Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19:

He Who Waits in the Depths

I PUSHED THROUGH THE DEAD that had gathered, hacking my way past them when necessary.

“They never end.”

“Nope.”

“Not easy being popular, is it?”

“I don’t know if I’d call this popular.”

Envy’s comment did raise a question, though. Why are the dead flocking to me like this? They didn’t even glance in Rafale’s direction. It was as if I were the only thing they could see. Was it because I hadn’t been ­devoured? Was it because I still wasn’t dead? Or was it because I was the bearer of Gluttony? Was it possible that the dead gathered around me in the hope that I might save them?

“What’s wrong? Lost in thought?”

“I’m thinking about all the souls here. What do you make of it?”

“I have no way of knowing. Do you not feel anything yourself?”

“I…”

Envy chuckled. “I had thought you would be consumed by your Gluttony by coming here,” said Envy. “After all, this is its deepest depths. There is no place with a stronger influence than here.”

“I thought the same, but…”

I had struggled against my Gluttony all this time, but now that I was so close to it…

“Your condition seems stable.”

“I don’t want to think about it, but you may be right.”

“You mean to say that perhaps you are now capable of controlling it?”

“No. Not when that false Fate is still able to attack me in the real world.”

Fake Fate was like an embodiment of my Gluttony. Was it because I had driven him away that I could maintain a sound mind here? I didn’t think so. In the end, I hadn’t finished off the fake version of myself. He had merely escaped. Even now, I could feel our connection.

“We haven’t settled things yet,” I said.

“We are layering conjecture upon conjecture. We have far too little in the way of facts. We don’t even know what’s going on around us.”

“Then all we can do for now is follow Rafale.”

“And yet, the dead refuse to open a path for you. You truly are popular.”

“If I could give it to you, I would.”

I didn’t want even a fraction of this kind of popularity.

I sliced through another of the dead, and a stranger’s memory flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning coursing through my skull. It was a pointless scene—­a man who killed and killed only to be slain at the hands of Gluttony himself. That man, I realized, was the first person I ever killed. He was one of the thieves who had tried to break into the castle. His memories were filled with hatred, but they were now a part of me.

“I feel sick,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

It wasn’t something that happened every time I cut a soul down, but I occasionally caught glimpses of memories belonging to people I had never known, people I assumed had been slain by Kairos. They flowed into me, trying to become a part of me.

“Something’s wrong,” said Envy. “You shouldn’t go on.”

“That’s not an option.”

Rafale was much farther ahead of me. I was in danger of being left behind.

“He’s not going to wait for us,” I said. “Besides, I feel like I have to see what’s up there.”

“You will never change, will you?”

As I ran, a long-deteriorated ancient monster appeared, barreling through the dead. I had defeated this monster on my way to the imperial capital. Its upper body was human; its lower body was that of a snake. It was a lamia, one as black as shadow.

“That’s a big one,” said Envy.

It dawned on me that I had killed far more—overwhelmingly more—monsters than people, though I couldn’t speak for Kairos.

“Is that an illusion?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The dead were transforming into monsters.

What does it mean? All the dead here are humans who had been devoured by Gluttony. They have to be. But…

“No. That’s no illusion,” I muttered.

The dead before me continued to change shape. They all took the forms of monsters I recognized, and all were completely black.

“Are these dead souls also monsters?”

“You really don’t know, do you? Or is it that you’ve just avoided looking at the truth all this time?”

I knew what the gunblade was getting at. The Gluttony skill activated when I killed humans and when I killed monsters. It didn’t activate for anything else, such as animals.

“Only humans and monsters carry skills and stats. Have you ever wondered why that is?”

“Because God gave them those powers, right?”

“Yes. In which case, why was there a need to give those powers to monsters?”

“Probably just one of those ‘trials’ God seems so fond of giving us.”

People raised their stats by killing monsters with their skills, and the spheres they received from that helped them to level up.

“That’s not an answer. Defeating monsters earns you spheres. As does killing humans. Why?”

The dead in front of me were changing form, becoming monsters. If there was a meaning at all to it, then…

“Are you saying monsters were once humans?”

“Bingo,” said Envy, complimenting me in its own be­littling way.

“They were human?!” I asked, suddenly nauseous.

“At their core, yes. You’ve seen the soul decay that can take place in the Domain of E yourself. If a person’s mind and power are not in balance, their physical appearance is affected. Skills are no different.”

“But I’ve never seen or heard of that.”

“Of course you haven’t. All these people here now were selected. Those who do not meet the skill requirements become monsters. Over the course of thousands of years, they’ve come to look like new types of monsters altogether.”

So the heart and mind you were born with was different from the skills you were given. This meant that the weak skills the forsaken received were no accident, no mere whim of fate. If you didn’t meet the requirements of your skills, you became a monster. According to Envy, this was what was happening to the dead who stood before me.

“That wasn’t very nice of Greed, hiding the truth from you like that.”

Greed spoke his mind to a fault, but he was considerate in his own way. Omitting the truth had been an act of kindness on his part.

“It’s not out of character for him.”

“So what now? Will the guilt keep you from fighting?”

“No. I’m just glad to finally have an answer to a question that’s plagued me this whole time.”

It had never made any sense. Why did monsters see humans as their mortal enemies and attack so persistently? Why did they feed on humans? Perhaps it was deep-seated enmity. Their hatred remained, and it drove them in their battle for survival against the humans. 

Unlike the dead that I cut down earlier, none of these monsters’ memories flowed into me, no matter how many I cut down.

“I think monsters are a different kind of species,” I said. “Their souls differ from human souls.”

“If you say so, then I imagine it must be true.”

There was something lonely in Envy’s voice. Perhaps we’d touched on the gunblade’s past. Not that it would tell me if I asked.

I ran after Rafale, cutting down the monsters before me without hesitation. A mountain of corpses piled at my feet before eventually melting into a black liquid that seeped into the ground.

I had no idea how much time had passed. When I looked back at where we had come from, a long, black path stretched off into the distance. The monsters were gone, and none of the dead souls remained. It was suddenly quiet, and only Rafale and I were in the burning red world of my Gluttony.

“This is the core of Gluttony,” said Rafale, coming to a sudden stop.

“Rafale…”

“It’s time. I owe you thanks for one thing and one thing only. You have my gratitude for taking care of Memil.” Rafale turned to face me. “What will you do when you next battle your father, I wonder? I can’t wait to see.”

“What do you mean?”

Rafale didn’t answer. He was gone. In his place was a man with bewitching purple eyes, tanned skin, and teeth so white that they gleamed when he grinned at me. However, his most striking feature was his fiery red hair.

“Hey, Fate. It’s been a long time. Fancy meeting you here…is what I’d like to say if I hadn’t been expecting you.”

In his hand was the black sword, Greed.