Chapter 245: Vane vs Eren

Eren walked casually over to Alice.

Without asking, he reached down to her leather utility rig and grabbed the hilt she had strapped across her hip. With a clean hiss, he drew the blade.

It was a slender, single-edged arming black sword forged from pure abyssal pitch—a masterwork weapon given by the Vice-Principal.

"Eren, listen to me," Alice murmured, her voice tight with genuine concern as she leaned in. "The borrowed mana you took from Violet burned out completely. Vane isn’t just an executioner—he’s the Lord of Death. He definitely consumes The Substance. You can’t trade attrition blows with a creature that knits its meat back together."

She caught his sleeve, her fingers curling into the linen. "Can you actually survive this?"

Eren paused, looking back toward the corner where two mercenaries were frantically dragging Baron Kiliyan away from the center ring.

"I made you a promise, didn’t I, Saintess?" Eren murmured, a faint, resolute smirk touching his lips as he flicked the black blade through a tight figure-eight. "I told you I’d keep Violet safe"

He turned his gaze back toward Vane; his eyes were burning with twitching delight.

"And to keep a promise like that, monsters like him don’t get to breathe the same air."

Alice searched his face, seeing the unyielding madness beneath the fatigue, and slowly released her grip.

"Be careful," she breathed softly.

Eren gave her a firm nod, stepped away from her side, and walked toward the center of the terrace.

Vane was already waiting, resting that huge, jagged butcher’s cleaver against the ground.

"I have to admit, kid, I’m legitimately impressed," Vane said, his grin wide enough to expose sharp, uneven molars. "Controlling three thousand bloodthirsty cutthroats with a piece of junk and a psychotic poker face? That takes serious testicular fortitude. Most men would’ve pissed their trousers the second they touched the stairs."

"Appreciate the review," Eren drawled, raising the black blade with casual elegance. "Now let’s see if you can preserve whatever scrap of sovereign honor this Rujgard has left."

Vane’s grin fractured into a feral snarl.

FZZT.

He detonated across the floor in a blur. The heavy cleaver cleaved through the sky in a brutal, vertical stroke aimed to split Eren from top to bottom.

Eren’s reflexes kicked in within milliseconds. He didn’t try to absorb the titanic downward momentum; he angled the pitch-black sword, catching the cleaver’s flat edge and guiding the mass of steel off-center, parrying it into the marble floor with a deafening CLANG.

In the microscopic window between the deflection and Vane’s recovery, Eren stepped in.

The black sword whipped upward in a clean, vicious diagonal arc.

SHK-RIIIP.

The steel bit deep across Vane’s torso, carving a jagged, bloody trench through his tank top and slicing muscle from collarbone to hip. Before Vane could roar, Eren kicked squarely into the gaping wound to send the Lord of Death skidding ten feet backward.

The crowd below gasped in stunned, collective horror.

Vane lowered his gaze to the massive gash across his chest, watching thick crimson bubble over his pale skin. Then, with a grotesque, rhythmic squelch, black-veined fibers stitched the torn meat and sealed the split flesh in seconds.

Vane looked back up, his eyes bulging with rabid, intoxicating pleasure.

"You really are fast, little prince," Vane giggled.

Snap.

Vane simply ceased to exist in front of him.

Eren’s pupils shrank into pinpricks. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up as he felt him directly behind him.

’Behind me—!’

Eren spun on his heel, swinging the black sword in a desperate defensive arc, but Vane had already anticipated the parry.

Mid-swing, the Lord of Death aborted his cleaver’s downward path, twisting his wrists to whip the blunt, heavy spine of the blade straight toward Eren’s temple.

Eren jerked his head backward with hair-thin margins. The whistling steel tore a shallow gouge across his right cheekbone.

Before Eren could recover his footing or reset his center of gravity, Vane breached his guard entirely, stepping deep into his blind spot.

CRACK.

Vane drove his elbow straight into Eren’s throat with the concussive force of a battering ram.

The strike should have crushed Eren’s windpipe into splinters.

Vane didn’t waste a second marveling at the impact. Assuming the kid was choking on his own crushed cartilage, the Lord of Death dropped low, his jagged cleaver whistling in a horizontal, shin-level scythe designed to sever both of Eren’s legs at the knees.

SWISH.

Eren didn’t drop to his knees wheezing. He kicked off the floor the instant, vaulting into the air. The whistling steel buzzed mere millimeters beneath the soles of his boots, shearing the frayed cuffs of his trousers.

"Slippery little cockroach!" Vane spat, twisting on his heel mid-pivot.

Rebounding off his forward knee, Vane whipped the cleaver upward in a reverse decapitation arc, screaming straight for Eren’s throat as the boy descended.

Eren ducked beneath the whistling steel with hair-thin margins. Dropping flat into a low crouch, Eren retaliated. In a brutal, sweeping counter, Eren drove the black blade across Vane’s shins.

SHK-CRUNCH.

The edge sheared through leather, muscle, and bone.

Vane toppled backward with a snarling curse as his lower legs buckled beneath him. Black tendrils erupted from his severed calves almost instantaneously, frantic regenerative fibers knitting the meat together.

Yet before the bones could snap back into their sockets, Eren was already over him.

Eren reversed his grip and drove the pitch-black point straight down toward Vane’s chest.

"Get off me!" Vane roared, his panic finally cracking his manic smirk.

He threw up his hand, conjuring a dense, pressurized barrier of translucent blue mana. It was an emergency shield meant to deflect artillery.

Eren didn’t care.

He threw his entire body weight behind the strike.

The blade pierced through the mana barrier like a nail through thin ice. With a sickening, dull punch, the sword buried six inches deep straight into the center of Vane’s sternum, pinning the Lord of Death to the floor.

"GURK—!"

Blood erupted from Vane’s mouth. His eyes dilated in genuine shock. For the first time in ten years, Vane actually felt panic.

With a feral shriek of pain, Vane lashed out with both boots, planting them squarely into Eren’s ribs and shoving him off with hysterical, animalistic force.

Eren ripped the black sword free as he flew backward, rolling gracefully across the stones and popping back onto his feet with effortless swagger.

Vane scrambled upright on trembling limbs, his hand clutching the gaping, smoking crater in his chest. The black veins were pulsing wildly, frantically weaving scarred tissue over his exposed ribs, but the color had completely drained from his scarred face.

Eren lightly cleared his throat, tilting his head with dry, mocking pity.

"Did you honestly think a cheap throat-shot was going to put me down, Vane?" Eren chuckled, his voice entirely smooth, devoid of even a rasp. "I’ve swallowed worse punches during training with my tomboy girl. Your hit was not even ten percent of her strength."