Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Eren was just three units away from entering the upper stage of the F-Rank.

Of course, he knew that the path of a ranker wasn't so linear. There existed bottlenecks and lack of experiences in one's field, preventing most rankers from quickly progressing further in their ranking journeys.

So what he considered to be merely three units of difference in BTP value might turn out to be a huge mountain to scale for him. But he wasn't discouraged by that realization.

After all, this was Eren's personal best in ranking progression in terms of speed. He would have never thought that he would be able to get this close to the upper stage of the Novice rank this early in this timeline.

Eren figured that his current hard work or past timeline's experiences weren't the only reasons for his surprising progress. He could feel that the transformation he had been through by fusing with Reen also had a hand to play in it.

'The pursuit of power doesn't need a rhyme or reason.'

Thought Eren to himself and smiled. Then he looked at his ranking status and the same smile grew wider.

Eren had performed breathtakingly in his ranking wars. The low ranks were due to him not gaining enough battle points, which in turn was due to him not participating in the ranking wars as much as the other top rankers placed above him.

Eren filled the gap left by quantity with quality. He was managing so many things at once so it was only natural he couldn't initiate as many ranking wars as he wanted to.

Eren didn't ignore his potioneering practice either during these weeks. Or more like, he couldn't. That's because he was now injecting many of his products into the market, thanks to Agatha and Jack's joint efforts.

Eren had bought two time-element spells at exaggerated prices from Levine de Montmorency that acted as the support-type spells for his potion-making. Ingredient Age Expedite allowed him to expedite the age of the ingredients, allowing him to get the ingredient at the right state for better potion quality.

Ingredient Age Reverse did the opposite of Ingredient Age Expedite. But it had its limitations, as indicated by its two-star status. Still, these two support-type spells helped Eren a lot in his late-night potioneering sessions, enabling him to dish out more and better potions and other potion-related items.

Eren had also bought a movement type time element spell that made his entire body get attuned to the effects of diluted time, not just his mind. Now when he executed Sedated Perception and Stunning Speed together, he didn't feel like he was immersed in the body of water.

The sheer movement resistance his body had to fight with while he was executing Sedated Perception had now turned into a mild inconvenience when it combined the effects of two time-element spells.

Of course, the gem had also passively helped the butcher in adopting the three new time element spells together in a short time to their perfection. But he didn't gain any insights into these spells, contrary to his expectations that stemmed from his experience with learning Sedated Perception. Eren figured out that the gem's slumber might have something to do with it.

Apart from the three time-element spells, Eren had also added three fire element spells in his arsenal. His lightning element affinity granted him a bit of an edge when it came to using fire element spells.

Eren had to learn the fire-element spells because he had faced the ineffectiveness of his lightning-element spells against some of his opponents with certain elemental affinities. The most bothersome opponents for him were those with earth element affinity.

Eren's lightning element spells would always fail to damage the earth element opponents the way he desired. He would use fire-element spells against such opponents to mitigate his disadvantage.

Of course, Eren's fire-element spell executions weren't as potent as his lightning element ones. They consumed more mana and produced average results. But that didn't stop the butcher from adding extra cards to play in his deck.

Eren had to learn the fire element spells the old school way, through practice and burnt skin. He used his ranking wars as means to test his new spells, making him unpredictable sometimes.

Eren's opponents couldn't even begin to guess what this wretched close combat expert was going to do in his battles. He would use his opponents to perform R&D on them, making them go all out in their rage. That would bring the butcher to the brink of his defeat. Only then he would use his standard spells to turn the result of the match around.

Eren was now called a low-key masochist because of his performances in the ranking war. But he didn't care about his opponents or what was being talked about behind his back. Or more like he couldn't, since he had dipped his hands in one too many pies.

The 36,549 Merps Eren's status window was displaying wasn't the real projection of his accumulated wealth during this period. That was because his Merps balance was considerably reduced after buying two time-element spells from Levine and one time-element spell from LA's Novice Treasury along with three fire element spells.

Eren had risked offending the dual berserker earlier than his planned retaliation because of this very progress he had blessed himself with. He knew having more Merps was the key to expanding his battle powers as well as his potioneering skills in a short time.

Eren had many sleepless nights, extended training sessions, ranking battles with self-induced hardships, and various lectures to attend while juggling his apprenticeship duties. He had used every bit of advantage he could to make such progress in all his open fronts possible for him.

Furthermore, the effects of his hard work weren't limited to his status window alone. Eren's growth spurt had kicked in due to his enhanced training activities, making him a few inches taller.

Against his wishes, Eren's beard was soon going to make a comeback. And he felt that it was going to be fuller than before. He loathed grooming his facial hair, so this wasn't welcoming news for him amid the plenty of good ones.

Eren still boasted a lean build. But his musculature was now more prominent than before. His mana signature and his presence also radiated a sharp aura that he was now finding a little difficult to mask.

Eren looked completely different from his past self in the previous timeline. He was visually and otherwise on a different level than the sorry-ass-him he was before the time reset.

The butcher felt like he was now more in control of his future path, thanks to these obvious and not-so-obvious transformations.