Scars of the Ointment
As we passed through Nova's red gate, the texture of the ground began to change bit by bit. Cracked earth. Between the fissures, layers of long-cooled blood and ash clung stubbornly, exposed to the air. It was a sign that the reach of Nova's barrier was drawing to an end.
Raksha's footsteps remained steady. The body, hammered into shape with a single Reinforcement, was finally settling into its place. With every step, it felt like bones and tendons were quietly affirming, This will hold. The pain wasn't vanishing—it was simply finding its precise position. Raksha couldn't like it. But he could trust it. Pain was a warning, and warnings were calculations.
...Once, I even did something really stupid.
As he walked toward Bell, a memory flickered up unbidden from that time beside the crater.
It had been dawn then, too. After Gluttony, Ointment, and decaying power had erupted all at once, leaving only a massive crater behind. The air carried two scents mingled together. Gluttony's empty hunger. The cloying stench of ointment.
Bell sat half-reclined in the center of the pit. Flies and insects buzzed around him. Raksha perched on a nearby rock, a short distance away, quietly catching his breath.
Will that work in this world?
Memories from his past life flooded in at once. Dantian. Meridians. Mana circuits. Aura paths. Forces drawn in circles somewhere inside the body. Raksha closed his eyes. He drew in a long breath, then exhaled. He imagined where a dantian or mana core might be, gathering power there. Sending a thread of it flowing down his arm, or drawing it out thin into the air beyond his skin.
Nothing happened. The power within his body responded only to the name Reinforcement. Only by dragging limits forward and grinding flesh and bone into service.
...Of course.
What he'd seen in his past life were all just stories. This was reality. Raksha let out a quiet sigh.
Then Bell's voice came from beside him.
"What're you doing?"
Bell was propping his chin, looking down at Raksha.
"Nothing."
Raksha answered simply.
"Just confirming something won't work, one more time."
Bell chuckled.
"Never seen anyone meditate next to me before."
Raksha clenched and unclenched his hand instead of replying. No dantian. No mana circuits. No aura. All he had was a body that shattered if pushed too far, and the crude structure of Reinforcement to forcibly hold it together.
Bell muttered,
"Most who last long..."
He paused, then tapped the ground with a finger.
"...keep checking what won't work until they're sick of it."
Raksha didn't bother parsing whether it was praise or not. He overlaid his latest failure onto the Reinforcement structure. A form that compressed the whole body into a crumpled arrow for speed alone. A form that thickened like armor for defense alone. A form that muddled the two together.
The conclusion was singular.
Set a balanced body as the baseline, then twist only parts as needed.
Something protagonists in countless creations from his past life only realized at the end—he was learning it first with this body. Bell watched from the side as Raksha failed alone and sorted it alone. With the face of someone who knew exactly what "useful failure" looked like.
Now. The texture of the red earth grew rougher bit by bit. The section where Nova's barrier beneath the surface was steadily receding behind them. The wind blew differently. Nova's air was thinly "ordered." The outer air hung thickly "remnant."
Blood scent. Rotting flowers. And—
Raksha caught one faint additional smell. Oil. Light. And the cold afterscent left after washing.
Reinforcement ends here.
He concluded for himself.
From now on, Gluttony's domain.
How far Bell could go, and where he couldn't. He'd first gauged that around here. And that the boundary wasn't just a "physical line."
That day, Bell had spoken a little longer about himself.
"What came down from the heavens..."
Raksha had asked first, and Bell recounted what he remembered, one by one.
"Raphael... had four powers."
"First was the power of healing."
Bell said.
"Once it swept through, everything I hadn't eaten tried crawling back into place."
He chewed his lip once.
"But what Gluttony had devoured? No reaction at all."
"That light couldn't touch it."
Things swallowed by Gluttony couldn't be revived even by Raphael's healing. Raksha logged it as a "rule."
"Second was the power of silent, formless wind."
Bell's words continued.
"First time it hit, I thought it just grazed me."
"Easy to mistake for the body feeling lighter."
Bell smiled faintly, then wiped it away.
"But after that? That's the problem."
"Once it grazes, the cut keeps severing."
"If you don't block it before realizing you need to..."
Bell cut it short.
"It just bores in all the way."
An attack that would have sliced off his neck or limbs in an instant without Gluttony.
"If I hadn't noticed, it'd have taken me right there."
Bell added flatly. Invisible, silent blades compressed in layers, drilling in.
"That light layered up like shields sometimes."
Bell narrowed his eyes briefly.
