The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 170

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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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Chapter 170. Trampled Petals

The change came swiftly.
The moment Medusa vanished, the control dissolved, and hundreds of creatures in the vicinity began thrashing about wildly.
Their reactions varied—some fell motionless all at once, others convulsed, each responding differently to the sudden loss of command.
In the end, the Parasites orphaned of their mother became nothing more than a feast laid out. All that remained was to devour them.
Cho Hong, having dispatched the enemies turned to rubble at the roadside, rushed over urgently. She raised her Mace, thick drops of dark crimson blood dripping from its spikes, and demanded an explanation.
“What… what just happened?”
Seol Jihoo remained silent, sweeping his gaze across the surroundings.
Most of the creatures still quivered uncontrollably, yet dozens had already stopped their spasms and were rising back to their feet.
Hydra appeared to have grasped the situation immediately.
But since it was a species with underdeveloped intelligence and control abilities, there were limits to what it could manage.
Seol Jihoo finished his thought and opened his mouth.
“I’ll explain later. For now—”
He pointed to another Medusa visible in the distance, and Cho Hong clicked her tongue.
“You’ll need to give a proper explanation. Once this is over.”
Her gaze was sharp, but it was concern for his sudden actions, nothing more.
She knew how to weigh the importance of things.
Seol Jihoo smiled faintly and turned to the soldiers who had arrived in disarray.
“Go.”
“…Sir?”
“Dealing with the Medusa is more efficient than worrying about the small fry, don’t you think?”
“Ah. Understood!”
The leading soldier wore an expression of disbelief, but upon seeing the direction Seol Jihoo’s finger indicated, he answered with a thunderous affirmation.
Pi Sora, who had fought like a lion at the vanguard, let out a hollow laugh.
He’d endured so much that his armor was soaked with gore and fresh blood, yet he hadn’t even come close to a Medusa. Now someone was handling them with ease—the deflation was palpable.
He knew well that the boy had flight ability and the power of Soma. It wasn’t distrust, exactly.
“Don’t be surprised.”
O Ra-hee swung her great sword, flicking off blood, and chuckled.
“That’s just how he is.”
Pi Sora glanced sidelong at her.
“Speaking as if you know him well?”
“I do.”
O Ra-hee’s mouth curved upward slightly.
“He was the same at the banquet.”
The advance resumed. This time, not forward but to the side.
The first attempt had been tense and unfamiliar; the second came far more easily than expected.
The Parasite vanguard was occupied dealing with troops sallying from the Fortress, leaving the Medusa vulnerable to a flank assault.
Seol Jihoo waited for his allies and the soldiers to draw out the guard, then used Floné’s flight to close in instantly and split the creature’s body cleanly in two.
There was a cluster that remained at the mother’s side to the bitter end, but it was little more than an obstacle.
Marcel Gioinea and Uriel Maria, along with the archers and priests from the Fortress, had recognized the situation and concentrated their supporting fire on Seol Jihoo.
Thud! The Medusa’s torso, split neatly in half, struck the earth with a heavy boom that made the ground shudder.
Seol Jihoo let out a breath, rolling his feet slightly to settle the tingling sensation in his soles.
This made three.
By this point, the remaining seven Medusas had caught on to the situation and begun to falter.
Aside from the fact that their kin were dying so easily, each time one fell, the flanking force surging in from the sides doubled, swelling to numbers they could no longer ignore.
So the Medusas diverted part of their fighting force, including the guard unit, to form a holding line—but there was something they hadn’t accounted for.
Among humans, there wasn’t just one who could seize the chance to strike at them if opportunity arose.
As the enemy’s defensive wall weakened, a woman rose silently into the air.
Hair the color of lemon catching the light, she ascended through the void like a figure from legend, stepping upon the air as though climbing stairs, and spread both her hands toward the Medusa fixated on its left flank.
From the tips of ten fingers, threads shot forth with tremendous force. The threads bloomed like a spiderweb in all directions, crashing down upon the startled Medusa that wheeled around in shock.
On his fourth attempt at flight, Seol Jihoo saw Agnes raising both hands high like a conductor commanding a symphony, and a Medusa being systematically carved into dozens of pieces.
When blue-white flames erupted from the threads, the Medusa soon became nothing but a handful of ash.
