Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 32

Chapter 32:

Black Wings

MICURIA’S HUMAN FORM DISSIPATED, and the fragments of her soul swirled around me. I watched, waiting to see what would happen. It seemed restructuring my soul was not going to be a gentle process. Each shard of Micuria’s soul formed a needle.

“You can’t be serious. You’re…?” I trailed off.

I already knew what was going to happen. Micuria was going to destroy my soul so that it could be rebuilt.

Countless needle-like soul fragments stabbed me from all angles. It was a sensation beyond mere pain; it was pure suffering. I felt her soul wriggling through my skin and into my organs. The pain of my soul was reflected through my body. It was unlike anything I experienced with my Gluttony. 

Then, the change in my soul began to show. The once-useless wings on my back started to grow. They tore through the armor on my back and stretched toward the sky, spreading wide. My wings were the purest black. Then, just when I thought it was over, another two wings grew. The vestigial scars on my back had turned into two full pairs of wings. It was just like Roxy when she was in her angel mode. My wings were the opposite color of hers, of course, but these were proof that I was indeed my father’s son.

“Hmm? I’m…I’m still me,” I murmured.

My mental state had remained throughout the transformation. My other half was nowhere to be found.

The other half of you does not wish to join you in becoming one whole being. I have merely paved a path between you. The rest is up to you, Fate.

“Micuria…”

Do not be afraid. You can do it, Fate. The two of you were once a single being, so trust yourself.

“I just don’t think that we’ll work things out.”

I’ll be watching over you, just as Kairos has been. Now, put your newfound wings to use. Hurry, before it’s too late.

Micuria’s voice faded, but the warmth of her soul remained within me. It pulsed with faith in my abilities.

“Let’s go, Fate,” said Greed.

“Time to fly.”

A slight pain flashed through my head when I spread my wings wide. It was as if my other half was resisting me. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s struggling against me.

It didn’t stop me from using my wings, though. I felt a bit sorry for him, but he wasn’t going to stop me from using the power of the holy beastfolk. With a flap of my wings, my feet lifted off the floor. I was surprised by how natural it felt; I knew how to use my new wings instinctively. Just as birds were not taught to fly, my body simply understood how these new limbs were supposed to work.

“You can fly now?” asked Greed.

“Yeah, apparently I can.”

We sped through the sky. My body grew light, as though I had become one with the wind itself. We weaved around the remains of old Galian ruins as we headed for the horizon—the final destination of souls. We went faster. And faster. And faster. Past all the ancient Galian buildings, we found ourselves looking at swirling souls that had broken away from the flow and created their own. Any souls passing nearby were absorbed into them. At the center of the swirling souls, black cubes spun at high speed.

“What are they?!” I asked.

“I’ve no idea, but I don’t like it!”

“I bet Libra put them there to slow us down.”

“Sounds about right. Here they come!”

The souls formed into transparent, fleshy red monsters without true physical forms with the black cubes as their cores.

“Those are some seriously ugly monstrosities,” Greed remarked.

“They’ve gathered monster souls…” I murmured.

The monster souls were thrown together haphazardly. Each one was forcefully drawn to and then connected with a black cube. That was why the creatures we faced were deformed beasts with countless heads, arms, legs, and bodies. Every single one of their eyes stared directly at me, as if every beast within the malformed monster had a unified consciousness and knew exactly who its enemy was.

I transformed Greed into the black bow and fired an arrow. It was useless.

“You’re fighting souls,” said Greed. “They have no physical form.”

“Are you telling me that my attacks are useless?”

“Looks like it. Which means we have to destroy the core the monster has formed around.”

That meant those indestructible black cubes were built from the same material as Greed. I only knew one way to take them down. 

“The Sixth Level,” I said. “Revolt Brionac.”

“That’ll severely deplete your stats, Fate.”

I couldn’t afford to lose too many stats before facing off against Libra. If I used the Sixth Level secret technique here, I wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Libra knew this. That was exactly why he’d prepared these soul monsters. Over thirty of them were in my immediate field of vision, and I could feel even more behind me. There were tons of them, and they had us surrounded. 

“They die. They become souls. And this is what they get used for?”

“Fate…”

“It’s just… It’s beyond sad. It’s pitiful.”

It was, perhaps, the first time I had ever felt sympathy for monsters. At the same time, I knew that they had all once been humans. They had all been implanted with skills they couldn’t bear and had lost human form. Depending on the skill, their very souls morphed, shifting into a form that matched what they had become. They lost their humanity, and all that remained was hatred for humans who were attuned to the skills they’d been given.

There was an unbreachable chasm between the chosen and the forsaken in our world—a world that valued skills above all else. Yet, even then, the people who had become monsters were the true victims. All the soul monsters standing before us no longer had the hearts or minds to even understand that, and yet…

“Fate! They’re coming! Move, damn it!”

I ignored Greed and continued to stare at the soul monsters as they moved in to attack. These weren’t like any monster with a physical form, and I needed to know something. If they were all souls released from their physical bodies, then shouldn’t it still be possible for Gluttony to devour them? Now that I had become one with my Gluttony, I knew that I was capable of more. I had come to this gathering of souls and received Micuria’s support. And now, I felt something I had never sensed before. 

With these thoughts running through my mind, I put a hand out toward the nearest monster. A metallic voice rang in my head the moment we touched. The soul monster dissipated in an instant, leaving only a black cube. The now released souls took off, racing in the opposite direction to the horizon.

“It looks like your Gluttony activated. What did you do?”

“I didn’t devour their souls,” I said as I released more monsters from their black cubes. “I only devoured their skills and stats.”

“Look at you. So dexterous all of a sudden.”

The reason those souls had become monsters was because of the skills they carried. Stats were merely a byproduct. I’d surmised that, by taking both of these attributes from the souls, their power would vanish, and they would be released from the black cubes’ control.

“So you just took the skills and stats, huh? So why not take all the power from all the souls?”

“Because it’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“It seems like I can’t take a soul’s power without its permission.”

The souls that attacked me had been forced to do so by the black cubes. Hatred was in their eyes, yes, but I also saw something similar to those devoured by my Gluttony in them: the desire for salvation. By devouring them, I merely rid the monsters of that which weighed most heavily upon them—their skills and stats.

“I don’t know what this power means just yet, but…”

But I could see the souls that gave me their skills and stats ignored the flow and raced in the direction Greed and I had come from.

“I see,” said Greed. “You’ve liberated them. Liberated their souls.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember the Great Canyon?”

It was a place in Galia where monsters had gathered as if looking for a place to die. Even now, countless ancient monsters slumbered there.