In a basement, we could see Edward hanging upside down, his mask slightly cracked. But how did he end up like this?
Well…
Flashback
We could see Edward pulling a Madara Uchiha move, reinforcing his body with chakra. He was using a fighting style based on the *Falling Flower of the Zenin*, spreading a dense layer of chakra around his body. The moment something touched it, he struck back.
"Fuck… how did Madara make this look so easy?!" he shouted, landing a punch straight into a cannibal's face.
But for a brief instant, he felt something slip into the chakra cloud.
Edward instantly shifted all his chakra into a single point—his abdomen.
A punch was unleashed with pure brute force, accompanied by a flash of white light. Touma was sent flying a considerable distance, but a black liquid soon began leaking from beneath Edward's mask.
"Well, my dear boy, it's quite rude to enter a lady's home and be violent toward your own kind, don't you think?" said an elegant feminine voice.
Edward struggled to stop the bleeding.
"Now I'm fucked… Rosie…" he muttered, pulling whatever weapon he could from his inventory—one of Angel Thompson's guns.
"Well now… you have such an appearance. Skin almost human, a well-trained physique—not too muscular, not too soft. Perfect~"
She smiled sharply as her shadow expanded, similar to Alastor's, but far more refined and controlled. The shadow crawled onto Edward's body and bit into him, causing a jet of blood to spray out.
"The worst part isn't the blood spray being dramatic," Edward complained, "it's because I'm forcing chakra through my body the hard way…"
He tried to shoot her, but the shadow's hand covered his own. Like a parasite, it spread across half his body.
"Well then… I'll let the meat marinate. How about a little appetizer~?"
End of flashback
Back in the present, we could now see Edward more clearly. He looked around—and that's when we noticed his missing arm.
That was Rosie's "appetizer."
"Shit…" he rasped, trying to think.
Through a haze of hallucinations, he remembered a good man who had once been in a similar situation.
Arthur Morgan.
"Come on…" Edward muttered, swinging back and forth until he fell face-first onto the floor. The sound of cracking porcelain echoed as his mask shattered. His horns retracted as we saw his back.
"Damn it… that was my favorite disguise mask…" he said calmly, wiping the shards from his face.
His true face was revealed: pitch-black eyes, a thin-lined mouth, and a large scar running along the left side of his face.
"Well… time to fix this."
The place looked like a mix between a morgue and a butcher shop. He needed a new arm—something good. He went deeper inside, where each coffin became more luxurious than the last, preserving the bodies in pristine condition.
"No, no, no… she has *this*?" he muttered.
One coffin emitted a faint white glow—angelic steel.
Without hesitation, he opened it.
Inside lay the body of an angel, unlike the others.
Edward grabbed a clipboard and began reading.
"Prototype Exterminator Angel. Pre-Origin flesh. Its taste is excellent, but more importantly, it has a unique connection to angelic magic tied to forests. The downside is that this may be the last remaining body—upon death, it turns into a tree. That's why I designed this special capsule to keep it in a semi-death state. While alive, they regenerate exceptionally well."
Edward leaned against the capsule.
"Well, buddy… you're basically Hell's Hashirama, aren't you?"
He glanced at a surgical station, growled, and grabbed an angelic steel saw, carefully measuring the arm. The skin was pale as paper—clearly a biological weapon from another era.
Some time later
Edward was drenched in sweat as his new arm drained his remaining chakra like a sponge.
[Congratulations! You have obtained a Unique-Rank item: Arm of Eden]
Description:
A limb taken from the prototype Exterminator Angels created before the Origin. These were homunculi based on Adam's creation. They possess a minuscule fragment of Eden's energy, granting them the ability to form rods with effects nearly identical to angelic steel—the latter being its finalized version. Due to material scarcity and ethical objections among angels, the project was discontinued. The most notable subject was a homunculus known as Santana.
The system spoke calmly as Edward struggled to read.
"But that doesn't explain the drain…"
[According to the system: Chakra is a vital energy, rich and similar in nature to sacred energy. The arm is currently undergoing metamorphosis.]
"Fuck it," Edward said as he stood up.
He clenched his hand, then pointed in a random direction. A black spike shot out at high speed and embedded itself into the wall.
"I like that."
He pulled his hoodie back on, forming a thick black rod and slamming it into the ground. With sheer brute force, he reshaped it into an improvised war hammer.
With Rosie
Rosie calmly sipped tea while watching an old TV playing one of Alastor's broadcasts. She was in a good mood—today she had acquired meat that, to her, rivaled the finest beef.
Boom.
She snapped her head toward the basement.
Touma burst out, the stone seal shattered at the tip. He shook off the debris and stared at her.
"Round two, bitch."
He took a fighting stance.
Rosie smiled savagely as her shadow lunged forward—but Edward used his staff to launch himself into the air, closing the distance. He swung, but a creature of white fire—a gremlin-like being—appeared and absorbed the blow.
Rosie leapt back and raised her hand. A massive tentacle lined with mouths surged toward Edward.
"Shit…"
Edward formed another rod to block it, snapped it at the last second, and used the sharpened edge to slice through the tentacle. But he was exhausted.
"Man, is this arm made of Hashirama cells or what?!" he shouted.
He used a larger rod to keep the shadow at bay, activating the Falling Flower technique again, deflecting everything he could.
He knew he would lose.
This place would be his grave.
Unless…
"Rosie," Edward said, stopping completely. "I came to negotiate."
Nothing happened.
"Well then… what can the little one offer me~?" she purred, approaching with a sway of her hips.
"My soul," Edward said, voice trembling. "In exchange, I want full protection. If any Overlord lays a hand on me, they suffer backlash. And I want power in return—growth like Alastor's if you can't make it."
One of his eyes was blood-red from strain.
"Well~ it's not often we play this game~" Rosie said sweetly.
"Very well. A deal is a deal~"
As the contract sealed, Edward felt something tighten in his throat.
But did she truly understand?
And what exactly was the real meaning of that contract?