"I have completed my end of the deal, Eren. Now bring out the Spirit Beast."
Nira Nightshade's eyes shone with unmasked greed as she thought of cultivating a potential God Spark. Plus, this was a God Spark from her native world. It would allow her to make the most of it.
Nira Nightshade didn't understand how Eren got hold of a Spirit Beast. However, she neither wanted to know nor cared about its origins. This was the most appropriate use of the vestige of her soul she had kept in the land of Anfang, she thought.
Eren smiled innocently at Nira Nightshade before speaking.
"First of all, I need to thank you, Sage Nira Nightshade. I don't know how many years it would have taken for me to learn about the lost history if it wasn't for you.
I also need to thank you for providing me with valuable information about that mummy. Frankly, this was more significant to me than learning about lost history."
Eren's smile turned grim after he said this. He narrowed his eyes at an expectant-looking Nira Nightshade before speaking further.
"Unfortunately, I have stopped negotiating with Sages. I now have the power to suffer the consequences of my "no."
As Eren spoke to Nira, she looked puzzled. She wasn't sure what he was talking about at first. But in the next moment, the entire hall started shaking as if someone was destabilizing the castle's foundation.
"You…"
The Sage archer couldn't believe what was happening. She felt like she was witnessing a dream for the first time in a long while as she watched her entire hall shake with intermittent quakes.
She understood that someone was trying to break the array that was located at the base of the castle. The array that hosted and protected the vestige of her soul.
Someone had not only infiltrated her castle and found the array but also had the power to mess with it.
Nira looked at Eren with a horrified expression before voicing her suspicions.
"You… did you sneak in a Sage ranker with you inside the castle somehow?"
Nira Nightshade believed that the array that housed her vestige of the soul could only be found and interfered with by another Sage ranker like her. Therefore, she treated the intruder as a Sage ranker. She immediately activated her soul sense in conjunction with the castle's mechanisms to find out who was messing up the array.
A spectral image of a girl in an elegant dress was rendered on the hall's ceiling. With the help of her grimoire spells, this black-haired Gothic-looking girl eagerly operated the array. A black-haired girl seemed to possess powers close to a C-rank, to Nira Nightshade's disbelief.
Various runic lines danced around this girl as she raised her hands and started modifying them on the fly. Her grimoire was levitating in front of her-its pages turning rapidly under her commands. The runes written on the pages of the grimoire came to life before taking various elemental forms. These runes would then merge with the already existing runes of the array, unlocking it slowly from within.
Nira Nightshade couldn't believe a homunculus, with her synthetic body restricted to C-rank, could do something like that. However, she decided to get over the shock immediately. She felt it was a sign of disrespect that two Expert-ranked entities had dared to act against her. This was utter disrespect for Sage's honor, she thought.
"Insolent brat… do you think you will get away with reneging on the deal? Think again."
Nira spread her soul sense wide in a domineering manner and tried to put pressure on Eren. She also controlled the castle's mechanisms to prevent the homunculus from messing with the array.
Eren felt like he was being attacked with a rain of arrows all of a sudden. And these arrows were piercing every organ in his body. He felt like even his bones were being targeted by these arrows and overloading his pain receptors.
This was the manifestation of Nira Nightshade's soul sense.
Even a vestige of the soul of a Sage could produce such powerful mental pressure on Eren. He felt like his body would really start bleeding if he stayed exposed to such intense soul pressure emitted by the Sage archer.
The butcher used his own soul sense to fight off Night Nightshade's pressure. Thanks to it, he wasn't as helpless as before.
"You… Do you think you are the only one who was holding back? Hahaha."
The butcher managed to laugh even in the difficult position he was in. His body was turning red and he felt like he was burning inside an oven. He had beads of sweat on his forehead and his eyes had turned red. He couldn't move his limbs freely and he felt like somebody was putting huge pressure on his shoulder to make him bend his knees.
However, this exposure wasn't enough to get him down. It almost looked like he was enjoying the misery he was subjected to, as if he were taking some kind of mental pleasure from confronting a Sage.
The butcher's body also reacted to his will. It started accommodating itself to his misery, making it easier for him to remain standing on his two feet. Even his soul sense was improving after clashing with Nira Nightshade. It was using the pressure emitted by Nira as a whetstone to sharpen itself.
Eren looked at Nira fearlessly before speaking in a grim tone.
"I have taken enough shit from you Sage bitches. There's no fucking way I'll agree to whatever any of you say this time. Not anymore.
Kekeke. If you think I'll turn over my Spirit Beast to you after you make me understand its worth, you're deluding yourself. So what if you are a Sage? If you believe rankers' etiquettes are still implemented the same way they used to be back in your days, you are stuck in the past.
Or maybe it is just me who has stopped giving a fuck about it.
Either way, I'd rather get rid of you here than regret losing something so precious later on."
