Berserk of Gluttony Vol. 3

by Isshiki Ichika

  Miria and I were both to blame. Our voices rang out in unison: “Sorry!”

  Mugan and the other soldiers laughed, their cheer echoing across the jagged lands. It struck me that, just like that, I’d become a member of Lady Roxy’s crew. I felt the same warm camaraderie that I’d felt as a servant for the Hart family.

  Those feelings were extinguished by Northern, who arrived with a report a few hours into the march, just after we took out an orc squadron.

  “That canyon over there,” he said, gesturing into the distance. “That’s our destination.”

  At the rocky end of the ruined lands, just over the horizon, a massive crevice gaped. It looked nothing like a natural formation—it was more like some immense strike of guided power had gouged into the earth. I couldn’t imagine what could possibly have resulted in such wide-scale destruction. Not until I remembered Greed’s Second Level secret technique—the Bloody Ptarmigan, the apocalyptic black bow. Perhaps a maxed-out version of that attack, fed with more stats…

  “Hey, Greed,” I muttered. “You didn’t make that canyon, did you? Sometime in the past, with some kind of horrendously powerful attack?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” the sword said. “I can’t remember everything from that far back.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say something like that.”

  Whether or not Greed remembered everything he’d ever done, he hadn’t said that the canyon wasn’t his doing either. I wondered about the bearer of Gluttony who had come before me, and what they had accomplished together with the black sword. Perhaps this canyon offered the tiniest glimpse into that history. That put a thrill in my step. If this place contained secrets of the past, I wanted to see it as soon as I could. As I split off from Lady Roxy’s squadron, she called out to me.

  “Mr. Corpse!”

  “We’re almost there,” I replied. “This is as far as we go together.”

  “I suppose it is. But when you finish gathering the material you’re after, let’s regroup.”

  Her eyes did not shift in their scrutiny of me. We came this far together, so we’ll return to Babylon together, her shining gaze seemed to say.

  “Very well.” I resigned myself to our new plans. “When I’ve found what I’m looking for, we’ll regroup.”

  “Very good. Be careful out there, please.”

  As Lady Roxy watched me part ways with her squadron, Miria suddenly popped out from behind her.

  “Corpse! You better prepare yourself! When we head home, I’m taking that mask from you!”

  Captain Mugan stepped out from the troops and scooped up Miria to carry her off. “That’s enough out of you, Miria!”

  I hoped that the next time we met, that girl might be a little less excitable.

  I headed toward the east side of the great canyon, following the sheer cliffs. Lady Roxy and her troops went in the opposite direction, toward the west, where the missing expedition had planned to build their base of operations. I’d join Lady Roxy there once I finished my own business.

  The question now was where to look for the duskstone. According to Jade, the colorless, transparent crystals let off faint purple light. That gave me a mental image of an ominous, cursed aura of crackling indigo, but I had no way to know what the crystals actually looked like until I saw them myself.

  As I got closer to the great canyon, the sheer size of it overwhelmed me. This jagged gash shorn into the earth could easily have fit a hundred Babylons. It might take quite some time to find the duskstone I needed. I couldn’t imagine it would be any easier for Lady Roxy to find her missing troops. In that case, if I stumbled across them before she did, I’d have to take a quick detour to inform her.

  Aside from its scale, what really surprised me about the canyon was the greenery. Great trees lush with green leaves reached up from the foot of sheer cliff faces, their leaves rustling in the occasional gust of wind. Fields of grass made the canyon look like a paradise somehow distinct from the land of death we knew as Galia.

  My first step into the gorge only made that thought more real. The bloody, putrid reek of Galia dissipated. Instead, my lungs filled with clean air.

  “It’s like this is the only pure place in Galia,” I said.

  “Yeah,” answered Greed, “It’s in Galia, but it’s different from Galia.”

  “Is it possible this greenery is all a result of the battle that created the canyon?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I just knew you’d be vague about it!”

