In the silent darkness, the sound of roof tiles shifting, glass shattering, and stones rolling across the dirt echoed incessantly.
BOOM!!!
A massive sonic wave erupted. The rubble burying them was blasted away entirely.
"Denji!!"
"Power!!"
Amidst the shouting, a small light flickered in the darkness. Arata switched on his phone's flashlight, scanning the wreckage for their trail. The sound of his voice seemed impossibly vast in the confined space.
VROOOM!!
Below the ruins, the whine of a chainsaw started up. A saw-blade tore through the soil.
"I'm here!!"
Having dug his way out, Denji canceled his transformation and hauled Power out of the wreckage. In the infinite dark, the small beam of light looked blindingly bright.
"Master!!"
"See the light? I'm here."
Crunch!
Crack!
Snap-snap!
Denji dragged Power, stepping over the debris toward the light. His heart was heavy with confusion.
"Master, where are we?"
"If I'm not mistaken, we're inside the Gluttony Devil's stomach."
"His stomach!! You mean he ate the entire church?!"
"Exactly. The Gluttony Devil can expand to an enormous size; swallowing a church is nothing for it."
"Why eat us? Shouldn't we be fighting?"
"Maybe he was afraid of us." Arata joked. "First, give Power some blood so she wakes up." He sliced his fingertip with a blade-claw, dripping blood into Power's mouth. Moments later, her eyes fluttered open. Seeing only darkness, she assumed someone had turned off the church lights—until Arata explained they'd been devoured.
"The Great Me doesn't want to stay here! Arata, how do we get out?" Power asked, her terror of the darkness clear.
"Don't worry, Power. I'll use the chainsaw to cut open his belly."
"Won't work," Arata countered. "The Gluttony Devil's stomach is a pocket dimension, not physical matter. It's like air; you can't cut it."
"How do you know unless we try?" Denji held onto a sliver of hope.
"Save your energy. There's another way."
"What if we walk down his throat... or crawl out his ass?" Power suggested.
Arata didn't even blink. If it were that simple, everyone the devil had eaten would have crawled out already. "If it were that easy, he wouldn't be much of a threat, would he?"
"Let's just try—how do we know if it works?"
"Look at your hands," Arata said.
They looked down to see their skin slowly dissolving. Their thighs were already showing raw wounds.
"This... what's happening?"
"We're inside his stomach. Time here is corrosive. It can't dissolve our heads, only our bodies. Eventually, we'll be excreted like any other corpse."
"Being excreted means the 'ass' method is viable!" Denji agreed with Power. They were willing to brave the duodenum just to survive.
"Wishful thinking. He doesn't have an ass. Everything he consumes is expelled through his mouth."
"Hahaha~" A man's laughter echoed through the dark space.
"WHO'S THERE!!" Denji spun around, hoping to find someone who could help them.
"I'm just laughing at how stupid you sound."
"To eat us, you actually swallowed an entire church? Talk about an expensive meal," Arata remarked.
"As long as I can eat you, a church is a small price to pay."
"You mean one of us has a value that far outweighs the church?"
"Worried about that even at death's door? Let me tell you: no one escapes my stomach. Don't waste your energy attacking or looking for an exit."
"Let the Great Me out! I'll give you 100 humans!" Power screamed, terrified.
"100? Don't make me laugh. Once I have Denji's heart, someone has promised me 10,000 people."
"Only 10,000? I'll sacrifice 100,000 Japanese people for you if you let me out!"
"Shut up. Do you think I'd believe you?"
"Then why believe those other people?" Arata asked.
"Because they pay me every day. Did you think those disappearances were my doing? No, those were gifts sent to me."
"I see. To get us to find you, you purposefully ended your control over Ryoko, let her leak information, and then waited for us to come to the church so you could eat us."
"Exactly. The 'Apple Case' was just bait to hook you, making you addicted to finding the truth."
"I get it now. That was the only thing I couldn't figure out—why the Apple Case always centered around us, appearing whenever we started to forget. But a Seven Deadly Sins devil serving humans? How pathetic." Arata sneered.
"It's not service; it's a transaction. Once I finish eating 10,000 people and reach a hundred meters in height, I'll eat everyone in this country, then keep going until I've eaten all of humanity."
"You think you're in an anime? You can barely handle the three of us, let alone all of humanity."
Arata started rummaging through the rubble. The Gluttony Devil stopped chatting.
"Help me find glass. The only way out of this dimension is to open a path to another."
They searched in the faint light. As time passed, their bodies eroded further. Their necks began to bleed; their arms and legs were covered in gruesome, dripping wounds.
"Master! Here's a big piece of glass!"
"Perfect. As long as the opening is wide enough to squeeze through, it'll do."
Arata pieced the shards together into a square window. He swiped his hand over the surface, turning the fragmented glass into a seamless mirror.
"Quick, get in!"
Power dived through first, followed by Denji. They waited on the other side, but Arata didn't follow. Denji poked his head back through, seeing Arata in the faint glow. "Master, why aren't you coming?"
"The Mirror Dimension has two layers: Reality and Mirror. Now that the Gluttony Devil's stomach has added a third layer—Stomach, Mirror, Reality—we can only travel between the Stomach and the Mirror. I can't reach Reality from here."
"Then come in and hide with us!" Denji could feel his skin starting to burn with corrosive pain.
"Go! I'll pull you out of the Mirror Dimension once I make it back to Reality."
Arata shoved Denji's head back through and shattered the mirror so they couldn't follow. He sat on the ground, whistling. His arms and legs had already been reduced to white bone.
"What's going on? Where are those two?"
When the Gluttony Devil returned to check, Denji and Power were gone.
"They dissolved." Arata said.
"Impossible! I was keeping Denji's heart; if they dissolved, the heart would have been left behind!"
"I ate the heart. Don't count on it."
"ARE YOU JOKING!!!" The Gluttony Devil roared in fury. The entire stomach space began to shake violently.
"Right, forgot to tell you one thing."
"What?"
"Enjoy your freedom while it lasts. You're done for once I get out."
As the words left his lips, Arata's body crumbled into dust and bone.
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