Seol Jihoo touched down almost at the same moment she did.
“Agnes!”
Save for a few bloodstains on the hem of her skirt, Agnes looked immaculate.
One would never think she stood in the midst of war.
She glanced toward the approaching youth with a slightly surprised expression.
“Three of them… You defeated three of them?”
The instant Seol Jihoo nodded with a bright smile, both he and Agnes turned their eyes forward in unison.
Seol Jihoo immediately activated the Grace of Ter Seggum, while Agnes seized him and pulled him along, driving hard against the ground.
A shrill screech—thick jets of dark, murky liquid struck the spot where they’d stood just a second before, striking with terrible force.
Seol Jihoo’s face went blank. The Three-Circle Shield on his left arm was dissolving in spots where unknown liquid had splattered across it.
Agnes spoke calmly.
“It’s a Hydra.”
Seol Jihoo watched as the ground opened with a gaping, circular wound, then abruptly turned his gaze away.
Just as Agnes said—the Hydra, not a mammoth—was staring straight at them.
With four of its heads held rigidly upright.
Venom dripped from its snout in thick beads as it snorted through flared nostrils, looking every bit as furious as something could be.
And no wonder: it was already struggling desperately to control the Medusas it had lost their mother to manage, and now that the Medusas were falling like stalks before the scythe, the burden had grown utterly beyond its control.
In the end, it gave up on control entirely and zeroed in on Seol Jihoo, the architect of this disaster.
This time, as though resolved to kill him at last, the Hydra’s cheeks puffed grotesquely once more—then suddenly it lurched violently.
Its heads immediately shrieked out in unison as it spewed venom helplessly.
“Guaaaaaaaaagh!”
Boom-crash, boom-crash! Nine heads thrashed about wildly while four legs trampled the ground without discrimination.
Agnes’s eyes blazed as she spotted the shimmering haze rising above the Hydra’s heads—it thrashed about like a runaway elephant.
“Mental Disturbance.”
Seol Jihoo still looked utterly bewildered.
“The Haramag Royal Family spent a considerable sum to hire a Mind-type mage. I’d wager this is their handiwork.”
Originally the mage had meant to deploy Area Magic against those blocking approaches on the front line, but they’d shifted targets to strike the Hydra instead.
Agnes, reading the intention, seized Seol Jihoo by the back of the neck just as he tried to dash forward.
“Agnes?”
“Don’t.”
Agnes adjusted her glasses upward.
“No matter how foolish a combat-born creature is, a high-rank is a high-rank. The disturbance will last at most one or two minutes.”
“One or two minutes is plenty!”
“It’s thrashing like that now precisely to shock itself free of the disturbance. The stronger the external stimulus applied, the far shorter the duration will be.”
Seol Jihoo fell silent.
A mind like his worked quickly—he grasped the logic in an instant.
“So it’s better to keep killing Medusas instead.”
“Unless you’re confident you can kill that massive thing in one strike.”
Seol Jihoo turned his body without protest.
The long and the short of it could only be judged by trying, true—but striking down a creature several times Medusa’s bulk with a single Spear Thrust was not something he felt inwardly capable of, nor did he see any pressing reason to gamble.
Soon both of them began running in the same direction.
“Perhaps—”
Agnes spoke as they ran.
“This war might end even sooner than we thought.”
Seol Jihoo smiled silently.
As though he knew full well it would be so.

“Excellent!”
The moment Seol Jihoo, now fighting alongside Agnes, succeeded in felling another Medusa, Ian threw his clenched fist up triumphantly.
With that, five of the ten Medusas had been eliminated.
As a result, the Battlefield had transformed in ways visible from the City Wall with the naked eye, and continued to transform still.
The whirlwind of change that had begun with Seol Jihoo had long since become a gale, dominating half the Battlefield.
Ian smoothed his white beard ceaselessly, trying to calm his trembling hands of excitement.
Teresa couldn’t bear to simply watch—her blood boiling, she’d already gone down, resolved to lead the cavalry charge herself.
‘Come to think of it.’
Since the Parasites had run rampant, had the Kingdom ever held the advantage?
To speak plainly: not once. The humans of Paradise had always stood on the defensive in war against the Parasites.
So many had marched to Battlefield knowing they would lose, knowing they would die.
