Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

A Home, Lost

WE WERE UNANIMOUS: Eris had to rest up back at the inn. She was totally plastered after all that wine. I had been unable to enjoy my delicious steak because she couldn’t stop drunkenly throwing herself at me. She was a real handful even when she was sober, but she became even worse when she drank. She kept getting between Roxy and me, and it all made eating lunch a real struggle. We tasked Memil with carrying Eris back to the inn. After all, her job in the party was to play support.

“Take care of Eris,” I said.

“Is this something I’m capable of accomplishing on my own, though? I’m brimming with anxiety,” Memil groaned, shifting her weight.

“You’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad you trust me, but…your confidence is entirely unfounded. Please come with me, Master.”

“I told you at lunch, Memil: there’s something I have to check out. So I need you to keep an eye on Eris until I come back.”

“You’re leaving me on my own?!”

“I am.”

Memil kept trying to find a way to come along with me, but she was wasting her time—I wasn’t going to take her. She narrowed her eyes, irritated…and yearning for my blood. Eris, meanwhile, sang merrily as she leaned on Memil’s shoulder for support.

“Eris!” I said. “I’m going to be gone for a little while. Try to sober up while I’m gone, okay?”

“Okay! Sir, yes, sir! I hear you loud and clear!” she bellowed, holding Memil tight, three sheets to the wind. “I’ll be right here waiting! Until then, I’ll keep the good times rolling with Memil. To think I wasted all that time trying to snare you and you wouldn’t even glance in my direction. Memil! We must overcome this loneliness! Are you with me?!”

Memil squealed in surprise. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Your Majesty!”

“I get to decide what’s a good idea!” Eris slurred.

“Your Majesty, what are you doing?! Watch where you put your hands! Master, help! Your sister needs you!”

“Uh… Good luck, Memil…”

With that said, I turned my back and walked away as Memil’s cries for help echoed behind me. 

Roxy, silent this whole while, turned to face me. “Are you sure she’ll be okay? She looks to be in quite a spot.”

“Well, there’s nobody else we can rely on to look after Eris. So she’ll just have to grit her teeth and bear it.”

Memil could be relied upon because she had a fragment of Shin embedded within her, making her immune to the allure of Eris’s Lust skill. When Eris drank too much, she occasionally became something of a flirting maniac. It was out of control. At times like this, only Memil could handle her. 

Roxy still felt guilty, so I suggested an alternative: “You could babysit Eris instead, if it bothers you so much.”

“But…” Roxy looked chagrined; this wasn’t like her.

As I climbed onto the driver’s seat of the motorbike, I asked, “What’s wrong, Roxy?”

“Her Majesty, she… She always gives me these looks.”

“Oh? Is that bad?” 

“You’re a bit oblivious about this sort of thing, so I haven’t told you, but…sometimes when I’m with you, I can feel her eyes boring into me.”

“Do you think she’s mad at you?”

“It doesn’t feel like anger…”

Roxy couldn’t put the feeling into words. Eris’s past was a mystery. All I knew was that she’d been saved by the former bearer of the Gluttony skill. But I hadn’t found that out from her; one of her white knight bodyguards had told me. I got the impression that Eris didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps she didn’t have many fond memories of that time. I knew the feeling. We had at least that in common. I decided that the next time we drank together, we’d have a proper chat.

Roxy hopped on the back of the motorcycle as I charged it with some magic. I weaved the bike through the crowds as we cruised slowly down the street. Every eye in the crowd followed me and this four-thousand-year-old artifact, once thought lost. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, and their curiosity was written plainly on their faces. Tetra was a town of merchants and markets, so it was only natural that expensive magitech would catch the eyes of traders. However, as soon as they noticed the royal seal emblazoned on the motorcycle, they bowed in reverence. Some people even got down on their knees.

It was just like Eris said: The ruler of the kingdom stood above all else. Too bad she also spent her days trying to cause me grief with her wiles… 

“These motorbikes cause quite the scene, don’t they?” said Roxy.

“Well, not only is it a rare piece of tech, it also carries the royal seal. No way we could stay low-key in a place like this.”

“So you’re telling me that we’ve got no choice but to just get used to it?”

“Exactly. But at least we’re clear of the crowds now. I’m going to pick up the pace, so hold on tight!”

“Roger!”

The best thing to do was to put those crowds behind us. Wind whipped through our hair as we rode out of Tetra and to the west, toward my old hometown. I needed to see something there with my own eyes. 

Roxy gripped my waist tighter. “Your village was burned down by gargoyles, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, back during my first trip to Galia. I stopped by, and…well, I got entangled in more than I expected.”

“I see… Would you tell me about it? The time you went back home?”

“It’s not a very nice story, to be honest.”

“I don’t mind. I want to hear it.”

From the sound of her voice, I knew that I didn’t have a choice. So, I regaled her with those old memories as we rode toward the village I’d once called home. 

It had all started when I ran into the village elder’s son, Set, in Tetra. He had gone there hoping to find some foolhardy adventurers to rid the village of monsters. However, there was no shortage of monster-hunting quests in Tetra, and Set hadn’t had the money to make a good offer. 

A long time ago, Set had been one of the people who drove me out of the village, and I’d still harbored a grudge. However, five years had passed, and I’d wanted to pay my respects at the graves of my parents, so I took his job.

“Set had lost his wife and was raising his daughter by himself,” I said. “It had changed him. Leaving the village and seeing the outside world had changed him too. He wasn’t the guy he once was.”

“I see. And now Set is helping with the restoration of Hausen, correct?”

