The cave blurred, and the scene changed into a garden.
It was a beautiful one, filled with different types of flowers scattered around, all blossoming in different colors.
Ren blinked as he stared around. "This is pretty. Shouldn't be that harmful, right?" he thought as he looked. He turned to his side to check for Zuran, but he wasn't beside him anymore.
He looked around, searching for him. But immediately, he heard a loud sound—a loud meow.
Ren paused. He slowly turned only to see a huge cat—the same huge white cat from Sloth—behind him.
This cat had endless desserts before it: modern desserts like cupcakes, cakes, bread, and the likes, all surrounding it as it dug in happily, meowing its sorrows away.
Ren blinked. "Huh? You again...?" he thought as he stared at the desserts. They were mouth-watering, and the cat was clearly enjoying them.
At that moment, he forgot to wonder what the cat was doing again in Gluttony. His mouth began to crave the desserts before him, and his stomach started singing for them.
It had been a while since he'd tasted these. He used to get them on a daily basis when he was still in the modern world, spending his days in his apartment digging into endless desserts even when his stomach said no more.
He could never resist them, perhaps because he had a sweet tooth. But now it was becoming a problem.
Ren slapped himself, swinging himself back to reality. "Oh no. This is it..." Gluttony was supposed to make you crave stuff like this—and not only crave it, but crave it in abundance.
"Not today, dear cat," he snapped as he turned away. "I have to find that boy..." He began walking away from the cat, a hand over his stomach, which was suddenly craving everything he'd left behind.
Modern desserts in this historical era were surely tempting! He didn't know when he'd see them again anytime soon.
A few steps ahead, Ren caught sight of Zuran. He was kneeling before a strawberry plant, eyes closed as he picked the berries and shoved them into his mouth.
He didn't take one, or even two or ten. He was taking in a lot of them while Ren watched. "He doesn't seem like he's stopping anytime soon...is he under a spell?"
Ren figured Zuran enjoyed them enough to make it his Gluttony trigger. "I just have to stop him," he said as he walked closer.
But a huge cupcake appeared right before him—huge and creamy in all possible ways. Its aroma filled his nostrils in the most addictive way possible.
Ren gasped. "No… not now… no…" He tried moving, but he could have sworn the cupcake gave him the puppy eyes!!
"I'll just take one bite and leave," Ren said with a nod as he took the spoon from the huge cupcake and took a bite.
In the next few minutes, he had consumed it all. And another appeared beside him.
Strangely, he was still craving more, even with his stomach hurting!
"What the hell," he muttered as he stared at the next cupcakes. "I'll just have this one and leave for real…"
Before he knew it, he had eaten five huge cupcakes.
Ren sat on his butt, staring at the sixth one that appeared in front of him again. He couldn't stop himself. He still had the cravings even though his stomach was literally hurting!
"I'll just have this…" He tried saying it but covered his mouth. He needed to escape this, and he didn't have any strategy against Gluttony like he had for Sloth!
He turned and stared at the cat, which was still enjoying its endless desserts. He guessed the cat was the main issue here.
And so he swung his fan toward it. Purple waves brushed through and scattered its desserts. "Sorry, kitty, but you have to stop eating!"
The cat panicked and immediately ran off into the woods. It was a temporary solution, but the cupcakes before Ren disappeared too.
"Thought as much," he said as he quickly ran toward Zuran before another temptation appeared.
"Stop eating," he said as he grabbed Zuran by the hand to stop him from picking more berries. But Zuran violently brushed his hands off and continued picking and eating.
He ate in an aggressive state—fast and impatient, as though those were pills that would save his life.
Ren didn't give up. He knew he had to get into his mind and end it before the cat came back. And so he held Zuran firmly by the hands and fell into his illusion.
***
Ren's interpretation of Zuran's gluttonous state was different in the illusion. At first, he thought Zuran was just obsessed with the strawberries, and that it was just that simple.
But it wasn't. The story had something to do with Zuran and the Demon God.
The Demon God was in the stage of creating the essence of Gluttony. And as always, he had to extract it from Zuran.
Zuran wasn't a foodie or one to consume something excessively and vainly. So the Demon God strategized.
"What's your favorite thing to eat?" the Demon God had asked him.
"Strawberries," Zuran had replied without hesitation, his eyes glued to the Demon God.
"Is that so?" the Demon God had smiled. "Then go and get me some strawberries. Let's enjoy them together."
Zuran was happy. Without hesitation, he left and gathered some strawberries to share with the Demon God. He was excited about the thought of it.
But the Demon God had used this against him.
The Demon God had inputted a drug into him—one that tortured him for days, one that always triggered him almost into madness.
He'd lose himself in such moments and likely burn down anything around him—as he was a phoenix after all.
And so, the Demon God used his powers to make the first thing Zuran ate during the moment of triggered internal torture his antidote.
And the Demon God gave him the berries.
So the strawberries became what he needed to take excessively to calm himself down. They became the pills for his triggered state—something he would pour down his throat to calm the demons the Demon God had intentionally set free inside him. Demons that spoke a thousand words into his mind, sending him into madness.
And so, his favorite thing to eat, which he had once enjoyed on a sweet note, became medicine he was forced to consume to stabilize himself.