Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

"Indeed," Eren smiled before responding.

"I just need around 20 A-Rank Practitioners, preferably following the Rankers' Path," he said casually as if he were buying vegetables.

"As for the B-Ranked Practitioners and lower, send them to me in batches, as many as you can without alerting anyone. I'll pay you as per the quality and quantity, like the last time."

Eren had recently lost his seventh pseudo-avatar, and his fiend army could only do so much. He needed additional supplies for the experiment, aiming to increase the sample size to enhance the chances of finding a compatible pseudo-avatar in a shorter time.

Of course, Eren also wanted to extract the Faustian Rune Fragments from the B-Ranked and lower-level demonic Practitioners. Since they didn't need to be put into the pseudo-avatar creation experiment, Eren didn't have stringent requirements.

This wasn't the first transaction Altair Argas had done with Eren. He had sent numerous captured demonic entities to Eren over the course of a few years, knowing full well that they were as good as dead. However, Eren paid well and provided many benefits. Besides, being a fellow Anfangian and having his granddaughter attached to him were reasons enough for Altair to cooperate with Eren.

Altair didn't need to ask Eren about what he did with the demonic entities. Knowing Eren, it wasn't something he wanted to know anyway. Some boxes were better left unopened.

***

As for the supply of the B-Ranked and lower demonic Practitioners, it was obviously for the genuine demons hiding within them.

Eren had hit some form of a bottleneck after devouring a certain amount of Faustian Rune Fragments. His Ranking Status as a late-stage A-Ranked Grandmaster was partly to blame for this situation. But that wasn't the whole truth.

Eren had kept on doing what he had been doing in Anfang– albeit on a higher scale than before. Yet, there was a catch this time.

No matter how many Wrath Flames he extracted, how many foreign Elemental Attainments he assimilated, or how much Lifeforce he extracted, this bottleneck wasn't something he could get rid of simply by devouring too much.

Considering Eren's broad Ranking Path and his age, one would have to admit that he had progressed too rapidly in his Grandmaster Rank. No matter how profound it was, his Individuality wasn't ready to initiate a Rankers' Calamity to achieve the S-Rank.

It could be said that time was the best magician, and it had not cast any spell on Eren's Ranking Path yet.

After all, Eren was not even a hundred years old.

Compared to his long lifespan granted by his Grandmaster Status, he could basically be referred to as a young teen by mortal standards who still did not have facial hair growth.

And yet, this teen had decided to leave his "home" to progress on his own.

In short, Eren's bottleneck wasn't because he lacked talent or resources. It also wasn't because his originally low aptitude didn't qualify him to achieve Sagehood. He simply was too young. Plus, his Individuality was too broad to be smelted into perfection within a few hundred years.

Plus, Eren's overachievement was another reason for his current predicament.

The bottleneck Eren faced was because he had practically eaten too much without stopping to digest his gains. He had become a fat mosquito that couldn't fly because it had achieved too much success in its blood-sucking adventures.

However, this bottleneck didn't stop Eren from working steadfastly on his goals to cut back on his Tantra practice. He also didn't slow down the extraction of the Faustian Rune Fragments from the disposable demonic entities.

When other Practitioners got discouraged after seeing their stagnated progress at the end of their lifespan, Eren felt that he was just getting started. The stagnation never bothered him. It only made him hungry for more.

After all, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem, Eren could feel that his mastery over the Sin Series Marks was improving with the consistent supply of Faustian Rune Fragments. Even a speck-like progress was still progress in his eyes.

His A-Rank mana core was also getting tempered because of his consistent self-improving methods, stabilizing his foundation for the incoming Rank Upgrade.

If one were to look at Eren's current Ranking Status and his individuality, they would have to compare it against a monster who had lived for thousands of years. And if they were to look at his current age and the Lifeforce his body carried, they would be even more horrified.

***

This was not all.

Eren had experienced something really peculiar after making use of the pseudo-avatars. His Elemental Attainments were somehow getting diversified through the use of multiple clones and living multiple identities at once.

Eren's Ranking Path was incredibly broad and all-

encompassing. It wasn't a path that one could follow using traditional methods. The more Rank Upgrades he received, the more challenging things became for him.

At the periphery of the S-Rank, an almost impassable bottleneck awaited him. Unbeknownst to this, Eren had inadvertently started to get rid of the bottleneck through his pseudo-avatar plan.

Eren had essentially used his enemies as nutrients, leveraging their foundation to fuel his progress. However, all of this needed to be ironed out before the Rankers' Calamity struck him.

Thankfully, the pseudo-avatars Eren had cultivated during these five years helped him do just that. They allowed him to compartmentalize his Elemental Attainments, Weapon Comprehension, Professions, and Sin Series powers.

Each pseudo-avatar was given access to a select part of Eren's Individuality. This fragmentation enabled him to refine these fragmented parts with better efficiency and efficacy.

The use of the pseudo-avatars also enabled him to observe his own Elemental Attainments from a third-person perspective, deepening his knowledge about his own strengths and weaknesses. This was not something achievable through living a singular life.

In layman's terms…

The use of the pseudo-avatars allowed the butcher to divide his broad Ranking Path into manageable lanes. Although his Ranking Progress had essentially stagnated during the last few months, this was not necessarily a drawback for him.