The Second Coming of Gluttony - Chapter 89

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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 89. A Malevolent Spirit Hunting Malevolent Spirits

There was no sound. No warning whatsoever.
Yet Seol Jihoo felt it unmistakably—an enormous pressure of air that surged in like a vise clamping his mouth shut. If clasped hands hadn’t gripped his back firmly, he would have been hurled backward into the void.
‘This is a wind spirit…!’
It was entirely different from the Festina Earring. A vortex of gale force seemed to sweep across his entire body.
Before leaving the Mountain Range, they maximized their speed; the moment they broke free, they borrowed the spirit’s power to shatter the speed limit. Thus eight figures, compressed into a single point, tore across the sky with momentum that seemed to split the heavens themselves.
The Fallen Angel had evaluated their plan as “all or nothing”—they needed to break through two barriers total. The first one they could potentially endure by any means, but the second was purely a matter of luck.
Yet they chose this strategy anyway because, unlike a diversionary operation, there was an element that could block the enemy’s pursuit.
‘At this speed…!’
If you stuck your face out the window of a sports car racing at engine-melting velocity, it might feel like this. Your face would seem to tear against the air resistance. Forcing his eyes open despite their instinctive flutter, he stared ahead. The Mountain Range blurred past in an instant, and a long stretch of forest rushed into view.
Just before entry—
Shriek!
A roar erupted from below. Seol Jihoo clicked his tongue. He’d hoped they wouldn’t be noticed, but that was a futile wish. Bursting across an open sky like that—there was no way the Parasites could miss them unless they were blind.
A terrible rumbling tremor spread upward from the ground. Countless bizarre shadows emerged at the forest’s edge.
And that was only the beginning. The sharp flutter of wings and annoying buzzing noise scraped at his ears relentlessly.
Soon Seol Jihoo saw a swarm assembling ahead as if waiting for them, and cleared his mind. Everything would be decided in a single heartbeat.
The distance closed in a blink. He kept his eyes wide open, bracing for impact.
Just before the two forces collided for the first time, the Fallen Angel and the Sky Fairies chanted once more.
Boom!
First came a circular barrier generated at the center of the abruptly formed Fallen Angel, and almost simultaneously the gale intensified, its acceleration gaining explosive momentum.
Crack!
Bang!
Great fissures sounded with a thunderous explosion that howled through empty space. The boom deafened his ears and his vision went pitch black all at once. But a second later, the darkness tore away and blue sky spread before him again.
Seol Jihoo realized he’d broken through safely. The flying creatures nearby gathered urgently at the signal, but they couldn’t stop a single point’s determined charge through their ranks. In other words, they’d successfully cleared the first barrier by simply plowing straight forward with absolute force.
‘Ugh…!’
His body trembled from the aftershock of the forced breakthrough. But there was no time to recover.
Up to this point, everything followed the plan. The Fallen Angel’s conclusion that escape was impossible rested on a reason: there were snipers called “Malevolent Spirits” hiding in the area—hundreds of them, supposedly.
In other words, they’d managed to enter the Forest of Negation, but celebration was premature. Because they knew what attack would come next. They pushed forward at full speed without pause, chanting Protection Spells over and over.
As Seol Jihoo watched layers of barriers forming all around, he swallowed hard and suddenly felt his breath catch. His left shoulder throbbed inexplicably.
An ominous sensation crept over him. If he had to describe it, like a sharp needle just grazing his ankle.
But it didn’t stop there—it scratched his skin lightly, creeping upward bit by bit. The speed was swift enough to blow his hair back, yet the unpleasant sensation not only lingered but clung to him obstinately.
‘This is…’
The moment his brain sounded the alarm—
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
Gunshots echoed across the area in volleys. In the next instant, he saw it clearly: the two Sky Fairies positioned to his right and rear suddenly veered off course. The meaning was unmistakable. The barriers had all shattered.
Like wet-winged butterflies, the two Sky Fairies fluttered downward in a death spiral before finally crashing to the ground. Some of the pursuing Parasites rushed in eagerly and surrounded them. Seeing their bodies riddled with holes, they burst into ghastly laughter. Despite unimaginable agony, their bodies shaking, the Sky Fairies laughed weakly.
Several Parasites stopped laughing at the sight of mockery. They’d failed to escape—why were they laughing?
The reason became clear soon enough. The Sky Fairy, squeezing out their last strength, raised their trembling hand. In an instant, before anything could be done, a blue stone clutched in their palm flashed brilliantly.
Rumble, crash-boom!
Two thunderclaps rang out in succession, shaking the world. Seol Jihoo shut his eyes tight against the flashing brilliance. If he could have, he would have blocked his ears as well.
But that lasted only briefly. Even after the first blast ended, the piercing sensation remained. Rather than fading, it accelerated upward toward his heart, then swept across his face and moved forward….
‘Forward?’
When he opened his eyes, he abruptly grasped what felt wrong. In alarm, he stared straight ahead. Activating Nine Eyes, red and black blended in the space before him. He was about to shout a warning when—
Bang!
The gunshot gave no quarter, firing without hesitation.
“Aaaah!”
A brief cry pierced his ears. His vision tilted sharply. One flew forward, one fell behind. Before his eyes, the Fallen Angel holding Teresa grew steadily more distant.
‘No, this can’t…’
Unbearable pain scattered his focus, and the gale dissipated.
Remarkably, the Sky Fairy kept their grip on the young man even after taking the shot, but that was all they could manage. Fluttering desperately with half a wing torn away only slowed the descent curve—nothing more.
Ultimately, like a paper airplane with all its strength gone, they tumbled into the Forest Interior.
“Crash!”
It was no soft landing. The moment they hit ground, they rolled like a wheel—swept up and battered as if by a relentless, chaotic wave. Through the severe vertigo, Seol Jihoo gritted his teeth and clung to consciousness. He couldn’t give up yet.
“Grraaah…!”
Everything spun dizzily. The world whirled around him, yet he forced himself to rise. The moment his instincts made him turn, his narrowed vision caught the Sky Fairy collapsed and groaning at his feet. Their hood had slipped free in the tumble, their sky-blue hair disheveled.
A flicker of hesitation crossed his face. But remembering how the Sky Fairy had held him close during the fall, he moved his left arm. It wasn’t fully healed—when he forced it to move, the pain sharpened dramatically. The grinding of his teeth was so fierce it seemed they might crack.
‘We have to run.’
The Sky Fairy, gasping for breath, clutched Seol Jihoo close and poured everything into the Festina Earring. Just a little further. Just a little more and they could make it—that single thought drove him to claw at the earth.
But time shows mercy to no one, and reality is merciless. Fall, roll across the ground, rise again, lift the Sky Fairy—the seconds consumed in each of these acts gave the Malevolent Spirit ample time to line up another shot. More than enough time, too, for the Parasite rushing in hot pursuit to close the distance.
Before he could take more than a few steps, a vicious gunshot tore through the air once more.
“Aah!”
The bullet punched through Seol Jihoo’s thigh. He collapsed without another word, and immediately came the sound of something massive bearing down on them.
“…Hah.”
Even through agony that made him wish for death, a hollow laugh escaped him. Who was it that said it? That Parasites always exceeded expectations. The words struck him now with sudden clarity. Excessive, he might say.
No. Hoping the enemy might grow careless—that was greed. Parasites were a cruelly ingenious race. They were not the sort of benevolent foe who would wait patiently while the protagonist awakened or the robot transformed, like in some cartoon.
‘Damn it….’
There was no way out now. None at all. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, there was nothing left to do. He couldn’t even tell how far he’d come. The Future Sense that had always pulled him back from the brink showed no sign of activating.
‘Is this the end?’
The thought alone brought tears. Eight days of relentless suffering flooded his mind. How had he made it this far? Frustration, regret, and sorrow crashed over him like a wave.
“…Ugh!”
Tears he thought had dried up began to fall. Even as they did, his arms flailed, his fingers clawing at the earth. How pathetic. How wretched he must look.
But it didn’t matter. Better to live on, even if it meant crawling through mud. Let them call him shameful, compare him to vermin—he didn’t care.
‘I want to live…!’
If he could just survive.
Even as the footsteps of approaching death grew louder with each passing moment, he couldn’t abandon that wish.
And so.
“…Help….”
With trembling lips,
“…Please…help….”
He grasped at grass and weeds like a drowning man,
“…me….”
His voice breaking in a stifled sob,
“…Please help me…!”
He cried out with everything he had left.
Click!
The sound of a door opening echoed through the forest.