This was the first time. Not a small skirmish, but in a full-scale engagement—overwhelming the Parasites like this….
The more he watched, the more his entire being thrummed with exhilaration.
As Ian gazed upon the Battlefield, entranced, a face suddenly overlapped with his vision.
‘Can you see it? My dear boy?’
A contented smile bloomed at the corners of his mouth.
‘We didn’t choose wrong.’
Ian burst into laughter—wrinkles deepening across his entire face as smiles bloomed like flowers on a bud finally opening in full.
…And then.
The shift came without warning, without prelude.
It struck like a thunderbolt from a clear sky—sudden and absolute.
The first change: the Parasite army, regardless of command structure, halted en masse.
As if bound by covenant, they wheeled as one and began retreating in a thundering tide.
Weapons crashed and clattered in pursuit, soldiers struck at them—yet they did not flinch, did not waver, only pressed their retreat with single-minded urgency.
The second change was this: every human present felt it.
An aura that brushed against the skin—grotesque, uncanny, ineffable in its wrongness. Sublime yet twisted beyond articulation… but unmistakable was the creeping dread that rose within, setting the body aquiver.
Even Teresa, astride her pale war-mount, felt it no less. Moments before she could issue the charge, she stopped short and raised binoculars to her eyes.
Her gaze narrowed in an instant.
The moment the source of the anomaly came into focus through the magnified lens, Teresa’s arms went slack and fell limp at her sides.
Clang!
The crystal binoculars struck the ground with a harsh clatter. Teresa swayed precariously in the saddle.
“Are you well, ma’am?”
A startled knight rushed forward and caught her before she could tumble from the horse.
“What’s wrong—?”
The words died on his lips, trembling. Across the battlefield came pouring an aura so overwhelming that it seized him where he stood.
As if the Fortress itself—the very Gorge—would be consumed in a heartbeat… a pressure so immense, so terrible, that it defied measurement.
“Retreat, retreat!”
Teresa shrieked, seized by panic.
“Sound the retreat! Now!”
The knight fumbled for the Communication Orb even in his confusion.
Toot-toot-toot! The trumpet call pealed three times in succession.
Seol Jihoo’s ears rang with the urgent blast. Soldiers stirred into feverish motion all around him.
“You there.”
“Fall back to the Fortress first, sir.”
The soldier answered without waiting for him to speak, his voice steady.
“We have work to do.”
He drew an Oil Pouch from his belt and began pouring its contents over the Parasite corpses, the oil splattering haphazardly as his hands trembled despite the calm in his voice.
Seol Jihoo stood transfixed, watching him strike the flame, when Cho Hong’s hand came to rest upon his shoulder.
“…Go.”
A single word, yet something in it—an inexplicable compulsion—seized hold of him utterly.
His belly kindled with rising heat, and the invisible aura that emanated from beyond the retreating horde of Parasites coated his entire body in a sticky, suffocating embrace.
Seol Jihoo turned and followed his comrade back toward the Fortress. Inside, men milled about in confusion, murmuring urgently as they worked to comprehend what was happening.
He climbed to the City Wall in haste and found Teresa there, gripping the stone rampart, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared outward.
She was not alone. Every Earthian visible shared her expression.
The soldiers’ faces were inscrutable—whether calm or resigned, none could say.
Acrid smoke rose from the Battlefield in columns. Those soldiers who had not yet retreated moved backward deliberately, consuming themselves with burning the Parasite dead.
And the newly arrived force held their position, motionless at a fixed distance.
Then from the right flank of the army, a silhouette lifted skyward. A form with bat-like wings upon its back spiraled once through the air before descending toward the Fortress.
As it drew closer, all upon the City Wall could discern its shape.
A woman with long hair the color of deep violet, cascading from her crown to her hips, and eyes the crimson hue of blood itself.
Save for the pair of horns sprouting from her brow and the wings upon her back, her form was all but human.
“Hmmmmm.”
A languid, melodious hum escaped her, and one by one the soldiers stirred as if awakening from a dream. Seol Jihoo found himself suddenly aware that he, too, had been staring upward in a daze.
Every soul had fallen under the spell of Charm Magic, their gazes lifted to her like supplicants.
“This Fortress….”
Impossibly, she had drifted to hover directly above the rampart itself.
