Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 22

Chapter 22:

The Return of Greed

EVEN WITHOUT GREED, the demonic Kairos didn’t stop. Sharp claws stretched from his fingers as he raised his arms before bringing them down to slice me into pieces.

“Fate! Up there!” shouted Envy.

I evaded Kairos’s claws and looked up. The black shield in the sky had transformed into the black scythe. Not only that, it was already morphing into the second level secret technique, Deadly Inferno.

So Greed can do that even at a range this far from his wielder, huh?

If Deadly Inferno even grazed its target, it’d be a killing blow. My father had stopped the attack with ease, but the same feat wouldn’t be so simple for me.

“Now! Finish this!”

“Kairos…”

Even after all this, I hesitated. We were in the spiritual plane, in the depths of Gluttony. Was it really okay to kill Kairos here? Perhaps this was a battle from which there was no return for Kairos. 

Deadly Inferno was not going to wait for me to make up my mind, though. It spun straight for me at high speed.

“Fate!” cried Envy.

The whirring of the scythe grew closer as it sliced through the air. I faced my foe head-on.

“Sir Kairos…” I said.

The next instant, I ran the black gunblade through his heart. The black scythe missed me by mere millimeters a moment later, its blade biting deep into the ground behind me.

The demonic Kairos began to crumble before me. His intimidating horns, his flesh-ripping claws, the sharp light in his eyes—all of it disintegrated as if sublimating into the air. Kairos’s memories flashed through my mind, though it was less memory and more a sensation.

It was as if I were Kairos. But the feeling was fleeting, fragmentary, and unclear. It was even hazier than what I had gone through to free Myne from her past, and much remained obscured as if by fog. All the same, I felt it. I felt that I had become Kairos.

“We’re finally…linked…” muttered Kairos.

“Kairos! What is this?!”

Kairos had returned to his usual form, but his deterioration continued. He was disintegrating, blowing away like sand in the wind. I hadn’t been able to do anything for him.

“Do not mourn this passing. I was dead anyway. Besides,” said Kairos, reaching out with a weak hand to push a finger at my chest. “I’ll always be here. And that will never change.”

He’d told me that we were connected through Gluttony. That’s what I thought he was talking about. Kairos must have known this because he shook his head.

“You’ve always been kind of thick, haven’t you?” he said. “Then again, that’s probably the reason you’ve made it this far. It’s why Greed has had such a hard time with you.” Kairos looked over at Greed, now back in the form of its black sword, and chuckled. “I’m returning to you, Fate. You’ll understand then.”

“Sir Kairos?” I said.

“I told you to knock it off with the ‘sir’ stuff. We’ve come this far, and you still insist on titles. Jeez. Anyway, don’t lose Greed again, you hear?”

“Understood.”

“I’m sorry that everything rests on your shoulders. But you’d never have been born otherwise. You really… You really don’t get it, do you?”

I didn’t know what Kairos was getting at, but he assured me I would understand soon. He had no reason to lie here in the very heart of my Gluttony.

“Until next time, Fate.”

“We’ll meet again.”

Kairos looked slightly shocked at my words, and then he was gone.

“Sir Kairos…” I said.

The sand-like grains of Kairos turned into motes of light that were pulled into my body. It was similar to a kind of fusion, but at the same time, it was as if parts of me that were once missing had returned to where they belonged.

A shockwave flashed through my head, hitting me so hard that I forgot to even breathe.

“So that’s what he meant,” I muttered, realization hitting me.

That explains it. I finally understand.

Now I knew why Fake Fate loathed me with such fervor, and what Kairos really meant when he’d said he was inside of me. I even knew why Rafale no longer had any reason to fight me. I understood it all. I understood everything. I now knew why it was that I’d been able to maintain my sanity and sense of self here in the depths of my Gluttony. I knew everything.

“I… I…”

“Now you know, Fate.”

The voice that called to me was one I knew all too well. It came from a black sword that was currently plunged into the ground behind me. The sword shifted into human form and approached.

“You sure know how to keep a sword waiting,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It ain’t worth worrying about. Besides, I got a chance to catch up with an old pal.”

Greed yawned so casually that I couldn’t help but elbow him sharply in the ribs.

“What the hell, Greed?!” I said. “Why’d you have to go and do something so reckless?!”

“Because there was no other way. But, look. I’m back, aren’t I?”

“Greed!”

I elbowed him a second time. I must have hit a soft spot because Greed dropped to the floor, writhing.

“Come on, Fate! Is this how you welcome back your most trusted partner?!”

“Don’t give me that!”

This was nothing like a moving reunion. Yet, at the same time, it was very much in keeping with our relationship.

“Hey, lovebirds. Don’t you think it’s about time we got back to the real world?”

Envy’s tone let us know how unimpressed the gunblade was by our antics. It was still worried about Eris, who was trying to deal with me going berserk. She was definitely in a tight spot.

My berserker mode had cooled by this point, though. I knew this because when I closed my eyes, I could see the outside world. I’d stopped completely and now merely stood in place. But calm and quiet didn’t necessarily guarantee safety, so we had to hurry back.

“You heading back? Need a hand getting there?” asked Greed.

“No, I’m good. I know the way now.”

“I see… Then let me tag along.”

Greed reached out a hand. It brought back memories. We’d done this before. And now it was time to head back to a world where we all felt alive.

“We’ll go back together,” I said.

I took Greed’s hand in my own. There was much I wanted to ask my father. Like whether or not I should even call him my father. It was a doubt that nagged at me, something he would have to answer for.

The real me. Back when I had no space in my heart for generosity I may not have accepted the truth. Now that I knew, however, I felt somehow at peace. It was a peace of mind, an openness of the heart, that I owed entirely to the kindness of those whom I called friends.

Light rained down on us, leading us back to the real world. This light filled us, became one with us, and when we lost our forms entirely, it lifted us from the world of red and carried us upward.

The quiet dead gathered where I once stood as if following after me. I watched them for a time, listening to their moans. They, too, were a part of me, a part I could never forget. I would think of them whenever my Gluttony devoured another life.

This place was a home for souls. That was what I was.

I looked up in the direction of home—the real world. It was no longer the blood-red world of the past but the bright blue of the future. And it was in that future that I found hope. 

I was who I was because my mother had given her own life so that I might live.