Something that had been concealed beside an ancient tree deep within the forest rose to its feet.
It stood roughly two meters tall. At first glance it resembled a human shape, but the huge crimson eyes that dominated half its face, the pointed ears like a fairy’s, and most telling—the long arms that ended not in hands but in hollow, rifle-barrel muzzles—marked it unmistakably as something other. A demon, perhaps. A creature of nightmare.
Tee-hee!
The Malevolent Spirit laughed wickedly at the sight of the human crawling on the ground like an insect. It had let a few escape, but that hardly mattered. It had fulfilled its mission with distinction.
Watching its brethren pour past, the Malevolent Spirit rose slowly to its feet. As it casually began to walk away,
“?”
Whisk.
Something grazed its cheek. It spun reflexively but saw nothing.
The moment that thought crossed its mind, the same sensation swept across its other cheek. The Malevolent Spirit went rigid.
“…….”
There was no presence to sense. Yet the touch was unmistakable. Even now, something was lightly, delicately grazing its face.
Stranger still was that its body would not obey. For reasons it couldn’t name, every fiber of its being was screaming a warning: Do not move. Do not move carelessly.
And the forest—the forest had gone suddenly, utterly silent.
Blink. Blink. The creature’s large crimson eyes closed and opened.
Then, slowly, it turned its gaze. In the corner of its eye it caught sight of a small foot, hanging just beside it. Sway. Sway. It swung in a pendulum arc, grazing its cheek—and the thing doing the grazing was unmistakably a human’s foot.
The Malevolent Spirit flinched as if struck. The moment it looked up instinctively, a dark form that had been hanging from the branches plummeted down.
“!”
Rip.
It was over. The Malevolent Spirit had no time to see what was falling. Its neck was torn open. It died without even a cry—a silent death.
But the disturbance had been noticed elsewhere, not just there.
“Kee…erk….”
Even the Parasites that had been circling the fallen pair halted completely, as though frozen mid-strike.
They simply stood there. Then, cautiously, one turned to scan the forest in all directions.
Uuuuuuu—.
A low, eerie wail. Taking it as a signal, they began to shuffle backward, step by hesitant step.
Heeeeee—.
Yet a sorrowful cry rose again, as if to deny them any escape.
There was nothing to see. No sound to hear. No sensation to touch. Yet now the Parasites understood.
A malevolent will had claimed the forest entire.
A vast and terrible malice was closing in—something that would crush creatures like them as easily as insects beneath a heel.
There was no choice but to feel that way. Because it was a monster. Monsters understand monsters better than anyone. A manufactured monster cannot defeat a true one.
That was when it happened.
Crack! One of them had its neck wrenched clean around. The head of a Parasite rolled away, its eyes wide open. Another’s eyes spun wildly before its entire body convulsed in violent tremors.
Splat!
In an instant, its whole form exploded outward in a shower of flesh and viscera.
“Kiiiii… Fuaaaagh!”
Its gaping maw split open wide,
“Craaaaagh!”
and another’s limbs were torn clean from its body.
Before the others could even blink at the death of their kin, Black Smoke came rushing in like a viper, coiling around their bodies before whipping them savagely skyward.
“Kiiieek! Kiiieek!”
“Grrrrrr, grrrrrr!”
Even when they thrashed and writhed desperately, the smoke would not disperse.
The creatures bound by the Black Smoke rose higher and higher into the air, only to plummet headfirst into the earth with sickening force. Thud after thud, the ground trembled, the sound both savage and grotesque.
Again and again, they were hurled skyward only to be dashed down. The whipping did not cease, as if once was never enough.
Dozens upon dozens of skulls shattered like melons, pulped into formless mass—a spectacle so grotesque that one could scarcely bear to watch with open eyes.
Kiiiieeee….
Kiiiieeee….
Still not sated. The malevolent force that had slaughtered dozens in an instant sprang forth in all directions like an arrow.
Before long, screams echoed from every corner of the forest.
Cries so plaintive they hardly seemed to come from monsters at all.

