Berserk of Gluttony Vol. 3

by Isshiki Ichika

  “I’m thinking, Fate,” said Greed. “Are we supposed to believe that rockface just so happened to crumble and uncover these empty chimeras, and lost orcs just so happened to wander into their empty cores? And that just so happened to all three chimeras at the same time?”

  “Yeah. I don’t like the sound of that either,” I said, “but we can question the details after we take care of the problem.”

  First, we had to get the wounded soldiers to safety. I wouldn’t be able to fight freely with them in the way.

  “Lady Roxy, can you fight?”

  “I’m ready,” Lady Roxy declared. “Miria, are you good?”

  “I’m on it,” Miria said. Even her excitable tone darkened in the face of this threat.

  The two of them were seasoned warriors. They read my intentions in my movements. We no longer needed to speak. I gripped the hilt of the black sword and moved in on the crippled chimera. It summoned a ring of fire around itself to stop me. At a glance, I knew my Fire Resistance would handle these flames; the chimera had only summoned ordinary fire, not the magical variety.

  I burst through the blazing wall and lifted my sword high to strike the chimera’s core. The beast shielded itself with its arms, and I used this opening to take aim at my real target—the chimera’s other front leg. I sheared the limb right off.

  The chimera pitched forward, and its flames dissolved. In the next instant, Lady Roxy leapt into the fray, and with one powerful blow, she severed the head of the orc entangled at the monster’s core. Its core destroyed, the chimera fell silent, unmoving.

  Two chimeras remained. I had an eye on them, but I hurried to Miria, who had kept both full-strength chimeras busy while Lady Roxy and I finished off the weakened one.

  “Hurry up!” Miria howled, darting around the field. “Ugh… I’m so dead, I’m so dead!”

  She was exaggerating. Her evasive movements were truly impressive, and her use of the flamberge was nothing short of masterful. Because her blade was imbued with the same elemental flame as the chimera’s fireballs, she was able to cut them down before the fire so much as singed her. I wondered whether this technique was something she’d picked up in the previous battle with the salamanders. If so, she learned fast.

  Miria might have been all sorts of crazy off the battlefield, but on it, she flared with wild potential. Still, no matter what I could learn from studying her maneuvers, I didn’t have the time. I had to move.

  “Miria, you’re clear!” I shouted. “Get the wounded to safety!”

  “Ugh, you’re the last person I ever wanted to save me, lich-man skull-face! I’ll never forgive myself! Anyway, thank you!”

  “Think nothing of it. But, please, look after Mugan.”

  “Leave it to me!” Miria said, and then, “Oh, Lady Roxy!”

  “Miria, I need you to get Captain Mugan and the other soldiers to safety,” said Lady Roxy. “Mr. Corpse and I will take care of the remaining chimeras. Once you’re clear, regroup with Northern and his men, and inform them of what happened.”

  “Understood. Be careful, Lady Roxy.”

  The girl was clearly reluctant to leave Lady Roxy’s side, but she did as she was told. She shouted orders to the soldiers who were still mobile, and together they carried the wounded to safety. Just a bit longer, and I’d be able to fight freely.

  “We take down the others like we took down the first,” I said, nodding toward Lady Roxy.

  “Got it.”

  We readied ourselves for another round, then dashed toward the chimera with an ordinary orc at its core. The high orc chimera cast a roaring firewall in our way, the flames far more intense than those the chimera we’d cut down had produced.

  I transformed Greed into the black scythe and sliced the fire into nothing. The momentum carried me into a second strike that neatly separated the grunt-chimera’s front legs from its body in a spray of corroded fluid. Lady Roxy once again leapt in to finish off the staggering abomination.

  Meanwhile, I turned to face the remaining high orc chimera. My job was to stop it from getting in Lady Roxy’s way.

  As I expected, the monster tried to throw another wall of fire in her path, but I sliced the flame away with the skill-negating power of the black scythe. At the same time, Lady Roxy chopped off the head of the grunt in the chimera’s core, spattering its bright blood across the charred grass.

