Chapter 246: Losers!

Vane winced, gritting his teeth so hard a molar cracked, spitting a mouthful of black blood onto the marble.

Total, suffocating silence gripped the Grand Municipal Plaza.

People stared up at the scaffold with dropped jaws. Baron Kiliyan had stopped whimpering entirely, his eyes bulging at the sight of the untouchable Lord of Death bleeding on the floor. Even Alice leaned forward, her amber eyes wide, her grip on the Shadow Cat cub tightening as she watched Eren dismantle an underworld titan.

"You’ve crossed your fucking limits, kid," Vane hissed, his raspy voice shaking with pure, volcanic murder.

He gripped the hilt of his massive cleaver with both hands. A sickening, pitch-black miasma boiled from his pores, condensing around the jagged steel until the blade hummed with a thick, serrated coat of volatile, vibrating aura.

Eren’s blue eyes narrowed, the roguish smirk giving way to chilling focus.

"I crossed the line the second I stepped through your city gates, you patched-up corpse," Eren said softly.

He drew a slow breath, sinking his weight into his stance. Along the dark black blade, a pressurized film of greenish-blue aura flared to life, coating the blade.

BOOM!

They vanished simultaneously.

They collided in the center of the terrace like two runaway locomotives.

CLAAAAANG!

Steel met steel with a concussive shockwave that blasted the dust outward in a violent ring. The floor beneath their boots pulverized into spiderwebs of jagged gravel, caving inward from the sheer, ungodly physical pressure of the lock.

Vane bore down with all his mass, the serrated teeth of his cleaver grinding against the black sword, throwing showers of blinding orange sparks against their faces. His veins bulged against his temples, snarling into Eren’s nose.

Eren didn’t yield an inch. With a sudden, violent twist of his hips, Eren slipped the blade, letting the cleaver crash into the stone.

Before Vane could reset, Eren drove the pommel of his sword straight into Vane’s nose with a sickening CRUNCH, followed instantly by a spinning back-kick that caved in Vane’s reconstructed ribs.

Vane wheezed, but the demonic corruption in his blood ignored the shattered bones. Snapping forward like a coiled viper, Vane swung a wild, decapitating backhand with the blunt spine of his cleaver, catching Eren across the shoulder and sending him hurtling into the stone balustrade.

CRASH!

Marble shattered under Eren’s spine.

Vane was already airborne, descending with both hands clamped around his blade in a vertical strike meant to split the terrace in half.

Eren rolled sideways before the cleaver struck. The massive blade cleaved clean through four feet of reinforced marble masonry, showering shrapnel across the crowd below.

Rising from the roll, Eren stepped inside Vane’s overextended guard.

SHK! SHK! SHK!

Three blinding, surgical thrusts tore through Vane’s flesh—one through his bicep, one through his hip joint, and one clean through his left knee.

Vane roared, the pain driving him into a berserk frenzy. Dropping the cleaver entirely, Vane lunged forward, wrapping his fingers around Eren’s collar and throwing his forehead forward in a brutal, bone-splintering headbutt.

Blood burst from Eren’s brow, splashing across his blue eyes, but instead of staggering backward, Eren just grinned through the crimson sheet.

"My turn," Eren whispered.

Dropping the black sword into his left hand, Eren coiled his right fist into an iron piston, pouring every remaining shred of his kinetic aura into his knuckles.

BANG!

A concussive liver punch lifted Vane six inches off the ground.

Before the Lord of Death could even exhale his ruptured organs, Eren seized the back of Vane’s spiked hair, dragged his skull downward, and met it with a devastating, rising knee to the jaw.

CRACK-SNAP.

Vane’s teeth sprayed across the floor like loose dice, his body ragdolling backward through the air and crashing violently through the wooden executioner’s chopping block.

Eren casually picked the megaphone up from the splintered planks of the chopping block.

He didn’t bother wiping the fresh blood dripping from his cracked brow. With swagger, he brought the horn to his lips and tapped the rim against his knuckles.

Thump. Thump.

"Hello again, lovely citizens and degenerates of Rujgard," Eren said into the megaphone.

He strolled toward the wreckage of splintered wood where Vane was feebly groaning, the black veins across his shattered jaw sizzling as they desperately tried to stitch fractured bone.

"Tell me something, audience," Eren asked, pacing casually around the fallen titan. "Is this really your sovereign champion? The great, untouchable Lord of Death? The apex predator of the underworld?"

Without dropping the megaphone, Eren reached down, buried his fingers into Vane’s spiked hair, and hoisted him upright.

Vane gagged, his heels scraping uselessly against the floor, clawing feebly at Eren’s iron grip as Eren dragged him across the elevated terrace like a sack of butchered poultry, parading his mangled, swollen face before thousands of stunned onlookers.

Eren leaned straight down to Vane’s ear, shouting directly through the amplified horn:

"LOSER!"

"Honestly, what a massive, pathetic letdown," Eren sighed to the crowd, shaking his head with theatrical disappointment. "Branagh at least had the decency to give me a permanent scar. Silas dragged me straight to death’s doorstep. But this little fucker?"

Eren gave Vane’s hair a dismissive shove, dropping him onto his shattered knees at the edge of the dais.

"Didn’t even match that level. A complete lightweight."

A dead, suffocating hush smothered the plaza. Cutpurses, gang leaders, and hardened mercenaries stared in disbelief as their supreme terror was dragged through the dust like an insolent cur.

"And you know why?" Eren’s voice turned silky, dripping with venomous amusement. "Because this clown was never powerful to begin with. Just a silver-spooned incompetent playing ringmaster in a sewer, riding on the coattails of his daddy’s legacy."

"So then, fine citizens... shall we proceed with the scheduled morning execution?"

Vane, coughing up blood, suddenly chuckled. A low, wheezing sound that quickly morphed into a raspy, hysterical giggle.

"Heh... hehehe... today isn’t your day, kid," Vane wheezed, spitting a glob of dark blood against Eren’s boot.

Eren arched a brow, unimpressed. "Oh? And why is that, dead man?"

Vane’s ruined lips peeled back into a manic, bloody grin.

He raised his right hand to reveal the little explosives remote he had stolen while Eren was dragging him around.

Eren’s blue eyes widened. "You—"

Before Eren could grab it, Vane whipped his arm back and hurled the device at the corner of the platform.

"TAKE THE DAMN TOY!" Vane shrieked at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing off the buildings. "SWARM THE SCAFFOLD AND KILL THIS ARROGANT MOTHERFUCKER!"

Eren ran towards the remote before guards could reach it.

Vane saw his opening. Gritting his broken teeth, the Lord of Death scrambled onto all fours, using the last dregs of The Substance in his marrow to force his rebuilt knees under him, ready to bolt.

He made it exactly half a step before a silver-hilted rapier burst straight through the center of Vane’s back, exploding out of his sternum in a violent spray of dark crimson.

Alice stood over him.

She twisted the blade ninety degrees inside his chest.