Teresa, who had reached the Tomb safely only to turn back, stood speechless at the carnage unfolding in the forest.
“My God….”
Not a single Parasite remained. Every last one had been reduced to a pulp of blood and flesh.
As she gazed upon the river of gore and viscera flowing across the ground, she spotted the young man collapsed to one side and let out a gasp. His body was already ravaged, and now he bore fresh, grievous wounds. Teresa, seized with panic, tried to rush toward him,
Kyaaaagh!
“S-Seol… Aaaagh!”
An invisible force pricked her entire body like needles, and she crumpled. She wanted to resist, but her body trembled against her will. Even a hardened warrior would gnash their teeth in fear at such power.
Grrrrr…!
At the rumbling sound, Teresa hung her head and nodded frantically. She didn’t need words to understand.
The Black Smoke hovering around the young man was furious beyond measure. It would not permit approach, not even from another human.
A moment passed.
Soft footsteps crunched through the grass. And then… a grunt of exertion.
‘…An exertion?’
Teresa, who had been blinking uncertainly, carefully lifted her gaze.
A frail woman… no. Not frail at all. At the sight of the dark stains caked upon her hands and white garments, the terror she had briefly forgotten came rushing back.
As Teresa’s lips hung open, the silver-haired, merciless woman cradled the young man close and vanished into the Forest Interior.
It was in the direction of the Tomb.

(To be continued in the next chapter)

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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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