In this world, there were tis when an entire village or even a bustling town vanished within a handful of days. Roads would still lead to where hos once stood. Wells remained. Fields lay untouched. But the people were gone, as if they had been erased mid-breath.
Kingdoms investigated such incidents again and again. Scouts were sent. Mages divined. Priests prayed. In the end, the official reports always carried the sa conclusion.
Demons.
It was an easy answer, one that required no deeper explanation and no uncomfortable questions.
And yet, in this case, the answer happened to be true.
But not in the way people imagined.
There existed a demon that did not favor open slaughter or grand battles. It did not march with armies or burn cities to ash. It loved sothing far subtler, far more intimate.
Despair.
Not the sudden terror of death, but the slow collapse of hope. The kind that made people turn on one another, the kind that hollowed them out long before their bodies were consud.
To make soone despair, brute force was useless. Pain alone was insufficient. The thod had to be precise.
First, you placed people in danger.
Then, you offered them hope.
And finally, you shattered that hope completely.
That was when despair blood.
The demon who perfected this process was known as Gluttony.
Gluttony trapped villages and towns inside elaborate domains ford from his own body. Walls beca mouths. Streets beca throats. Buildings turned into living extensions of his flesh. Inside those spaces, he created cruel gas. There were choices that forced people to betray one another, sacrifices that demanded blood in exchange for survival.
He fed on every scream, every tear, every broken promise.
When the Demon King discovered him, even he was impressed. Gluttony was given a title and elevated to the rank of Demon General. Yet despite this honor, Gluttony rarely answered summons. He did not care for conquest or loyalty. He cared only for his hunger.
Sotis he took the form of a man.
Sotis a woman.
Sotis sothing in between.
In Leafrest Town, he chose the shape of a guard.
His plan had been flawless. He trapped the entire town within his domain using a high-tier skill that only he possesses. The initial panic fed him well. The screaming, the running, the desperate prayers and all of it was delicious. Then ca the despair, slow and heavy, as people realized they could not leave.
He waited patiently for the next stage.
The mont when fear turned inward.
He expected violence. Then the Accusations. So Bloodshed between neighbors and even own family. That was how it always went. He would remain hidden among them, savoring the chaos, devouring one soul at a ti until the town was empty.
But sothing went wrong.
A group of adventurers and guards interfered.
First, they cald the crowd instead of letting it fracture. Then, they imposed order where they searched the whole town.
Worse, they escaped the traps he set beside the city gates, sothing that never happened before.
Gluttony felt irritation for the first ti in a long while.
Then they began damaging his mouths.
Even though those mouths were part of him, they possessed defensive instincts independent of his will. Whenever overwhelming danger approached, sections of his domain disconnected automatically. It was a safeguard he had never needed to worry about before.
But they also found out about this flaw.
Also, they even encountered another demon, so pitiful vitality-eater and that creature could sense him. That was unacceptable. To make sure he doesn’t get snitched, the Gluttony devoured it without hesitation, savoring the irony that another predator beca his al.
Still, despite everything, they could not find him.
He laughed quietly among the guards, watching hope flicker back into the people’s eyes. Hope made despair richer when it finally broke. He waited for the mont they would realize escape was impossible.
But hunger gnawed at him.
Restoring the town drained his power far more than expected. The buildings healed slowly now. The mouths pulsed weakly. His skill was straining under its own weight. Even the power he got from Devouring the Vitality Demon is slowly draining.
Then ca the announcent.
The demon was hiding among the people.
For the first ti, genuine unease crawled up Gluttony’s spine.
’How did they figure that out?’
He watched carefully as they constructed a narrow stone pathway through the square using so random person skill. Those who walked across it slowed briefly at the center, then passed through unhard, leaving the path behind.
Gluttony sneered internally.
Parlor tricks.
He stepped onto the path when his turn ca, confident that nothing would expose him.
The mont his foot touched the stone, and reached the centre, his body locked in place.
A hand settled on his shoulder.
The pressure behind that grip was monstrous. Mana, dense and focused, pressed against his core like a blade poised to pierce his heart. Every instinct he possessed scread danger. He tried to twist away, to shed the disguise, to flee.
He could not move.
At that exact mont, the city convulsed.
