Chapter 149: Multiple Playthroughs — The Betrayal Arc!
The awakening came with a sickening familiarity. It wasn't a violent impact, but a slow coagulation of his consciousness, like a bubble rising from sludge. Eren sensed the solid ground beneath him and heard the familiar wind of Paradis. The residual corruption in his Soul Gem had grown heavier, a reminder of yet another failed attempt. He knew he was back, carrying more memories and a deeper exhaustion.
He had no time to process the emotional rubble of his failure. The global alert, the multi-national proxy wars, the endless attrition and infiltration—all of it had drowned him. He had tried to use deterrence, to build an indestructible safe haven, but the result was uniting the entire world against Paradis, leading to an endless war that consumed everything.
What was the root cause? It was no longer the Titans, no longer Marley, not even a specific nation or power. All the beings who had gained supernatural power and broken the balance pointed to a single source.
Kyubey. And the "contracts" it brought.
It was like a cheat code with a price. But the price was so minuscule that people flocked to it, turning ordinary humans into unpredictable, unstable factors.
"I have to eliminate the source."
A new, iron-clad rule formed in Eren's mind. He realized that defense and counter-attacks were not enough. Only by cutting off Kyubey's chain of influence at its very root could he truly stop the tragedy from repeating.
But he didn't know how to do it.
Instead of thinking, he acted. He would use the foresight from his loops and his own overwhelming magical power to conduct a global cleanup of Kyubey. He would find the earliest contractees, the ones who, under Kyubey's influence, became the starting points of regional instability.
And then, he would "clear" them.
In his mind, this wasn't war. It was firefighting. Extinguishing the blaze just as it began. Of course, this was just a plan his own "not-so-smart" brain had cooked up. Whether he could do it, whether it would succeed, he didn't know. If it failed… he'd just go again.
He made his arrangements, ordering his Jaegerists to kill any white creatures on sight and to protect certain specific people. Then, he left Paradis Island.
He explained himself to no one.
Using the stealth and high-speed movement granted by his magic, he became a ghost, moving through the darkness. Guided by his memories, he tracked the key figures who were fated to make contracts with Kyubey at this point in time. A young hero of an oppressed nation, the first to stand up and resist. A test subject in a great power's secret experiment. An ordinary person in a dark corner, making a desperate wish to the white creature.
His actions were swift, and he left no survivors. He gave them no chance to explain or beg for mercy. At first, he felt a sense of apology, but he quickly grew numb. In his eyes, these "contractees" were no longer people. They were carriers of a disease. Sources of infection that had to be removed.
However, in the eyes of the outside world, Eren's actions were nothing less than a brutal "witch hunt." The powerful "Devil of Paradis" was globally hunting down people who had suddenly gained new powers. He was assassinating symbols of resistance against dictators, secret weapons that nations had pinned their hopes on, and even ordinary people who had only wished for the power to protect their families.
Every "cleansing" was accompanied by blood and terror. Global opinion shifted from fear to extreme rage. "The Devil of Paradis" became his public title once more. Eren was nailed to the villain's pillar of shame.
Kyubey did nothing. It didn't stop Eren's actions. It just sat quietly, watching his seemingly insane rampage. Eren's "cleanup operation" was, in itself, creating an astronomical amount of fear, despair, rage, and a thirst for revenge. Eren's bloody methods had, unintentionally, become Kyubey's most efficient energy harvester.
The greatest irony was that Eren's hunt, far from stopping the spread of contracts, was actually accelerating it. Faced with this powerful and ruthless hunter, many human communities, in a desperate bid for self-preservation, for revenge, or simply to gain the power to fight him, sought out Kyubey's contracts even more actively.
Kyubey's "business," far from diminishing, became exceptionally "busy" thanks to humanity's desperation for survival and power. For every one he "cleared," ten new ones rose to take their place.
Eren soon realized this horrifying cycle. He was Sisyphus, exhausting himself to push a boulder, only to find more boulders rolling down the mountain. His speed at "clearing" could never keep up with the birth rate of new contractees. Human desire, pain, and the lust for power were being infinitely amplified by Kyubey in this chaotic era, becoming an inexhaustible wellspring of new contracts, like "wildfire that cannot be burned away, which grows again with the spring breeze."
Even more fatal, his extreme "ends justify the means" approach, which "asked no questions and only looked at the result," had cost him every potential sympathizer and ally. The outside world saw him as a demon king, to be fled from or hunted down.
And his comrades on Paradis Island, the ones who had been through life and death with him, the ones he had trusted with his back, could not accept this indiscriminate slaughter that implicated the innocent. They saw the growing madness and coldness in Eren's eyes, and they saw the corpses at his feet—contractees who could have had different fates.
Trust collapsed with every "cleansing." The rift between them became an uncrossable chasm. They tried to stop him, to bring back the Eren they once knew, but they were met with a wall of ice, forged from determination and exhaustion.
In the end, Eren found himself a true pariah.
His former comrades stood against him, their hearts filled with pain and resolve. The surviving contractees and victims of the world, consumed by a bone-deep hatred, united to attack him. He was now forced to face an endless, regenerating wave of new Magical Girls, all seeking his life for revenge.
His power was still immense, but his weary soul, his lost faith, and the desperate situation of being an enemy to all, made it impossible for him to turn the tide.
The moment he fell, he thought he saw Kyubey's inorganic eyes, watching him dispassionately from on high. This entire spectacle, revolving around it and the power it brought, was just another energy harvest.
Kyubey's emotionless indifference even made Eren feel a sense of shame.
This time, he had failed again. He had not lost to a great enemy, but to his own chosen path into the abyss.