"Well, well, well… if it isn't Lady Rebecca."
The voice slithered into my ears like poison, snapping me from the haze clouding my thoughts. My limbs ached, my vision spun. I struggled to remember what had happened—where I was, what had brought me here. But before I could piece it together, two coarse hands seized mine from behind, wrenching them upward as I twisted in vain.
"Where…? Eren? Eren, help me!" My voice cracked with desperation. "What is this? What's happening?!"
Crack.
A vicious slap split across my cheek, white heat flashing through my skull. My head snapped to the side as pain bloomed across my face.
"Shut your filthy mouth, wench." The voice was rough, cruel, and familiar. My eyes widened in horror as I looked up and recognized the man standing before me.
He was once just another patron at the tavern—well-dressed, clean-shaven, with hollow eyes that never smiled. Now, he loomed before me, stripped of pretense, his expression twisted in contempt.
"So Eren's dead?" he spat, pacing before me. "Hmph. A pity. I wanted him to see it-to see what his precious wife had become. I wanted to see the despair in his eyes as he realized she craved the touch of any man but him, a lowly whore addicted to the pleasure my men gave her."
My breath caught. The weight of his words, the casual cruelty with which he delivered them, pressed down on my chest like a stone. And then, I saw her.
Rebecca.
The golden-clad knight stood silent as judgment, her armor gleaming like divine fire. Beside her, a figure cloaked in black lingered in shadow, unmoving, watchful.
"You see, Lady Rebecca," the man continued, spreading his arms in mock surrender, "I'm a man of business. And in my line of work, darkness is just another trade route. Nobles, priests, and even your so-called protectors rely on the services I provide. So let's not be hasty. Turn a blind eye, and we can all walk away. I even have a lovely little hostage here. I'm sure the Church would pay handsomely for her first night."
His smile was venomous, his gaze flicking between us with the smugness of a man who believed himself untouchable.
Rebecca's gaze darkened. Slowly, she raised her blade—a massive claymore glowing with runes, its edge still slick with crimson.
My stomach twisted as I followed her gaze… and saw Eren's body, butchered and headless, lying at her feet.
"You will pay for this," she whispered, her voice like cold iron.
"Bring me the weapons," the man snapped.
"Yes Aldin sir!"
Not long after hulking brute emerged from a nearby hatch, handing him a bowgun and a short axe. The man stripped off his jacket and tie, revealing a white shirt stained with sweat and malice. He took both weapons, a wicked grin curling his lips.
"Reload," he commanded.
A green aura shimmered around him, and ten spectral bolts hovered in the air like fangs.
He leveled the bowgun at Rebecca. "What say you, knight? Will you look away and save your honor—or die in vain?"
Rebecca raised her sword.
"You disgust me," she said, voice trembling not with fear, but fury. "You call yourselves men, yet all you do is prey on the weak, ravage the helpless. You are no more than beasts. And I am the blade that culls the diseased."
With that, she lunged forward.
The man fired a flurry of bolts streaking through the air, but Rebecca swept them aside with the flat of her blade, sparks bursting from steel on steel. She brought her sword down in a golden arc.
He rolled to the side, barely evading the crushing blow, then rose and lashed out with his axe. The strike rang harmlessly off her enchanted armor. She responded with a savage backhand that he ducked beneath before firing again.
She retreated two steps, her movement swift despite the weight of her plate.
A signal flashed from the man's fingers. One of the brutes holding me broke into a charge, sword raised. Three others followed, each brandishing weapons glowing with the telltale shimmer of combat arts.
The battle had begun.
One after another metallic clangs rung out as their weaponry made contact, each swing created a gashing flicker of golden light that sparkled in the moonlit night.
The muscular masses of flesh repetitively swung at their lone opponent, each swing delivered with increasing speed and intensity.
They sought an opening one to which she dared not provide to these relentless predators lunging at her with vigor.
"Resonance!" Her voice penetrated the very darkness like a toothpick through butter.
A Red Hue enlightened the alley, and the wind that stood still roared in anger. The pressure increased, and the wind seemed to plant her opponents in place, unable to break free of its fury-filled grasp.
She once again brandished her golden Claymore, ready to dispatch her opponents as she had seemingly dealt with Eren.
I once again looked over at his body, my body shivering with rage and fear, a mixture of emotions that were toxic to my once innocent mind.
"Penetrate and Explode!" the poisonous voice once again soaked my ear canals as a barrage of uncountable arrows all locked onto Rebecca went loose.
Each volley was followed by another, relentlessly digging into her armor, piercing and cracking away at its outer shell.
A sizzling sound peered from the cracks in her armor reminiscent of eggs cracked in hot oil. The sound was followed by a green puff of smoke seeping through the cracks.
"You underhanded Scum!" Rebecca's voice cracked with rage as she noticed the cracks in her armor.
"Reverse."
A clink caught my attention along was her opponent who froze in awe of the sight before him.
His resolve ruptured as he was the arrows he had pierced her armor with fall before her and the cracks in her armor begun to vanish as it they had never happened.
"Fu fu fu!" It seems am late the the party.
A thick fog seeped in covering the alleyway slowly and a voice all to familiar to me brought a smile to my face. I was anxious and scared wishing to go home but too helpless to move especially while not being fully recovered from intoxication.
Even so that voice gave me hope and the resolve to stand and run towards it.
I rushed passed Adin running towards Rebecca she froze unable to understand my actions but was also guarded not just towards me or her opponent but to the voice I ran towards.
"You bitch where do you think you're going?" Aldin grabbed at me but was instant englufed by the fog and which caused him to step back from caution.
"Granny, you're here!" I was relieved as her figure emerged from the darkness clad in a white kimono with a red and white fan in her hand.
"We'll be taking our leave miss knight the rest of this is in you're hands."