The worthless Ex-Convict returns to rule the world.

CHAPTER 6: Cleaning out the Block

Eren’s eyes burned pure, undivided gold in the pitch-black cell.

Where the lethal black-site mana gas had been dissolving his internal organs moments before, something fundamental changed in his chest. The Sovereign Core flared. The toxic cloud didn't disperse—it flowed directly into him. Not through his throat, but pulled inward through every pore, rushing into the hollow void where his Spirit Marrow had once been.

The core drank it down like a parched throat taking in cold spring water.

Eren gasped. His back arched off the floor. The gas was still pouring into the cell, still thick enough to kill a hundred men, but every lungful that entered his body was being pulled into the golden light and consumed. 

The pain didn't vanish; It transformed. The searing burn in his lungs blossomed into a surging warmth. The sludge in his veins cleared, replaced by a rushing current of golden energy that rewired his broken pathways.

“Shit! It's eating the purge,” he realized, pushing himself up onto his bare feet. ‘’The stronger the poison, the faster I grow.’’

The gas kept coming. The vents were still open, still pumping at maximum capacity—a concentration designed to clear the entire level of life. But Eren Strong was no longer dying. He was feeding.

His organs rebuilt themselves. His blood cleared. His withered muscles filled out. The deep-iron discoloration on his skin burned away, leaving tight, dense muscle over heavy bone. Three years of prison decay dissolved in less than sixty seconds.

Beside the cell doorway, the amber energy barrier sputtered and shorted out, its control grid overloaded by the raw sovereign pressure radiating from his body. Eren stepped over the threshold into the main corridor of Sub-Level Zero.

The cell was gone. The energy barrier died, the walls stained black with gas residue.

The corridor beyond was a graveyard. Bodies lay crumpled against the obsidian walls where the purge had caught them. Across the aisle, Old Marsh sat slumped against his cell barrier, his poison-warped hands frozen in a clawing motion. Three cells down, the hoarse woman lay still.

Eren walked past them without slowing. He didn't feel triumph, nor did he feel pity. Sub-Level Zero had been designed to break men into dust; it had merely cleared away everything in Eren that was weak.

The gas was still thick enough to choke on. He breathed it in like fresh air, feeling his core pulse with every inhalation. The purge was making him stronger. Every minute, every breath, every lungful of concentrated poison, all of it was fuel. 

He reached the end of the corridor.

The blast door was sealed, a slab of reinforced obsidian three feet thick, the same alloy that had once bound his wrists. It was designed to contain the purge, to prevent any survivors from escaping the lower levels.

Eren placed his bare palm against the frozen metal.

"You kept me in the dark for three years," he murmured.

The golden light in his chest roared. Reversing the flow of his pathways, he drew the anti-magic iron's internal energy straight into his core. The reinforced blast door didn't shatter—it disintegrated into fine black dust that settled onto the wet flagstones.

He stepped through the ruined doorway into the middle prison block.

Sirens were wailing through the higher sectors—the frantic, blaring horns of an internal containment breach. But here in the middle tier, the purge haze still hung heavy, trapped between the narrow catwalks.

He didn't make it far before the first inmate stepped out of the shadows.

"Hold it."

The man was huge. A slab of muscle and scar tissue, head shaved, arms covered in prison tattoos that marked him as one of the block bosses. Behind him, three more inmates emerged from the haze, each carrying a makeshift weapon. Sharpened bone. A length of chain. A jagged piece of obsidian ripped from a wall.

Eren stopped.

"You're the one from the lower cells," the big man said. "The one who walked through the purge. We heard the commotion. Thought we'd come see for ourselves."

He stepped closer, close enough that Eren could smell the rot on his breath.

"You don't look like much."

Eren tilted his head. "And you are?"

"Grendel." The man said it like it meant something. "I run this block. Have for six years. Anyone who wants to breathe in Sub-Level Zero breathes because I let them."

He gestured at the other inmates.

"So here's how this works. You show up in my territory, you show me respect. You show me what you've got. And if I'm not impressed..." He shrugged. "Well. The gas already killed most of the trash. Nobody's going to notice one more body."

Eren looked at him for a long moment.

Then he walked forward.

Grendel's fist came up. A haymaker, slow and heavy, the kind of punch that broke jaws and caved in skulls. It connected with Eren's face and stopped dead, the impact dispersing through his body like a stone dropped into deep water.

The golden core pulsed.

Eren didn't flinch. Didn't stagger. Didn't even blink.

"That," he said, "was a mistake."

Grendel stared at his own fist, then at Eren's unmarked face. "What—"

Eren's hand closed around his throat.

The big man weighed three hundred pounds. He had muscles like cable, bones like iron, a body honed by years of violence. It didn't matter. Eren lifted him off his feet with one hand and slammed him into the wall hard enough to crack the obsidian.

Grendel wheezed, clawed at the grip, kicked his legs. The other inmates froze.

"Six years," Eren said quietly. "You've been running this block for six years. That means you've been here longer than me. That means you've seen things. Suffered things. Maybe you even think you've earned the right to be king of the garbage."

He squeezed.

Grendel's face went purple.

"But I don't care about your kingdom. I don't care about your rules. I don't care about you." He released the grip, letting Grendel crumple to the floor, gasping. "I'm leaving. Anyone who tries to stop me gets broken. Anyone who follows me gets worse."

He turned to the other three inmates.

One of them, a wiry man with a shiv, lunged.

The blade hit Eren's shoulder and snapped. The kinetic force converted instantly, flooding his body with warmth, and he backhanded the man across the corridor without breaking stride. The wiry inmate hit the far wall and didn't get up.

The remaining two dropped their weapons.

Eren walked past them.

The block was a maze of corridors and cells, each one stained with the same rot and filth. Inmates watched him from the shadows. Silent. Wary. Hungry for violence but smart enough to hold back. He could feel their eyes on him, could sense the calculations happening behind every face.

A woman with a shaved head and arms covered in burn scars stepped into his path.

"You killed Grendel?"

"Didn't kill him. Just broke his pride."

"Same thing, in here." She studied him. "You're the one they threw in the bottom cell. The traitor. The one whose woman stole his core."

Eren stopped.

"That's me."

"I heard stories about you. Before you came down here. They said you were strong. They said you were going to be somebody." She spat on the floor. "Then they said you were nothing. Just another convict rotting in the dark."

"And now?"

She looked at him. Really looked. Her eyes traced the golden glow behind his pupils, the unmarked skin, the way the gas curled around him like a living cloak.

"Now I think the stories were wrong." she muttered, her eyes catching the faint golden shimmer curling off his skin. "The rumors said they threw a broken traitor into the pit. Looks like the rumors were wrong."

Eren didn't answer. At the far end of the block, he bypassed the upper stairwells and headed straight toward the heavily reinforced, sealed bulkheads marking the restricted lower vaults.