  Was it possible the last bearer of Gluttony had wielded such power they had cleansed a part of the land or something? If so, I was nowhere near matching the strength they’d possessed. I walked through the grassy fields for a time, until I reached a sheltered meadow spotted with hundreds of unusual boulders. Trees and grass grew around and through them, as if the boulders served as sustenance. Boulders that looked like…

  I stopped.

  “These…these boulders are monsters.”

  “Monsters turned to stone, it would seem,” said Greed. “It seems to me they’ve been here for many long years, trapped as they were, never returning to the earth.”

  “It’s a graveyard.”

  Chapter 15:

  The Canyon of Green

  THE PETRIFIED MONSTERS surrounding us were of all types and sizes. Some could have been crowned beasts, hundreds were orcs, and a number were their lesser cousins, goblins.

  “Greed, look at that.” I nodded ahead at a much fresher sight.

  “Those are…huh. They’re still alive.”

  Some distance into the meadow, a group of orcs lay broken and writhing, their arms and legs twisted in unpleasant directions. All frothed at the mouth, mortally wounded, lingering on the verge of death. I looked up and estimated the drop from the cliff edge above to be well over a thousand feet. Had the orcs fallen from all the way up there?

  “I wonder if some other monster coerced them into doing this,” I said. “There have to be fifty—maybe more. Why else would so many orcs just fall off a cliff together at the same time?”

  “Coercion, you say…” muttered Greed. “Well, there’s no evidence either way, at least not on the surface. Maybe they charged and missed their mark.”

  It was true that, again, I was just hypothesizing. As I once more studied the peaceful meadow, I identified a few more clusters of dying monsters turning to stone. A larger quantity had petrified already. What unsettled me most was that, even while bleeding out from shattered limbs, none of the orcs displayed any pain. Rather, they looked blissful as they awaited their demise.

  A field that leads captured monsters to their final rest…

  I kept the dying orcs in my peripheral vision as I walked by them and deeper into the great canyon. Nowhere in this field of once-living boulders did I detect a hint of the indigo duskstone crystals I was searching for.

  “They’re not here. Are those crystals really somewhere in this canyon?”

  “They must be. The kingdom’s troops gathered them here until recently. If you keep exploring, they’ll have to show up eventually.”

  The canyon was vast, not just towering but long—long enough to be an entire valley. I probably should have asked Northern about the duskstone earlier, while I’d had the chance. On the other hand, I had a gut feeling that the less time I spent with him the better. I’d just have to work things out on my own. I’d had this dumb idea that I’d just waltz in, and the duskstone would be sitting in plain view, waiting for me, but the reality proved quite different.

  Those crystals have to be here somewhere, I thought. Are they? Over there, maybe?

  I looked all over, up and down, until finally I noticed a bright sparkle along the cliff face.

  Well, well, well, what have we here? It had to be my prize. How many shiny rocks could one canyon hide?

  I climbed up close and pried the ore from the cliff. Upon closer inspection, it was golden in hue, about the size of my fist. Definitely not the slightest bit purple.
/>   “Damn it. This isn’t what we’re looking for.”

  I was about to throw the ore away when Greed shrieked in my head. “Don’t throw that away, idiot! That’s orichalcum! You don’t have any idea what that’s worth, do you?!”

  “This is orichalcum?!” I stared at the palm-sized metal chunk in my hand.

  “You don’t have to take my word for it. Use Identify!”

  Greed was much more serious and earnest than usual, so I Identified the ore immediately.

  Orichalcum: A rare and sacred ore. When used as a crafting material, it bestows holy protection upon armaments and equipment.

  Whoa! This is the real deal!

  “If I sell this, how much are we looking at?”

  “Most orichalcum ore is no larger than a bean when it’s gathered. With a piece of ore the size of a fist, you could build several mansions.”

