Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 7 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19:

This World of Myne

THE WORLD OF WHITE turned black, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the midst of pandemonium. I didn’t know where I was, but everyone around me carried a weapon. Explosions boomed in the distance, and inhuman screams pierced the air.

“Greed?! Luna?!”

From Luna’s spiritual plane, the three of us had entered Myne’s soul. We should have appeared together, yet Greed and Luna were nowhere to be found. I figured I must have lost my way and ended up in the middle of a battle. Dumbfounded, I stood and stared at this unfamiliar world as a light flashed from behind.

“Whoa!”

Somehow, I managed to dart out of the way of danger. When I turned to look, I was face-to-face with a huge creature.

“A chimera?!”

Though it was a chimera, it was not like Haniel. Its core was obscured by a shield. It was then that I realized a terrible truth: I was unarmed. I had the worst luck. Not only had I gotten myself lost, I had also lost my weapon. Luna had warned me that if I wasn’t careful, I could be lost in the labyrinth of a person’s soul forever.

“Well, this isn’t a great start.”

But there was no time for complaining. The chimera advanced toward me. The people around me—probably soldiers—fired on the monster with their guns, but the attacks were of no use. This chimera was of a different class from the one I had fought. It was considerably larger, with six wings along its back. 

As it prepared to fire another beam of light, a loud and powerful voice roared, “Out of the way!”

The one who spoke wielded the black sword, Greed. His skin was tanned and his hair a fiery red. He was tall, with an incredible physique that even his armor couldn’t obscure. The man charged the chimera, his blade cutting through the beam of light with ease.

“Wow…” I murmured.

There was no wasted motion in his movements. He reminded me of Aaron, but this guy seemed possibly even more capable. 

“I’ll take the chimera. The rest of you, do whatever you can!”

After barking his orders, the man ran toward the chimera alone. As the wielder of the black sword, I assumed he might also be the bearer of a Skill of Mortal Sin. If so, that meant he might have some idea about Myne’s location. 

I picked up one of the longswords that lay scattered about and chased after the man. I could move with as much ease as in the real world, which was a good sign. It meant I could fight. 

I called out to the man with red hair. “Let me help!” 

“Huh? I haven’t seen you around before. Black hair, black eyes… You’re not Galian, are you?”

“I…”

“Tell me later. The more allies, the better. We’re losing men out here quicker than we can count,” he said, his voice blunt and direct.

Then he put a hand out to stop me when I reached him.

“But,” he continued, “that chimera belongs to me. You have no idea how ravenous I am. Well, how much my skill hungers. It’s not going to calm down unless I eat that thing.”

The man took off at high speed, his black sword shining. The chimera launched explosive pinions from its wings, but the man dealt with them as if time had stopped for him. He only took one swing, a vertical slash straight through the chimera’s core, splitting it in half.

“Hoo yeah! That’s the stuff! Too bad these big ones never seem to hit the spot!”

Now there was absolutely no mistaking it: this was the bearer of Gluttony.

I had felt the same when I devoured a chimera—oddly underwhelmed. According to Greed, the chimera were a failed experiment.

“I’m gonna regret eating that later. Anyway, what’s your story?” The red-haired man turned his back on the collapsed chimera and looked at me.

“I’m…Fate. I, uh…I got lost.”

The man chortled. “Lost? Here? In the middle of a battlefield? You are interesting. But you offered to help me, and you had the guts to stand up to a chimera. I like you, kid. Call me Kairos.”

Kairos grabbed my hand and pulled me along as he walked. He was clearly the pushy type.

“I’ll show you around the base,” he said. “Nothing to eat around here anyway. Can’t go fighting on an empty stomach and so on—especially in my case. I’m useless if I don’t eat.”

“Thank you. To be honest, I can’t make any sense of this place.”

“Yeah, I can tell. It’s written all over your face. Fate, right? Here’s a free piece of advice: The battlefield is no place for your feelings.”

“I hear that a lot.”

Kairos roared with laughter. “That being said, they say honesty is a virtue too. Probably especially the case, given the current state of the world.”

Kairos sheathed his sword and gave me a charming grin. Now that the chimera had fallen, the enemy formation broke and they began to retreat.

“No more fighting today. We may have to face an even harder battle when they rally and launch another offensive, so we need to get our rest while we can.”

I stared at the black sword hanging from Kairos’s side. “That’s an amazing sword. It’s powerful enough to cleave a huge beast in half.”

“This here is Greed. He’s the rudest bastard I know, but he’s a good guy deep down.”

“Who’re you calling a rude bastard, Kairos?”

“Sorry, sorry. No need to get salty. As you can see, the sword talks.”

Kairos gave the sword a friendly pat. It wasn’t the Greed I knew—this one didn’t need to use Telepathy to speak and could make his opinions known to anyone he wanted. That meant Kairos had unlocked Greed’s Fifth Level. That was unexplored territory for me.

I looked around. Was this really the region of Galia? It was so different from the place I knew: a vast, barren wasteland that teemed with bizarre flora. Even though this land was gouged and scarred by the ongoing war, the native plant life still flourished.

“Eyes up, soldier,” said Kairos. “The base is north of here. Let’s go.”

“Right behind you, Sir Kairos.” 

“None of that ‘sir’ stuff, thanks. Kairos is fine. That’s what everyone calls me.”

I followed Kairos north. After some time, a familiar black wall came into sight.

“Babylon…” 

“Babylon? What’s that?”

“Oh. Uh, it’s nothing.” It seemed like it didn’t have that name here. 

Kairos gave me a curious look, but then his eyes lit up. “I like it. Babylon! They’ve been on my back about naming this place for forever. I’m taking that.”

“Uh…you’re going to make your decision just like that?”

“Yeah. If they don’t like it, it’s their fault for making me come up with a name in the first place.”

As we drew closer, I realized that it was different from the Babylon I knew. It was not yet that Babylon, but it would one day become it. This place was still being built.

“We don’t have enough material,” said Kairos. “We take the adamantite from the enemy, but it ain’t easy. I’d rather be fighting. At least that’s straightforward.”

Kairos called out his thanks to the workers on the wall as he walked. We had been in the thick of battle mere moments ago, but he showed no signs of exhaustion whatsoever. None of the side effects of Gluttony seemed to manifest either.

When he was done with the workers, Kairos showed me the way to some lodgings.

“First things first: food.”

“Uh…why are you treating me so well?”

“I told you already. I like you. Besides…”

“Besides?”

“You’ve got a familiar scent. We can recognize one of our own. Right?”

I was thrown for a loop. Should I tell him that I’m another bearer of Gluttony? 

I hesitated without answering until Kairos shrugged it off.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. My silence didn’t faze him in the least. “By the way, we got a new recruit not too long ago. Same as you.”

“New recruit?”

“Yeah, over there. All by her lonesome in the corner again. She’s one hell of a monster in battle, but as soon as the fighting stops, she keeps to herself. Not sure what to do about it.”

Kairos smiled as he spoke. He indicated a girl with a ruddy, tanned complexion, bone-white hair, and deep red eyes that made you flinch. She sat holding her knees in the corner and gazed up at the sky.

“Myne?!”

I was so surprised that I spoke louder than I would’ve liked. Some people turned to look at us, surprised. As soon as Kairos heard me, his eyes shone with a fitful luster as an idea came to mind.

“You two know each other? That’s great! You can help make her feel at home. I’m counting on you, Fate!”

Kairos left to attend to other business, leaving me alone with Myne’s piercing gaze. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since I had literally just shouted her name.