Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Eren and Demonmir could both be defined in the same way.

However, Eren had Demonmir beat when it came to achieving the kind of success he had achieved while still being this young and in the Adept rank. Levine knew that Demonmir was leagues behind Eren when he was in the Adept rank. And this was when he was supported by her family's resources.

Levine came to realize something when she started drawing comparisons between Eren and Demonmir in her head. She started by counting the similarities between the two. And ended up seeing what made the two different as well. The more she thought, the more she was sure of her prediction.

'Eren will surpass that bastard in the future.'

The Master ranker smiled when she thought about Eren's monstrous potential. She smiled mirthlessly before adding on.

"You know Eren, Morty Derringer told me that Demonmir had approached him. The bastard wanted to cut a deal with him and cut me and my faction off along with you. And House Derringer would probably have considered the offer as well.

But then your killing of Rey and Janos Remus got known. Do you know what they call your kill site? The Grim Pillar Town. A small town had been erected on the site overnight.

House Derringer has rejected Demonmir's offer ever since then. It considers you to be a greater threat than Demonmir. I don't know about your enemies. But you sure have spooked your allies a bit."

Levine said with a light smile on her face. The butcher raised his eyebrows before speaking up.

"Grim Pillar Town? Who's behind this? Those sons of bitches better give me a cut of their profits if they want to use my artwork as their landmark."

Upon realizing Eren had retained his greedy nature to capitalize on everything and anything that moved, Levine, burst into laughter. Eren's grim face, like he meant what he said, made her laugh even more.

She knew everything was alright with Eren when he showed her that he was still the old him. That success had not gotten into his head and he was still as prudent as he had always been.

"Alright. Enough with your jokes. Demonmir might not target you anymore. But he is not the only enemy you have. You have also pissed off uncle Sebastian and who knows how many others. So we'll be traveling together and that will be the end of it."

Eren was forced to agree to Levine's plans. The butcher was about to say something to her when he heard another woman speak to him.

'Isn't she laughing too easily at whatever you say? It wasn't that funny. And it wasn't even a joke, was it?'

Eren heard Alephee's voice in his head and ignored it. Of course, he wasn't joking when it came to collecting revenue from Grim Pillar Town. As long as it brought more traffic to his city, he was more than willing to erect more pillars like the last one. He was ready to adorn those pillars with the "souvenirs" of his remaining enemies. The butcher made plans to let Agatha handle this part for him.

Eren and Levine made their way to her suite. There were a few details they wanted to finalize before they moved on to the next set of tasks. It was related to the use of the elemental pool for high-ranked entities.

The use of such an array for rankers above the Adept rank became increasingly complicated. The array needed a constant stream of special resources belonging to the respective elements to keep it functioning. And this burning of expensive resources wasn't something one could pull off in an individual capacity.

Eren and Levine both needed to sit together and figure out how many high-ranking entities would enter the elemental array. They also needed to discuss the resources that would be used in the process.

The student-and-teacher pair sat in front of each other at Levine's desk before charting out a plan. The butcher was glad that he had his guild's funds backing him up. Otherwise, forget about sponsoring his guild members. He wouldn't have been able to make the program work for himself.

"There's one more problem I have regarding entering the elemental array myself. From the data you have provided me regarding the array, I and Zethos won't be able to enter the pool by ourselves. We'll need two more B-rankers who are willing to take this risk and share the burden with us. At least one, if we want to keep it close. Otherwise, we both would be throwing our futures as rankers away."

Zethos was another B-ranker from Levine's faction that Eren had met not too long ago for the first time. She had invited him to the White Raven city when she was made aware of the array by Eren.

Zethos was very loyal to Levine. So she thought of rewarding his loyalty like this. However, the lack of B-rankers made it difficult for her to participate in the rank-up program.

Levine was very confident about clearing the program. She had no doubts in her mind that she could progress in her ranking journey by leaps and bounds without any hurdles. This is if and when the elemental pool is made available to her. However, she wasn't willing to take unnecessary risks by entering the pool with just one ranker.

Eren was about to say something to her when the communication artifact inside his storage started sending him alerts. The message looked urgent from the looks of things.

Eren excused himself from Levine's study room and stepped out. He only turned on the voice feed of the artifact to listen to the other side. He heard someone speak to him in a desperate monster tongue when he did that.

'My king! You finally picked up!'

Eren narrowed his eyes when he recognized the voice.

'Ror? Why are you out of breath? What happened?'

'My king, do you know someone named Nina and Amory?'

Eren's expression turned grim when he heard Aunt Nina's name. He thought she was in trouble so he didn't waste any time affirming Ror's speculation. He urged the quasi-Monster King to give him more details about what exactly was going on.