Chapter 213: Deal
"Well, that was remarkably easy," Eren muttered, raising an eyebrow at the masked woman.
"Why are you so terrified of this city?" Gold demanded, stepping forward and ignoring Eren’s quip. "Your mercenary squad said they were hired to pick you up. If this was your designated escape route, why are you screaming like a condemned criminal?"
"Because it’s not an escape route, you fools!" Kiliyan shrieked, clutching his head in hysteria. "If they bring me to Rujgard, it’s not an extraction—it’s my execution! The syndicate doesn’t bring me here to hide me! They bring loose ends here to feed them to the bone-grinders so no one would ever find my remains! The moment that syndicate realized I was compromised in the capital, they might mark me for disposal!"
Gold went completely rigid. Her hand tightened on her sword. "Syndicate? So you do know who orchestrates the distribution."
"I know everything!" Kiliyan cried, rocking back and forth against the trough. "If it’s about The Substance... if you’re hunting the shipment logs... I’ll tell you everything if you pull me out of this! I swear it on my mother’s grave! Just don’t leave me here to be butchered!"
The warehouse fell into silence.
Eren slowly blinked. His blue eyes drifted sideways, locking onto the mask beside him.
At the same instant, the golden mask slowly swiveled toward Eren.
"Wait," Eren said, his voice flat, his eyebrows slowly furrowing in sudden realisation. "...You broke into the Velvet Rose... for The Substance?"
The gold-masked muttered, her voice cracked in sheer, disbelieving outrage. "Are you telling me you lit an entire noble establishment on fire... for the same thing?!"
Eren stared at her.
She stared at Eren.
Between them, Baron Kiliyan looked back and forth like a confused spectator at a high-stakes tennis match, still sniffling through his tears.
"P-Please..." Kiliyan whimpered from the trough, raising two trembling, sweaty palms toward them. "C-Can we please talk about this after we leave this place? I think I hear dogs outside..."
"Over here! The side entrance is unlatched! Move it, you bastards, this is where the rat said they dropped!"
Harsh shouts echoed through the alleyway outside, accompanied by the heavy boots splashing through mud puddles.
"Well, look at that," Eren muttered, tilting his head toward the double doors with a wry smirk. "Our runner friend from earlier gathered a welcoming committee. Customer service in Rujgard is remarkably good."
Gold clicked her tongue in irritation. Without a word, she took a lethal stride toward the threshold, her thumb popping the crossguard of her rapier clear of the scabbard with a menacing hiss of polished steel.
Before she could take a second step, Eren grabbed her forearm, casually reeling her backward.
"Hey, bloodhound," Eren said, rolling his eyes. "Can you physically survive ten minutes on this continent without butchering someone?"
She violently wrenched her arm out of his grasp, amber eyes blazing murder through the eye slits. "Eliminating them now is cleaner, you fool. Every witness left breathing in this district is a blood trail leading straight to our necks."
"And turning every storage unit into a butcher shop makes us a tourist attraction," Eren countered, grabbing the shivering, sobbing Baron by the collar and hoisting his portly bulk upright with effortless, monstrous strength. "Our sole objective right now is smuggling our fat little friend out alive so we can extract the details. I am not trading sword thrusts with another wave of local dockside sanitation workers while holding an oversized ham under my arm."
Gold glared at him for a second, then she let out a hiss and snapped the blade back into its sheath..
"If this blubbering pig slows us down by half a second," she rasped, "I’m cutting off his ears to save weight."
"A reasonable compromise. To the rafters, Goldy."
Ten seconds later, the rusted double doors were violently kicked off their latches, banging hard against the inner stone wall.
A dozen armed men swarmed into the warehouse, their swinging brass lanterns casting light across the blood-slicked flagstones. The sweet, metallic stench of fresh slaughter rolled out to meet them, mingling with the sour brine of the curing barrels.
"Sweet mother of rot..." one of the front-runners choked, nearly slipping on a severed forearm.
The lanterns swept across the room in frantic, trembling arcs. Pinned corpses, caved-in chests, cleaved limbs, and shattered barrels lay scattered across the floor in a gruesome display of absolute violence.
"Ralph! Over here!" a scarred enforcer shouted, kneeling beside the massive chopping block where their bald leader remained pinned through the throat by a jagged furrow of steel. "The boss is cold. All of ’em... gutted like sea bass in under two minutes."
At the rear of the squad, the weasel-faced mercenary who had fled earlier stood trembling violently, his back pressed hard against the doorframe, clutching a rusty dagger like a child with a toy.
The man leading the fresh pack—a towering brute with iron-plated knuckles and a pelt of mangy wolf fur draped over his broad shoulders—walked over, grabbing the weasel by his collar and lifting him until his boots dangled above the gore.
"You said it was a noble drop, you little worm," the leader snarled, spit flying into the survivor’s pale face. "Who did this? Did the capital send an entire vanguard legion through the rift?!"
"N-No! I swear on my life, no!" the thin guy shrieked, his voice cracking in terror. "It was just two of ’em! A lunatic brat in a blue coat, and a demon in white robes wearing a golden skull mask! They’re in disguise, but I know their rough builds!"
The brute’s grip tightened, his eyes narrowing as he dropped the sniveling scout back into the dirt. He slowly turned his head, scanning the dark, vacant meat hooks swaying gently from the high rafters above, where a faint draft whistled through a pried-open ventilation grate near the ceiling.
"Golden mask and a blue-coated brute," the leader growled, his voice rumbling like grinding stones. "They didn’t just botch a private drop... they slaughtered citizens of Rujgard."
He turned back toward the dark, rain-soaked streets of Rujgard, baring blackened teeth in a vicious, predatory snarl.
"Send a runner to the central spire immediately. Inform the Lord of Death. We have unlicensed killers loose on our docks, and nobody walks out of this sovereign harbor alive."