Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 25

Chapter 25:

Father and Son

MY ARROW NEVER REACHED my father. I had no way of reaching him, either. Not as things currently stood, at least.

“I’m going to need some help, Kairos,” I said.

“Fate, this power…” said Greed.

When I fought Myne at Hausen, I was able to call forth the power of the chimera, Luna. I should have realized exactly why I could do that. I should have given it much more consideration at the time. Not that it mattered now.

Kairos had poked me in the chest and told me he was always within me. He’d told me that would never change. He’d always been by my side: From the moment I was born. Before I’d even known who I was, even. Him and all of those who had been devoured by Gluttony. Greed had probably known Kairos was there all along. Perhaps the reason he’d watched over me and let things happen slowly was because he knew that this time would eventually come.

“Greed,” I said, “how long have you known Kairos was inside of me?”

“From the moment you first held me.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“It’s what Kairos wanted. You are the true Gluttony. We were careful.”

“Is that why you were so reckless against the Zodiac Aquarius?”

When the holy beast had attacked Hausen, Greed gave up his own existence to unlock the Fifth Level secret technique.

“You are our hope. And anyway, I wanted to do it. We’re both quite guilty of recklessness.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. The sword was right. Our devil-may-care attitudes, disregard for our own safety, and rashness were how we’d survived this long.

Kairos’s power surged. Countless memories of battles he’d fought awakened inside of me. 

“You’re closing in on who you really are.”

“Not there yet, though,” I said. 

A scarlet aura surrounded my body, its fiery color reminiscent of Kairos’s hair. 

“From now on, we do this together, Kairos,” I said to his spirit.

As if in response, even more energy surged through me.

“Ready?” asked Greed.

“Always.”

I pulled back on the bow string and filled it with magical energy. I aimed the arrow at my father. He had the ability to stop my attacks by freezing them. If I wanted my questions answered, I had to find a way to overcome that ability. My aura transformed into magical energy, and I funneled its burning flames into my arrow before letting it fly.

My father spun his spear, trying to cut the arrow down. The air around him froze in an instant. The arrow slammed straight into it but didn’t freeze. Instead, it continued to blaze. The freezing air around my father never weakened, however, and the two energies fought against one another.

“Dad!” I shouted.

I leaped from building to building in order to reach the black cube upon which my father stood. I was getting closer. I fired another scarlet arrow from the black bow and ran close behind it, transforming Greed into the black sword.

As expected, my father stopped both of my arrows. Keeping up the ice barrier was putting a strain on him, though, and the air surrounding it grew less chilly. I charged my sword with Kairos’s crimson aura and jumped in with an attack. Now it was two arrows and a blade against a single barrier. I hoped it would be enough to knock my father from the black cube.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he asked.

In one swift move, my father knocked away both of my arrows and sent me flying. But my eyes were locked on the black wings that had sprouted from his back. As I looked at them, my own useless wings pulsed.

“Those wings…” I said, trailing off.

“I’m not even close to giving you a hundred percent. Well? Will you keep going?”

“Are you always going to treat me like a kid?”

“If you’re not a child, prove it.”

My power was still building, but my father’s power surged in proportion. I took a deep breath to center myself, then threw myself into another attack with the currently scarlet-hued black sword. The black spear stopped it like it was nothing. 

Compared to my last attack, this one had seemed the weaker of the two. I’d poured even more effort into that last strike, though. I had felt our energies struggling to overcome one another. But my father’s power now far outweighed my own. How had he gotten so strong in a mere instant?

“Fate, it’s the wings! Look!”

The black wings on my father’s back had changed. 

The tips of them are red.

The wings stretched out wide, like the roots of a tree thirsty for water. The larger the red area on those wings grew, the stronger my father became. It wasn’t just that, either. The red hue of those wings was the same as my own aura.