  “Well, let’s bring it back with us. I wonder if there’s any more around here…”

  Talk about hitting the jackpot! This was almost as good as the crystals. I continued walking along the eastern side of the cliff, looking for more orichalcum. As luck would have it, I managed to pry out another two pieces about the same size.

  “With these, it doesn’t even matter how expensive things are in Babylon. We’re living on easy street!”

  “Better watch out for that landlady, though. She’s been squeezing money out of you since day one. If she gets a glimpse of those stones, you can expect even better service, and higher prices to match.”

  “Well, the service at that inn is already easily as good as any of the high-class ones, so… Honestly, I’d love to see what those higher levels of service look like.”

  “You say that now, but I can already picture her charging you twenty gold coins per night!” Greed burst into raucous laughter.

  The going rate for the high-class inns of Babylon was about five coins per night. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of service you could get for four times that amount. Back when I was a gatekeeper, it’d taken five long years of grueling work to earn two silver coins. When you factored in the fact that a single gold coin was equal to a hundred silver, twenty gold per night was an extraordinary expense.

  My perception of the value of money had really shifted since I reached Babylon. It was about time I started thinking a little more about how I budgeted.

  “Anyway, I didn’t know orichalcum came from Galia,” I said. “This is the material they use to forge holy swords, right?”

  “Almost all the material used to craft special equipment comes from Galia. It’s a unique environment, conducive to forming such things.”

  “Like duskstone?”

  “Indeed. But first things first: Get out there and find them!”

  “We haven’t had any luck so far. If you’ve got tips, now’s the time.”

  “Always need your sword to bail you out, huh? Fine, fine. Give me a minute.”

  Greed dropped into silence, concentrating. Was that all he needed to do? We could have saved ourselves a lot of time if he’d just said so from the start! Still, nosing around had led us to the orichalcum, so maybe he just enjoyed the exploration.

  Greed piped up. “I can feel it, Fate! Those gems are a ways south from here.”

  “South, huh? All right, I’m on it!”

  The southern stretch of the canyon brought us to a path sloping downward. The farther we went, the more stone monsters we found. So many were piled on top of each other that I couldn’t even see the ground beneath their bodies. To continue farther south, I had to walk over them.

  “This is unsettling,” I said.

  “‘Unsettling,’ says the guy who fills his rumbling stomach by slurping down monster souls.”

  “Hey, that’s one thing, this is another. They’re totally different! And anyway, you know the saying. Waste not, want not.”

  We continued on for a time.

  “Those crystals are around here somewhere,” said Greed.

  “But where?”

  I scanned the area and spotted a crumbling cliffside. What I saw there snatched the breath from my lungs.

  From within the stone, a face peered out, connected to a rusted, metallic body crudely forged from a collection of other monsters’ bodies.

  It was a chimera, much like the one I had fought alongside Myne—a fight where I had nearly lost my life. I unsheathed my sword and readied myself in a battle stance.

  “Is it moving?” I asked.

  “Nah. This one is completely shut down,” said Greed. “You can tell. Look at its chest.”

  “Ah… It’s got no core.”

  When I fought the barrier chimera, Haniel, it had moved because a young girl of pure white had been the monster’s core—the same girl who had appeared later in my dreams. With Myne’s help, I’d devoured Haniel’s soul, destroying it completely. If this chimera had an empty core, it was soulless, and it couldn’t move. It was also smaller than Haniel, which made me curious. I used Identify on it.

  Chimera, Lv 1

  Vitality: 6,300,000

  Strength: 5,400,000

  Magic: 4,700,000

  Spirit: 2,300,000

  Agility: 2,000,000

  Skills: ERROR

  Interesting, I thought. Even though it’s shut down, I can still analyze its stats.

  This chimera didn’t have a unique name like Haniel. Perhaps that meant it was a standard variety, not a specialized type like Eris had told me about.

