Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

'Tell me what is going on.'

Eren asked Ror to be precise in his report. That latter obliged.

'My king, this human healer, and the old man who's with her attacked me while I was on my way to meet Baran as you told me to. I want to avoid confrontation with them since I heard your name from their mouths.

So all I can do right now is run away from them. But they… Aaaargh... these humans are not leaving me alone. This old man is especially persistent. As if he wanted to die at my hands. What should I do, my king?'

Eren didn't know what to say to Ror after he heard about his situation. But he was glad that Aunt Nina was safe.

It had been a few months since Nina left the city of Curar with Amory and a female Adept ranker from her guild. She first visited the city of New Beginnings and dropped the Adept ranker off there. This was because Nina and Amory were about to visit a zone meant for Master rankers in Monster Canyon and an Adept would only get in the way.

Nina was supposed to visit Eren in his city after ensuring that Amory wasn't taking any unnecessary risks in his forced breakthrough. But for some reason, he lost contact with Nina after entering Monster Canyon.

Eren could only blame the peculiarities of Monster Canyon for this. He wasn't really worried about her safety. She was a full-fledged B-Rank healer who was very aware of which zones in Monster Canyon she was supposed to check out. Plus, Amory was with her who was supposed to be someone only a few steps from achieving the Grandmaster rank.

Still, there was always room for "what ifs", especially when it came to exploring Monster Canyon. The butcher knew this better than anyone he knew. After all, the place had claimed his life once.

That's why Eren wanted Nina to contact him as soon as she could. Which she didn't do. So all he could do was wait for her update.

'Haah! She should have called me.'

Eren sighed. Only now did he understand the misery of keeping someone in the dark about their whereabouts after being on the receiving end. He decided to call Agatha up from time to time whenever he pulled stunts like this. At least as much as he could.

Eren listened to Ror's pleas and sighed. He pondered for a bit before giving Ror a few basic instructions. He also gave him pointers on how to get rid of the human rankers following him.

The quasi-Monster King never really ran away from any fights until this day. Plus, he didn't know much about humans' way of tailing monsters in the land of Anfang since he had seldom ventured outside the Oni dungeon.

Ror listened to Eren's points keenly and understood them well before cutting the call off. The latter knew that the Ogre Overlord was more than capable of staying away from his pursuers if the right instructions were provided to him.

Eren didn't know much about Amory or Aunt Nina's current strengths. But he was confident that Ror wouldn't be at a disadvantage fighting two B-Rank healers at the same time. The only reason he ran away from the fight was that he was afraid of injuring someone his king knew personally.

Eren chuckled when he thought about the situation. To sort the mess out, it seemed he would have to intervene himself in such a high-level battle. He immediately thought of killing two birds with one stone.

The butcher looked at the door of Levine's study room before walking up to it. He knocked on the door twice before entering.

"Teacher Levine, I think I have found two B-Ranked entities you need for entering the elemental array. I'll just go ahead and get them."

Eren already had plans for letting aunt Nina enter the elemental pool when he learned about its existence from Ror. This was another reason he was waiting for Nina to contact him.

It was just a matter of convenience that Amory was added to the list. Of course, he would ask Healers' Nirvana for compensation for allowing Amory to use the elemental pool.

Levine looked at Eren carefully before speaking to him in a careful tone.

"I hope you know who to count on, Eren. I don't think we should pick any random ranker for a program this sensitive. We don't know how the royals will look at us running the program…"

Levine was about to warn Eren against contacting some random Master ranker just for the sake of filling in the numbers. She could have done the same if the number requirement was all she cared about.

However, Eren cut her off before speaking up.

"It'll be fine. One of the rankers I'm talking about is my aunt Nina. I trust her completely. As for the royals objecting to our program, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

We won't run the program long enough anyway. It costs a lot to operate an array like this, and I'm not running a charity. The rankers we have chosen will probably be all there is to it. So there's nothing to worry about."

Eren straightforwardly sorted the matter. Of course, Levine asked him about Nina and her whereabouts. The butcher gave her a brief description of Nina's current progress before getting up to leave. He walked towards Levine's window instead of taking the usual exit route.

Argo was summoned in his eagle form outside the window. The demon beast flapped his wings and generated a mini typhoon around him before giving out an eagle cry.

"Kiyeeeeh! Let's wreck some shit."

Argo could form perfectly sound statements ever since he had digested an Expert ranker for himself. He still struggled to keep the cuss words out of his mouth for a long time. But his vocabulary had grown a lot as opposed to using a certain word to describe everyone and everything.

"We are not out hunting, you fat bird. It's just a simple convoy recovery. Let's go."

As Eren climbed up the window's ledge, he sighed and said to Argo. Lightning struck and he appeared on Argo's back who had already started flying toward the horizon.

AN: The first appearance of Amory Stowage was in chapter 652.