Chapter 248: Arrival of Heroines

Eren planted his boot firmly onto the rat-faced runner’s ribs, plucking the remote from the man’s fingers.

He didn’t bother to check whether the rat was still breathing. Standing upright in the center of the plaza he’d carved with sheer butcher’s math, Eren lifted his gaze toward the high platform.

Alice was down on both knees, holding her sword for support.

Before her lay the ash of the Lord of Death; she had poured every drop of her replenished divine mana straight into his blackened marrow, burning out her own engine in the process. She was panting, shoulders slumped, barely clinging to consciousness.

The cub guarding her, hissing at the crowd below.

The circle of mercenaries has been surrounded like an iron noose.

"The prick’s too damn slippery!" a scarred captain roared, spitting blood. "Bury him under iron! Skewer him!"

"Wait! He’s got that explosion thing!" someone shrieked from behind, boots scraping backward. "The whole damn plaza’s wired to blow!"

"Screw that thing!" a one-eyed vanguard yelled, raising a spiked battleaxe with crazed abandon. "Look at him! If we let this psycho walk out of here alive, he’ll level the territory anyway! Kill him now!"

The panic flipped to manic desperation. A collective roar of bloodlust tore from thousands of throats as the front ranks surged forward, a tidal wave of rusted steel, pikes, and serrated halberds screaming for his head.

"Man, I really despise crowds," Eren muttered under his breath, shaking the hair out of his bloodied eyes.

Detonating the charges with the brass remote was off the table. The concussive shockwave would turn the plaza’s foundations to powder, collapsing the high terrace and burying Alice, the cub, and the Baron in twenty tons of falling marble.

With a click of his tongue, Eren slid the little brass device into his trouser pocket.

He gripped the hilt with both hands, lowering his stance. His lungs burned with exhaustion, but the blue fire behind his eyes didn’t flicker. If this broken world wanted him to grind his bones down to dust just to keep his word to a couple of fractured, beautiful girls, he’d pay the toll and ask for the receipt.

"Come on, then, you bastards," Eren whispered, steel leveling at the oncoming horde. "Let’s see who runs out of meat first."

Then, the silver earpiece buzzed with a sharp, static hiss.

"You really are an unredeemable, suicidal idiot, aren’t you?"

Eren’s breath hitched in his throat. His blue eyes snapped wide in shock.

The voice was rough around the edges, fiercely exasperated, and achingly familiar.

"Emma...?" Eren breathed, the words barely leaving his parted lips.

"Don’t just stand there like a brainless target, you moron!" a second voice snapped through the channel—cold, regal, dripping with imperious fury that could freeze a volcano solid. "Duck!"

Princess Seraphina.

Before Eren’s brain could even register the royal lecture, the lead mercenary charging him with an executioner’s axe abruptly stopped moving as a jagged, six-foot spear of glacial frost plummeted from the clouds, spearing through the giant’s torso, pinning him to the ground as a frozen, shattered popsicle.

The charging front line stumbled in absolute terror, but the sky offered no mercy.

VZZZZZZT—BOOM!

A blinding, cerulean beam of pressurized, high-tier spell obliterated an entire company of twenty heavy infantry on the eastern flank. Armor melted into slag; bodies were thrown through the air like discarded ragdolls as scorched granite rained down.

Before the smoke could even clear, an ear-splitting crack of celestial thunder tore the sky wide open. A cascading wave of purple lightning ripped across the southern battlement, frying half a dozen mercenaries until they turned into smoking ash.

Eren slowly lifted his head, spotting a silhouette he would recognize in any lifetime.

Tanned skin glowing against a pristine white dress. Pink hair whipped by the wind, tied back into a high warrior’s ponytail that snapped like a war banner. Her grey eyes burned with furious, incandescent rage, and her greatsword was completely coated with Swordmaster aura.

Emma fell like a meteor of righteous retribution.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

Her boots slammed into the plaza cobblestones with a deafening, concussive crater, swinging her sword downward straight into the heart of the plaza floor.

The earth simply tore apart.

A cataclysmic fissure erupted from the impact point, screaming forward for fifty meters in a violent, jagged line of upturned bedrock and flying granite slabs. The shockwave pulverized shields, snapped limbs, and swallowed fifty mercenaries whole into the churning earth, throwing an entire battalion into the air like dry autumn leaves.

Emma rose smoothly from the crater, resting her massive, smoking blade casually over her shoulder.

Emma turned slowly within the smoking crater, the serrated tip of her greatsword gouging a line through shattered granite.

Her storm-grey eyes were locked onto him, turbulent, dark, and crackling with barely restrained tempest fury. For a heartbeat, the warrior melted: her jaw loosened, her knuckles turned pale against her hilt, and an overwhelming wave of sheer relief washed over her tanned features. But the vulnerability lasted all of two seconds before her eyebrows violently knotted back into pure, incandescent rage.

"Don’t you dare think you’re getting away with this, you arrogant prick," Emma ground out under her breath, her rough voice trembling with a mixture of frustration and suppressed terror. "The second we clear this sewer... you and I are having a very long, very painful conversation."

"Good to see you too, sunshine," Eren wheezed, his roguish smirk managing to twitch against the dry blood on his cheek.

Before Emma could march over and physically throttle him, a sharp, frantic cry cut through the air above.

"Darling!"

Eren tilted his chin upward. Drifting down through the smoke in an immaculate, decelerating circle of translucent violet levitation runes were three figures.

The instant her feet hit the floor, the blue-haired villainess moved like a tempest.

Aria Reedings bypassed the corpses, ignored the thousand surrounding blades, and threw her entire regal frame straight into Eren’s chest.

WHAM.

Her slender arms locked around his neck with terrifying force.

"Oof—mercy—Aria—" Eren gasped, his ribs groaning in synchronized agony as her blue curls buried into the crook of his collarbone. "Lungs... currently undergoing... structural maintenance..."

"Shut up! Shut up, you idiot, you lunatic, you absolute nightmare of a man!" Aria sobbed into his neck, her golden eyes spilling furious, crystalline tears down her immaculate pale cheeks. She didn’t care about the mud, the soot, or the blood staining her dress; she just clamped onto him tighter, trembling so violently he could feel the frantic drum of her heart against his sternum. "You disappeared! You vanished! Do you have any idea what I—what we—"

"Eren!"

A second, softer cry interrupted the tirade as Norelia practically threw herself into the fray.

The petite professor slammed into his flank. Her small arms wrapped around his waist, her round crimson eyes wide, wet, and horrified as she took in the torn linen, the burned flesh, and the dried arterial spray coating his neck.

"You’re alive... You stupid, reckless idiot, you’re actually breathing..." Norelia whimpered, burying her nose against his torn shirt, completely shedding her dignified academic veneer. "The ring flared... your resonance... I thought I’d lose you..."