The detention center.
That's right.
But this was the detention center used to imprison the royals inside the Walls.
After eating prison meals for years on end, they had gotten used to it.
Now, suddenly, a new face had appeared.
How could they not treat him to something "nice"?
"Welcome to the 'House of Men,'" one of the royals said with a smile. "We'll take good care of you."
"What?!"
The Marleyan officer stared at this cellmate in terror.
As if something had been disturbed, large groups of people all at once seemed to awaken from a daze.
They turned their eyes on the Marleyan officer—staring, sizing him up, fixing him with feverish gazes.
In their eyes,
the Marleyan officer saw one word:
"Happiness."
"?!"
"What are you doing?! I'm a man just like you!"
"Haha, exactly because you're just like us," they said, smiling as they watched him. "Exactly because you're just like us that we can all meet here, in this 'House of Men.'"
"What?!"
The Marleyan officer had no idea what they were talking about.
And it was right at that moment that a whole crowd of them grabbed hold of him.
"If you make us happy, we might consider letting you live," one said with a laugh. "Oh no, not I—we."
"No! Don't—don't come any closer!!! Stay away from me!!"
Watching this human tragedy unfold, Roger's expression became… hard to describe.
The guards at his side had seen things like this happen in the detention center plenty of times, but even they were stunned when they witnessed something this "grand" with their own eyes.
And when they saw the expression on Roger's face, they were even more shocked.
What kind of person could look that pleased while watching such a brutal scene?
After whispering among themselves, they figured out exactly who the newcomer being locked up was.
He was one of the people who had created so many cruel Titan incidents inside the Walls, releasing wave after wave of Titans into their lands.
Once they understood that, it all started to make sense.
Roger was a man from outside the Walls—and so was this prisoner.
They weren't allies. If anything, they were enemies.
The terrifying Titans were the link between them.
As humans living inside the Walls, they had originally had nothing to do with the outside world, yet so many people had died here, in the place where they'd been born and raised.
Their homeland.
And all of it was thanks to them.
Seen that way, everything became easy to explain.
With that in mind, the guard's gaze toward Roger no longer seemed so strange. Instead, it was full of understanding—and approval.
After they threw this bastard into the "House of Men," the guard left.
After that, more and more prisoners like him were brought in one after another.
And without exception, every one of them was "educated" by the nobles inside the Walls.
The guards didn't interfere at all. As far as they were concerned, as long as the prisoners didn't try to escape, anything else was fine. Whatever happened, happened.
Cigarette dangling from their lips, they would even applaud and cheer when some new "entertainment" appeared.
In the boring routine of prison life, this was the greatest form of amusement they had.
Weird as it was…
It had become a sort of traditional "festival."
Bad people torturing other bad people.
That, in Roger's eyes, was "utopia."
After that, there wasn't much else to be done.
Once Roger sent the Marleyan officers into prison, the people inside the Walls began the work of rebuilding their homeland.
It was hard—extremely hard—but the humans inside the Walls, tempered by all they had suffered, did not lose heart.
They slowly began to reconstruct their homes.
The corpses inside the Walls were gathered up.
To prevent plague, they burned the bodies.
"Back when humanity fought against the Titans, we used fire to burn them to death."
By the towering pyre, an old man stood beside Roger, warming himself.
That was what he said.
Roger frowned slightly in confusion.
"Fire can kill Titans too?" he asked.
"Fire can destroy everything—burn all things to ash," the old man said, then quietly walked away.
Roger watched his retreating back, deep in thought.
[He's not from this world.]
All of a sudden, the Parasite, Ken Kaneki, spoke.
"What do you mean by that?"
[I don't really know how to explain it to you, but I just have this instinct. He isn't a human of this world, and he doesn't have even the slightest trace of this world's World Source on him.]
"Then who is he?"
[Who knows.]
[There are countless worlds in the universe, countless civilizations. Who could ever know that many things? Even I still know very little about this world.]
Hearing this, Roger stared after the old man's fading figure, his expression meaningful.
Maybe…
An even greater calamity was coming.
Roger sighed.
All of a sudden, he heard breathing behind him.
It was supposed to be deliberate breathing, yet it sounded almost like normal breathing.
But Roger's body tensed instantly.
It wasn't that he was particularly sensitive to the sound of human breath—rather, it was that this breathing…
Had only just now sud!den!ly! ap!peared!
If it wasn't invisibility,
then the person behind him had to be a top-tier stealth assassin.
And in Roger's mind, there was no one in the world better at stealth than him.
If there was supposedly no one better than him…
Then that could only mean that this person had quite literally appeared out of nowhere.
"Yoshikage Kira!!"
All at once, Roger remembered that name.
The name of the owner of the hand that had appeared from that cracked black hole.
According to Ken Kaneki, this "Yoshikage Kira" could turn anyone he touched into a bomb that could be detonated at any time.
And once his hand brushed against you—
Even the slightest touch, the tiniest contact, could bring a deadly disaster down on your head!
So he had to move, fast!!
Swish!
The dagger Roger had kept hidden up his sleeve at all times slid into his hand.
He let it spin half a turn, gripped the hilt, and in almost the same instant—in the span of a single breath—Roger spun around.
Without thinking, he stepped sharply back and thrust the tip of the dagger straight forward.
However!
Just then—
"B-Boss!! It's me!"
"It's me, Tours!"
Shhh—
The tip of the blade stopped right in front of Tours' eyes.
But it still sliced off several of his eyelashes.
He froze, completely stunned, his whole body trembling.
For all that he was a big, burly man, right now he was drenched in cold sweat.
"S-Sorry, boss. I just wanted to test my potential a little. I didn't think…"
Hearing that, Roger was a bit surprised.
Since when had this kid's stealth gotten this good?
He had almost been "assassinated" because he hadn't sensed him at all.
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