Chapter 18: Chapter 16 – Loss of Appetite

Demon Lord of Gluttony, Rei, Russiva Imperial Year ??? Month ???, Day ???, ???, ???

Dark.

It could only be described as darkness in every direction. It didn't matter which direction, Up, Down, Left, Right, Forwards, or Backwards it was all a pitch black darkness.

But it wasn't like she was floating in that pitch black darkness.

*clack*

*clack*

Rei stepped on the floor twice to confirm that she was standing on something solid. And although it seemed like it was only an endless dark void around her, It was clear that she could walk around freely.

Or she was about to walk around freely, until a structure came into view.

'A bar?'

The structure was simple in construction, It looked more like a large concrete cube with no visible decorations other than a dark-looking oak door with a golden doorknob with a sign that says 'BAR' on the top of it.

It looked like the incarnation of the term 'Minimalist'.

After a small almost-inaudible sigh escaped from her mouth she stepped forward without any issue, not minding to use any kind of caution.

Because why would she need to be careful after all? She's been here before.

Rei opened the door. Inside was a dimly lit bar consisting of a counter and a row of backless chairs. Multiple bottles of different size, shape, and origin were scattered around the bar. Some lined the shelves that hung on the walls beside and behind the counter, while others were grouped haphazardly on the counter itself. Rei vaguely felt her eyebrow twitch as she glanced over at a simple painting hanging on the wall, at the bottles...

And finally the two people who were inside the bar with her.

"Yo kid! You're here again!" A cheery voice came from the only woman sitting on one of the stools by the counter.

"Ah fuck..." A curse word couldn't help but escape Rei's lips.

A girl who had roughly almost the same physical features as Rei was sitting on one of the tall barstools next to the dark-coloured wooden counter. She wore a black military uniform that vaguely resembled the M1930 field dress that the japanese soldiers wore on WW2. Besides her clothes, She had eyes the same size, shape, and pupils like Rei, and even had the same black hair which had a military cap resting on top of it bearing the insignia of a spider resting on a nest of swords. It was the First Demon Lord of Gluttony, Reina, Her predecessor.

"Take a seat!" Her loud entusiastic voice beckoned Rei to step closer, She wasn't good with these type of people. They tend to make her tick in the worst time available so she tends to avoid them whenever she could.

*wrooook* The sound of the barstool's legs dragging across the wooden floor could be heard as Reina pulled one along for Rei to sit down on.

An audible sigh managed to escape Rei's lips as she reluctantly sat down on the barstool just next to Reina's, But Reina herself didn't mind the obvious dislike for the disregard of personal space.

"Hey Reika!" Reina called out to the other remaining person in the room, It was another person of similar body proportions to Rei and Reina, She was wiping a wine glass with a red linen cloth in focus, She wore what looked like a modern dark suit and tie, as well as a white vest that made her look like an appropriate barkeeper, And since that Reika's body proportions were almost the same as Rei and Reina's she wasn't sure if her face looked the same as well, since Rei couldn't see whether this 'Reika' had the same facial features such as her because of a white mask that hid her face.

The white mask itself had no obvious decorations, other than the red crescent lying horizontally on the bottom side of the mask, mimicking a smile.

In a way, It was both creepy and kind of minimalist as well. Which was still creepy, but slightly more acceptable.

"What...is it?" A slow voice replied back, It was the same voice as Rei and Reina's except her tone makes it seem like she hasn't spoken to anybody in years.

"Get some schwarzbier, for the lady." Reina told Reika while winking at Rei at the last part, which made Rei want to puke.

It seemed disgusting actually, It wasn't like she wasn't supportive of same-sex relationships, but Reina looking almost exactly the same as Rei wanted to question if this counted as some sort of messed-up selfcest.

'Is she perhaps...a narcissist?' Rei thought.

And without a word, Reika clicked her tongue before groggily putting down the wine glass she was so vigilantly wiping before shoving the red linen cloth into her breast pocket and reluctantly grabbed a random bottle from the nearby shelf and started pouring it on a glass mug.

"Anyways, what the fuck happend to you?" Reina turned to ask Rei.

It was then that Rei realized what she was wearing, Her military uniform was rumpled up and muddy, and blood soaked her sleeves and torso. There were even multiple holes on her uniform, but she paid it no heed.

