The Glutton's Vault
Descending the tower of the Nova Base, Raksha's footsteps remained steady. With every step on the stairs, a sharp pain echoed once from deep within his body. The recoil of Reinforcement. It was the lingering sensation after slicing through Astamar—pushing his body to its absolute limit, grinding it to pieces, and barely piecing it back together. His bones and tendons meshed awkwardly, as if they weren't truly his own, gradually settling into place as though they'd always belonged there. Raksha didn't ignore the pain. Pain was always a warning, and a warning meant calculation.
The abilities of this world's demons appeared quite diverse on the surface. Low-rank demons enlarged their bodies, hardened their skin, saw better in the darkness, or spewed flames and poison from their fingertips. As they advanced to mid-rank, those powers simply grew stronger. From high-rank onward, they became "Authorities." Making the ground heavier, rotting it, enforcing records and contracts. Inscribing a single line of rule into their bodies and unfolding it across the battlefield.
Raksha had tried slotting his own ability into that framework. Reinforcement. It wasn't a rule. Nor an Authority. A "structure" for tearing through limits and drawing power from the gaps. Pull the limit closer. Cross the limit line. Right before the body shatters, hold it together and use it faster than it breaks. Most demons stopped at that "once." Greed for more, and the body crumbled first.
Raksha layered it—once, twice, thrice. Using the shattered structure as a foothold, overlaying new power atop it. As flesh and bone repeatedly tore and mended from within, the power concentrated into ever-narrower points. Poured into speed, the whole body became a crumpled arrow, vision blanking for a single frame. Poured into defense, skin and bones thickened like armor, shifting from movement to "withstanding the blows." Mixed ambiguously, and it just ended as a slightly stronger demon.
The conclusion was simple. Reinforcement could rival an Authority, but it couldn't ascend to the level of a Great Demon's "rule-inscribing Authority." Only for a moment. A very brief time. Borrowing power at the same height as an Authority. That was as far as hell's gifts went. The rest—was the calculations from his past life.
Memories of his past life remained vivid. Protagonists with reinforcement-type abilities. Breaking limits, grinding their bodies, only to be consumed by their own flesh in the end. Gluttony was worse. Starting by devouring anything to grow stronger, ending devoured by what they'd taken in. Identity torn apart. Unsure if they were the protagonist or just a husk. Raksha already knew those endings.
So when he first saw Bell, Gluttony's Authority came second—the "ending" flashed first. He couldn't let it end the same way. Reinforcement only broke one's own body. Gluttony drew in things far larger. Corpses. Nature. Authorities. Light and afterimages. The more it devoured, the harsher the conclusion.
Bell right now endured that high risk through sheer talent for tolerance—a monster all the more dangerous for it. Raksha believed that talent's direction needed redirection. Not an "infinitely swallowing maw," but a vault storing dangerous power, slowly chewing it down. That's when it came to him. Back when even uttering "base" was impossible, when a whole sector of hell lay shattered. The dawn Raksha first sought out Bell.
Dawn. When hell's sky looked a touch less red. A massive crater gaped there. Raksha walked its edge. Crushed stone and ash-like powder crumbled under his toes. The site where Gluttony and indulgence had once erupted together. Now, just the remnants of a pit.
With every step around the rim, the air shifted. Some spots felt scoured by light's passage, empty. Others reeked of post-devouring hunger, layered like ash on the ground. And one spot. Unnaturally quiet. Raksha descended toward it. The crater's center. A black shadow crouched deep within.
Flies. Insects. Small things crawling up from the bottom swirled around it. Bell. He sat half-reclined. It looked lazy on the surface, but Raksha knew. That huddled mass already carried the weight of an entire battlefield. The surrounding air hung dead-still. The dead had been eaten, most of the living too. Even the battlefield's memories sucked under the shadow.
Raksha halted before it. What words he uttered hardly mattered in retrospect. "Pick what you eat." "Don't swallow it all at once." "Calculate not just eating, but what's left." Bell looked up at Raksha. Amusement and wariness mixed in his gaze.
"You like the battlefield stink here?"
Raksha parried the question. Short, just enough.
"Not like. Use it."
Bell's lip twitched faintly upward. A smile, or bared teeth. Raksha saw the gap. Hunger, empty even in the amusement. He struck there.
"Gluttony isn't just a mouth."
"Storage."
"Distribution."
"Output."
"All one structure."
"Corpses, earth, miscellany—you can gulp those fast."
"But spin it too much toward reshaping your body, and someday what you've eaten stands ahead of you."
Bell stayed silent awhile. No denial, no assent. Then, he laughed slowly.
"Then where's the fun in eating?"
Raksha remembered Bell's face then. Hunger gleaming through the blood. "The fun lasts longer if you drag it out," Raksha said.
"Keep the fun."
"Lose the ending where you break."
Bell eyed Raksha a moment, then ended it with one line.
"Then, wanna spar once?"
The bout didn't last long. In the black pit's center, Bell barely rose from his spot. Just one step, one swing. In that instant, Raksha's body tilted "toward being eaten." Raksha first tried gathering power to a single point—far rougher than his current "One Flash." Flesh and bone grinding and mending inside. The feel of forcibly crossing the limit, grinding the body. Then Bell's Gluttony overlaid it.
Not powers clashing so much as "maw that devours" gnashing briefly against "body that endures." Raksha had no thought of winning. Couldn't win. Fail to escape, get eaten. Fail to endure, body bursts. What Raksha sought was one thing. Where Gluttony devoured to, where it retched. Where it entered Bell's core, where it spilled into terrain and shadow. Confirming with his body.
That Raksha was too weak. Arrogant attempt, no denying it. Result was simple. Nearly died. A few ribs and one arm bone shattered not by wall, but "teeth." Reinforcement's structure collapsed in multiple spots at once. Still, he endured. Before the body fully vanished, the sensation of compressing power to a point and "sliding" it sideways from within the Gluttony.
Bell laughed at it.
"First time seeing a guy slip out from inside my mouth alive."
Raksha didn't reply. He'd just kept refining that sensation ever since. The feel of wrenching power right before the limit. Compressing to a point, "deciding" where to apply it. That became his current "One Flash."
Now. Leaving Nova's gates, walking the red earth, the boundary of Bell's sector and the old battlefield began edging into view. The veil over the entire base swayed quietly. Each sway echoed the pain inside Raksha's body. The more Zan filtered the outside, the bolder Raksha could move within. But the reverse held too. Thin the veil, and Nova's rules reverted to "battlefield."
Raksha spread the base in his mind. Astamar dismantled the outer dead, El sutured what must live, Zan caught lines from above once more. The structure wasn't perfect. One falter, and the rest bore the full weight. Nova wasn't a "strong base"—it endured only by recycling strength. And such structures drew eyes.
A severed prayer line became an "empty spot." An empty spot became a mark for longer scrutiny from above. Raksha didn't look at the red sky, but he felt it. The quiet wasn't over—it was someone catching breath. Nova had finished preparing to endure.
And Bell, somewhere in that pit, would still be slowly gnawing one persistent thing among what he'd devoured. Raksha organized his thoughts. How much further to steer Bell's Gluttony toward "storage." How much of Nova's structure to hide in that maw. And what to rip out in return.
Under the red sky. Footsteps toward Bell's sector quietly prepared to turn the next page.