Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

Wrath and Gluttony

I WAS RIGHT. Laine would never change. In addition to forgetting to tell her father that she was alive and well, she decided that informing him could wait until after she was done with her research. 

I should’ve seen it coming, I thought. I’ll inform Mugan on her behalf. Set was already sending a report to Seifort—we had to inform the royal capital about recent events at Hausen—so I called him over and asked that my message to Mugan be included.

“Not easy for you, is it?” said Set with a wry chuckle. “Oh, by the way, I haven’t seen Eris around recently. Do you know where she is?”

“Oh, she went off looking for a way for us to get there.”

I looked up at Galia, floating in the sky. It was no longer a place we could reach on foot. Roxy said she’d fly me there in her angel mode, but I knew the transformation drained both her and Snow’s energy. I didn’t want them to overuse their Valkyrie powers as a means of getting around only to land in the middle of a pitched battle too exhausted to fight.

Eris had said she had a plan in mind, and then she simply left. She never even told us what her plan was, so we were all left scratching our heads.

“It better be something good…” I muttered.

“You don’t put very much trust in Her Majesty Eris at all, do you?”

“Why would I? She’s got a dismal track record. It’s like there’s some new stupid thing to deal with every day.”

“Such as?”

“Like her getting naked and trying to force her way into bed with me every night. I’m barely getting enough sleep as it is.”

“What?! Ugh! How I yearn for such a blessing!”

Set was clearly enamored with Eris. I had to concede that she was a beautiful woman. But something about her behavior felt…off to me. She’s always throwing herself at me, sure, but she isn’t doing so with any amorous intent. It’s something else. I hadn’t yet worked out what it could be.

Eris still kept tons of secrets. She remained an enigma in many ways.

“Fate! You realize we’re talking about the queen, yes? She’s not only the ruler of our kingdom but a peerless beauty! If such a woman passionately offers herself to you, and you do not respond to her in kind, well…can you ­really call yourself a man? Why in the world would you complain about this, Fate?!”

“Calm down, Set. You’re talking way too fast!”

I admit I was shocked the first time Eris showed up nude. My heart raced like crazy. After days and days of it, though, it became a familiar sight. Now I simply thought of her as an exhibitionist. Eris lying in bed naked was just a part of the mundane scenery of my life, and it was better just to let her go than make things worse.

“I’m so used to it these days that when I see her, I only think, ‘Oh, she’s naked again.’”

“What?! The majestic splendor! Our queen in all her naked glory! Outrageous! Simply outrageous! What is this envy within me?! Let me take your place, Fate! I demand it!”

“Set! I said calm down!”

Set’s behavior made me suspect that he might be a target of Eris’s Lust skill. He was practically out of his mind. I suspected that Eris didn’t like how Set was so smitten by Roxy and had cooked up a little revenge. She often claimed this kind of thing was about keeping up appearances, but I wasn’t going to stand for it in my own domain.

Even now, Set continued to heave deep sighs as he called Eris’s name. Suddenly, the cold gaze of a child came to rest upon him.

“Papa… You’re doing that thing where you moan about Eris again…” Anne, Set’s daughter, said.

“Oh!” cried Set, snapping back to his senses. “Anne! I, uh…”

“You promised!”

“I’m sorry!”

He must have promised that the topic of Eris was off-limits. But he’d broken that promise and now faced the wrath of his young daughter. It was a pitiful sight.

“You still have work to do, right? Get to it!” Anne said.

“Yes, ma’am!”

Anne then dragged away the dejected Set. This was fraying their relationship, so I made a mental note to admonish Eris and demand that she stop toying with Set. 

“I can’t believe it,” I muttered. “The stakes are so high, and she’s still got time to play with people’s feelings.”

The queen had some terrifying hobbies. I breathed a sigh and found arms draped around me. There is only one possible culprit—Eris. She’s finally returned. Or so I thought. But…something felt off. The body pressed against my back felt different.