"You're already looking into my actions at the present right? Shouldn't you know already?" Rei was certain that Reina was watching as she got slammed in the face with the flat side of a sword, And she wasn't going to talk about the experience again, much less to someone who actually already knows what happend.

"This is why you're so empty..." Reina muttered as she drank the remaining alcohol inside her glass mug.

It was only supposed to be a simple muttering underneath Reina's breath, but somehow it ended up louder than she actually intended.

And naturally, Rei who could hear much better than the average person caught up on that, and that sentence rang a bell inside her memories that suddenly made her tick on reflex.

'Empty? What does she mean by empty?' Rei was confused as to what she meant.

She searched her memories for something that would warrant her being called 'empty'.

There was nothing that supported the word, However it was then that a certain memory struck Rei.

'You're so empty that it makes me want to mess with you more!' The distant memory from her childhood suddenly crept up to her thoughts, and just like that she found herself grinding her teeth in pure rage.

"You..." Rei's voice became deeper, as it slowly wept up with a mild hatred and slow-boiling anger.

"Hm?"

Rage once again started to well up withing Rei upon seeing how Reina was casually acting. A vein started to pop up in her forehead because of the sheer hate that she was directing right now.

"Did you just look into my memories?"

"My my, I have no idea what you're talking about." Reina put on her dumb face and started drinking the beer she ordered. And she was drinking it quite fast too, taking in large amounts of the alcoholic substance with every single gulp, without slowing down at all.

"Did.you.just.look.into.my.memories?" Rei once again asked, but in a more serious tone. Reika didn't seem to mind her tone as she kept wiping an empty wine glass with her linen cloth maintaining an unreadable expression as long she had that mask on her face, But Reina on the other hand...

*CLANK* Reina put down her beer glass which was completely empty from just gulp, and while she wiped the alcoholic substance from her red lips with her snowy-white hand she said--

"And if I did? What the fuck could a weakling like you do?" Reina replied with a smug grin, as if she was making light of Rei.

*BANG!*

In an instant, Rei mustered up all of her speed to try and attempt to hit Reina square on the nose.

Emphasis on 'try and attempt'.

Instead of hitting Reina in her face, Rei's fist stopped just an inch before it could connect, and on her forearm was a pale hand that was slowly crushing her forearm with a tight grip.

"See! That bitchy strike was so fucking slow I could block it in my sleep! What the hell have you been doing for a year!?" Reina mocked Rei as she stared deep into her crimson eyes with her own eyes of similar fashion.

"You always talk about that grandiose dream about devouring the world, but look at you right now! A whole fucking year and you've spent it twiddling your thumbs with that girl!" Reina's voice seemed to get more violent and even angrier which each word that she was materializing.

'Shut up.'

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"You lack strength kid, That's why you couldn't protect her from the Francais," Reina's grasp tightened as bones started to break under the sheer pressure of her superior grip

'Shut up!'

"Nor couldn't you protect your friends back then! It's because you lacked the strength to destroy all your enemies!" The pressure got tighter and tighter, until finally Rei's forearm snapped. But she paid it no heed though, since her mind was filled with something else entirely that overrode her sense of pain.

"SHUT UUUUP!"

*SLASH!*

Blood sprayed across the room. Although not as much blood as you would think since it's actually harder than you think how much blood there is flowing through the veins of a literal demon.

'What...just happend?' It was so fast, Rei couldn't even see the movement with her eyes which even had the capacity for photographic memory. And even when the motion was already complete she couldn't figure out what just happend.

"Tch." Reina clicked her tongue in annoyance.

It was then that Rei realized that the grip on her forearm had loosened.

Reina's arm had been cut off, with the hand still grabbing on to Rei's forearm gripping it tightly, Although not as much when the hand was still attached.

"No...fighting..." A raspy, yet somewhat feminine voice said from just on the other side of the dark-wooded counter.

It was from Reika, the quiet barkeeper who was now brandishing her hand without gloves on.

Her whole hand was entirely dark, as if someone took a piece of the night sky and used it to make a hand. But instead of stars in that night sky there was red veins which looked more like symptoms of corruption rather than actual flowing veins. The ends of her fingers didn't have any fingernails, and they ended in sharp points that were dripping in blood.

'!?' It was then when Rei started panicking.

"Relax kid, it was only me." Reina assured Rei.

Sure enough Rei's forearm was still intact, although broken it was still attached. She had not gotten around to the level to be able to regenerate limbs yet, so losing a limb before hand would be much unappreciated.

