8
“Ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
With Leaping Dorkel’s ability at his fingertips, Lye fled from Ram.
The reckless thought of trying to eat Ram had completely left his mind. He chose to run without concern for appearances.
It was impossible. He couldn’t win. He couldn’t win against that.
That was a being that wouldn’t grace a gourmet’s plate or a dumpster’s plate.
“Sorry, Louis and Roy, but…! Gourmet food requires the proper preparation.”
Putting pressure on the wounds covering his entire body, Lye sneered at his siblings, who were after the same prey.
Louis had left the battlefield early, and Roy was rampaging somewhere else at the moment. If that Oni could go after the two of them, he would be free to run away without being hounded.
Roy with his willingness to eat anything didn’t know when to pull back, so he might finally die here, but there was no helping that.
If anything, he was fed up with Roy’s appetite. He devastated their hunting grounds as much as he wanted and had probably stolen some of the delectable bits that should have been Lye’s to enjoy.
—No, could anything his brother ate at this point truly be considered gourmet?
“Useless, every last one of them…agh, damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Something like that, something like that existed! It would be better if we had never known!!!”
It wasn’t the emotion evoked by a younger sister who adored her elder sister.
It was a feeling of yearning for an immeasurable, absolute being—a powerful emotion that took form inside Lye, a desire born from the truest depths of his heart.
He wanted to consume every bit of her. He wanted to savor her body and soul.
As the standard-bearer of true gourmands, he had intended to consume only the finest ingredients and sample every sort of emotion. But now that he knew what true gourmet cuisine was, everything else in the world seemed bland in comparison. Everything that Lye Batenkaitos, Archbishop of Gluttony, had gathered in the belief of its value crumbled away, turning to dust.
The dinner table that had once seemed so vibrant and glimmering had devolved into a sandbox filled with mud balls.
“We want that.”
He would cast aside anything and everything for a chance to taste that flavor.
He would give up all the things he had built up and not feel any regret.
He didn’t want to taste anything else. He didn’t want to satisfy himself with anything else.
“Obgh, ugh.”
Vomit leaked from the corner of his mouth as he ran.
It wasn’t due to the pain he was suffering. The cause was far more unbearable. Things he had believed to be the finest were not. Now that he had glimpsed the ultimate delicacy, everything that filled him was disgusting in comparison.
Why had he ever thought anything less could be wonderful? Why had he praised any of it? How had he been content until now?
How could he call himself a gourmet if he was satiated by food besides the truly wonderful—?
“Ah, right. Right, right, of course, it has to be, that’s why! Gluttony! Gluttony!”
He cried out with a welling hunger, a satiated hunger, and begged from his heart.
He wanted to become one, to merge with her. If hunger could encompass a being outside itself, then the gluttony that drove him was an extreme form of love.
“That’s right! This is love! Sister…no, Ram! We love yo—!”
Just as he was about to scream with the emotion that had taken root inside him, his words were suddenly cut off.
The reason was a new pain.
“…Ah?”
Touching his cheek, Lye saw his palm covered in blood.
A new cut had torn his cheek open while he had been trying to flee the tower. But all he could see was empty space.
“ ”
Silently stretching out his finger, Lye watched as his fingertip got sliced open.
There was an invisible blade hanging in empty space.
“Hah.”
It was the same technique he had shown Ram on the spiral staircase.
The technique of setting invisible blades in space was the skill of a legendary shinobi, though Lye had long ago forgotten whose memories that had come from, so it didn’t matter much.
The problem was there being a blade here. Lye didn’t remember placing this one.
“Could it…?”
Dodging the blade that had left a shallow cut in his finger, Lye pushed on—only for his toes to go flying.
He recoiled with a shriek of pain. That was when a blade touched the back of his head. His face tensed, and he froze in place.
He was surrounded by invisible blades.
“…Ha-ha…seriously?”
He had only shown it once.
Exactly once in battle, and it was an invisible technique, so it wasn’t like she had actually seen it.
More importantly, she never even passed this way earlier. And yet she had accurately predicted the direction he would take and preemptively placed invisible blades.
She had not let Lye escape. Her eyes were tracking him even now.
“Hee-ha-ha.”
Lye laughed. There was nothing else he could do.
He loved her. It was the first time he had yearned so strongly for something. He was head over heels for her impossible strength.
And…
“Ah! Wait, wait please! Wait just a little! Just a little bit longer is enough! Just a little bit more!”
No matter how much he pleaded with her through her Clairvoyance, it couldn’t carry his voice. He knew that. His desperate shouts were not for her—they were to urge himself forward.
In a panic, Lye clung to the wall beside him. He had been too quick to abandon all that he had eaten. If he had just kept the Fist King’s ability, it wouldn’t have been so much work.
Saving those thoughts for later, Lye hit the invisible blade with his arms. Both of his hands fell off, and blood spurted from his wrists.
Owww. Owww. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. But that doesn’t matter now.
“Accept our feelings! Witness our plea!”
He pushed his bleeding arms against the wall, and with all his might, he frantically wrote.
Every bit of his small body was dedicated to writing massive letters on the wall of the tower in dark blood.
“Pwah.”
Stepping back and opening his right eye wide, he admired his work. He hoped this bloody message he wrote would reach the person he desired, from the depths of his heart. If it was her, he was sure she would watch to the very end, overlapping with him all the way.
“We lov—”
—Before the Archbishop of Gluttony could finish what he was saying, his head was sent flying by a blade of wind.
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