Chapter 55 Take No Prisoners

"Look what you made me do."

Stan heard Eren's voice loud and clear even when he spoke it casually. He understood what was about to happen to him if he was defenseless.

Stan got up from his position and channeled his almost-empty mana. His mana core started getting damaged because of the overdraw of mana. But he didn't care at this point.

Stan was about to cast forbidden spells. They would affect or destroy the ranker's potential to break into the next rank at the expense of giving them a chance at survival if faced with dire circumstances.

Too bad, Eren wasn't interested in letting his opponents power up before him just like that.

Blitz Steps x4

Stan had his left leg cut off at the knee, forcing him to lose his balance. The pan was so severe that it overloaded all of Stan's senses, forcing him to dispel his spells abruptly. The spell backlash made things even more difficult for the original sword owner as his mana circuits were fried by the mana's reverse flow.

"Aaaa—"

The wailing sound was cut abruptly as Eren slashed Stan's neck, severing his windpipe and his voice box in one blow. He couldn't completely cut the neck clean off of his torso. The neck bone was an obstruction he couldn't get past this time.

Stan couldn't shout. He couldn't cast spells in his current condition. He couldn't even get up to perform a kamikaze strike on Eren. He just dropped to the ground on his back while holding his almost cut neck with both his hands. As if that would make his thighs any better for him.

'I created a monster.'

Stan thought to himself as he watched his killer looking at him with deadpan expressions. The sword that originally belonged to him had been cleaned once again. The weapon artifact cracked as Eren's infinite mana overloaded it too.

The weapon and its owner were about to end their journeys at the same time.

'Or maybe I was the monster. And this thing just became a medium to give what was coming to me.'

Stan had a moment of clarity just before he took his last breath. He couldn't help beaming a grin on his face as he convinced himself that whatever had killed him wasn't human. Therefore, he did not need to worry about his inferiority to him anymore.

When Eren dropped the sword he had been holding until now, it crumbled into many pieces. It had perished along with its original master.

When Eren saw that Stan was also dead for good, his hands began to shake. He could have never thought that things would escalate to this point. To the point where he had to take another person's life.

Eren spat in anger near Stan's body. Blood clots were more prevalent in his spit than in his saliva. He didn't blame himself for his actions. He wasn't naive enough to let these guys go after what they had done to him. Especially after hearing Stan's words. But that didn't mean he wouldn't feel the jitters.

Eren knew about mana-binding contracts from the memories he borrowed. But he also knew that there could be many loopholes present in the contract. He didn't trust himself or his current knowledge enough to rely on them.

However, even if he could rely on the mana binding contracts, he did not trust the party who signed the contract with him. Eren would have been too criminally dumb to trust Stan with things like this. He would kill all three rankers anyway.

His infinite mana core is too logic-defying for him to take any risks. He didn't want to serve as anyone's lab rat after all.

'So I need to keep it a secret.'

Eren thought to himself as he walked towards the last guy who was starting to wake up. He had to finish this thing for good.

Take no prisoners.

***

Jayce had a killer headache when he woke up from his forced slumber. It took a while for him to readjust his blurred vision and make sense of what he was seeing.

"Where the fuck am I.."

Jayce pressed his head with both his hands and tried to get up. He felt like there was still residual mana of a foreign nature wreaking havoc inside his internal organs. Most of his skin had gone numb because of the lightning mana he was subjected to not too long ago.

Jayce then looked around him and saw that there was nobody he could see in the vicinity. Well, not nobody technically. There was one person who was walking toward him with a spear in his right hand.

"I don't blame you for retaliation, Jayce. But I blame you for choosing the wrong person to retaliate against."

Jayce heard the lone spearman's words while he was still a bit delirious. He realized that the words this incoming person was speaking sounded familiar. It took him a while to realize that they were his own words that he had spoken for someone else. The metaphorical fog over his mind was slowly diminishing its effect.

"Eren…"

Jayce recognized the spearman who casually walked toward him. Before he could make sense of the scene, he heard Eren speak again. His voice is as serene as calm water.

"You have run out of your time and regret is a bitter pill to swallow. This would be over quickly. I hope you forgive me as I relieve you of all your sufferings."

Throw. Swoosh. Pierce.

A spear was thrown from near a spot where someone was lying on the floor. The lightning-clad weapon lodged itself straight in Jayce's chest. His lungs were pierced because of it.

Confusion. Stun. Lack of pain.

The lightning mana, which had been fed to the weapon without regard to its affinity, infected Jayce's body. It met up with the residual lightning mana already present inside his system and shut off all his pain receptors. As a result, Jayce, who was already acting like he was high on the wildest mushrooms, didn't feel any ounce of pain.

But that didn't stop Jayce from understanding his situation. He recognized Ralph's body first. Then he looked down and saw his spear that was lodged inside his chest. He finally used his mana sense and found out that Stan had also been dead.

"This…"

Jayce couldn't complete his sentence or chain of thoughts as he stopped breathing. The earth-element ranker had died listening to his own words.