  Now, we had only one chimera left to deal with.

  It was strange, but even though it was our first time fighting together, Lady Roxy and I moved as though we already knew each other’s maneuvers. I’d fought alongside Lord Aaron Barbatos and Myne, the bearer of Wrath, but fighting beside Lady Roxy felt the most natural. She clearly felt it too, because in the beat after the grunt-chimera collapsed, she looked at me with surprise on her face.

  “One left,” I said.

  “Let’s keep up the pace and make it quick. I need to check on my troops.”

  “Are you okay? Your breath is a little short.”

  “I’ll be fine. You gave me the last strike on each of those last two chimeras, and I’ve never taken in so many Spheres before. Thanks to you, I’ve leveled up multiple times.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said sincerely.

  Lady Roxy put on a brave face, but she was confronting an enemy with stats well above her own. If she wanted to save her troops, this fight had no room for error. We had to finish the strongest chimera, and fast.

  I dashed toward the last chimera with Lady Roxy close behind. The monster threw firewalls in our way, but again, before the skill-canceling blade of the black scythe, these spells were useless. I cut the fires away as we ran, once again aiming to slice off the monster’s legs.

  But the high orc chimera wasn’t stupid. It didn’t let me use the same trick a third time. The firewalls were a distraction. The monster leapt backward, metal body gleaming, in an arc nearly thirty feet above the ground. Its landing point, however, was obvious.

  “We attack the moment it lands,” I said. Lady Roxy didn’t even need to acknowledge my direction. We moved in unison.

  If we timed it right, and I knew we would, the chimera didn’t stand a chance of avoiding our joint attack. We sprinted to the site of impact, ready for our chance to finish it off.

  We could not have predicted what happened next.

  As the chimera landed, the creature’s immense weight crushed through the ground we stood on. Together, our voices cried out in shock as Lady Roxy and I plummeted into cavernous darkness below.

  I engaged Night Vision as we fell, trying to get a sense of how far we were falling, but I couldn’t see the bottom. It was so deep. The landing was going to be bad. I grabbed Lady Roxy’s hand and pulled her close.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  Lady Roxy didn’t reply. She simply let me carry her as we fell. A tremendous shock snapped through my back. We hit bottom, I thought, but there were no thoughts after that, and my consciousness faded out somewhere far, far away.

  Chapter 17:

  At the Bottom of the Cavern

  I DIDN’T KNOW how much time passed, but when I woke, I could only hear Greed shouting.

  “Hey! Fate! Hey, wake up!”

  “Greed…? Ah! Ow. Did you hear that pop? I think my ribs might be fractured. Lady Roxy…looks unharmed, thankfully.”

  Lady Roxy lay on top of me, unconscious, but whole and breathing. Slowly, hazily, she opened her eyes.

  “Fay?” she whispered.

  That one word had me scrambling for my skull mask, which had slipped from my face in the fall.

  Where is it?!

  I looked around hastily and found the thing had fallen by my side. At least it was still in one piece. I scooped it up with my left hand and quickly fastened it back over my face.

  It might be too late already. I’ll have to make something up to put her off my scent. Well, it’s dark, so…

  However, when I looked back at Lady Roxy, h
er eyes were once again closed, and she’d fallen back into unconsciousness. I carefully slipped out from beneath her and laid my jacket under her head as a makeshift pillow. About thirty minutes later, she woke up fully.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  Her answer came slowly. It was taking a little time for her senses to fully return. “Yes. I’m sorry about earlier, but thanks to you, I’m fine and ready to go. Ouch!”

  Lady Roxy tried jumping to her feet to show me she was uninjured, but she lost her balance. Her left leg was causing her the pain.

  “You’re not fine at all. Here, lean on my shoulder.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” She let herself lean on me, but her face spoke only apologies.

  Lady Roxy was horrible at hiding things, so I knew if something had changed in how she thought of me, her feelings would show in her reactions. Fortunately, I didn’t detect anything different. She’d probably written off seeing my true face as a dream. After all, on the way, she’d said I reminded her of someone she knew…that someone being the real me, Fate. She could readily assume she’d been disoriented.

