Chapter 235: I’m here for you.

Thick, black-veined tendrils erupted from his shattered kneecap and his cracked skull as the demonic corruption in his blood regenerated his body. The broken bones aligned, knitting muscle fibers back together like a spool of frantic wire.

"Hah... haha... you see, boy?!" Silas wheezed, his cracked teeth bared in a trembling chuckle. "You tore your own soul apart for this Burst... and for what?! You don’t have that girl’s divine radiance! You cannot purge The Substance! You can hit me a thousand times, break every bone in my body, and I will still stitch back together while your little candle burns down to ash! The moment your Burst collapses, I will personally—"

Eren reached downand, grabbed his bloody hair, and yanked him backward onto his knees.

"Tell me something, Lord of Contracts," Eren whispered, his voice smooth, dead, and utterly unbothered. "Just how absolute is this miraculous little drug of yours? Sure, it grants you unnatural resilience, stitches your meat together, and shrugs off ordinary wounds unless met with holy light. But biology still adheres to basic arithmetic."

Silas’s swollen eye widened in sudden, horrifying comprehension.

"What do you think happens," Eren continued softly, tapping a bloody finger against the base of Silas’s skull, "when a mana capacity a hundred times denser than your core is forcibly pumped straight into your central nervous system?"

"N-No..." Silas stammered, a cold, suffocating dread seizing his gut.

"And what happens," Eren’s lips curved into a chilling, razor-thin smile, "when that mana burns so white-hot that not a single cell, not a scrap of marrow, not even a microscopic trace of your flesh remains to regenerate?"

"NO! STOP! WAIT!" Silas screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, pathetic shriek, tears cutting clean rivers through the gore on his cheeks. "I can give you the names! PLEASE!"

Eren picks up Silas’s fallen rapier. He spun the weapon once, turning the blade downward.

"Pardon?" Eren mocked, tilting his head with cold, cruel leisure. "Speak up. I couldn’t quite hear you."

"PLEASE! MERCY! I BEG OF YOU—"

"You know," Eren murmured, his blue eyes narrowing into slits of pure, terrifying menace, "hearing a Lord of Rujgard beg like a pig in the mud really does balance the ledger."

****

The doors of the storage vault buckled inward.

A sea of torchlight flooded the murky gloom. Heavy boots trampled through the dust as enforcers of the Rujgard municipal vanguard poured into the chamber in a disciplined wall of steel.

At the head of the formation, the veteran captain raised a hand, his boots freezing dead in their tracks.

Everyone behind him halted, breath catching in collectively.

In the center stood a shirtless youth.

He was drenched in blood from his knuckles to his brow, three jagged claw marks carved deep across his chest. His posture was rigid, swaying imperceptibly with shallow, ragged breaths. In his hands, the charred pommel of a rapier was driven point-down into a smoldering, human-shaped mound of gray ash.

"That... that ash..." an enforcer in the second rank stammered. "Is that... Lord Silas?"

"Lord Silas was an untouchable sovereign..." another whispered, his voice pitching into panic. "He could regenerate from severed limbs! How is he... how could a boy..."

"Is he even human?!" someone shouted from the ranks. "Lord Silas was the second strongest behind the Lord of Death!"

Eren raised his head, his eyes swept across the soldiers.

The front line flinched.

Yet despite the trembling in his calves, Eren did not yield an inch of ground. He shifted his stance, placing himself directly between the army and Alice’s body on the floor behind him.

"His mana is hollow!" the captain bellowed, raising his broadsword to steady his men. "He’s on his last legs! There are three hundred of us! Form ranks and take the freak down!"

"Hold your blades."

A calm, melodic voice paused their charge.

From the rear ranks, a hooded figure stepped forward. The crowd parted without question, clearing a path as the cloaked woman walked towards the battered boy.

"No need for all of you to throw your lives away," the cloaked woman said softly. "I will handle him."

She did not draw a blade. She held no staff.

The ornate silver ring on her has flared with a soft, pulsing faint red light.

Eren snapped his guard up on instinct, bringing the rapier across his chest.

Yet as the woman closed the distance, her footsteps light against the bloody stone, the icy madness in Eren’s eyes began to unravel. His vision blurred, swimming with tears and exhaustion.

She reached him.

Without hesitation, her hand came up, gently swatting the flat of his blade aside. The rapier slipped from his numbed fingers.

"It’s alright," she whispered, her voice like warm velvet. "You don’t need to push yourself anymore."

Eren’s lower lip trembled.

The Burst state shattered. The violent synaptic overdrive collapsed like a severed bridge, and every nerve, every torn muscle fiber, and every cracked rib screamed in agony at once. His mana, borrowed from Violet, had been exhausted.

He looked up into the shadow of her hood, his voice cracking into a broken, childlike whimper.

"They... they tried to kill Alice..." Eren muttered, choking on the blood pooling in his throat. "Alice is dying... right there... because of me. I couldn’t... I couldn’t protect her..."

His knees gave out completely.

Eren collapsed forward, his heavy, battered frame falling straight into her embrace. His face buried softly against her generous chest.

She caught him with tenderness, wrapping her arms around his bloodied shoulders, pulling him tight against her warmth. Her fingers gently combed through his hair, cradling his trembling head against her collarbone.

"It’s okay," she murmured against his ear, rocking him gently. "Everything is alright now. I’m here."

"I’m weak..." Eren grumbled, his eyelids fluttering shut. "I couldn’t protect anyone..."

With a soft, shuddering exhale, his consciousness snapped completely.

Behind them, the soldiers let out a collective sigh of relief, lowering their halberds as they watched the terrifying monster crumble without a fight.

"Incredible!" the old captain called out, stepping forward with an appreciative grin. "Did you use a high-tier mental hypnosis spell, miss? To subdue an anomaly like that in seconds is magnificent work!"

She didn’t look up, gently stroking Eren’s hair with a maternal, doting rhythm.

"Something like that," she answered quietly.

"Splendid!" the captain barked, signaling two heavily armored brutes with iron manacles. "Hand him over immediately! He’s the syndicate’s half-million-crown bounty, and we have orders to bring him in alive for extraction!"

The cloaked woman slowly pulled back her hood, revealing a long, brilliant orange that cascaded down her back like burning autumn silk. Her porcelain skin was pristine, her sharp, stunning eyes glowing with a calmness.

"No," Carolynn said softly. Her smile widened just enough to reveal something terrifying beneath the beauty. "I won’t be handing over my exhausted darling to anyone."

Before the captain could blink, invisible, spatial mana threads snapped taut across the space.

Without Carolynn moving a single step, the veteran captain’s body was instantly sheared into forty clean, symmetrical ribbons of gore, collapsing to the floor in a sickening, splashing heap of crimson.