“You can use Spirit contracts with your physical body. Plus, Kiamat’s rank also requires you to be Awakened.

So this is something you are only able to do when you enter Gilaahan using your real body.”

Kino explained the Spirit contract’s intricacies to Eren along with the benefits it had. The latter was finally convinced to take Kiamat as its Contract Spirit beast.

Eren needed to break into the next rank as soon as he could. He had progressed rapidly. But since he had started late, all he was doing till now was catching up with the standards set by the rankers with him and before him.

Still, he was proud of his achievements. He looked at the testing grounds one more time before bidding adieu to Kino and Kiamat. He would return to the site using his real body in the future.

***

The days ticked by. In Gilaahan, six months passed after Eren’s ranking status reached quasi-Awakened.

Eren performed many solo missions for his guild after getting out of the Bear’s Creed testing grounds. He mostly opted for solo missions. Or he would prefer to go with known associates like Reece, Mia, Ekay, and Rhea. Occasionally, he would embark on party missions under Miranda’s or Kiara’s lead.

Stardust guild’s tussle with the House of Spiders intensified over time. Members of both guilds had started attacking one another. They would only act civilized in the kingdom-controlled regions. They would be at each other’s throats once they left the cities.

Eren had become lowkey famous among the House of Spiders ever since the details related to his battle with Geer’s team started spreading. It was the same team made of Spiders that also had Lagartha as its member.

Gian had publicly vowed to kill Eren to avenge his brother’s death. He had planned an ambush on Eren and Mia ever since he learned about their feat.

Mia had broken into the Awakened rank during these days. The Stardust guild had offered her extra protection after she became its asset. As such, she had been rendered untouchable by Gian.

Gian was also angry at Lagartha for surviving the tragedy that took his brother’s life along with the rest of the team members involved in the incident. She had reappeared in the Spiders’ midst and reported that she had managed to get away from Eren and Mia’s joint front against them.

Lagartha used a clever strategy to keep herself away from Gian’s revenge. She signed a cooperation contract with the Spiders and distanced herself from his sphere of influence. However, she still kept tabs on the Spiders and Gian under Eren’s orders.

Lagartha’s cooperation contract and her previous trust building with Spiders worked in her favor, allowing her to reap benefits without getting completely committed to the guild. Spiders expected her to eventually sign a binding contract with them. Preferably before the showdown between the two guilds. However, she and Eren had different plans.

Eren and his friends had managed to avoid a lot of traps set by the Spiders for them, thanks to the crucial information provided by Lagartha. Sometimes, Eren would let the Stardust members get attacked and killed by Spiders when they were not related to him. This way, he managed to not make it apparent to Spiders that they had Lagartha as his mole.

Lagartha had already told Eren that she didn’t want to be associated with Stardust guild members. This was because she had a history with Spiders and that was never a positive thing. Thus, the battlemage decided to make her a member of his mercenary team. The team was now three-person strong if one counted him, Ariadne, and Lagartha.

Ariadne and Lagartha were called by Eren to meet each other. Ariadne was the hired help of the guild while Lagartha was part of the Spiders. As such, the data gathered by both of them mattered to him.

Eren also told the two ladies about the plans the Stardust guild had for the Spiders. He paid handsomely and used Malcolm’s alchemy products to temporarily allow him to share information about his guild. In doing so, he managed to keep both his associates and merc team members away from harm’s way.

The Stardust guild’s traps were even deadlier than the Spiders’. Ariadne and Lagartha both were glad that they could skip the ambushes planned for their teams using Eren’s intel.

Ariadne had managed to attain the rank of Awakened during this time. She had no special attachment to the House of Spiders in the first place. And entering the Awakened rank diminished her need to keep on working for the Spiders even more.

However, she remained under Eren’s orders. Thanks to her rank-up, she demanded more resources from Spiders for her contribution.

Additionally, Eren let some of the Stardust guild members he didn’t know about getting killed by Lagartha and Ariadne to make sure they would survive in the guild. Otherwise, people would have questioned their loyalty. This was something he wanted to avoid until the final battle between the two guilds.

Reece, Mia, Ekay, Rhea, Miranda, Kia, Litho, and others had also grown over time. They allowed Eren to take up more challenging missions in groups and score more benefits for himself as well as other members of his squad.

The battlemage took part in the assassination and ambush mission with Raina Regan and Yana Shiran. He managed to take down prominent Spiders during the missions, earning him recognition among Stardust members and an even more intense form of ill-fame among the Spiders.

Despite his achievement, Eren remained a slippery eel for the Spiders. Thanks to the latest intel he had on Spiders and their movements, he always managed to stay a step ahead of them, preventing him from falling into lethal traps.

Sometimes, he would choose to fall into Spiders’ traps willingly with thorough preparation and backup. He had managed three more party wipeouts because of his counter-traps.

After the third instance of party wipeout, the Spiders started to steer away from him. He would stay away from Awakened rankers and only get involved with Meta rankers, completely dominating them. As such, setting traps for him had become a suicide event for all the Meta rankers associated with the House of Spiders.

At this point, only Gian and the rest of his crew were determined to confront and kill Eren. They had tried to target him many times. But Eren had stayed away from them because Gian had somehow managed to gain favor from two more Awakened rankers.

Eren was confident in beating Gian alone even if the latter was an Awakened ranker. However, he didn’t want to face two more Awakened rankers with him. Thus, he stayed away from Gian without Lagartha’s help.

Eren could always seek Raina’s help in taking care of Gian and his other team members. The night elf was an efficient killing machine when it came to the assassination.

However, Eren didn’t trust Raina. She had also figured out that Behlam Dorian’s sudden disappearance had something to do with Eren.

Eren had kept Behlam’s wealth to himself. And he had already sold half of them to Malcolm to make quick bucks. As such, he thought he had burned bridges to seek help from the night elf.

He started to become more deadly for his enemies ever since he was able to cast Hex spells effectively. He had mastered Hex spells at his current rank, allowing him to beat multiple opponents all by himself.

Fortunately, Eren’s opponents never lived to tell the tales of his exceptional battle prowess. For most rankers who had only heard about him in passing, he was a mystery and an enigma.

Eren refined his style as a battlemage during these six months. He focused on using his summoning spells in conjunction with his other spells. He also tried and tested various spell combos born of elemental and aspect fusions.

Through his handler Van Straban, Eren also grew close to Raquel’s faction in House Roy. Beginning to take on small jobs, he acted as House Roy’s hired help at Oasis Corp.

He had come to know that Oasis Corp was much larger than he had initially thought. Raquel’s faction in House Roy was facing internal conflict because of Raquel’s questionable actions.

Essentially, the house had stopped interfering with Bourgy’s Oasis. Due to internal conflict, Raquel and her faction had a limited space within which to act. As such, Eren didn’t have much to do but was made aware of a lot of things not known to even the citizens of the Elysian cities.

The battlemage also kept exploring Borgys’ Oasis to look for more Easter Eggs. He already had a bunch of clues regarding a few of them.

Eventually, Eren managed to absorb some Easter Eggs related to various weapon arts. They inspired him to use more weapons than what was available to him at the time.

Eren hoped he could talk with the creator of the Easter Eggs and understand his purpose for placing these Easter Eggs in the Oasis.

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