Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 27

Chapter 27:

Two Levels of Sacrifice 

LET’S GO! 

Pushing my stats to their new limit, I closed in on the man in black. Multiple omega slimes moved to block my path, but I only had eyes for one target. If I wanted to stop the omega slimes, I had to deal with him. 

Despite that resolve, I needed to cut through the omega slimes to continue forward. With each slaughtered slime, the metallic voice ever-faithfully informed me of my increased stats, which remained capped. 

I’m closing in, but he still hasn’t moved even an inch… Well, how about this, then? 

Using my forward momentum, I raised the black sword, and with everything I had, I brought it down upon the man in black. The air vibrated, but the man in black easily stopped the attack with his own blade. 

Once again, a smile crept behind his mask. “You still don’t get it, do you? This difference in our power? Everything you’re doing is useless.” 

“Useless? My ‘useless’ attack gave me the chance to hear your voice.” 

The man in black didn’t like my retort. He clicked his tongue and pushed back against my sword. His power surpassed everything I expected. In an instant, he threw me hundreds of feet, then hundreds more. I dug the black sword into the earth to create resistance and stop myself, but it wasn’t easy. This bastard’s strength was off the charts. 

I looked ahead with hate in my eyes, only to see his gunblade pointed directly at me. I transformed Greed into the black shield just as I heard the echo of gunfire. 

I blocked the attack, but the shock was enormous. The shots kept coming. With each bullet, the man in black pushed me farther backward. Farther and farther, until I was up against a huge cliff face. 

“Gah!” 

My back pushed violently into the jagged rocks. The blow sent fractures cracking in every direction. The wall crumbled around me. Gravity peeled me forward, and I crumpled to the ground, my body aching. I coughed blood. I didn’t have a chance to wipe it from my face before the man in black stood before me. 

What speed… 

He was on a different level—from a different dimension in every conceivable way. 

The man in black raised his gunblade and looked at me. A tremendous power charged through his body into his arm. The blade came down with blistering force, aimed straight for the top of my head. 

I was at my limit. I trembled with pain, near the end. Greed couldn’t save me now. I had nothing left but my desperation. 

I didn’t care how much it cost. I didn’t care what I had to give up. I would give my everything. I would kill for it. I would die for it. With my last breath, I would sacrifice everything I had in exchange for ten years’ worth of experience. 

The high-pitched shriek of metal on metal reached every corner of the Galian wastelands. The shockwave sent more fractures through the wall behind me, and the cliff face crumbled. Boulders fell from above like rain, one after another, but I no longer cared. 

I didn’t have to. I gave everything, every last ounce of strength I had, and I was changed. 

The man in black sensed my transformation, and his gaze moved from our clashing blades to my face. 

“Those eyes! It’s impossible… Already?!” 

“I unleashed it in its entirety,” I said, blood flecking from the corners of my mouth. “My Skill of Mortal Sin. Just like you.” 

I felt a power unlike any I had ever known. It flowed through my body. At the same time, I pushed against the gunblade, forcing it backward. 

So, this must be the Domain of E. 

The world looked different. My senses, the depth of information, the very taste of the air—there was no other word to describe what I’d become but “superhuman.” 

“You weren’t supposed to be there yet…” the man in black growled. Now that I had changed, so too had his tone. 

“Well,” I said. “I got tired of waiting.” 

Gluttony didn’t care for half-hearted resolve. If it took anything, it took everything, so I had offered it the very limits of my being—the two levels of ultimate resolve. I was ready to kill, and I was ready to die. With these two resolutions as a sacrifice, I had, for a time, complete control of Gluttony. 

“I owe you my thanks,” I said. “Without you, I’d never have come this far.” 

“Damn it,” the man snarled. 

Now that I had reached the Domain of E, the millions of stats I’d inhaled earlier flooded into me. It seemed I had become the stronger of the two of us. 

“Get ready!” 

I planted my left foot firmly on the ground, transforming the earth beneath me as it cratered under the force. I shoved back against the man in black with all my strength. He leapt backward, unable to withstand the force. As he did so, the omega slimes around him moved like a shield. 

With both my eyes stained red, the crowned slimes were nothing to me. “Get out of my way!” 

With a glare, I froze every omega slime within my field of vision. I had used the intimidating effect of my Gluttony, which better enabled the bearer to feast upon the shivering souls of the weak. I ran along a path made of cowering omega slimes. The man in black pointed the barrel of his gunblade toward me, preparing to attack from range. 

Now, however, I could track the bullets he fired. I readied the black sword for another attack as I cut his bullets out of the sky. The man in black settled his sword into a middle guard to intercept me. We closed in on each other as we both searched for the right time to strike. 

The black sword and the black gunblade seemed to merge as I evaded the man in black, and his blade cut deep into the earth. Dust and soil swirled around him, rising up and clouding my vision. 

I aimed to impale both the skull mask and the man in black’s face behind it. The man was a fearsome opponent. Without a doubt, his head was the best target. I readied my sword and drove it forward, the blade slicing through the dirt and directly toward the man’s face. 

At the last possible moment, the black gunblade parried my sword and sent it off course. Greed carved a chunk from the left side of the man in black’s mask, and the strike sent me past him. I used the momentum to recover distance. 

The man in black turned to face me. His skull mask’s durability was spent, and it crumbled from his face. The power that hid the man’s identity was gone, and the face that revealed itself was one that I knew only too well. After all, we’d met not so long ago. But I wouldn’t have forgotten that face anytime soon, with its wavy blond hair and its fake smile, as much a mask as the skull had been. 

“It was you all along, wasn’t it? Northern Alistair.” I spat. 

I couldn’t say I was surprised. I’d had a bad feeling about him the moment we met. He knew too much about Greed. Everything he said had reeked of lies, especially during our journey to the great canyon of Galia. 

Northern lowered his hood to his shoulders and grinned. “Well, you’re half-right,” he said, with a chuckle, “but you’re half-wrong too.” 

“Then I guess you’ll be telling me what I got wrong. And soon.” 

“I’ll just let you know up front, Corpse—I’m not nearly so kind or gentle as Eris. You see, I can do this too.” 

With his gun still pointed at me, Northern took a white whistle from inside his armor. He spun it on his finger for a moment, then chuckled and blew. A high-pitched tone echoed into the silence. 

“What the hell was that?!” 

Northern let the whistle drop back into his armor. “Oh, you’ll know soon enough. Look to the skies—you’ll see it flying there.” 

The skies? Flying? No way… 

A gigantic shape manifested on the southern horizon, its face barely visible. I didn’t need to see it in any greater clarity. I already knew exactly what it was from the eager, hungry pulsing of Gluttony. 

“The Divine Dragon…” 

“Indeed. The Heavenly Calamity itself. A beast so overwhelmingly powerful that some call it a herald of the gods.” Northern pointed his gunblade to the sky and fired. “Well, enough playing around. It’s time to begin. The Divine Dragon and I are going to kill her , and we’ll give it everything we have. That means you’re going to have to show me everything you’ve got. I’m looking forward to it—aren’t you?” 

“Northern, you…” I snarled. 

But I didn’t have any more time to waste on Northern, because the Divine Dragon’s course was set. The Heavenly Calamity was heading directly for Lady Roxy.