Berserk of Gluttony (LN) - Volume 4 - Chapter 25

Chapter 25:

The End of the Vlericks

IN THE END, we had to delay repairs to Barbatos Manor on account of the battle with Rafale. The carpenter we’d intended to hire was working on rebuilding the Military District. Little by little, the district recovered from the scars of battle, and the damaged facilities returned to their former glory. That is, everything except for what had once belonged to the Vlerick family.

Those ghastly, horrific facilities were to be destroyed after Eris and her white knights investigated the remains. Rafale’s mother was removed from the glass cylinder where she was kept and carefully transported to the Seifort graveyard, where she could be laid to rest.

I returned to the facility myself, to see once more what Rafale had done in that place. During our battle, I had seen the room where I found Lina Vlerick, but I discovered others like it. All of them had belonged to Rafale’s father. The things he had done in those rooms could only be called inhuman, and they made me sick to my stomach.

One floor above, I discovered the room Rafale himself must have used. It was, perhaps ominously, located directly above his mother’s remains. On the wall hung a painting of a young Rafale, smiling in the arms of his mother. The shelves were full of materials relating to the research of Galian artifacts. He must have done his work and research in that place every day.

After the white knights had collected and taken the research materials, all that remained were the diaries that Rafale had written in his childhood. I took one in hand and opened it up. A shiver of fear ran down my spine.

“Rafale…you…damn it…”

It was a record of the path that had twisted him into the monster he became. It started with entries about peaceful days with his mother, but all too soon, those entries stopped. When they began again, they spoke of suffering and pain—presumably from the time when Rafale’s mother died.

However, the young Rafale didn’t know his mother had in truth been killed by his own father. Instead, his father lied and said she had died of a plague. Ostensibly because of a fear that she would infect others, the young Rafale had not been allowed to say a final goodbye. The reality was, of course, that Lord Vlerick had moved his dead wife’s corpse into a glass cylinder.

Then, when Rafale turned twenty, he saw his father with a young woman. Suspicious of this behavior, he followed the pair to the Vlerick facility in the Military District. There, he saw Lord Vlerick kill the girl and place her body into a glass cylinder filled with liquid—all done as though the girl was a piece of art he wished to enjoy viewing.

And the girl was not alone. The room housed dozens of similar bodies, each kept in their own cylinder. Among them was the mother whom Rafale had adored, still as young as he remembered her.

The diary essentially stopped after Rafale made this discovery. All that remained were messy lines scribbled in rage. I placed the record back on the bookshelf and put the facility behind me. All of it would be destroyed, once the bodies trapped within were finally laid to rest.

***

The following day, I woke to the sound of chirping birds and tidied my messy hair in the mirror. Roxy had invited me to visit Hart Manor, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself as the head of the Barbatos family. I quickly got dressed and took Greed from his resting place on the wall.

“Looking motivated, Fate,” said the black sword.

“Of course. Today’s a big day.”

Greed laughed. “Finally a little light shining on your face. It’s nice. You’ve been so doom and gloom recently, you know?”

“Shut it, Greed.”

“I guess we’ve got that young lady to thank, huh? But are you sure about this? Your Gluttony has entirely different thoughts about her, you know.”

“I know. But I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. I have to be me.”

“I see… Well, I guess it’s up to you then.”

“Let’s get going already.”

I’d told Roxy about my Gluttony, and even then, she still wanted to be with me. The way she said it had made me feel like an idiot for ever worrying about explaining myself. I had always carried my Gluttony by myself, as my own problem. But I felt that maybe, just maybe, with Roxy by my side, there might be another way.

“Recently, I’ve been thinking I want to live a little more carefreely. Like you, Greed.”

“I’m always stone-cold serious.”

“Oh, sure!”

How many times had I heard Greed say “because I’m a weapon” to shirk responsibility? The weapon was about as carefree—and irresponsible—as they came.