“It feels…flatter…”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

I turned toward the voice and found a girl with tanned skin and white hair. “Myne?!”

Myne never did anything like this.

“What do you mean?” repeated Myne. Her grip tightened. The power was unbelievable.

“Myne… You’re hurting me…”

I felt like I was going to snap in half. Even with my Health Regen and Health Regen Boost, I wasn’t sure I’d recover from a broken spine.

“Mercy!” I cried. “I mistook you for Eris! That’s all, I swear!”

“Understood…for now.”

Just when I thought my bones were going to shatter, Myne released me. 

Talk about a close call. We’re on the verge of battling the entire Galian continent, and I nearly got paralyzed by a hug.

“What was that about, anyway?” I asked.

“I figure if Eris does it, then sometimes I will too.”

“Why?”

“I just felt like it.”

Myne had been doing this sort of thing more often lately. I wanted to compare it to a cat playing with a toy, but Myne was more like a tiger that merely resembled a cat. She was a wild beast. If I let my guard down, she would tear me apart like prey, so I kept my guard up at all times.

Until recently, Myne and I had functioned within a set distance of each other—not exactly together, not exactly apart. Since Myne had confronted her past, the distance between us had shrunk to nothing. It was like she was attached to me. She was always acting like this out of the blue. I wished she’d warn me ahead of time. Can I get used to this? Will it eventually end up like Eris, the exhibitionist? I had my doubts.

“Fate, have you heard anything I said?”

“What?”

I wasn’t paying attention at all, and Myne wasn’t happy about it. If she’d had her black axe Sloth in hand, she would have sent me to the stars with a single swing. Instead, her cheeks puffed up like an angry squirrel. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but then she smiled at me.

Myne smiled.

I was starting to get used to Myne’s smile. She had gone expressionless for so long, but she had regained her emotions when she confronted her past. Her sense of taste had returned, too. Myne said she wanted to try something new, so Roxy was teaching her how to cook, and I was usually the taste tester for her creations. While Myne may have been a prodigy in battle, that genius did not translate to the culinary arts. She had a long road ahead of her.

“So, um…about what happened…” said Myne bashfully.

There was only one thing that she could have been referring to. Just a few days earlier, I was taking a bath when Myne pushed her way in to join me. Then she declared her love for me.

Given the situation, and the weight of the moment, I only did what was natural—I panicked. All of the girls then burst in: Roxy, Memil, Eris, and Snow. This quickly turned into an interrogation. They needed to know how exactly I ended up in the bath with Myne. Since then, things between Myne and I had been uncertain—we’d never finished our conversation.

“When you confessed your love to me, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I, uh…”

I love Roxy.

I was just about to tell Myne this, but she pressed a finger to my lips. “I know,” she said, not allowing me to say the words aloud. “Does it make you uncomfortable? How I feel?”

“No. It makes me happy.”

“Then that’s enough for me.”

“What do you mean?”

Myne flashed me another grin. “I have time,” she said. “Endless amounts of time. Just like you.”

I should have expected this from someone who’d lived so long.

“Wait. You mean…”

Myne had lived for more than four thousand years. Apparently, it had something to do with bearing a Skill of Mortal Sin, which suggested that maybe I, too, would live for an unfathomably long time.

“You can have Roxy for now,” Myne said. “But a hundred years, maybe two hundred years from now, I’ll have you all to myself. And then we will be together forever.”

“What?!”

“So it’s no big deal.”

Whoa! Talk about a seriously long-term plan! But it was true that Roxy was human and only had a normal human lifespan.

“Myne…” I muttered.

“My luck ran dry the moment you saved me. This is what I get.”

“Come on now,” I said. “There’s no need to be so hard on yourself.”

“In that case, it’s going to be a perfect example of reaping what I sow!”

With that, Myne happily wrapped me in another hug.

I didn’t know what was going to happen a couple centuries from now, but Myne had chosen to let go of the past and live in the present. I believed that, through it all, there would be a brighter future.