The second contract came before Eren asked for it.
He noticed the shift the moment he stepped into the common room.
People looked up.
Not all of them. Not obviously. But enough. A pause mid-conversation. A glance held a fraction longer than before. Someone who had avoided the corner tables now chose one deliberately farther away.
Recognition was a dangerous thing.
Tomas sat where he always did, posture relaxed, eyes sharp. When Eren approached, he slid another parchment forward—thicker this time, the edges darkened with age.
"This one isn't livestock," Tomas said. "And it isn't clean."
Eren unfolded it slowly.
Three missing men. All from the same patrol route beyond the eastern road. No bodies recovered. No witnesses. The last report mentioned screams—cut short.
"Guards?" Eren asked.
"Militia," Tomas corrected. "Farm boys with spears and borrowed armor."
Eren scanned the final line. A rough map. A circled location near old ruins swallowed by forest.
"What's living there," Eren said, "isn't a coincidence."
"No," Tomas agreed. "And it's not alone."
Eren exhaled through his nose. This was a step up. Not just danger—but responsibility. If he accepted, failure would echo louder than success.
The hunger stirred.
Not urgently.
Patiently.
"I'll take it," Eren said.
Tomas studied him for a moment longer than necessary. "You don't hesitate anymore."
"I learned what hesitation costs," Eren replied.
Tomas nodded once. "Come back alive."
The eastern road was quieter than the northern fields had been. Too quiet.
Eren noticed it immediately. Birds avoided the area. Insects were scarce. The forest itself felt withdrawn, branches bending inward as if listening.
The ruins emerged near dusk—stone foundations half-sunk into earth, remnants of a structure that had once mattered. Mana pooled faintly around the place, old and stagnant.
Eren slowed.
This wasn't a hunt.
It was a test.
He moved through the ruins carefully, boots silent against stone. The air smelled wrong—metallic, sour. Blood, old and new.
The first body lay near the entrance.
One of the militia. Armor torn open from the inside. Eyes wide, jaw frozen in a scream that never finished.
Eren crouched, scanning the wound.
Not claws.
Something sharper.
Something deliberate.
The system stirred, not with words—but with awareness.
Then movement.
From the shadows beyond the collapsed wall, something shifted. Tall. Lean. Too many joints bending at wrong angles. Its eyes reflected faintly, pale and knowing.
A humanoid shape—but not human.
"Ghoul," Eren muttered.
Not the mindless kind.
This one watched him.
Measured him.
It spoke.
Not with words—but with a rasping sound that scraped against thought itself.
The hunger flared.
Eren moved first.
The fight was brutal, confined to narrow stone corridors and fallen pillars. The ghoul was fast, intelligent, adapting mid-combat. It targeted joints. Went for the throat. Tried to retreat when injured.
Eren didn't let it.
He took damage—minor, manageable—but he adjusted, learned, closed angles. When he finally drove steel through its skull, the silence afterward was thick and absolute.
The hunger surged harder than before.
Deeper.
He staggered slightly as power settled into him—not overwhelming, but heavier. More defined.
Growth.
Not free.
Earned.
Eren stood over the corpse, chest rising slowly.
This was different from beasts.
This had intent.
When he returned to town the next morning, the reaction was immediate.
The missing men's families were waiting.
Not cheering.
Watching.
Eren handed Tomas the proof and said nothing.
Silver changed hands. More than before.
But the real weight wasn't the coin.
It was the looks.
Expectation had teeth.
That night, as Eren sat alone, the system stirred again.
Not cold.
Not mocking.
Something in between.
[Gluttony observes.]
Eren closed his eyes.
This world had noticed him.
And it would not look away again.