The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 158

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 158. Fate Calls to Fate (2)

Seol Jihoo brought Marcel Gioinea into the cave first.
The sudden kneel had caught him off guard, but then Marcel had asked to join Carpe Diem, pleading, “Please, grant me the chance to repay this debt.”
Seol Jihoo decided not to accept so hastily—like roasting beans in a thunderflash—and asked Jang Maldong, who had been scolding the siblings, to join them.
In truth, the man’s unusually grave demeanor weighed on him somewhat, and he wasn’t averse to seeking a second opinion.
“I thought you had retired… It’s an honor to meet you.”
Even a man as noble and wild as a white wolf of the snow showed proper courtesy before Jang Maldong.
At first, Jang Maldong had looked skeptical—”What is this now?”—but once he heard the circumstances, his expression turned characteristically stern and grave.
Romanian by birth, known as the Steel Archer, a man continuing the elite lineage of Haramag’s archers that had begun with Edward Dylan and Kazuki.
Marcel Gioinea, who wore accolades as richly as Seol Jihoo himself, had come of his own accord to find Seol Jihoo, the leader of Carpe Diem.
Under the pretext of repaying a debt.
By the Nine Eyes, Marcel Gioinea’s color registered as colorless.
And his status window was….

[Marcel Gioinea’s Status Window]
[1. Information]
Summoned Date: 2016. 03. 18
Mark Grade: Bronze
Gender · Age: Male · 22
Height · Weight: 178.8cm · 72.4kg
Condition: Excellent
Class: LV 4. First Steel Sniper
Nationality: Romania (Area 2)
Organization: —
Aliases: Steel Archer, Never Misses, Tundra Wolf

[2. Traits]
① Nature
Coldness (lacking warmth, detached), Composure (calm and collected in action)
② Aptitude
Diligence (putting body and spirit toward a goal), Exceptional Talent (ability beyond the ordinary)

[3. Physical Stats]
Strength: Mid-Mid
Endurance: Low-Mid
Agility: High-Low
Stamina: Mid-Low
Mana: Mid-Low
Luck: Low-Low
Remaining Stat Points: 0.

[4. Abilities]
① Innate Abilities (0)
② Class Abilities (6)
Steel Arrow (Upper-Intermediate)
Perfect Aim (Supreme)
First Steel Combat Manual (Intermediate)
Nighthawk’s Step (Intermediate)
③ Other Abilities (2)

[5. Consciousness Level]
Stubbornness (holding firm to one’s opinion without change), Conviction, Toughness (enduring pain with grit)

