Chapter 210: Temporary alliance
In the dim light of the unknown location, Eren’s gaze dropped to the gloved hand stealthily creeping across the mossy ground toward her sword.
Eren’s Temporal Eye flared. In a split-second phantom overlay, he saw a glimpse of her driving the sword straight through his throat with vicious, surgical finality.
’What the hell is this woman’s problem?’ Eren cursed silently. ’Just arrived at a teleportation place, and her absolute first instinct upon waking up is straight-up murder?’
The vision lined up with reality. Gold’s fingers snapped around the grip. Vaulting upward with terrifying fluidity, she lunged forward to execute the exact killing thrust his sight had previewed.
Except Eren had already rewritten the script.
Instead of rolling away, Eren planted both palms firmly against the cold stone, tucking his torso and kicking his legs out in an explosive, breakdance-like rotational sweep. His right boot whipped through the air like a hammer, striking her wrist dead-on with pinpoint precision.
The sword fell from her grip, clattering into the darkness.
Before the golden mask could even process the airborne disarm, Eren’s sweeping momentum carried through. His trailing left leg hooked behind her knees in the same heartbeat. Her balance was violently swept out from beneath her, her boots flying into the air as she crashed flat onto her back with a breathless, indignant thud.
In a flash, Eren mounted her torso, dropping his full body weight to pin her down. His knees clamped her thighs into the stone while his hands locked around her slender wrists, pinning her arms above her head.
"You are a pure headache, do you know that?" Eren groaned, his body screaming in protest from the day’s accumulated abuse. "We literally crash-landed into the abyss, and you’re already trying to add me to your body count."
"Get your filthy hands off me, you ape!" she snarled, her voice muffled behind the gold mask, struggling furiously beneath him with strength that could have easily cracked stone.
Glancing sideways, Eren spotted a rusty piece of structural rod from whatever ruined masonry they were occupying. Freeing his right hand, he snatched the spike, intending to drive it down through her shoulder to pin her cloak and end the struggle once and for all.
Before the iron could pierce her skin, Gold’s freed hand caught the blunt edge of the rod inches from her.
Eren leaned down, channeling his monstrous physical power into the thrust. Veins bulged along his forearms, the sheer hydraulic pressure enough to crush a man’s breastplate. Yet the assassin beneath him didn’t fold. Gritting her teeth, she pushed back, her frame somehow generating enough terrifying, concentrated aura to halt his downward force in dead air.
’Damn it. Is she a human?’ Eren thought, thoroughly impressed and irritated.
He activated his Hawkeye vision to peek through the mask and see who the hell was giving him this much trouble. But the moment his perception hit the gilded skull plate, the visual feed fractured into static.
"Nice mask," Eren drawled, panting slightly as their arms trembled against the iron rod. "Did you buy it at the circus gift shop, so you could hide how punchable your face was?"
"And you fight like an ill-mannered stray," she spat back, her eyes blazing through the mask’s narrow slits. "Is straddling women your signature combat doctrine, or are you just desperately making up for your utter lack of elegance?"
"Elegance?" Eren scoffed, leaning an extra ounce of his body weight onto her. "Says the one who butchered every guard in that hallway?"
"Coming from the idiot who lit the entire second floor on fire?!" she fired back instantly.
"That was strategic distraction and controlled demolition!" Eren argued with absolute moral righteousness. "It’s called professional subtlety. Everyone evacuated safely without a scratch, unlike your little blood-drenched carnival show that brought every inquisitor in the district running!"
"Fuck off, you self-righteous barbarian!" she snarled, her boots violently kicking against the stones beneath his shins.
CREEEAAAK.
The screech of rusted iron hinges echoed through the room.
Heavy doors swung inward, slicing through the murky gloom as brilliant, swinging beams of lantern light flooded the interior.
Both of them froze instantly. Eren and the golden mask snapped their heads toward the glare, their pupils contracting against the sudden illumination.
Now that the darkness had been chased away, the true nature of their vacation spot became absurdly clear. They were stranded in a massive, storage meat warehouse. Dozens of rusted iron hooks dangled from overhead conveyor rails, accompanied by crusty salt barrels, splintered chopping blocks, and the overwhelming, sour stench of old brine and cured fat.
And ten feet to their left, sprawled like an overturned sack of wet flour beside a wooden trough, Baron Kiliyan let out a pathetic, muffled groan, entirely unaware that he was the most contested piece of meat in the room.
Framed in the doorway were about ten burly, rough-looking men in stained leather vests, iron bracers, and notched broadswords.
The gang halted, looking at a battered young nobleman in a ruined, expensive coat sitting squarely on the hips of a white-robed girl in a golden mask, the two of them locked in an awkward position with an iron rod trembling between their faces like squabbling squirrels.
A towering, scar-faced brute at the head of the crew scratched his bald scalp.
"Oi... Ralph," the big guy grunted, his voice thick and confused. "Didn’t the client say only the fat noble pig was gettin’ pulled through the rift for the carriage drop?"
A weasel-faced, slim mercenary beside him squinted through the lantern smoke, checking a crumpled scrap of parchment. "Aye, boss. Just the Baron."
The entire gang paused for a beat before erupting into booming, guttural laughter that rattled the hanging meat hooks.
"Then why the hell did we get a pair of horny lovers as a package deal?!" the big brute roared, pointing with his blade. "Look at ’em! Couldn’t even wait for a bed before tearin’ each other’s clothes off!"
"WE ARE NOT LOVERS!"
Gold’s boot lashed out in a sharp, scurrying kick straight into Eren’s shins.
"Ow! What the hell was that for?!" Eren hissed, scrambling backward onto his feet.
"Collateral for earlier, you ape," she rasped, springing upright in the same breath like a coiled spring. She grabbed the hilt of her fallen sword, flicking the blade into a low guard.
"Where is your weapon?"
"I lost that when we were fighting in that transport spell, thank you very much," Eren retorted dryly, dusting off his coat. "Some of us don’t carry an entire armory."
"Idiot," she spat, unbuckling a pair of hatchets and hurling them straight at him.
Eren snatched both weapons out of mid-air by the grips, testing the balance with a spin of his wrists.
"Only for this moment," the golden mask warned in a whisper. "Try to stab me in the back with my own steel, and I’ll hollow out your lungs."
"Perish the thought, my temporary friend," Eren grinned, his blue eyes lighting up with delight as he twirled the twin hatchets into reverse grips.