“No way…” I gasped. “My energy…”

I couldn’t believe it. Before I could get a hold of myself, my father thrust his spear straight at me. With a black cube at my back, I couldn’t dodge out of the way, so I had no choice but to take the hit. White sparks showered us as his spear collided with my sword.

“Our powers are very similar,” said my father. “You devour strength. I absorb it. But there is one difference…”

“Damn it,” I spat.

Strength drained from my body. My aura was being absorbed by my father’s wings. I could see it occurring with my own eyes now, perhaps because I was finally aware of it. 

“The difference is in how our powers activate. You have to take your opponent’s life.”

“My power?” 

“I can activate my power whenever I feel like it. Soon, you will no longer even be able to stand.”

My father was siphoning my power. I used Identify to confirm my own stats, and my magic was plummeting, though there wasn’t a huge change across the board. Not only would soon be unable to stand, but I’d soon be starved completely.

“Hngh!”

How about this, then?! I put a powerful skill I had acquired here in Galia from an ancient monster into play, one that hit the target with a status ailment—Poison Attack. You want to absorb something? Absorb this.

I let go of the black sword with my left hand and swung a poison-filled fist at my father.

“Whoa!” he said, jumping back, out of the way of my strike. 

His power momentarily stopped absorbing my own.

“Don’t like status ailments, huh?” I said.

“I don’t know a single person who does. Where’d you get a skill so dangerous?”

“Just picked it up on my way here.”

“How many times have I told you not to eat weird things you find lying around?”

“Guess I’m not picky like you.”

“Sure seems to have toughened you up.”

As long as I had the Poison skill running through the black sword, my father couldn’t siphon my energy. And as much as I wanted to buy myself time while my lost magic recovered, I wasn’t about to be granted that luxury.

“Guess it’s my turn to attack, then,” he said, pointing the spear at me.

But I knew his stance. I’d seen it somewhere. I knew I had.

“You fool.” Rafale’s voice echoed in my head. “Watch for the jump.” 

He was the very last person I expected to stick his nose into things. I immediately understood the warning, and I focused my attention on the spear, waiting for it to move.

Now!

I just barely managed to evade the spear’s attack on my right arm, but my father still stood a distance away from me. He hadn’t taken a single step. His spear was a different story, though. Everything from the spearhead to his hands had vanished as the portal jumped to impale me. Rafale had used the exact same thing on me in the past.

“Good instincts,” said my father.

“How do you know that skill?”

“It’s a unique attribute of this weapon. It reads the wielder’s heart and mind and gives it a physical form. And if the wielders of the past left it with any particularly strong feelings, their power remains in the spear. Makes you wonder about the person who developed this portal jump attack…”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Rafale click his tongue in disgust. 

I ducked and dodged the black spear while I shot another question at my father. “Does that mean your freezing abilities come from someone else, too?”

“No, those are mine. I can freeze anything and everything, just like my heart,” he explained, his loneliness plainly visible in his face. “Long ago, that wasn’t the case at all. It was the just opposite, actually. I’ve changed.”

His magic only continued to grow. It was so overwhelming I felt like I might be crushed beneath its power. 

“Don’t die on me, Fate. It won’t be long before this will prevent me from holding back.” My father pointed at his face and the sacred mark that glimmered ever brighter, staining his face blood red. “It has recognized that you are an obstruction to the completion of my Divine Revelation, and I can no longer control it.”

“Dad…”

“If you want to stop me, you have to be prepared to kill me.”

“But, I…”

“I’ve told you everything I’m capable of. You know the rest. If you fail here, you and your friends will die.”

My father’s black wings spread, multiplying from two, to four, then finally to eight. Then, a jet-black halo that seemed to suck all the light from the sky around it appeared above his head. My father’s face was gone, now concealed by an iron mask upon which glowed his sacred mark. The black spear also seemed to respond to my father’s transformation, growing even longer and sharper. 

After a moment of silence, the thing that was once my father let out an inhuman battle cry and launched itself at me. It was the spitting image of the Angel of Death.