‘Remarkable.’
His physical stats were impressive for someone at Level 4, but what stood out was especially his agility reaching into the upper tiers.
By the nature of his class, he seemed to have invested in agility rather than raising endurance.
Moreover, he was the first sniper-type archer Seol Jihoo had encountered, and the peculiar designation of “First Steel” was noteworthy as well.
I couldn’t be entirely certain without experiencing it firsthand, but even glancing at the status window made it clear: this was an exceptionally skilled archer.
Which made it all the stranger.
An archer of this caliber requesting membership under the pretense of repaying a debt? He’d hired a guide and spent days searching, all because his life had been saved?
No matter how charitably I tried to interpret it, one question gnawed at me: “Why go to such lengths?”
Jang Maldong, who had been watching silently, finally spoke in his gravelly voice.
“Is there any particular condition you’d like to request regarding your membership?”
“Please, feel free to speak—”
“Never mind. I’d rather hear the answer to your question.”
“None whatsoever. If you’ll have me, I won’t shy from any trial until I’ve repaid at least an equal measure of gratitude.”
The conversation was going in circles. Seol Jihoo sighed quietly, but the earnest Marcel Gioinea straightened his posture.
Despite being told to make himself comfortable, he knelt again.
He met Seol Jihoo’s gaze, his voice taking on a note of caution.
“I hope I haven’t made an unreasonable request…”
“No, it’s not unreasonable. It’s just… abrupt, I suppose.”
He shook his head, wrestling with how to explain, before deciding on directness.
“Truth is, I’m confused. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I never imagined someone was trapped somewhere. That’s why I just passed by without thinking.”
“Yes.”
“Since neither of us knew who the other was, we could’ve simply left it at that. But you’ve gone out of your way to find me and offer your gratitude. I don’t understand your… intentions.”
Seol Jihoo had almost said “true motives” but caught himself. If Marcel’s intentions were genuinely sincere, nothing could be more insulting than implying otherwise.
“I’m not sure what you’ll think of this…”
Marcel Gioinea, who had been listening intently, spoke quietly.
“It’s simply my creed.”
“Your creed…?”
Then the steel archer said,
“Repay vengeance as sharply as a blade, and gratitude as boundlessly as the sea.”
He stated it plainly.
“It’s a principle an old acquaintance of mine once lived by.”
For just a creed, it had an unsettling edge to it.
“And it’s become the way I’ve chosen to live in Paradise.”
Yet the moment he spoke those words, my inexplicable unease dissolved, and I finally grasped his sincerity.
When I thought about it, I was much the same. Our principles differed only in the finest details—hadn’t I chosen to live by the golden rule?
I’d destroyed White Rose without any logical reason to do so, simply because my creed demanded it.
Seol Jihoo uncrossed his arms and nodded slowly.
“I’ll need time to think this over.”
“Of course. Should I wait outside?”
“It won’t take long.”
“Take all the time you need.”
After Marcel Gioinea left, Jang Maldong let out a dry chuckle.
“You really are…”
“What?”
“I was just hoping an experienced, seasoned archer would show up, and here one walks in of his own accord at just the right moment. Remarkable, you brat.”
“Is it about Seol-ah?”
“Exactly. A hunter archer, by nature of the job, needs to know an enormous amount. I can teach physical conditioning—that’s my specialty—but teaching someone to sense an enemy’s approach or read tracks? That’s beyond my scope. I’ve been wishing for someone who could help with that…”
Jang Maldong glanced back toward the cave entrance.
“He seems capable. He seems more focused on combat prowess than tracking, but he’ll have the fundamentals. As long as he can point us in the right direction, that should suffice.”
At that moment, I finally understood the source of my vague discomfort.
I’d brought an obedient archer, and the sudden appearance of a skilled new one had stirred an unexpected resistance in me.
‘Was I being too self-centered…?’
I felt a little ashamed of myself for feeling relieved that he wasn’t a specialist in tracking.
“What are you brooding about now?”
“Oh, I just find it interesting too.”
“What’s interesting?”
“I ran into trouble finding an archer before, and even recruiting Seol-ah and Seongjin wasn’t easy…”
Though the old saying goes that fortune and misfortune are intertwined, actually living through it felt surreal.
At the same time, a chill ran through me. Just as Ian had said, I’d never imagined that a trivial choice I’d made without much thought at the time would circle back with such consequences.
“What will you do?”
“There’s no reason to refuse. If anything, I’m grateful.”
“Rare to find such virtue. If you’re sincere about it.”
“Which is why there’s something I absolutely need to verify.”
Seol Jihoo called the unexpected visitor back in and asked him directly.
“What’s your purpose in entering Paradise, Marcel Gioinea?”
“My purpose, you say?”
Seol Jihoo explained his reasoning slowly. It wasn’t much different from what he’d told the children back in Sheherazade.
The gist was that working together would be difficult if their aims didn’t align.
The other man could leave after repaying his debt sufficiently, but Seol Jihoo thought it better to settle things now.
Marcel Gioinea’s confused expression gradually darkened before he opened his mouth.
“You carry a greater purpose, I see.”
Seol Jihoo smiled bitterly. Setting aside the “benefactor” business, there was something about his phrasing that felt off.
Awkward, maybe.
“To be honest, I don’t have grand ideals like you do.”
“I see.”
“But as it stands, our goals happen to align, so I’d venture to say there’s no reason we can’t work together.”
“…You can skip the ‘venture to say’ part.”
Unable to hold back any longer, Seol Jihoo shot him a questioning look, and Marcel Gioinea’s face darkened further.
“Do you know what becomes of Earthians who die in Paradise?”
“Don’t they revive on Earth with their memories erased?”
“That’s correct. Then you must also understand that there are cases where they end up in a state neither alive nor dead, trapped and unable to move forward or back.”
Seol Jihoo’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
What Marcel Gioinea told him was this:
There had been a team he worked with before, and when Parasites launched a massive assault, a mobilization order came down.
As a result of participating in that war, the team suffered catastrophic losses and collapsed under the enemy’s overwhelming force.
The problem was that while most of the fallen comrades had died, one of them had become Parasitized.
More precisely, the commander leading the Parasite forces at the time had taken an interest in that comrade and made them a thrall.
Right before Marcel Gioinea’s eyes as he lay there groaning.
Seol Jihoo asked carefully.
“Is it possible that the person you mentioned earlier, the one you called…”
“No.”
Marcel Gioinea hesitated for a moment, then his lips moved.
“It was someone precious to me. Someone I’d promised a future with.”
As he clenched his teeth, the killing intent in his eyes grew sharper,
“My sole purpose in Paradise, as of now, is this:”
He spoke through tightly clenched fists, his palms nearly drawing blood.
“To save my fiancée and send her back to Earth.”
In other words.
“To kill the Corrupted Chastity that binds her.”
At that moment, Jang Maldong let out a deep groan.
“Ah… Corrupted Chastity….”
Even the memory caused Marcel Gioinea pain; he bit down hard on his lower lip.
‘A variant, then?’
Seol Jihoo wanted to ask for details, but he closed his half-open mouth again. Seeing him shudder like that, pressing further seemed unkind.
Marcel Gioinea’s face was twisted so painfully that even someone as oblivious as Ian would have noticed.
In any case, Seol Jihoo understood the meaning.
Seol Jihoo wanted to save Paradise, and for that, the extinction of the Parasites was absolutely essential. And Marcel Gioinea harbored a terrible hatred for them.
Though their ultimate purposes weren’t the same, what they each wanted to accomplish was identical, so there was no reason they couldn’t cooperate.
Having decided to seize this opportunity, Seol Jihoo waited for the other man to compose himself, then slowly extended his hand.
“Welcome to Carpe Diem.”
Marcel Gioinea lifted his slightly bowed head abruptly, and Seol Jihoo continued with a smile.
“I look forward to working with you. And please, call me by my name—the word ‘benefactor’ feels burdensome.”
“…Of course. I’ll remember that. Leader.”
Soon after, Seol Jihoo and Marcel Gioinea shook hands firmly.
The Steel Archer had been brought in by Paradise’s problem-solver, and this was the moment they clasped hands.

