After arriving at a random parking garage on a whim, Eric sat down on the ground somewhere towards the back of the garage and breathed a sigh of relief.
'Wow, I seriously thought that she was about to punch me there for a second.'
Eric couldn't help but shake his head just thinking about it.
When he had seen Aria clench her hands tightly earlier, he was almost certain that the woman was going to throw a punch or two at him, or even worse.
And although he had a somewhat good enough robust physique to handle a couple of punches from Aria, he still didn't want to get punched regardless.
That was why when he saw Aria got angry at him for reasons he still doesn't currently understand at the moment, he quickly thought of something somewhat truthful and emotionally shocking yet still ambiguous to say and then quickly left the scene before she could even react.
And luckily, it somehow ended up actually working out for him in the end.
'Seems like all those years on Earth watching drama movies actually paid off, huh.'
Well anyways, now that was all done and over with, Eric wanted to go home and relax for a bit before thinking about what to do next.
With that in mind, Eric got up from the ground and prepared to head back home.
But just as he was about to leave though, he noticed for a very brief second a woman get into her heavily tinted dark gray car about a couple of parking spaces away from him and start up her car.
He didn't manage get a very good look at the woman's appearance since she had been wearing a light black coat that completely covered her body with a hoodie, and a black baseball cap over her head, but Eric had a bad feeling about her.
After all, he immediately recognized the car that the woman was driving.
Furthermore, the woman's physique, despite it being well covered, was very similar to a certain person's he knew very well.
'Could it be...?'
Eric thought about it for a second before deciding to wait in the parking garage for a little longer to see what would happen next.
And as he had suspected, the car didn't move out of its parking space and remained idle in its spot despite having its engine started.
"Ah for fucks sake." Eric couldn't help but curse out loud.
Although Eric had already speculated and was positive that Aurora had been observing him the entire time yesterday after his talk with Aria and she told Aurora about it, he was still shocked to see it actually happen right before his very eyes.
Really, doesn't the stupid protagonist of this novel have anything better to do like find the non-existent organization that was praying for her downfall, or better yet, go actually kill the other 9 villains before him?
Why does she have to constantly monitor him now just because he came up to Aria yesterday?
'I swear, Aurora must have at least some feelings for Aria, or else it wouldn't make any sense.'
Well whatever it was, Eric's mind wasn't calm at the moment, especially since he was now uncertain if Aurora was about to kill him or not.
If he hadn't entered this parking garage and hadn't seen how well covered up she was, then he would've likely assumed that Aurora wouldn't kill him yet and was merely just observing.
But unfortunately, he had the memories of reading the novel and his past lives and knew very well what it meant when the Aurora from an early regression cycle went this far to cover herself.
With that, Eric ultimately decided that he needed to do something fast and didn't want to leave it up to chance about whether Aurora was going to kill him soon or not.
Just as Eric was coming up with a plan in his mind though, the gray car that had previously been idle for awhile suddenly stopped running and shut off.
So without hesitation, Eric ran at full force towards the exit of the parking garage, hoping that he could get out to the public's eye in time and make Aurora reluctant to make a move on him.
But before he could even get 10 steps away from the grey car though, he heard a small popping sound from behind as a small grenade flew right past his face.
It was then...
BOOM!
An explosion erupted right before Eric's eyes, and a bunch of metal fragments flew everywhere, hitting the garage's concrete walls and any of the cars that were unlucky to be parked towards the end.
Luckily, none of the fragments managed to hit Eric's body, as the grenade had accidentally been thrown too far, and without wanting to risk it any further, he turned back around to face the culprit.
From there, he saw the woman, who was definitely Aurora, covered up completely from head to toe again, with absolutely almost no visible skin or any identifiable features showing.
Only her black eyes could be seen, but it was obvious that she was wearing color changing contact lenses to hide her real eye color.
"Seriously, this is just ridiculous." Eric unintentionally stated out loud as he inwardly sighed.
Just because he had acted on impulse the moment he regained all of his memories yesterday morning and wanted to try and kill her off quickly, he had inadvertently made Aurora more powerful than she originally was at this point in the story.
After all, that grenade that she had thrown at him just now was originally his to begin with.
And since he had also briefly checked the rest of the traps he had set up and saw that they were all gone this morning before he went out to eat, he was certain that Aurora now has a bunch of weapons and traps that she wouldn't of been able to get her hands on as a normal civilian at her disposal.
In other words, he literally managed to become his own worst enemy and fucked himself over from the very beginning.
'Oh well, there's no use in complaining about it now.'
He needed to figure out a way to survive this predicament first before anything else.
As such, Eric stared at Aurora directly right in her eyes while he figured out what to do next.
Aurora on the other hand also stared right back at him with an emotionless expression as well, but her hands were extremely tensed up as she clenched onto the knife that she had hidden within her coat.
After all, she was afraid.
Not afraid of the fact that Eric could potentially kill her here right now if he wanted to.
Oh no, not at all.
She has already killed this despicable scum 18 times already in her previous lives, so it was laughable to even think about that she was afraid of that.
No, the thing that she was mainly so afraid of was the fact that...
'He's different now.'
In the past, every time she had observed Eric from afar, whether it be to get ready to kill him again or to just make sure that he ends up getting lured in by her traps, Eric had always appeared to be very spoiled, idiotic, entitled, and unrefined in every way.
Basically like how an arrogant rich second generation like him should typically behave.
And that should've been the case for Eric in this life as well, just like the other scum she had already killed after regressing back again yesterday morning.
However, the Eric in this life now was simply far too unpredictable, far too composed, far too knowledgeable about Aria, and most importantly, far too...
Wrong.
Even seeing how he had reacted to the explosion of the grenade just now and the way he was currently staring at her with that unsettling look in his eyes made her entire skin crawl.
He just didn't appear sane at all whatsoever.
And then the fact that he had randomly came to visit the cafe that her best friend was working at just yesterday and somehow knew about her skin cancer at just a glance...
Everything was just too weird about him in this life.
That was why she was so afraid of him right now, and why she had taken the major risk of using a grenade to try and kill him off immediately to begin with, despite knowing it was an extremely reckless and terrible idea.
She just simply didn't know what to expect from him anymore.
However, just like the first time she had forced herself to kill for the first time ever, she needed to force herself to get over her fear and kill him again, no matter what.
Because if she didn't, then these monsters will certainly continue trying to kill her for who knows how long, and for reasons she still doesn't even understand why.
So with that thought in mind, Aurora waited for Eric to make the first move and then respond accordingly.
But after what felt like ages of intense staring later, Eric finally opened his mouth and spoke first.
And what he said next completely shook her to the core.
"You're still hesitating to kill even at the very last moment, Aurora."