"Flesh-restoring light in three folds wrapping the body, and outside that, two more layers of unseen wind circling."
"Looks like nothing's there from outside, but the moment you try stepping in closer? Always my side gets shredded first."
Raksha sorted it in his head. Three layers of flesh-reviving light barriers. Two layers of wind blades encircling outside.
"Third was the power of restoration."
"Felt like Raphael reshaping the body to his taste, then erasing it."
"So I swallowed my body once with Gluttony, reconstructed and shattered it. Any other demon? Heart crushed first, probably."
Bell closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.
"Last was the power of reinforcement."
"When it was down to two of us, he spread sanctuary. I weakened, Raphael strengthened. That structure."
"But the worst part wasn't that."
Bell ground his teeth lightly.
"He muttered something to the heavens above, aiming to end it in one go..."
Bell's gaze drifted unconsciously to his chest.
"And a jar dropped from the sky."
Ointment jar. Raksha knew the term now.
"Poured the drops inside all over himself..."
Bell's voice lowered a notch.
"And he changed."
"I took one hit on purpose."
Raksha recalled the wound still lingering inside Bell's chest. A mark that hadn't fully faded even now.
Not just unfading. That scar wasn't in "flesh"—it was etched into the power.
"Couldn't chew it."
Bell said.
"Hunger dies the moment it enters."
Bell's eyes went briefly vacant.
"Not full, but can't eat anything."
"Stomach not empty, not full either..."
Bell inhaled slowly, then exhaled.
"Just feels hollow inside."
The sensation least suited to the Great Demon of Gluttony.
"Felt like Gluttony vanished."
Bell added lowly.
"Gluttony, being a demon..."
"In that moment, the whole thing felt erased."
Raksha classified it as a "wound." Wounds don't form from torn flesh. Holes from erased rules last longer.
"After taking that hit here..."
Bell tapped inside his chest once.
"...still doesn't process right."
"Hunger doesn't form well in this spot."
Raksha nodded quietly.
Ointment jar. Sacred relic. Those drops. Raphael's all-in strike after absorbing them fully.
What it left wasn't a scar—it was a mark that erased the very structure of "hunger."
"The rest, I ate somehow."
Bell spoke more matter-of-factly about what followed.
"Whatever came down from above—light, blades, anything."
"Can put it in my mouth."
He twisted his mouth briefly.
"But swallowing straight? Feels like it'd burst."
Heavenly powers. When Bell ate them, he forcibly mixed with demonic power to make them "one mass" before gulping. Otherwise, rejection surged even in his mouth.
"Mix demonic stuff first for what needs eating fast."
"Better not to touch the rest."
Bell's phrasing was roughly that. Threads connecting above and below. Things constantly tugging from heaven.
Back then, he hadn't known names or structures, but now Raksha overlaid the term Gabriel had given: prayer lines.
And Raksha drew one more line here. Prayer lines were "lines of sight." Ointment erased the "mouth that eats."
Heaven hadn't just tried killing Bell—it had already tested neutralizing Gluttony's structure itself.
Bell had drawn a clear line about his own power then, too.
"Right now."
Bell said quietly.
"I could chew up a whole battlefield."
Considering the number of Raphael's legion he'd devoured, it was hardly a boast.
"Ate most of what came down from heaven then—roughly legions, anyway..."
Lower and mid angels sliced off easily. Upper and archangel powers, eaten somehow.
"Eat what I can, slowly."
"Stuff I couldn't endure now? Don't touch from the start."
Bell shrugged once.
"I'm not stupid enough to miss that distinction."
"But so far, nothing's been too dangerous to even approach."
The line sounded trustworthy. But Raksha didn't use it for "reassurance." Lines are drawn for someone to cross someday. And heaven excelled at making that happen.
Now. A faint afterscent like oil-mingled light drifted into the red air. Raksha now knew it was the smell of the ointment that had lodged in Bell's chest that day.
At the point where Nova's barrier ended, the ground's texture shifted once more. The air felt like it "settled" once. As if the rules laid beneath the surface had changed, altering even the way one breathed.
The shadow of Gluttony deepened a shade.
Raksha didn't stop walking. The body barely held by Reinforcement. The structure honed bit by bit in Nova. A line that could slip back out even after being dragged into Bell's maw.
How far can I change it this time?
Beneath the red sky, the outline of a massive pit slowly rose into view. Once a battlefield. Entrance to the next.
Raksha drew in a quiet breath. The path leading once more to meet Bell.