  For now, we had two things to worry about: how to get out of this place, and what had happened to the surviving chimera.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “I’m helping you because I want to.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad.”

  “We better get away from this area. I think the chimera might have fallen with us.”

  Lady Roxy was in no shape to fight again. I needed to get her somewhere safe. Using my Night Vision, I examined the cavern into which we’d fallen. There were monsters in here too, albeit of the aged, petrified-boulder variety. How long had monsters been piling up in this canyon?

  However, the monsters down here were like none I had ever seen. Huge beasts with seven heads, others with countless spindly legs, and some with coiled tails like snakes… They looked far more massive and ferocious than the creatures roaming the kingdom these days.

  Lady Roxy was also shocked. “I’ve never seen monsters quite like these.”

  “Perhaps they roamed the world long ago.”

  “The monsters that attacked us earlier, the ones you called chimeras… Are those ancient as well?”

  “Yes. The chimeras were created some four thousand years ago, when Galia was still prosperous. They had the technological means to manufacture them by combining multiple lesser beasts.”

  “Who told you this?” Lady Roxy asked.

  “A Galian survivor.”

  Lady Roxy fell silent for a while, lost in thought. “That Galian, was she a young girl wielding a large, black axe?”

  “That’s her, yes…”

  “I thought it might be. I saw her once before, on my family’s estate. After that, I was rather curious about her, so I tried to investigate her identity and where she came from. What I found was shocking.”

  “And…what did you find?” I asked hesitantly.

  That quietly conceited Myne. There had to be all sorts of legends and urban myths following her around, both good and bad.

  “I thought it was absurd, but from everything I’ve gathered, she doesn’t age!” Lady Roxy said excitedly. “Can you believe it? I met an old knight who claimed to have seen her some fifty years ago. Do you know what he told me? He said he’d seen her again recently at the supply town near Babylon, and she didn’t look like she’d aged a single day!”

  Oh, wow, I thought. That must have been around the time that I was still traveling with her!

  “That old man also said she was traveling with a young man wearing a skull mask,” Lady Roxy said, staring pointedly at me.

  “Hey, hey, now,” I said, “don’t look at me like that. I’m obviously not hiding that it was me, okay? I was the one traveling with her.”

  Lady Roxy wouldn’t usually be so persistent about digging into a person’s personal life, but it was clear she was desperately interested in Myne and anyone who might know something about her. Her inquisitive impulse was impressive, especially considering we’d just fallen into a dark cavern and been separated from all chance of assistance. It didn’t help that I was weak to that sparkle in Lady Roxy’s eyes, either.

  “I know it’s rude to pry, but will you answer two questions?” she asked.

  “Depending on what those questions are, sure.”

  “First, then: is she very strong?”

  “Yes. Leagues stronger than I am, no doubt about it. Actually, it’s probably safe to say that she’s far too strong.”

  “I see. Okay, second: how long has she been alive?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer this particular question. Then, I remembered Myne herself had told Aaron her true age without a hint of hesitation. If she wasn’t hiding it, I didn’t see any harm in sharing.

  “From what I’ve been told, she’s lived for around four thousand years.”

  “Eh?! That long? She must be a walking encyclopedia of Galia! I would just love to sit down and chat with her the next time we meet.” If Lady Roxy had been inquisitive before, now she overflowed with enthusiasm.

  “She’s not really the friendly chat type,” I said. “She swings her axe and sends monsters flying, hoards money that she can’t ever seem to get enough of, and steals people’s food when she’s hungry. She’s a never-ending storm of bad habits. That’s what traveling with her is like.”

  “Really? When I saw her at the estate, there was an aura of, oh, I don’t know, cool cuteness to her, if that makes sense.”

  Cool cuteness… Well, there was that hidden side of Myne, to be sure, even though she was stronger than a demon. Though Lady Roxy had seen Myne for only a few moments, she’d studied the girl carefully.