“Yeah, he’s a key part of the forces building the place into something new.”

In the end, the night I returned home had also been the night of a fierce gargoyle attack. Before I knew it, more than half the village was gone. I decided then and there to protect Set and his daughter at all costs. In the aftermath of that battle, the village was reduced to rubble. The gargoyle’s fire magic incinerated everything, the air choked with ash.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Roxy said. “But at least you managed to patch things up with Set in the end.”

“Yeah… He asked me to punch him, actually. He said, ‘I want you to hit me. I know it won’t make up for everything that happened.’ I think it was symbolic for him.”

“What?! And did you?”

“Well, not at full strength. I didn’t want to kill him, so I only gave him a light tap. He went barreling across the ground, but…he grinned like an idiot the whole way.”

That smile had reminded me of my father. It was just how he’d smiled whenever he wanted to cheer me up during my childhood. When I saw that smile on Set’s face, I felt like I had made peace with my past. 

“I’m so glad to hear it. It ended up good for you too.”

“Yeah, if we hadn’t been able to put the past behind us, Hausen wouldn’t be where it is now. It really made me appreciate the power of human connection…Our experiences bound us together, and those feelings don’t fade no matter how great the distance.”

“I feel exactly that way about you, Fay.”

“Roxy…thank you.”

“You’re most welcome.”

Roxy hugged me tight, as though she wanted to make sure she didn’t fall off the speeding motorbike. I was surprised, but the sincere bond between us brought a smile to my face. We rode on until the burned remains of my old village came into view.

The village was long abandoned. With enough time, as weeds and grass reclaimed the roads, it would become indistinguishable from the wilderness. I got off the bike and took a look around. 

“It’s like the place is frozen in time,” I said. “Frozen in the aftermath of a gargoyle attack.”

“I wanted to come see your village with my own eyes, but…I never imagined it would be in such a state.” Roxy stood quietly by my side, her face apologetic. All I could do was hold her hand. “I know where you’re going, but…will you be okay?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine. It’s the reason I’m here. The reason I came back.”

We continued on toward my old home, which was located a short distance away from the village proper. Left unattended, the spring sun welcomed new tenants—tall grass and weeds. Had the chill of winter left sooner, they might even have reached waist height. The house had been razed to the ground, but that hadn’t been the work of gargoyles. Rather, it had been the efforts of the villagers themselves; they had set it aflame when they drove me out of the village. 

Roxy noticed how these ruins differed from the others. “Fay…” 

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.”

When I headed around to the back of the house, I would find what I sought. I wanted to see what had come of the graves of my parents. As we neared, we took in the state of the graves. There were two at the back of the house. One remained undisturbed, but the earth before the other was churned up, as if someone had crawled out of it.

“Damn it… Damn it. It… It really was him.”

“Just like my father, your father…”

“Came back to life,” I said, finishing her sentence. “The person who stole the Philosopher’s Stone, the person who had kidnapped Laine, truly was my father.”

The dead had returned to life. I knew that for certain now. But only my father had returned. My mother remained in eternal repose. There was some reason, some factor, that decided who came back to life and who didn’t, but I had no idea what it was. At this point I could only speculate. Nonetheless, I felt confident that I would get closer to finding an answer on our journey to Hausen.

I didn’t know why my father had taken the actions he had, save that he said they were part of a “contract.” The way he’d said that word had been filled with portent. That’s why when I returned to my home village, I’d hoped to find some sort of clue. Kneeling beside my father’s grave, I spotted a holy pendant half-buried in the loose dirt.

“There’s some kind of symbol carved into this,” I muttered, brushing aside the soil.

“I’ve seen that somewhere before, it’s…” Roxy yelped in surprise when recognition hit. “That’s the holy symbol of the god Laplace, once used by an ancient faith,” she stammered, perplexed. “The religion has largely faded into obscurity, so there are very few followers of Laplace left, but it seems like your father was one of those faithful.”

“When I was young, we prayed together every morning. I never realized we were praying to Laplace…”

“But look. It seems this belongs to a Zodiac Knight. They were very high-ranked.”

“A Zodiac Knight?”

“I’m no expert, but I read an old tome in our manor’s library about Laplace. There was an illustration of a pendant just like this one alongside a picture of the Zodiac Knights. A long time ago, before the kingdom was established, they held great power. So much so that they were called descendants of God. I don’t know why, but when the Laplace religion declined at some point, the Zodiac Knights disappeared along with it.”

“And now they only exist in old stories?”

“Yes. How did your father come to possess this pendant?”

When it came to my father’s past… I had no clue. This pendant was potentially important. Placing it carefully in my pocket, I spent some time tidying the two graves, flattening the disturbed earth and pulling weeds. With Roxy’s help, we finished more quickly than I expected.

“Thank you, Roxy.”

“Think nothing of it, Fay. I’m simply glad I could finally meet your parents.”

“Well, one of them was truant, unfortunately.”

“Then I’ll just have to meet him in person.”

“And when that time comes, I’ll be right there with you.”

I was glad to have Roxy by my side. However, I realized that Greed had remained strangely quiet during this whole trip. I wondered if, in his own way, he was giving me space to process my feelings in this quiet moment. If so, I was grateful for it.

I had made an important decision when I dueled Aaron, and as I stood before this empty grave, I grew sure that it was the right decision.

“Dad, the next time we meet…it will be in battle,” I said.

My heart was at peace with the decision. We left the graves and returned to Tetra.

When this is all over, I thought, I’ll be back…Mother.