'Mental fortitude, my ass.

Who the fuck is this guy kidding? He just wants to have fun one-shotting the participants.

Damn it. That night elf was much better to deal with than this two-faced bastard.'

Eren scoffed in his head when he heard how Sage Loxley wanted to conduct his test. If Alephee wasn't focusing on recuperating herself, she would have commented that Eren just didn't like interacting with people like him.

The butcher wasn't as handicapped as most of his competitors because he had his soul sense. He could feel Sage's presence all around him. It was just that it was difficult to find the real deal in them.

Eren could feel that Sage Loxley just loved his job as an assassin too much.

Furthermore, since he spent so much time inside, the soul that remained was bored. The graduation event served as an excellent opportunity for him to entertain himself. That too, doing what he always liked doing assassination.

The participants knew that the test Sage Loxley was conducting was going to be unfair to them. No matter how nerfed he told them the assassination attempts carried out by him were going to be, the participants couldn't possibly defend themselves for long against a Sage. That too on his own turf a place suitable for assassinations.

Yet, nobody tried to object anymore. They observed what had happened to the participants who had questioned Sage's method. They didn't want to make the same mistake and make their task twice as difficult as it already was.

Sage Loxley didn't have an awakened soul sense like Sage Nira Nightshade. However, his soul had been strengthened by the Sage rank breakthrough. The Sage's soul could interact with the world around him on a subconscious level. As a result, Eren couldn't use his soul sense on the assassin to pinpoint his location anyway.

The participants that were waiting outside the hive of cave entrances looked at each other before making up their minds. All of them were veteran rankers at this point. They knew what to do.

Eren watched as the participants around him started entering the caves they had chosen for themselves. He sighed before walking towards one of the entrances.

Eren found himself inside a large underground space after moving cautiously inside the cave for a couple of miles. He found that there was an underground river flowing at a distance from where he stood.

The sound of flowing water could be heard in the distance. Plus, the ground was riddled with various small and big puddles.

Eren found it troubling that no attack had been initiated by Sage Loxley even though it had been quite a while since he had entered the cave entrance. He remained vigilant all the time. His senses were working overtime. But they too had their limits.

A game of patience was necessary for the assassination. The timing of the attack was as critical as its lethality. And the most appropriate time to attempt an assassination was when the potential victims exhausted themselves anticipating an attack.

Perhaps this was the reason Sage Loxley declared that he was planning to assassinate the participants through his shadows. It wasn't to give the participants an advantage. It was to make them mentally fatigued from the moment they entered the test grounds.

It was either that or Sage Loxley was simply sadistic, bullying the younger generation and making them give up on obtaining his legacy. After all, the difference between him and the participants was just too big despite any nerfing conditions he had placed on himself. The guy's weapon mastery alone would allow him to kill almost all the participants effortlessly.

Eren reckoned that the Sage could launch his attacks on the participants anytime he wanted and still be able to land a lethal hit on them. There was no need for him to worry about timing. He just liked seeing the participants get frustrated.

Eren knew the psychological nuances behind the assassinations just fine. However, it didn't make him immune to their effects. Plus, the chronic planner in him actually made things worse by trying to anticipate every subtle clue that wasn't really a clue.

And just when Eren tried to relieve his stress by downshifting his mental gear, it happened. He had his heart pierced by an anelace a long dagger manifested into existence by water-element mana.

The butcher didn't know what had hit him. He experienced the same level of surprise most of his victims had experienced before their dying breaths. Fortunately, there were no participants around him. So there was plenty of time for the defense mechanism to kick in, allowing him to "die" relatively peacefully.

***

When Eren opened his eyes, he knew that he was being judged by the Life And Death Altar. That's because a familiar scene unfolded in front of him, which had once become the source of his sleepless nights.

For the first time in a long while, Eren found himself back in his nightmare world. The kind of recurring nightmare he was used to seeing when he had just gotten out of Purgatory.

The wraiths surrounded him. They made teeth-grinding and bone-cracking noises while walking toward him slowly but surely. They had various weapons in their hands and were as strong as him all of them.

The dragonkin beasts were his second line of opponents. They eyed him as if he was a delicacy they had all been waiting for. They spewed green flames from their mouths from time to time, attesting to the fact that they had harnessed the power of Enderflames.

Standing amid all these entities was a young woman in battle armor.

Her green eyes sparkled with a peculiar brilliance as she looked Eren in the eyes. She was beautiful yet dangerous. She looked peaceful and yet had chaos running through her veins. She had a light smile on her face a smile that could bewitch anybody that saw it.

This woman had her arms folded under her bosom. Her aloof and domineering presence alone was enough to frighten her opponents. As if calm before the storm, she stood proudly.

Eren had goosebumps on his skin when he looked at this woman. However, that didn't stop him from having a slight smile on his face. He felt that his fear couldn't shackle him any longer even when he found himself in his nightmare.

"Long time no see, Eliza."