Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 12

Chapter 12:

Experiment E002

I PROCEEDED NORTH toward the containment cells, and little by little, a deep chill crept into my body. The air was cold, yes, but more than that, I shivered at the claw marks carved into the white walls that I passed and the multitude of bloodstains that accompanied them. The farther I went, the more signs of butchery I stumbled across. The scars and the blood told stories of countless lives lost to these depths. I was afraid that the forsaken who had come here from the church had been hunted down and killed in these very passageways.

Was that how they had died before their shredded corpses were fed to those monsters?

“Fate, are you all right?” asked Greed.

“Why? What’s wrong? We should focus on finding Memil.”

“If it’s just my imagination, I’ll let it slide, but…you’re not acting like yourself. This isn’t the Fate I know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to tell you one thing, and I want you to listen well: do not respond to evil in kind.”

“But those guards back there, they—”

“I know how they made you feel. I know you lost your cool. Even then, you can’t afford to lose yourself like that. This is for your own sake. Power alone does not determine what is good and what is evil. Now more than ever, because you wield great power yourself, you must understand this.”

“Greed, I…”

“Just think back. Do it now. Remember how you felt in Galia when you fought the Divine Dragon. Do you intend to repeat the past? When you meet Lady Roxy again, can you look her in the eyes and be proud of who you’ve become?”

I had gone to Galia to support Lady Roxy. I’d told myself I wanted to be a power she could rely on. But those words had merely been an excuse to fight, and Lady Roxy had discovered my hidden identity at the worst possible time. Even then, just as I was about to completely lose control of my Gluttony, she had reached out her hand to save me.

The emotion I felt from Lady Roxy in that moment could not be defined by ideas like “good” and “evil”—it was something warmer. She reached out with a power beyond levels, skills, and stats. At that moment, I realized that I hadn’t journeyed to Galia to save Lady Roxy. I had gone so she could save me.

But I still had a long way to go. I’d decided to start over, doing my best so that I could look Lady Roxy in the eyes as a stronger, better person. However, I’d again lost myself to my anger and instincts. In doing so, I’d lost sight of what was most important. It was pitiful, really.

Aaron and Myne worried about me just like Greed did. They’d worried about me ever since I became a holy knight. These days, I felt like I had so much to do that I put those priorities first, and in my rush, I was making rash decisions in order to find the quickest, most efficient way to get what I wanted.

“I see it, now. Greed…I’m sorry.”

“As long as you understand, Fate. I won’t say more.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t need to.”

Greed was right. I wouldn’t be able to change, let alone evolve, if I continued to fight evil with evil. Lady Roxy…she didn’t see good and evil in such uncomplicated terms. Though I couldn’t solve problems like she did, I could still find a way forward all my own. Maybe then, once I freed myself of the cursed binds that linked me to the Vlericks, I might finally be able to look her in the eyes.

I clasped Greed tight in hand and hurried on to the containment cells. There I found another plate next to a door that was much bigger than any I’d seen so far. Perhaps large numbers of people needed to be able to move through it at speed.

“Greed, can you open this door?”

“Of course.”

I placed the black sword against the plate and the door opened with a beep. Once through, we stepped into a long passage lined with transparent doors on either side. These allowed for a full view of the rooms behind them, each of which was pure white and run through with drainpipes. They didn’t look like places where people could live.

I checked each room to see if anybody else had been captured and contained, but to a one, the rooms were eerily clean and empty.

“There’s nobody here.”

“Don’t give up yet. Check that door at the end of the corridor. It looks different.”

The room at the end had a door made from a single pane of opaque glass. I couldn’t see through to the room behind it. As the other rooms were unoccupied, if Memil was here, that was the only room where she could be. I put the black sword against the plate by the door.

“It opened. There’s somebody in here. Is that Memil?”

“Yeah, that’s her. I’d recognize that purple hair anywhere.”

The girl looked haggard and gaunt, but there was no mistaking her. We were looking at Memil Vlerick. She was dressed in white, and her room contained only the soft bed on which she slept. She must have been utterly exhausted because she showed no sign of waking as I entered. Even when I walked up and touched her face, she continued to sleep. Something very strange was going on.

“What is this?” I asked aloud.

“Something is keeping her sedated and asleep… Fate, look. Her right arm.”

“What the…”

Her arm was riddled with tiny wounds, as though she’d been stabbed countless times by a thin needle. The area around those wounds was a blend of her pale white skin and the deep blue of her veins.

“It looks like they injected her with some kind of drug, and a lot of it. That’s probably why she isn’t waking up.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Could be for an experiment of some kind. Just to be certain, use Identify on her.”

If they were experimenting on her, dosing her with something, we might see some sign of it in her stats. I focused on Memil and used my Identify skill.

Memil Vlerick, Lv 30

Vitality: 5,165,600

Strength: 6,197,600

Magic: 6,138,400

Spirit: 5,150,900

Agility: 5,167,800

Skills: Holy Sword Technique, Strength Boost (high), Magic Boost (high)

Memil’s stats were unusually high. Given her current skills and level, ordinarily her stats would still be in the lower six digits. But for some reason, each stat surpassed five million. This wild change was likely the result of the experiments that Greed had hypothesized. Despite all that strength, she had been left here, asleep.

“We’ll never find out what’s going on while she’s stuck like this,” I said.

“So what are you going to do?”

“We have to get her out of here. Based on those wounds in her arm, I’d guess it’s those injections that are keeping her like this. If those injections stop, maybe she’ll wake up, and then we can talk to her.”

She was undoubtedly an important source of information, so I reached out and hefted her over my shoulder. Just as I did, the room went from white to red, and a shrill alarm rang throughout the facility.

“What?!”

“You messed up, Fate. I told you to be careful.”

“What?! Don’t act like you aren’t a part of this!”

“May I remind you that I am merely a weapon, Fate?”

“Always shirking responsibility. You never change, do you?”

I turned toward the door only to see it shut on its own. I carried Memil over to it and placed Greed against the plate next to it.

“Greed, the door’s not opening.”

“Of course it’s not. A trespasser entered the room, so the security lock engaged.”

“If our cover’s been blown, then I guess the time for sneaking around is over, huh?”

“It’s what I’ve been waiting for, Fate. This creeping around in the shadows, it’s just not very…the mighty sword Greed, you know? Loud and violent, though? That’s what I’m talking about!”

With the cackling black sword raised up high, I sliced through the automatic door that stood in my way.