Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

Luna on the Spiritual Plane

PLACES YOU LONG FOR but can never return to—if there was a world composed of places like that, it would perhaps resemble the spiritual plane. I stood right in the center of it, surrounded by a landscape of alabaster white that stretched beyond the horizon and into eternity. This landscape would never change no matter how far I walked. I visited so often that it almost felt like a second home.

Greed and Luna aren’t usually late, I thought.

Typically, they were waiting for me when I arrived. This time I was all on my own. Luna was the creator of this spiritual plane. Below it was the world of my Gluttony, a prison where the souls I had consumed cried out in despair and resentment, pleading for salvation.

In Galia, when I had almost lost control of my Gluttony, Luna had saved me by creating this safe harbor. In essence, it acted as a barrier against the effects of Gluttony’s hunger. 

I waited and waited, and eventually I laid down on the white floor. In the real world, I was sound asleep in my bed. It made me wonder what would happen if I did the same here. Out of curiosity, I closed my eyes. Then I heard a familiar voice call out. It rang sweetly and had a certain youth to it…

“Luna! I’ve been waiting for you.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen anyone try to sleep here. You’ve got some guts though, lying there waiting to peep at a lady like a dirty little pervert.” As Luna stepped closer to me, I clambered to my feet. It felt almost like she dared me to look.

“Eh? Ah, that wasn’t what I was doing.”

“How unfortunate. I was hoping you might stay there a little longer so I could stomp on you.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad, actually.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed to slits as she watched me getting ready to lie down again. “Ew. Seriously?”

I laughed. “It’s a joke, Luna.”

“Why you—”

When we first met, we had been stilted and awkward around each other, but now we knew each other well enough to banter. Though I was grateful to Luna, I still harbored feelings of guilt for what I’d done to her. After all, when she was part of the monster Haniel, I had devoured her soul. Though she had created this spiritual plane, she was still destined to spend an eternity in the prison of my Gluttony. She had spent an unfathomable amount of time trapped in the core of Haniel, only to end up here. I couldn’t consider it any sort of salvation.

Even so, Luna had thanked me before. She said she was glad that, at the very least, she’d ended up somewhere that she could be herself. But when I heard that, I only grew more miserable. We lived in an unfair world where nothing went the way it should. Yet once, long, long ago, supposedly the world had been in the care of a God who offered salvation. I’d grown up hearing those stories from my father. 

Back then, I’d believed in it too—in a time when the God Laplace had brought peace to all. An age in which all people lived equally, without skills or stats, without the threat of monsters. It was a just-so story to explain the world. The protection of Laplace, so it was said, had brought an eternity of bliss. But that god had vanished from our world, leaving behind skills, stats, and monsters, all of them trials for humans to overcome.

The memories of those stories came flooding back, even though I’d abandoned my faith the day my father died.

“What’s wrong?” Luna asked, her head tilted in curiosity. “You look rather perplexed… Ah, I see. You’re thinking about how to get a peek at my panties, aren’t you?”

“I am not!”

“Is that so? Recently you’ve been up to all sorts of activities with a whole variety of young women.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know all of that has been well above board!”

“Oh, really? I’ve been watching it all through your eyes, Fate. Nobody knows you better than I do.”

“Please, can’t a guy get a little privacy?”

“No need to worry, Fate. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

When we first met, Luna had seemed so shy and timid, but I couldn’t find a single trace of that girl in the one who stood before me. She was lively, talkative, and always laughing. Even so, here in the spiritual plane, Luna could see the real world through my eyes, so she knew about my father, the Zodiac Knights, and Libra. Of course, she also knew all about what Eris and I had discussed as we gazed up at the night skies of Tetra. Luna enjoyed watching how I reacted to it all.

“I want things to go well between you and Roxy,” she said. “I honestly do. But if you’ve really made up your mind, I think the sooner you tell her the better.”

“I know, but…”

“I know that your Gluttony makes it difficult for you to fully open your heart. But if Roxy really is more important to you than anything else in this world, then that settles it.”

Luna didn’t go any further; she didn’t have to. We both knew what my Gluttony hungered for more than anything else. It hungered for those dearest to me—a quirk of this particular skill that I never wanted to think about. Even Luna didn’t know what would happen if the worst came to pass. And the reason she didn’t was because the last bearer of Gluttony hadn’t let it happen.

“You know the risk, but you still want to be with her. She wants to be with you too. So, all you can do is keep on going. Nevertheless, you must not forget that if you ever lose control, you put her life in danger.”