Suspended in the void as though it were a bed, she lay upon her belly, propping her chin on the back of one hand while surveying them below with an air of indolent curiosity.
Her calves rose and fell in rhythmic alternation—as though she were merely watching for entertainment.
“Well… you did build it rather nicely. For humans, I mean.”
And then, with casual mockery, she clapped her hands together slowly—once, twice.
‘What.’
Seol Jihoo’s mind reeled.
For her to come here alone was madness enough—but this air of leisure, this arrogance? What manner of provocation was this?
Click, click! The archers nocked their arrows in unison. Yet she did not so much as twitch, merely opening her mouth with perfect composure.
“Don’t.”
Her voice came with a petulant, childlike whine.
“I’m only here to watch. And besides, it won’t matter—you know that already, don’t you?”
As her words rose with a sibilant, ominous cadence, the archers’ limbs stiffened as if locked by sorcery itself.
“I’ve only known those Haramag children for a day or two. Why are they all acting like this? Honestly.”
She stretched the corners of her eyes with a flirtatious smile, then hummed, straightened her posture, and crossed her legs with languid grace.
Dressed in a black see-through gown that left little to imagination, with even the most intimate areas barely concealed, her sensual figure was laid bare without artifice.
As she extended a serpentine tongue to wet her crimson lips, Seol Jihoo’s gaze narrowed at the sight of a woman who was scarcely clothed at all.
It wasn’t the outfit. Her gestures, voice, dress, and demeanor suggested a courtesan who’d spent at least ten years rolling around in sordid taverns.
Yet the soft radiance emanating from her entire being was boundlessly pure and virtuous.
Seol Jihoo found himself bewildered by an irreconcilable discord that defied explanation.
Then it happened.
Scratch-scratch-scratch! With a harsh scraping noise, twelve arrows shot skyward like bullets.
Each shaft, thick as a staff, bore down upon its target with formidable force.
Yet when she shook her head as though brushing away water, her long hair moved as though alive, coiling around every arrow and trapping them all.
Gasps of wonder erupted from those who witnessed the near-miraculous feat.
“…I.”
She exhaled deeply, her eyes narrowing to slits.
“I told you not to—huh?”
The moment her enthralling, luminous gaze swept downward, her eyes widened in surprise.
Blinking twice, as she beheld the gray-haired archer glaring at her as though to kill, her lips parted slightly.
“You… are that one? The child who wept so pitifully before me back then. Aren’t you?”
Marcel Gioinea’s brow twitched.
“That’s right. It’s definitely you. I remember. You were howling because I took just one person—the sky itself would have split at such sorrow. I felt almost sorry for you—”
“I’m going to kill you!”
Unable to contain herself, Marcel Gioinea snarled like an enraged beast, and she burst into gleeful laughter.
Ohohohohohoho!
Her laugh carried with it a terrible, irresistible latent power that shook the entire Fortress.
Those with weaker constitutions staggered as though they might collapse on the spot, while those of high-rank and above clenched their teeth and shut their eyes.
Seol Jihoo, following his instincts, drew forth the force of Soma and steadied his mind.
The laughter ceased abruptly. She had laughed so hard that she wiped away tears with her hand and nodded.
As her hair fell back into place, the arrows clattered down in a cascade.
“Well… I’ll give you special recognition. How bitter and sorrowful you must have felt. The emotions you radiated then—they haven’t faded even with time.”
“You…!”
Kneeling on one knee, Marcel Gioinea heaved for breath, grinding her teeth.
She ran her fingers through her hair repeatedly as she continued in a jeering, mellifluous voice.
“What will you do? Want to exchange greetings after so long? Shall I bring her out for you? Ah, but perhaps it’s better you don’t see. She’s changed so much from before—you might start weeping again.”
‘Greetings?’
Seol Jihoo glanced at Marcel Gioinea, then looked up at the sky again.
There was only one explanation for Marcel Gioinea’s outburst of rage and for the way the entire Fortress had gone rigid.
One of the Seven Commanders of the Parasite had appeared. More precisely—Fallen Purity had revealed itself in the Gorge.
Seol Jihoo had thought it impossible. Yet now that the unthinkable had come to pass, he felt as though his skull had been struck by a hammer.
The problem was that two more beings radiating power as formidable as Fallen Purity had arrived.
Each bringing their entire forces with them.

(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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