Chapter 228: Alice introgating
Eren sat on the cold stone floor, leaning against a pillar and watching Alice hiccup through the aftermath of an emotional meltdown. For an hour or more, he’d stared at her in silence, his mind a fraying of confusion, spinning too fast to grab any single thought.
The Shadow Cat cub was currently engaged in mortal combat with a rat three times its size, chasing the rodent around the building with enthusiastic, squeaking fury.
Alice’s eyes were swollen to slits, her face puffy and red, her nose running freely. She looked less like a deadly assassin and more like a child who’d been denied dessert. She whimpered occasionally.
Eren sighed, finally breaking the silence. "Calmed down yet?"
She didn’t answer. Just took a shuddering breath, her nose whistling.
He sighed again. "Honestly, I never imagined I’d see the day. Alice, the Saintess-to-be, the golden child of the academy, crying like a toddler who dropped her ice cream. And this after murdering, what, thirty people in the last three days? Impressive."
Alice grabbed a loose chunk of brick and hurled it at his head with precision. Eren obviously ducked it and the brick shattered against the pillar behind him.
The Shadow Cat cub shrieked, abandoned its rat, and bolted back to Eren’s lap with hisses.
"Do you have zero concern for my mental state?!" Alice snarled.
"I’m trying to cheer you up."
"That’s not cheering me up, you bastard!"
"Language, You’re a Saintess," Eren teased, chuckling.
"Fuck you," Alice spat.
"There’s the spirit."
She glared at him, her chest heaving, her fists clenched. Eren chuckled, but the sound was hollow—his mind still trying to process the impossibility sitting before him. A regressed protagonist. A game character who’d broken her programming. It was absurd. It was terrifying.
Was it because of his existence?
He shook his head.
"You’re hunting The Substance," he said, his voice dropping into seriousness. "For Violet’s sake. To prevent... what you saw. The future where she..."
Alice nodded, her anger draining into exhaustion. "I’m going to stop every worst thing before it happens. The Empress’s poisoning. The demon army alliance. The...the thing that happens to Violet. All of it."
Eren studied her, pieces clicking together in his mind like a puzzle assembling itself in reverse.
"So it was you," he said slowly. "The warning letter. The one that reached Seraphina about the poisoned tea. You sent it with Theo’s help."
Alice’s head snapped up, her swollen eyes widening. "How did you—how do you know Theo was involved?"
Eren shrugged casually. "It’s obvious. Only Theo would believe your words without demanding proof. Only he has the resources to quickly gather skilled people. And only the Crown Prince could access the imperial messenger networks without raising suspicion."
He tilted his head, observing her with new understanding. "You told him about the future. About what would happen. And he believed you."
Alice’s cheeks flushed crimson, her gaze darting across the room.
"It’s none of your business," she muttered. "What I tell Theo. What we plan. It’s—"
She stopped, eyes narrowing as she realised something.
She leaned forward, invading his space, her amber eyes boring into his blue eyes with suspicious intensity.
"How are you alive?" she whispered.
Eren’s face was drained of color.
"In every single timeline, you were the stalker. The obsessive noble who harassed me, who made my academy years a living hell. You challenged Reinhardt to a duel over me and died Pathetically. Forgotten by everyone except as a cautionary tale about entitled men."
She leaned closer.
"But this time," she said, her voice trembling with something between awe and terror. "Something changed right at the duel. You moved differently. Spoke differently. You didn’t die."
Her hand shot out, gripping his jaw with surprising strength, forcing him to meet her gaze. "How is that possible, Eren Volsver?"
The Shadow Cat cub hissed, sensing the tension, its violet eyes flicking between them.
"Hey, easy on the historical revisionism," Eren protested, wincing slightly as her fingers clamped his jawline. "Stalker is a touch hyperbolic. Enthusiastic admirer with catastrophic boundary issues, perhaps. And that’s the past."
"Tell me," Alice ordered, her amber eyes burning with frantic intensity, completely ignoring his defense. "How did you survive that sword strike? Why did you move like a completely different person? Why did your entire demeanor flip in a single afternoon?"
Eren raised a brow, his blue eyes locking onto her gaze with calm amusement. "If you already possessed these memories of yours on the very morning you woke up, why on earth didn’t you interrogate me right then?"
"Because you were an irrelevant variable!" Alice snapped. "You humiliated Reinhardt, took Aria away, and stopped following me. You weren’t obstructing my path. More importantly—you made an impossible breakthrough to cure Liora’s condition! And also you’re a cure for Violet’s curse! So I deliberately ignored your suspicious survival!"
"Splendid deduction," Eren grinned, completely unbothered. "So how about you continue to do the same?"
THWACK.
Alice’s free hand curled into a fist and cracked him squarely on the top of his head.
"Ow! Dammit, woman!" Eren hissed, rubbing his scalp. "Is this what they taught you in holy Church?!"
"Answer the question, you insufferable degenerate!"
Eren let out a long, slow sigh, leaning his head back against the stone pillar behind him. The playful, mocking glint in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cool, assessing weight.
"Has it ever occurred to that brilliant skull of yours," Eren murmured, "that I might simply be in the same boat as you? That maybe... I regressed, too?"
Alice’s eyes narrowed in sharp intellect. She shook her head without a shred of hesitation.
"That doesn’t add up. Not for a single second."
She leaned closer, dissecting him with surgical logic.
"In every single route, Eren... you died. Every. Single. Time. In the same way, cleaved in two by Reinhardt’s blade. You were buried before The Substance even surfaced on the kingdom’s soil. If you had regressed, you wouldn’t know a thing about The Substance. Unless..."
Her eyes flared. "Unless you were consuming The Substance yourself before that duel. But if that thing was circulating in your veins, you would have at least put up some fight. You didn’t."
She gripped his jaw tighter, her thumb pressing hard against his chin, her gaze digging into the depths of his soul.
"So explain it to me, Eren Volsver. If you’re not a regressor, and you’re not an addict... how did you know the exact plan to send Her Majesty to the executioner’s block? How did you know they targeted Violet?!"
Her voice dropped to a trembling, breathless whisper.
"And why... why are you so desperately, furiously determined to save Violet from that fate? Who the fuck are you really? And what are your actual plans for this world?"
Eren sat motionless beneath her grip. The silence stretched between them.
Slowly, Eren smiled.