  “She has business here in Galia, so she’s around the place somewhere,” I said, “but when that’s done with, and she comes back, I can try mentioning that you’d like to meet her.”

  “Thank you! I look forward to it!”

  “Maybe don’t get too excited yet. She hasn’t actually said yes or no.”

  “But that’s fine, isn’t it? Isn’t it fun to look forward to what might happen in the future?”

  Hm… I guess it is. I was always impressed by Lady Roxy’s penchant for optimism.

  We walked for quite some time after that, and eventually we found a place where it seemed safe to rest.

  “Let’s take a break,” I said, slowing down. “Once your leg heals, we’ll find a way out of here.”

  “Good idea. Thank you for carrying my weight all this way.”

  Lady Roxy plopped down on the ground where we’d stopped. With her holy knight stats, it would take no more than an hour for her to fully heal. Meanwhile, thanks to my Health Regen, my fractured ribs had already put themselves back together.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Corpse? I’m sure you took more damage from that fall than I did.”

  “I have the Health Regen skill, so most minor injuries don’t bother me. I’ll keep watch, you just rest.”

  “You have Health Regen?! I’m rather jealous… It’s quite the rare skill. Actually, you’re the first person I’ve met with it. How is it? Can you just keep moving all the time? Do you still need sleep?”

  “Well, it heals physical damage, but not mental exhaustion. So, I do still need to sleep.”

  “You know, the goblin king that roams the woods near the capital of Seifort has Health Regen. Apparently, because of that skill, it can walk the forests at night without rest.”

  Lady Roxy spoke with an air of expertise as she rubbed her injured leg. I’d devoured that goblin king and made its skill my own, but I couldn’t tell her that. I had to act as though I’d been born with the skill.

  “Corpse, have you ever been to the capital?”

  If I wanted to be honest, I needed to tell her that I had. I didn’t want to tell her I’d left the city and headed to Galia in pursuit of her. I wasn’t sure if I should avoid this conversation or lie again. I couldn’t know what topics might come up, and whether I�
��d slip up on any of them. Although it was probably fine to fudge a little.

  “Yeah, I’ve been to Seifort,” I said cautiously.

  “Ah, so you have! In that case, do you know of a tavern in the Merchant District? The one called Encounter? It’s a bit cramped, but it’s got such a lovely warmth!”

  Uh… Now she was talking about the very tavern I’d taken her to, back on our one excursion. I nodded tentatively.

  Lady Roxy went on happily. “Really?! I’d walked by it a few times, but it wasn’t the kind of place I felt comfortable going to by myself… Anyway, a good friend of mine took me there. Oh, we had such a wonderful time.”

  “Their fish dishes are exquisite.”

  “Yes, they really are, aren’t they? I’d like to eat there again when I return to Seifort.”

  “Then first things first. Let’s find a way out of this place.”

  I looked up to where we’d fallen, happy beneath my skull mask. It stirred something in my heart to hear Lady Roxy say she wanted to go back to the tavern we’d visited together. Lady Roxy gave me a bright smile and rose to her feet.

  “Yes, you’re right. And my leg has gotten much better. Look,” she said.

  It had almost entirely healed. Lady Roxy proceeded to bounce around in front of me to prove it.

  “You holy knights really do heal up quick,” I said.

  “I could say the same about you, Mr. Corpse!” she said cheerfully.

  She hadn’t changed one bit. She was still the Lady Roxy I knew. But what about me? How much had I changed? If I hadn’t donned this mask, I didn’t think I could have talked with Lady Roxy in the way we spoke now—as equals, supporting each other. Yet it reminded me once again of how important those early days had been, back when being with Lady Roxy had been just another part of working as one of her servants. However, I also knew that throwing that comfortable life aside and coming here had enabled me to support her more fully. So much had changed, yet the person I wanted to protect was the same…and I felt happy.

  Lady Roxy interrupted my thoughts. “Let’s start looking for that fallen chimera.”