“Aaaaaaah! Help. Someone help. Eren Idril is trying to r*pe me.”
Sienna didn’t waste time after assuming an ideal ‘damsel’ position. Her friends had accidentally brought Ken in the vicinity by then. He heard the shout, recognized the voice to be Sienna’s and rushed to the ‘crime scene’.
Eren wanted to get his hands off of Sienna. But he couldn’t. He had regressed in his ranking journey due to changing his path to be a berserker midway while others only progressed. Therefore he couldn’t get rid of the overwhelming BTP difference between him and Sienna even when the latter belonged to a non-combat class.
Before Eren could say or see anything, he saw a mana-coated fist gradually getting larger in his eyesight. Then everything went black.
When Eren came to be, he experienced severe pain in his nose. His eyesight had become groggy. His mouth had a taste of iron in it, which was his blood due to the severe injury. He tried to fix his eyesight by shaking his head but that action almost made him lose consciousness again.
It took Eren a while to gain complete clarity. When he did, he noticed his hands and feet were tied. He was still at the same meeting place. But now he was apparently in the middle of the crowd that was surrounding him.
Eren looked at the crowd. The people were looking at him in ridicule and scorn. Like he was the lowest human being on earth. His appearance of being bloodied with a broken nose didn’t help his image either. It did not invoke the feeling of pity in any one of them. Everyone felt like he deserved it.
Even friends of Sienna who had kinda guessed what must have taken place at the scene didn’t feel any trace of pity for him. It was his mistake for Sienna being Sienna and him being a nobody. They would use Eren as a ladder if they have to and a use-and-throw rug when they need to.
Eren saw Ken who was looking at him with barely contained rage. He was holding Sienna in his embrace who was weeping and whimpering on his chest. Her head had been buried in his pecks, her body glued to Ken’s without any care.
Ken’s one hand was caressing Sienna’s head while the other hand wrapped around her waist. He had stretched his legs in a flipped-V to accommodate Sienna, compensating for his taller stature. The guy looked like an incarnation of justice with his pose and a damsel by his side.
Ken’s one hand was coated in red. It was clear who had punched Eren. But as if the real-life knockout wasn’t enough, the Riverine prodigy decided to punch the guy with his words as well:
“You piece of shit. You didn’t have the brain to understand a simple no. So you resorted to forcing yourself on Sienna?
I had told her to press charges against you when you first tried to get all touchy with her. But she wouldn’t listen, saying something about not wanting to use her family name against a student with a common background.
But look what that has gotten her into? She still tried to make peace with you by accepting your apology. But this is how you say sorry?
This has been my eye-opener.
I thought only rich kids acted spoiled and shameless. But I was wrong. The evil is in all of us, reserved-ordinary, rich-poor, common-noble. It doesn’t matter.
You know what you have done right? You have ruined the image of all common students who have worked hard to get into this academy. You have also ruined the already criticizable image of reserved category students.
Sienna, listen to me. Don’t back away from this now. You have to press charges against a maniac like him. Lest he becomes a threat to anyone else.”
Sienna stopped crying. She didn’t know what to do or say. It wasn’t like she didn’t want Eren to suffer anymore. But pressing charges against Eren would backfire on her.
When Sienna had claimed to everyone that Eren had tried to breach her formal physical boundaries, according to her it happened at the potion lab when everybody had left. Eren was only used to coming in contact with her and all the students at that time. Plus, he was used to staying late in the lab due to his additional practises. So that lie became believable.
But that lie contained Sienna’s lie. The lab had visual monitoring artefacts. Had she pressed charges, the visual footage of the lab would have gotten analyzed and everybody would come to know she was lying through her teeth.
So Sienna played smart and skipped on pressing charges by saying something ridiculous to Ken. But the guy not only bought her BS, he even started respecting her for it. Yes, Ken was kind of a guy you’d find in hero stories acting as the protagonist while wearing the goggles of justice on his eyes.
Even in this incident, Sienna didn’t have solid proof. She had cleared off this area from any potential eyewitnesses that would witness anything she didn’t want them to witness. But in doing so, she had prevented a valid third-party eyewitness that would hold ground against such cases.
Therefore, the case would involve ranked entities if Sienna decides to press charges. Those entities could use special spells, artefacts or any other means to dig the truth out, which would again be detrimental to her.
Sienna saw the hope in the lab potioneer in charge of the first years that had come at the place as she had asked him to. The guy was completely obedient to her. He noticed her eye signs and stepped forward:
“Ken Riverian, you shouldn’t punch anyone outside the battle arena. It is against the academy’s rules. I will overlook this incident due to special circumstances but don’t break any more rules now. Sienna dear, tell me what you want to do now. Do you want to press charges or take a different approach?”
Sienna quickly thought of a way out. She remembered her promise to Eren at that time and decided to deliver on it:
“Sir lab in-charge, I saw a friend in Eren but he acted in this way, not once but twice. I should press charges against him. And I want to. But I won’t do that. Because the guy’s base nature wouldn’t change even if we throw him outside the academy and into some city prison. He would become even more dangerous than he is right now after being released.
Why not change Eren’s way of life then, to make him benign to society? I propose you sign a binding contract with him that would serve as a restraining order and more.
The conditions would be as follows.
1) Eren would not harm or conspire against any of his fellow LA students consciously, subconsciously, or through any other means or personnel.
2) Eren would not commercialize his potion-making anywhere consciously, subconsciously, or through any other means or personnel.
3) Eren would always stay within the Edinburgh kingdom and not leave it under any condition consciously, subconsciously, or through any other means or personnel.
