters. I didn’t think I would have been able to do the same thing at her age, and I only won my first battle because I’d had Greed with me. A strong skill didn’t guarantee a strong heart. Rather, a strong heart was forged and tempered in the fires of battle. 

“I fought and I fought, and…eventually I wondered if it would ever end. I knew my level had grown, and that my stats had grown with it, so I decided to gamble with them.”

“No way…”

“Look, you can still see it.”

As I ran along the path toward Barbatos Manor, Miria poked her face forward so I could see it more clearly. I turned to her and noticed a thin scar running along her neck. To be precise, it was a burn scar. 

“I put the flaming sword’s blade between my neck and the collar, and I burned through it. It was so hot that I thought I was going to die, but fortunately, the collar broke open before anything really bad could happen. Once I was free, I ran with everything I had to the Kingdom of Seifort.”

The young Miria had nowhere else to go, but she felt drawn to the majesty of the kingdom’s capital. She hoped that if she made it to a city of that size, then she’d find a way to make things work out for herself. 

No way, I thought. Her thoughts, her feelings—they were just like mine when I came to Seifort. We couldn’t possibly be that similar…could we?

“Excuse me, are you listening? Hello?” Miria asked. “I’m trying to tell you a serious story here.”

“I’m listening,” I said. “I’m listening intently, in fact.”

“Really…?”

“Don’t be rude! I wouldn’t ignore you. I’m the head of the Barbatos family!”

“Kind of suspicious that you’re bringing the family name into this. You never do that.” Miria’s hands gripped my shoulders tight, then relaxed. “Well, whatever. Anyway, I came here to Seifort without a coin to my name. I wandered the slums in the rags I called clothes until I couldn’t walk another step. I collapsed right there on the street, and…”

“And then Roxy found you, right?”

“Uh, spoiler alert, anyone?! This is the most important part of the story! Damn it, Fate…could you just learn to listen once in a while?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

Miria’s anger flared up again, but she regained her calm a few moments later and went on. 

Roxy had found her and taken her back to Hart Manor, where Miria was nursed back to health. From the moment she recovered, Miria had been taken with Roxy’s all-encompassing generosity, and they’d been friends ever since. 

“I didn’t think I could trust anybody until I met Roxy. You know what I mean, right? I mean, now I have Mugan—and Laine, too—but it all started with Lady Roxy, and I’m so, so grateful for her.”

“I see,” I said, processing her story.

“I signed up to join the kingdom’s army because I wanted to make myself useful, and I wanted to pay Lady Roxy back for all she’d done for me. Besides, magic sword skills are pretty rare. But then, when we were in the forest earlier, I needed her support, and I couldn’t do anything by myself… I failed her.”

Miria’s strong point was always her strength of will. Her tenacity. But here, she suddenly showed me vulnerability. I realized she tried to hide it behind her bravado and her attitude.

“You didn’t fail her,” I said as Barbatos Manor came into sight. “And if you’re still game, I’ll need your help to save Roxy. What do you say, Miria? Are you up for it?”

“I am! Thank you, Fate.”

There was a note of happiness in her voice as she clambered off my back. We had arrived at the manor gates. 

“I told you all about me,” Miria said as we opened the gates, “so next time, you have to tell me about yourself. And I won’t take no for an answer!”

“Once we kill this goblin shaman, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But it’s a long story, and you’re not allowed to fall asleep while I tell it, okay?”

“Well, that all depends on how good the story is. If it’s boring, I’m totally going to nap!”

“You don’t get to decide if my life is boring!”

Miria chuckled as she walked into the manor, then ran off to find Aaron. I’d always felt something of a distance between us, but now that distance seemed to have shrunk. 

With Roxy still limp across my shoulder, I walked into the manor.