Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 21

Chapter 21:

Dark Matter

THE UNDEAD ARCHDEMON opened its four wings wide and chanted. Eris and Greed reacted instantly.

“Oh, this is bad,” said Eris.

“Real bad.”

I realized then that the monster was preparing to cast Dark Magic, summoning unstable dark matter to create another huge explosion. My own Fireball was a paltry spark in comparison.

Space warped out of shape overhead as the archdemon cast the Dark Magic spell from five portals in the sky. I transformed the black sword into the black scythe and leaped upward.

“Greed!” I shouted.

The incantation period of Dark Magic was considerably longer than for most other spells. No doubt that was why the archdemon had taken to the air; it needed space to cast without interruption.

However, the black scythe had the power to negate spells—though that power only worked while a spell was being cast. In other words, it would work against the Dark Magic spell as long as the portals remained closed. However, once the dark matter came through, the scythe’s blade would be unable to stop it. In a worst-case scenario, I’d be looking at another massive explosion.

But space was still warping, and the portals weren’t yet open. Could I make it in time?! I counted as I sliced through each one. “One, two, three—”

Two more remained and I couldn’t easily reach them—but that wasn’t all I had to worry about, because the archdemon moved in to attack me while still casting.

“Gah!”

The archdemon wound up for a punch. I couldn’t dodge while stuck in midair. Just as it swung, a sound like lightning crackled by, and the monster’s head spun away from me, blue blood pouring from a crater in its skull.

“Fate, now!”

Eris was playing support like she’d promised. The bullet from her black gunblade had struck the archdemon in the temple with considerable force. But the bullet hadn’t completely passed through its head, meaning the crowned beast had a fearsome defense. I nonetheless took the chance and grabbed the monster by its curving horns. I kicked off of its skull as hard as I could, pushing myself through the air toward the last two portals.

“That makes four,” I said as I sliced through it. “Just one more to—huh?!”

Dark matter poured from the last portal even as I sliced through it. It was so pitch-black in color that it looked like a void, pure absence, absorbing all light. In an instant, the portal fractured and shattered.

“Fate, transform me into the black shield! You’re going to get sucked in!”

Just before I was enveloped in this lightless void, I transformed Greed into the black shield and found myself instead swallowed up by an enormous close-range explosion. For an instant, everything went white. When my sight returned, I found myself hurtling toward the earth. I spun in the air to avoid crashing down headfirst and prepared to land. In the corner of my vision, I saw Eris kiting the archdemon with Envy’s bullets to keep it busy.

At the very moment I landed, I sent energy through my legs and into the ground, then sprang immediately back into battle.

“Are you okay?” Eris called.

“I am, thanks to this,” I called back, motioning at the black shield before using it to bash the undead archdemon away. I considered it revenge for blowing me up. The monster let out a dull sound as it rolled along the ground, but in moments, it was back on its feet and rising once more into the sky. It soared well above where it had hovered the first time and shot up into the snowy clouds, where it vanished from sight.

That didn’t mean it was fleeing. Though I couldn’t see it with my eyes, I was in my half-starved state, meaning my right eye could follow the flow of the archdemon’s magical energy. I focused my power into my right eye and discovered something incredibly bad brewing within the clouds.

“Eris! It’s in the clouds! It’s—”

“That’s not good. There are so many portals…”

There must be thirty…no, forty. Damn it. It’s still making them! I’d never imagined the monster could summon so many portals simultaneously.

“This would be impossible for an ordinary monster,” said Greed. “But there’s something else inside of it. The source, and… Well, just don’t forget that.”

“Yeah, but what am I supposed to do? At this rate…”

Eris played a support role, meaning she didn’t have the firepower to stop this many attacks. When I looked over at her face, I saw that she was at the end of her rope. Right at that moment, warning sirens wailed out through the kingdom. The sound was so deafening that I wanted to cover my ears.

They’ve finally started the evacuation in earnest… However, the archdemon was summoning a vast amount of dark matter. If it summoned enough to destroy the kingdom all in one go, every last one of the townspeople would be caught in the blast. Even if they got whatever meager distance they could away from ground zero, there were just too many portals. Based on the blast I had just weathered, anyone less powerful than a holy knight would be incinerated. There would be no survivors.

“Fate! What are you waiting for?” Greed asked, transforming himself all on his own from the black scythe into the black bow.

Is he trying to make fun of me? At a time like this?

“Isn’t it about time you unleashed my First Level secret technique?” he asked.

“Wait, what?! Here?! Now?!”

Eris pounced on me. “After all that time we spent training in Galia and teaching you to master it, now you’re going to be all stingy and hold back? Go on, Fate! Do it!”

“Would you please get off me, Eris?!”

“But you know, I don’t think we have any other choice,” Eris said. “I think this really is our best bet.”

I guessed when it came to this particular problem, Greed and Eris were in agreement. I took a deep breath. “Greed, take 10 percent of my stats.”

“I knew you’d come through! Let me at them!”

As the stats drained from my arm into the bow, the bow grew and morphed into a larger, more ominous form. Like this, Greed was more than a tool of violence—he was an Apocalyptic Weapon of Mortal Sin.

Up until this point, the process was just like the one we’d practiced. This was the road to the Bloody Ptarmigan attack. The new technique Greed and Eris wanted me to unleash began here. At present, the bow was powered by the stats Greed took from me, which was how we had always done it. But now I was learning to truly master the weapon’s form—the secret technique—and make it my own.

The only problem: If my new attack exploded early, it would decimate the city before the archdemon could. But we’d come this far. We couldn’t retreat now. It was time for me to blend the power of the secret technique with my Gluttony—it was time to make use of a modified tech-art, just as I had in Galia.

Even by itself, Greed’s Bloody Ptarmigan attack was incredibly powerful. But by modifying it, I could raise that destructive power to entirely new levels. The only downside was that by doing so, I forfeited Greed’s ability to control it for me. I had to do it all myself.

Controlling that technique on my own had been at the heart of my training in Galia. There, I had struggled, lost consciousness, and suffered for weeks under the unrelenting glares of Myne and Eris. It had been sheer hell. I’d fired the Bloody Ptarmigan until I ran out of stats, and then I’d killed monsters to regain them. Over and over until I finally got it right. But even though I’d at last managed to control the technique, this would be the first time I’d used it in an actual battle.

“Concentrate, Fate…” said Greed.

“Just sit back and watch,” I said.

I pulled back on the bowstring and followed the flow of the archdemon’s magical energy to settle my aim in just the right place. The black arrow nocked on the string was near bursting with magical energy, flickering with uncanny black lightning. I focused on letting myself melt into the bow, becoming one with it, connecting it with my Gluttony.

“Let’s see how you like this modified Bloody Ptarmigan!” Together with my shout, I poured myself deeper and deeper into the weapon, and when it reached critical mass, the black arrow itself transformed from a single straight arrow into a double spiral.

There was no doubt left in my mind. This was the right course of action.

I aimed the bow at the archdemon and fired the Bloody Ptarmigan Cross.

Two colossal bolts of spiraling lightning spun through the air, tearing into the snowy clouds floating above the kingdom of Seifort. Everything they touched was ripped away and taken deep into the far reaches of the sky—from the summoned portals of dark matter to their summoner, the undead archdemon itself. The night sky lit up as though the sun had suddenly sprung out from hiding.