Reika put back her glove and put down a glass mug filled to the brim with beer in front of Rei, signalling her to drink. And naturally Rei, who was under a state of anxiety easily succumbed to the temptation of alcohol even though she knew that alcohol  could lower a person's intellectual capabilities temporarily.

But still though, It didn't matter.

Demon Lords of Gluttony were automatically immune to poisoning, Much less a little alcohol.

"Look, I'm gonna be straight with you kid..." Reina said, as she simply regenerated her hand back into existence while Rei put the glass mug to her lips and started drinking.

"You suck."

Two words. Yet those two words hit Rei where it hurt the most.

She almost choked on her drink.

"You suck like hell, You're so friggin' weak that you can only contest against human small fries, and a fucking goblin almost killed you." Rei looked down at the ground when she heard those words, There was no excuse for such faulty behaviour.

"You're pale as fuck, Yeah I'm pale as fuck too, But that's because I'm a friggin' demon-vampire hybrid. What about you? You're pale as fuck because you're fucking anemic for god's sake!" Rei clenched her fist in annoyance, Reina was now making fun of her physical appearance. Yet Rei couldn't do anything about it, She was right. For a so-called Demon Lord of Gluttony, She was eating like an impoverished person in Demon-Lord-of-Gluttony standards.

'But I can't help it!' Rei couldn't really do anything about it, Asking someone to not realize something was off when the enemy corpses on the battlefield suddenly disappeared without a trace was a dream within a dream.

If she started corpse-eating she would be ratted out as a monster in no time. Her already pale skin was already enough to get her mistaken as a vampire a few times already, But coming out of the battlefield with your jaws bloodier than your hands is like holding a sign that says 'Hey! I'm a Demon Lord of Gluttony!' in broad daylight.

"Hey kid, You lost everything that was important to you right?"

"..."

"SO HOW COME YOU'RE STILL HOLDING BACK!?" Reina lost her own composure.

She turned to Rei who was drinking her beer with apathetic eyes, as if she was ignoring her.

Or at least Rei was trying to ignore what Reina was saying, and Reina knew that as well, so she kept reprimanding her.

"DESTROY! DEVOUR! KILL! THAT'S ALL YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THINKING ABOUT!"

*BANG* Reina slammed her hand down on the wooden counter in rage and frustration, although surprisingly the wood didn't even so much as crack under the pressure.

"WHY DO YOU CLING ONTO YOUR HUMANITY!? USE AETHER! DEVOUR! THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF GLUTTONY!"

*CLANK* Rei finally had enough, she put down her glass mug, which was still halfway from being done.

"You're...not going to...finish that?" Reika asked Rei in an apathetic tone, It seemed like she was more worried about the glass mug rather than Rei's actual emotional state.

"I..."

"I've lost my appetite." Rei said as she got up from her seat, and bolted to the door with heavy steps without even looking back at Reika and Reina, who was staring at Reichel's back as it got smaller, until finally it disappeared in the void.

"She'll...break..." Reika said as she kept single-mindedly wiping her wine glass, not even bothering to look at Reina.

"She will, now come to think of it, Isn't she breaking already?"

"..." Reika's hand, which was wiping the wine glass with focus, suddenly came to a stop.

"Well, once she breaks it won't be a problem anymore, she'll complete our dreams for us. And we can finally rest easy knowing we've pissed off that shitty goddess more than anybody else has." Reina shakes the beer glass in her hand erratically, watching the remaining alcohol bob itself around inside a transparent surface seemed to appease her boredom it seemed.

"What makes you...so sure...that she'll be...the one....who breaks this cycle of hatred?"

It was a naive thought, To think that a poor excuse of a Demon Lord who has had barely any growth for a year upon merging with the Essence of Gluttony, is thinking about doing what Reina herself died in vain trying to do was absurd. It seemed more likely that she'd destroy herself in her starvation first.

"There's no reason why I think she's going to accomplish it...'Third time's the charm as they say' I'm just believing in that stupid saying." Reina put down her empty beer glass as she stared in her reflection.

*clank*

Reika put down the wine glass she was wiping, seemingly satisfied with the unnatural amount of shininess on it's transparent surface.

"You're...a fool..."

"Yes, Maybe I am."

"No no...You are a fool."

"Shut up."