"I'd rather get rid of you here than regret losing something so precious later on."

Eren raised his one hand with difficulty and made a "come here" gesture with his index finger after pointing it at Nira. His green eyes shone with determination as he challenged the Sage.

"Come If I can't even face Sage's husk at this point, I might as well pack my bag and call it quits."

Nira Nightshade was pissed, to say the least. She didn't even take a second to launch her attacks on Eren after she heard his words.

***

"Aaaaargh!"

Eren cried in pain as he was struck by real arrows this time. Or as real as they could be. They were manifested by Nira Nightshade's soul sense, after all.

A large spectral arrow that looked like a javelin pierced his stomach. The arrow's tip had also pierced the wall behind him, pinning him onto a wall at one end of the hall.

Soon, the arrows that had pierced Eren's front from every angle disappeared into thin air before another batch of arrows pierced him. This time, the impact of the arrows was so strong that the wall behind him was broken into spiderwebs before it caved in.

Eren was wounded not only physically by these arrows. They also tried to affect his soul. The butcher would have been sent into a vegetative state if he didn't have a strong awakened soul to fight off Nira's direct soul intrusion.

Bzzt. Swoosh. Jump.

A shadow coated in lightning jumped away from the caved wall, leaving more rubble behind it. A bloodied and unrecognizable figure of a human male stood a few meters away from an angry-looking Nira.

This bloodied figure had numerous wounds on his body. His lower rib bones were exposed due to severe injuries. A large chunk of muscle was missing from his right shoulder, exposing his clavicle and scapula.

It seemed like this bloodied figure had concentrated on strengthening the defenses of his vital organs. And in doing so, he had to let his other body parts suffer in the one-sided assault of his enemy.

The man also had a mangled face. Still, he managed to show his bloody teeth to the Sage archer, indicating that he was laughing at her. His green eyes shone with brilliance as he eyed his attacker.

Snap.

Instant Reset.

Eren let his Ability and his bloodline powers work in conjunction. And within a few seconds, he was back to normal, with most of his injuries healed. Even his most severe injuries weren't able to prolong their stay in the face of such an accelerated healing process.

"Kekekeke. That's all you got? I thought Sages were some untouchable beings. Come on, attack me for real already."

Eren said while mocking Nira Nightshade. Normally, he wouldn't say something boastful like this. But he recognized the effects they would have on one's opponents. Especially if the opponent was strong and one wanted to not let them gain any mental satisfaction from winning.

The words also acted like some form of self-hypnosis. The butcher was willing to use any physical and psychological tactic in his battle against a Sage.

***

The first thing Nira Nightshade did after finding out that someone was trying to destroy the array where the vestige of her soul was stored was to get rid of the person. She disappeared from the hall and appeared right where Alephee was.

However, Nira soon found out that she had greatly underestimated the grimoire-using homunculus. Alephee had rewritten the rights of the defense mechanism used to protect the array long before she even started interfering with the main array.

Therefore, Alephee was able to use the Sage-level defense mechanism against the husk of the soul the array was supposed to protect in the first place. Meaning the Sage ranker couldn't touch Alephee until the latter was done with whatever she was doing.

Nira immediately understood that Alephee was not someone she could take lightly. She even doubted that the land of Anfang could produce someone like her in the first place. However, this was not the time to admire the enemy's work. So Nira got back to where Eren was, trying to force him to stop doing what he wanted Alephee to do.

The fight between Eren and Nira's vestige of soul had been going on for a few minutes by this point.

Eren tried attacking Nira with various elemental spells. He also tried attacking with his weapons. However, Nira Nightshade did not have a physical body, to begin with. Even if she did, Eren's C-rank spells would not have done any real damage to her anyway.

Thankfully, Eren's ranking status wasn't suppressed inside Nira Nightshade's castle as it was a special zone inside the Sansara World. But that didn't really help the butcher either. All it did was make him a long-lasting punching bag.

Eren was basically forced to receive a one-sided beating from Nira Nightshade. She would have killed him at this point. However, the butcher had Instant Reset to rely on. He kept healing himself from even the most fatal of injuries, denying Nira the satisfaction of killing him in the goriest way possible.

This was Eren's 7th time healing himself from near-death injuries. Alephee was working as fast as she could to destroy the array and the vestige of the soul it was housing. So all he had to do was survive against a Sage who was thoroughly pissed at him for playing her like a fiddle.

***

"You. How the fuck can you heal like this? You have preposterous Abilities.

But your constitution... And then there's that homunculus.

Who who the fuck are you?"

Nira Nightshade couldn't believe what she was looking at. She had to say that the C-rank specimen in front of her was like an undying cockroach.

She couldn't use her go-to elemental spells because she didn't have a physical body. But her soul sense attacks alone were enough to take care of an Expert ranker like Eren. At least that's what she thought.

However, Eren's existence had shaken her.