“I won’t forget, and…I’ll tell her.”

Luna nodded, satisfied. “I’m counting on you, Fate.” Her head once again tilted to the side. “Speaking of, don’t you think you’re playing things a little too…loose and casual recently?”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. Consumed by awkwardness, I barely stammered a reply. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

But Luna was always watching, which meant she knew what had happened to me right before I arrived in the spiritual plane. She giggled. “Don’t act like you don’t know! It’s practically written all over your face. You look so embarrassed.”

“No comment.”

“Hm. Well, in that case… Shall we have a look at what’s happening in bed at this very moment?”

“Y-you can do that?”

“Of course I can. Now let’s see what’s going on.”

Luna snapped her fingers in a way that felt rehearsed. A rectangular, screen-like shape appeared before us. It displayed the ceiling of my room. I seemed to be sleeping on my back. Quite the sound sleeper, I didn’t toss and turn. We heard the regular sounds of my breathing. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“You got me all worried, but I’m just sleeping,” I said. “What’s so interesting about this? I’m just…”

Then I remembered that Memil had been drinking my blood. I’d passed out from a combination of blood loss and exhaustion, and found myself in the spiritual plane without any idea what had happened after Memil finished. I hoped that she’d simply gone back to her own room, satisfied and satiated…but recently, I’d been waking up to find Memil sleeping in my bed with me more often than not. I’d tried telling her off, but she said she couldn’t help herself, as drinking blood made her too drowsy to move. She claimed that she fell asleep on the spot.

But looking at the screen now… I couldn’t see Memil anywhere. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ah! Look! There’s Memil,” cried Luna.

“Huh?!”

We heard something shuffling under my blanket before Memil’s head suddenly popped out from it. “I’m still thirsty. Master! Are you awake? No… He’s out cold. In which case, happy hour!”

Memil sunk her fangs into my neck. I had no idea she did it all night long! That explained why I sometimes woke up light-headed and bleary. 

“She’s taking too much blood!” I shouted. 

“Calm down, Fate, calm down. It isn’t that bad.”

“There’s… there’s more?”

“There is.”

Luna locked me into a tight, inescapable grapple as I fought to wake myself up, and a crooked grin grew on her face.

This is bad. This has to be bad! 

We watched the screen before us as Memil lifted her head from my neck, a look of pure satisfaction on her face. “Ah! Delicious. Any more than this and he’ll die of blood loss. I must resist! Well, well…”

Then we heard the rustle of the blanket again as Memil disappeared from view. Where was she going?! I knew she was lying down, but… 

“Luna, I have to know! Let me go!”

“Cool it, Fate! How about a little trust?”

A few moments later I heard Memil’s soft breaths. Between them, muffled and difficult to discern, I occasionally heard faint whispers of, “Brother, why?” 

Was Memil dreaming of Rafale and Hado? Either way, I’d just caught a glimpse of a different person, one who didn’t have her guard up. She always said that the past was the past, but I always wondered how much she really meant that. In truth, when her own family betrayed her, it had left wounds on her soul that only manifested in quiet moments like this.

“I’ll have to be more considerate toward her going forward,” I said. “Thank you for showing me this, Luna.”

“You’re most welcome. I couldn’t just sit by and let this go. Sometimes the memories come back to her, and they come with tears.”

“I had no idea…”

“That being said, you should be more wary. When she’s in a good mood, she likes to play tricks on you.”

“What?! That girl is incorrigible. Perhaps a little discipline is in order.”

I didn’t know exactly what Memil was doing, but I gathered that it wasn’t anything too serious, given the impish grin on Luna’s face. I still couldn’t bear to see Memil weeping. I turned away from the screen and toward Luna. It was about time to get to the reason I was really here, and nobody knew better than her. She seemed to understand at that moment, and she snapped her fingers. The screen vanished.

Then Luna just stood there, impassive. Her expression suggested that she was waiting for me, so I decided to get right to it. I took a deep breath.

“Why is Myne so intent on getting to the Door to Distant Lands? I want to know what I can before we arrive at Hausen.”

“Yes… Her goal hasn’t changed a bit. Not then, not now. It’s always been the same thing.”

Luna stared out at the endless expanse of white that surrounded us, and she began to talk. What she told me filled me with an abyss of inescapable sadness. When she finished, I had made up my mind: I would do anything to stop Myne.