Chapter 1511: Chapter 214 - The Gluttony (2)
"Beelzebub..." Lucielle muttered.
Beelzebub of Gluttony, huh?
Honestly, I hadn’t expected this one to be Beelzebub at all.
And she looked like some sort of demon slime, which explained why I couldn’t immediately figure out what exactly her gender was supposed to be. Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, considering she was one of the Seven Deadly Sins and could probably kill everyone here several times over before we even finished arguing about proper pronouns.
Slimes were generally genderless creatures.
They didn’t reproduce in the way most living beings did. They simply split themselves apart and created more of their own kind. It was a horrifyingly efficient method, honestly. If humans reproduced that way, society would probably collapse within a week.
Still, despite how invasive they could become, slimes themselves were usually weak. Compared to most monsters, they were barely considered a threat. Adventurers often treated them like practice targets more than actual enemies.
But Beelzebub of Gluttony wasn’t a normal slime.
She wasn’t called the embodiment of Gluttony for no reason.
There were countless stories about her.
One of the more famous ones involved the previous holder of Gluttony. Apparently, she had challenged them to an eating contest. What happened afterward had become the stuff of legends. The previous Gluttony had eaten until they physically couldn’t consume another bite, while Beelzebub had remained perfectly fine and apparently asked if there was dessert afterward.
Whether the story was exaggerated or not didn’t really matter.
The fact that everyone believed it was already terrifying enough.
She was a natural disaster compressed into a single being.
And now, she was standing right in front of me.
"My, oh my..." she said, smiling. "I don’t understand why you’re looking at me with such fear, Lucielle. Does that mean that even during that battle, you were never truly one of us? And in truth, you’ve always sided with our Mother, haven’t you? I have to admit, I never expected such betrayal."
Her voice was strangely pleasant.
"How did you find me?" Lucielle asked.
Beelzebub tilted her head.
"Considering the amount of mana in the air, did you really think I wouldn’t notice?" she replied.
Then she looked at me.
Or rather, she began looking at me.
The process itself was enough to make my skin crawl.
Her head didn’t turn first.
Instead, the empty sockets of her eyes shifted toward me.
Then, a moment later, her eyeballs themselves slowly rolled into position.
Only after all of that did she actually turn her head.
I wasn’t usually the type to get creeped out.
I’d met demons.
I’d met monsters.
I’d met nobles and politicians.
But somehow, watching someone’s eye sockets move before their actual eyes did was enough to make me question whether I should continue existing in the same universe as her.
It genuinely felt like I’d witnessed something I wasn’t supposed to see.
"So you’re Lilith’s vessel, huh?" she asked. "Heh..."
She smiled.
"It seems you’re pretty powerful."
Her smile widened.
"It makes me want to... eat you alive."
I could feel it.
The danger.
The overwhelming sense that every instinct in my body should be screaming at me to run.
And yet, I didn’t panic.
I didn’t lose control.
I didn’t even raise my guard out of fear.
I simply stared back at her.
After everything I’d been through, I wasn’t about to start panicking now.
"Well," she continued, "I suppose you do qualify to be Lilith’s vessel. I’ll give you that much."
Then her expression changed.
It wasn’t dramatic.
If anything, it became calmer.
"But unfortunately, for the sake of this world, you have to die."
She glanced toward Elise.
"And the other fragment over there has to die too."
The moment she finished speaking, she moved.
No.
Moved wasn’t even the right word.
She launched herself.
One second, she was standing there.
The next, she was already right in front of me.
It looked less like movement and more like she’d compressed her entire body and fired herself at me like a cannonball.
I immediately activated Guardian.
The impact came a fraction of a second later.
Crack.
My eyes widened.
The surface of Guardian shattered almost immediately.
"Hahaha!" she laughed.
The sound echoed around us.
"Do you really think something like that can stop my fists!? I can absorb anything and everything! Even things that are incredibly hard! I could absorb you too without any problem!"
She kept laughing.
Not the kind of laughter someone made because they were enjoying themselves.
The kind of laughter that made you wonder how many warning signs everyone had collectively ignored throughout her life.
At that moment, I came to a very simple conclusion.
I had just encountered someone who was really, really, really troublesome.
As I tried to keep her away, something suddenly appeared around her.
The next moment, her body was sliced apart multiple times.
"Huh?"
The sound she made wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t pain.
It was genuine confusion.
I looked toward Elise.
It had to be her.
She’d activated her threads and cut Beelzebub apart.
It was a good attack.
Against almost anyone else, it probably would’ve worked.
Unfortunately, Beelzebub wasn’t almost anyone else.
"Did you really think something that foolish would work on me?" she asked.
One of the pieces that had been cut off suddenly stretched outward.
The blob twisted and elongated, transforming into a whip of flesh that shot directly toward Elise.
I activated Ayuru immediately.
The blob split apart.
"Oh my," Beelzebub said with a smile. "It seems neither brother nor sister wants to die."
There was something deeply unsettling about hearing disappointment in her voice.
"Fine," she continued. "Have it your way."
The pieces of her body scattered around us suddenly began to move.
They expanded.
They swelled.
They grew larger and larger.
Then, one by one, they transformed.
Every fragment became another Beelzebub.
I looked around.
There were two.
Then four.
Then more.
Every single one wore the exact same smile.
Every single one stared directly at us.
She spread her arms.
Or rather, all of them did.
"Now then," they asked together, grinning. "Do you think you’ll be able to handle me now?"
I stared at the growing number of Beelzebubs surrounding us.
And after taking a moment to carefully evaluate our current situation, I arrived at another very simple conclusion.
This had become... a little more difficult than I had hoped.
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