  It still resembled Haniel in that they were both Level 1, and its skills showed up only as “ERROR.” Myne had explained that, hadn’t she? If I recalled correctly, chimeras were constructed artificially, crafted from different monsters fused into one unnatural creature, making their skills unstable and thus unreadable. Even if I killed a chimera and devoured it with Gluttony, I wouldn’t gain any of its skills.

  Notably, while this chimera had stats as high as six million, it was on the weak side compared to Haniel. That said, I looked at these beasts from the point of view of someone with a Skill of Mortal Sin. If any ordinary adventurer met a chimera of this level, that adventurer would soon after meet their maker. This basic chimera would be a handful even for a holy knight.

  “What is this thing doing here?” I asked Greed as I gazed at the empty shell.

  “Pretty sure this is an experimental model. Almost all of those were buried in battles long ago. It looks like the rocks that covered this one recently crumbled to reveal it.”

  I stepped closer to get a better look at the half-buried chimera. As I did so, my gaze was drawn southward, to another part of the canyon where the rocks crumbled away. The way the stone had fractured gave me a bad feeling. It looked as though something huge had crawled out of the cliff face, then headed west. When I examined the path smashed through the stone monsters, I feared I knew what had happened. An experimental chimera had awakened and attacked the kingdom’s soldiers here.

  No… Based on the tracks, I wasn’t looking for one chimera—I was looking for three.

  “Guess we’ll have to put off our duskstone hunt for the time being,” I said.

  “You’re going to search for them?”

  “Of course I am!”

  I’d left Lady Roxy with her troops because I knew she could handle herself against the likes of a few crowned beasts. A chimera—three chimeras—changed the situation. Even one weaker than Haniel still had more than enough in raw stats to give Lady Roxy trouble, let alone what havoc it could wreak with its unpredictable mess of skills.

  I dashed off. Just as I set foot in the peaceful fields, a great explosion erupted to the west. I charged forward without hesitation, and soon the carnage came into focus between the trees.

  Three activated chimeras surrounded Lady Roxy, Captain Mugan, Miria, and their troops. Mugan’s arm was bloody, and he lay unconscious. Another ten wounded soldiers had fallen to the ground. The chimeras’ attack had taken them by surprise. Only Lady Roxy and Miria were still able to move and fight.


  And where was Northern?! Had that smug jerk used his injured arm as an excuse to slack off somewhere? Well, even if so, the clamor of battle echoed through the great canyon. He would hear it, and when he did, he would come—but at this moment, I sensed no sign of him, nor of reinforcements.

  It was up to me.

  Chapter 16:

  The Second Coming of the Chimeras

  I DOVE THROUGH the grassy fields and into battle, cutting off one chimera’s leg as I did. I slid to a halt by Lady Roxy’s side.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She looked relieved to see me, and she quickly brought me up to speed.

  “Yes, somehow. But these monsters took us completely by surprise. I’ve never seen anything like them. Mugan suffered an injury protecting Miria, and the beasts’ coordinated ambush caught the other soldiers.”

  Even if she and Miria wanted to prioritize getting the injured troops to safety, they couldn’t run. Not while surrounded by three chimeras. However, by striking decisively and cutting off one chimera’s leg while I moved in, I’d also given us a little space to breathe. Luckily, it looked like these particular chimeras didn’t share Haniel’s speedy regeneration abilities.

  The now three-legged chimera could no longer support its own weight. It staggered clumsily, attempting to regain balance. Blood bubbled from the monster’s wound as the stump blackened. The grotesque creature was repairing itself, but at this rate, it would take at least a week to form anything remotely functional.

  “These abominations are called chimeras,” I told Lady Roxy. “You have to take out the core. That’s where they’re weak.”

  “The core?”

  “You see those orcs wired into their chests? The orcs power the chimeras’ souls. If you kill the core, you kill the chimera.”

  Honestly, I was surprised to see ordinary monsters in chimera cores. Haniel had used a human, which I’d assumed necessary. Yet here in front of me, two cores clearly held normal grunt orcs, while the third held a blue-skinned high orc.