4) Eren would be required to make every woman he is about to sleep with, say “I know I’m sleeping with a potential r*pist, and I willingly consent to it.” The statement needs to be said word-to-word, and Eren can’t alter the words consciously, subconsciously, or through any other means or personnel.
5) The contract’s duration is a lifetime. Any form of breach in any of the above-mentioned pointers would result in Eren’s mana core getting wasted and him dying immediately afterwards.
Sir lab-in-charge, use a C-Rank contract you might have in store to bind Eren with so he wouldn’t be able to break it anytime soon. With this contract, everyone would feel safe and Eren would be able to turn a new leaf on his life.”
The viscount house’s vixen came up with the harshest terms for a mana binding contract. The first pointer was for her safety. She just added every student of LA to make it less obvious.
The second and third pointers were something she had already promised Eren to do with him. At first, she was going to use her family power to do that but she found a more efficient way to implement her judgement on Eren through the contract.
The fourth point was something Sienna came up with on the spur of the moment. She wanted Eren to live a miserable life. Keeping him sexually frustrated was a good way to do it.
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The fourth point was another reason Eren had resorted to using an aphrodisiac on women. No sane girl in her right mind would say something like this just before they were about to have sex and still proceed with the act.
Therefore Eren had to blur their consciousness and make them say that statement word-to-word before proceeding forward. Otherwise, he would die if the contract breach takes place.
The women would feel miserable after remembering what they had been made to say by the devil they had slept with. That’s where all the disgust and dissatisfaction came from.
Eren could only find solace in hookers after the same scenes kept happening to him post his academic years. Then he found comfort in hookers who would say that statement as if it rolled off their tongues, sans the surprise and disgust.
Eren never looked back after he found professional help. Yes, he was still sexually frustrated. But he had found a channel to vent it, even if ever so slightly.
**************
Eren didn’t say anything against signing a contract. Even if he cried that he was innocent in all this, it would not help him. The crowd might even turn violent in response to his genuine pleas.
And a sold-out lab in-change was in cahoots with Sienna. What were his chances of finding genuine help from the academy? Almost zero, he thought.
At first, Eren had underestimated Sienna’s reach. But later on, he overestimated it due to seeing the behavioural changes of entire lab staff and lab-in-charge. He thought there was no use going against the entire system.
That’s why Eren chose to do nothing when he first heard about the fake gossip about him. He thought he was protecting himself from any potential repercussions when in fact he was making himself prone to more severe ones.
Regret is a bitter pill to swallow.
Eren didn’t find any other choice but to sign the contract at that time. He wasn’t sure Sienna couldn’t buy an academy’s investigator that gets assigned to his case if he decides to reverse-press charges of defamation on her. She had already bought a lab-in charge. How hard would it be for her to conspire with the investigation team?
The lab-in charge produced the C-Rank contract from his storage that he had bought by paying a huge sum of money. But he knew he’d get compensated by Sienna so he didn’t mind using it here.
The contract took place between Eren and the lab-in-charge. It was practically impossible for the former to break the contract from his end. Eren read the conditions once again before signing the document with his blood. The sanguine blood was imbued in his mana that contained his mana signature.
The lab-in-charge did the same. The contract needed a name for its completion. The lab-in-charge proposed a name and everyone agreed with it.
The contract was given the name of ‘LA’s Recluse Rapist’ to taunt Eren some more. The incident became famous in LA and outside it as a Recluse Rapist Incident.
Eren’s life resumed after the incident. But it was never the same. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to Nina’s place with such infamy stuck to him.
Eren didn’t want to drag Nina’s business down by being with her. So he had dropped the idea of going to her place after graduating.
Plus, she knew about his recluse nature and his awkwardness when it came to girls. To her, that incident looked believable. At least that’s what Eren thought.
The real victim of the whole incident didn’t want to face his aunt’s judgemental eyes too just to justify himself. He didn’t want to go through another victim shaming.
Eren was a ghost of his former self. He put all his frustrations into at least passing the academy. Because that was all he could do to cope up with his mental state, channelling his energy into something that mattered to him.
Eren had always been a hard-working guy. That hard work, that sore body and worn-out sense of existence gave him the strength to sleep at night.
By the time Eren moulded himself into a half-assed berserker, his academic years were over. His merit points were just enough to pass the fifth year. The damage his image took was even worse than his grades.
The contract forced Eren to not seek or apply for potioneer’s license. What would he do with the real or fake license if he can’t commercialize his potions? His potion-making career was over.
With his infamous name, Eren couldn’t find any hunters’ or adventurers’ party to be a part of for an extended amount of time. One way or the other they’d always come to know about his academic incident.
Even after the previous heat dying down on him after some years, Eren’s name again sprang up when he tried to sleep with women using roofies. Eren stopped caring about hunting in the party when that happened.
Eren could not even leave the kingdom to seek better opportunities. He was trapped in a cell that was slowly shrinking on him.
Some years after Eren’s graduation.
Even with all the risks he took in his missions and all the lucky encounters, Eren still did not manage to go beyond the initial-stage D-Rank. Most of his successful academy peers were either on the upper stage of D-Rank or had already stepped into C-Rank. They were in a better position in terms of the ranking journey, social standing, and economical condition.
A girl named Sienna Slughorn had delivered on her promise. She had sent him to his ruin while keeping him alive to experience it. Eren later came to know that she and Ken had entered C-Rank together and had gotten married.
Eren was even angrier at the world and himself after knowing such news about his peers. He felt sadness, wrath, jealousy, injustice and everything in between.
So the hookers and booze became his only respite, which became his eventual downfall as well.
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Author’s Note: The Recluse R*pist incident completes with this chapter release. It was the major reason behind Eren’s sorry state in his past life. Let me know what you think about the incident. ?