Every mouth across Leafrest snapped shut. The red glow dimd as if soone had smothered a fire with ash. His connection to the other mouths severed violently, leaving him naked and exposed.
"The mouths recognized the threat," Kaeya said, her voice cold and sharp. "They disconnected from you."
She raised her sword slightly, pointing it at him. "We finally found you."
Before Gluttony could react, Tyler moved.
His hand drove forward, plunging straight into Gluttony’s chest. The impact was not flashy. There was no explosion of light. Just the sickening sound of flesh giving way.
Gluttony staggered, choking on his own breath.
"H–How?" he rasped. "How did you find ?"
Tyler raised a severed hand of Vitality Demon tied to a length of string. The fingers twitched faintly, rotating until they pointed directly at Gluttony.
"Impossible," Gluttony hissed, even as blood spilled from his wound. "That thing can’t pinpoint . It points all of my mouths randomly."
"I already guessed it. And yes, It couldn’t," Tyler replied calmly. "Not until everything else was stripped away."
He gestured to the stone path. "That path isolated what happened inside it. When people crossed, nothing registered outside. It is made of two skills. Two skills layered together, stone shaping and illusion. And the Illusion, people outside won’t able to sense what is happening here."
Tyler smiled, "Now here is the fun part , actually I tried to kill everyone who stepped onto this path, then stopped myself at the last mont. Because The mouths didn’t react."
Tyler’s eyes hardened. "But when I tried to kill you, the mouths imdiately sensed the threat and disconnected imdiately. That confird our suspicion. You are connected to those mouths. And when every mouth lost its link at once, this hand had only one direction left to point."
Gluttony laughed, a wet, broken sound.
His chest wound split open wider, stretching unnaturally as a massive mouth ford where his heart should have been. Rows of teeth unfolded, slick with blood, laughing along with him.
"You clever little human," Gluttony said, his voice echoing from the gaping maw in his chest, overlapping itself as if several mouths were speaking at once. "My na is Gluttony, the Third Demon General under the Demon King. I was going to savor you last."
The words carried weight, not just aning. The air itself seed to thicken, pressing down on everyone’s lungs. Breathing beca harder, as if the town had sunk underwater without anyone noticing.
Before Tyler could respond, a sharp pull yanked him backward. He did not resist. He let himself pulled.
Kaeya dragged him aside and surged forward in the sa motion, her sword already flashing. Her feet barely touched the ground as she closed the distance, her blade cutting a clean arc through the air.
Steel t flesh.
The strike landed squarely across Gluttony’s abdon, splitting it open in a brutal slash. For a fraction of a second, it looked like a fatal wound.
Then the flesh twisted.
The torn skin peeled back, reshaping itself into a massive mouth lined with glistening teeth. The wound did not bleed. Instead, it laughed. The sound was wet, delighted, and wrong.
Kaeya leapt back imdiately, her expression darkening.
Around them, the town responded.
The half-destroyed buildings shuddered. The walls that had been slowly repairing themselves stopped their healing entirely. Stone cracked and shifted, not collapsing, but rearranging. Streets bent inward. Buildings leaned, stretched, and slid across the ground as if guided by invisible hands.
Within monts, the town transford.
A massive circular wall rose around the people, enclosing them in a vast arena. Houses fused into the barrier, their windows sealing shut, their doors vanishing. Every surface of the wall sprouted mouths —hundreds of them— dripping that sa glowing red liquid that pulsed like living blood. The dim crimson light washed over the arena, casting long, warped shadows that made even familiar faces look alien.
People scread.
Guards tightened their grips on their weapons. Adventurers spread out instinctively, forming rough defensive lines around clusters of civilians.
Gluttony rose.
His body lifted effortlessly into the air, carried by the shifting flesh beneath him. He stood atop the arena wall, arms spread wide, his form towering against the red glow. His chest-mouth stretched open in a grotesque grin, saliva dripping onto the stone below and sizzling faintly as it hit.
"So much effort," Gluttony said, his voice rolling across the arena like thunder. "All that planning, all that hope you built for them."
He looked down at the people, his many eyes roaming hungrily over the crowd.
"Now," he continued, savoring the word, "let’s play the final ga."
Whatever ga Gluttony had planned, one thing was clear.
This was no longer a hunt.
It was a battlefield.
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