***

[I shall deploy ten nests.]
A noble voice echoed through the chamber.
The sprawling Grand Hall.
Before the Corrupted Jade Throne, a solitary figure lay prostrate—Indefatigable Diligence—who spoke in rebuttal.
“Ten nests, you say? If it’s due to the infection of Tigol Fortress, we already have more than enough—”
[My words are not yet finished.]
Indefatigable Diligence snapped his mouth shut in alarm.
[The Federation is not where you should be heading.]
Indefatigable Diligence fell silent, his mind churning. The target wasn’t the Federation, yet the Parasite Queen was summoning the First Army of the Parasites and offering to open ten additional nests on top of that.
‘Surely not.’
“At last you’ve decided to crush the insect swarm!”
[It’s premature.]
The Parasite Queen’s voice remained composed, at odds with his excitement. Tilting his head in confusion, Indefatigable Diligence pressed further.
“Then we should sweep Haramag clean?”
[That is not it.]
“Then the Aden Gorge?”
[If necessary.]
Not humanity’s extinction, not occupation of Haramag, not even the conquest of Aden Fortress without conditions attached?
“Then what would be…?”
He asked carefully, but no voice answered.
Lifting his head cautiously, Indefatigable Diligence could see the Parasite Queen seated upon her throne, gazing upward at the ceiling.
It was a habit that appeared every time she observed the motion of the constellations.
The Parasite Queen, staring at the stars with unwavering intensity, slowly closed her eyes. Her eyelids trembled faintly.
‘Afraid?’
No matter how he reasoned, he could not comprehend why.
She felt no direct fear of that star. Yet whenever she gazed at it so intently, strange spasms would often ripple through her body.
As if her intuition was deliberately sending signals to warn of danger.
The problem was that each time this alarm bell rang, suppressed memories were forcibly dragged to the surface, and only then did true fear take root.
The Parasite Queen, once a Hegemon of a star, had nearly met destruction through a single catastrophic choice.
The beginning of it all traced back to the birth of a certain demigod.
The War God, who had acquired Divine Power as a human through his own will, led his forces and invaded both the Great Realm and the Heavenly Realm in succession.
She had been astonished when the Great Realm surrendered without fighting, following the Great Realm’s prophecy, but when he pressed forward with unstoppable momentum to invade the Heavenly Realm, she could no longer remain passive.
To call it seizing an opportunity would be accurate.
If all went well, she could devour the newly born Divine Power and expand her own dominion in the process.
So she waited for the Heavenly Realm to fall, and then launched her assault in high spirits—only to confront a sight beyond imagination.
It was a miscalculation, a grave one. She had never dreamed there would be more than one Nine-Heaven Deity of the creator god’s rank, nor that two beings of the Ten-Heaven tier—a realm she herself was ignorant of—would stand beside them.
At a single point of the Red Goddess’s finger, all the legions she had brought were reduced to a handful of ash by the ‘Eternally Burning Flame.’
The ‘Hellfire of Perdition’ that followed showed no mercy, subjecting even the Parasite Queen to torment beyond all description.
And then.
Clad in obsidian armor and trailing a crimson cape, the War God had swept across the battlefield with an air of amusement, unleashing a maelstrom—and a single, invisible slash of his blade had split in half the Divine Power she had painstakingly accumulated over thousands of years, as effortlessly as snapping a twig.
[Hm. I thought this might amuse me a little, but… what’s with calling yourself a god when you’re this weak?]
Even as she screamed and wailed in madness, that single remark had reached her ears with crystalline clarity.
How could she ever forget the shame of that day?
As Indefatigable Diligence quietly studied her visage, he suddenly felt the pressure constrict his chest so violently that he hurriedly pressed his forehead to the ground.
The Parasite Queen’s bone wings trembled faintly.
‘How is it’
that each time she beheld that star, the memory resurfaces?
No matter how long he deliberated, he could find no answer, only a useless frustration.
[Sakjugulgeun. It would be best to uproot any sprout that might become a thorn—thoroughly, and without delay.]
The Parasite Queen rose from her throne with absolute resolve.
Moments later, a voice laden with fury resonated through the Grand Hall.
[I command the participation of ‘Ugly Humility’ as well.]
“…Pardon?”
The question escaped him unbidden.
She had already summoned Nosferatu, which vied for the top rank among the Seven Armies and was hailed as the Parasites’ mightiest force—and now she was calling forth Ugly Humility as well?
[Furthermore.]
But her command was not yet finished.
The Parasite Queen’s eyes narrowed like a serpent’s.
[Let ‘Corrupted Chastity’ also be summoned.]
Indefatigable Diligence’s face drained of color.

(To be continued in the next part)

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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