“Shouldn’t you hurry up, Fate? Aaron is probably waiting. Old men, they tend to be early risers.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

I left my room and headed down the stairs at the center of the manor. As expected, Aaron was indeed waiting.

“Sorry I’m late, Aaron.”

“Not at all. I got here early. Ah, that’s right—the Vlerick family’s punishment has been decided.”

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“They were stripped of their rank, and all their assets were seized. They’ve been crushed, essentially. …But I’ve been thinking that I might take in Memil. The girl quite literally has nowhere left to go.”

“Wait, you mean you intend to adopt her?!” I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t that make Memil my…little sister?

Aaron smiled and nodded. “Yes, but even if I do, she won’t be able to call herself a holy knight.”

“But she’d be one of our family…”

“Yes, and I’ve already decided what duties I’d like her to perform instead. We’ll have her act as a servant. A maid, I suppose.”

I was bewildered. “She really doesn’t strike me as the servant type, Aaron.”

“Well, we won’t know until we give her a chance. And she does seem to genuinely regret what happened with her brother. I’d like to take her under my wing and help her down the road to a new life.”

So now Memil wouldn’t just be my sister—she’d also be the Barbatos family maid. I had this feeling she’d be like no other maid I’d ever met. I could already imagine her coming to wake me up with a morning greeting along the lines of “Ew, how disgusting. It’s time to wake up, maggot.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any time to reconsider?” I asked.

“Indeed, no. But there’s no need to worry, Fate. She’ll turn over a new leaf. It’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”

“And she won’t stomp on my face to wake me up while I’m sleeping, will she?”

“What on earth? Do you…desire that, Fate?!”

“You know what? Just forget I said anything. It’s nothing.”

Aaron then informed me that Memil would be coming to the manor the following day. Maybe it was for the best. Now that Myne was gone, it was just me and Aaron. Another person would hopefully brighten the place up a bit. Aaron had treated Myne like she was his own daughter. Once he heard she was gone, it had hit him quite hard. Sometimes I caught him muttering about having lost what little joy remained in his life.

Either way, it was my duty to welcome Memil to our family. After all, I’d killed her brothers. I was sure she had her own thoughts and feelings about moving in with me too. But if she was joining the Barbatos family, then I owed it to her as both the head of the family and her brother to watch over her.

“I’ll look forward to seeing her when she arrives,” I said.

“Thank you, Fate. Well, shall we go?”

“Yes.”

When we opened the manor door, we found a woman waiting for us at the gates. Hers was a face I knew all too well. It was filled with a gentle kindness and looked remarkably like Roxy’s. I ran to greet her.

“Lady Aisha? What are you doing here?”

“Oh? Should I not be? Now that I’m feeling so much better, I wanted to spend a day out in the kingdom.”

“A day out?!”

“Well, actually, I only just arrived. Even Roxy doesn’t know.”

“You kept your journey to the kingdom a secret?!”

“I did. Oh, Roxy will be absolutely bowled over, don’t you think? You know, I haven’t even informed her of my recovery yet! I wanted to tell her in person, you see.”

First Memil, now Lady Aisha. On top of that, Lady Aisha wanted her arrival to be a surprise for her daughter, and I could tell by the cheeky, devilish look on her face that she intended to rope me into her plan. I was frozen in place as my mind rushed to catch up, so Lady Aisha turned to Aaron.

“Why, if it isn’t Lord Aaron! It’s been more than a decade!”

“Aisha, it’s always a pleasure. I dare say you’ve grown even prettier since we last met.”

“Oh, Aaron. I see you haven’t lost that silver tongue of yours.”

Lady Aisha was in high spirits, and she tapped me on the shoulder excitedly as she spoke. She really was back to full health, so I was glad, but…perhaps she was still a little too energetic? In any case, because our visit to Hart Manor was fast approaching, the three of us put our heads together and devised a plan Lady Aisha dubbed “The Great Daughterly Surprise.”