Chapter 218: Rujgard’s involvement
"I like you, Branagh," Eren chuckled, leaning back with a shrug. "Straightforward. No monologues about your own magnificence, no elaborate death traps with obvious escape routes. Just..."
He gestured with his chained hands as best he could. "Business."
The Lord of Flesh said nothing.
Eren sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself, then opened them with renewed focus.
"Let me ask you something," Eren said, his tone shifting from playful to something sharper. "That bounty on our heads. Is that Rujgard’s own initiative? Or did it come from... external sources?"
Branagh’s eyebrow arched upward. "And why, pray tell, would I share that information with a man in chains?"
"Come on," Eren said, his smile turning winsome, almost boyish. "We’re apparently going to die tonight. At least give us a heads-up on who’s pulling the strings? Closure for the condemned. It’s traditional."
Branagh studied him for a long moment, his jowls quivering with suppressed amusement or irritation—hard to tell. "You might already possess the answer, boy. You’re clearly not stupid."
"Syndicate then," Gold muttered from beside him, her eyes narrowed behind her mask. "The distribution network Kiliyan mentioned. They’re the ones who want him silenced."
"Ah, but which syndicate?" Eren pressed, his gaze never leaving Branagh’s face. "And more importantly...Are they working with Rujgard? And is Rujgard, in turn, working with the Demon Continent? All to overflow the human continent with The Substance?"
The room fell into absolute silence.
Not the silence of empty spaces, but the silence of a held breath, of a heartbeat skipped, of a world tilting on its axis. Even Gold turned to stare at him, her eyes wide behind her golden mask, her earlier irritation replaced by something bordering on shock.
Branagh went very still. The cigar in his thick fingers stopped rotating. His expression didn’t change, but something flickered in those eyes—something like recognition.
Eren smiled, shark-like and patient. "No answer?"
He settled back into his chains comfortably.
"Then let me provide some context," Eren continued, his voice dropping into that particular cadence that made men lean in despite themselves.
"Three months ago, there was an attack on the Volsver mansion and Duke Alfric Volsver was the target. The assassins were... special. Specifically trained to avoid detection by Emma, the legendary swordmaster who serves as his bodyguard. They knew her patrol routes, her habits, her blind spots. Almost as if they’d been briefed by someone with intimate knowledge of her techniques."
Gold’s breath caught.
"And those assassins had The Substance inside them. Sound familiar?"
Branagh’s cigar had gone out. He hadn’t noticed.
"Two months ago," Eren continued, his voice now soft, "we uncovered a plan to assassinate the Empress. Not some crude attempt. This was elegant. The best way possible, involving key officials, timed distractions, and a cascade of failures designed to look like a public execution for her own crime. And the reason for it is The Substance again."
Gold’s heart was hammering now, audible in the silence. She thought only she knew about this, but this idiot sitting here knew everything that’s gonna happen, just like her.
Eren’s eyes locked onto Branagh’s.
"So let me ask you directly, Lord of Flesh," Eren said, his voice carrying the weight of every death, every secret, every thread he’d pulled together in this dam world. "The assassination attempt on Duke Alfric Volsver. The attempt on the Empress. And The Substance. Does Rujgard have its hand in all three? Are you the pipeline?"
Branagh stood in silence, his cold eyes tracking Eren with a new kind of assessment, the way a butcher might study a steer that had suddenly started quoting philosophy.
Gold’s mind raced. ’Who is this man?’
She’d thought him another opportunist, another vulture circling The Substance, She had already decided that the moment their laughable truce dissolved and the Baron’s logs were in hand, she would cut his throat without a second thought.
Anyone who sought The Substance was a cancer that needed to be pruned.
But this... this was different. He knew things. Things that hadn’t happened yet.
’How does he know?’
"You’re too good at connecting dots, boy," Branagh muttered finally with reluctant respect. "Makes me wonder who you’ve been talking to."
"Books," Eren said lightly. "Very educational. Now, are you manufacturing here? The Substance? Is this the factory, or just the distribution hub?"
Branagh’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
"Sorry. I can’t let you know more than you already do. And frankly..." He flicked his eyes to the guard standing at Eren’s left shoulder. "You shouldn’t be alive when Vane arrives. He gets fussy about unfinished business."
Eren sighed like a man disappointed by predictable outcomes. "Seems they don’t say casually, huh?"
He pushed his weight backward with a thrust and his chair hurled into a backward tumble. The sword sliced through empty air where his neck had been, the guard’s eyes widening in surprise. The chair hit the floor with a crack of splintering wood, Eren’s head narrowly missing the marble tiles.
The guard recovered instantly, pivoting his stance to drive the blade downward in a killing thrust.
Eren rolled and the chair spun with him. The sword pierced into the floorboards where his chest had been. The guard grunted, yanking his blade free, and lunged again meeting Eren’s legs snapping upward like trap springs.
The chains around his ankles shattered. The guard stumbled backward with a gasp and recovered quickly again, ready to finish Eren.
Eren tilted his head slightly and the guard’s desperate horizontal slash passed through empty air. The blade stuck to the floor.
The upper chains around Eren’s hands shattered into flying shrapnel.
Before the guard could blink, Eren’s freed hands shot up. His left hand clamped the man’s collar and skull, while his right hand held the guard’s own sword hilt. With brutal leverage, Eren wrenched the guard’s neck forward, dragging his jugular directly across the pinned blade.
Blood sprayed across the wall as the executioner collapsed in a limp, shuddering heap.
Eren vaulted upright in a single motion.
A second enforcer was already charging from his blind spot with mace raised high. Eren didn’t even look, he just snatched a steak knife from the table, spun on his boots, and drove the silver blade straight through the man’s neck.
Without pausing to watch him drop, Eren ripped the bloodied knife free and hurled it to the forehead of an enforcer who had drawn a curved saber against Gold. The man’s eyes rolled back as he crashed backward into an antique side table, shattering decanters across the floor.
"No need to thank me, Goldy."
Gold wasn’t paying attention to his banter.
"How do you know about The Substance’s link to the Empress?!" she demanded, her voice shaking with intense, desperate urgency. "Who are you?!"
"What’s it for you?" Eren asked in confusion.