The fall of Meereen

After Eren saw Modun and the cavalry arrive, he raised his butcher's blade against some of the surviving soldiers.

Once he saw that the situation at the harbor was under control, Eren turned his gaze toward the pyramids.

Those pyramids were all home to slave masters. Once they saw the Dothraki cavalry charge into the city, some of them would surely gather up their possessions and rush toward the harbor.

After all, the harbor was the only place that offered them a way out. Thirty thousand troops Eren had stationed outside the city gates were also standing guard, and even if they managed to break through by luck...

Out on the plains, they certainly could not transport their belongings faster than the Dothraki could ride. And if they abandoned their baggage, that would suit Eren even better.

After all, Eren wanted money. Whether the people lived or died did not matter. Besides, without their baggage, food, or money, they would no longer have the means to start over in this place. Simply staying alive would be their greatest luxury.

That made the harbor the highest priority. As long as the ships sailed far enough away and scattered widely enough, Eren would have trouble pursuing them. After all, on the vast sea, it was easy to lose track of a quarry or lose one's bearings.

After ordering Modun and the Guard Corps to clear out the entire harbor, Eren found an intact ship there and ended his Titan transformation. With the situation stabilized, there was no longer any point in remaining a Titan.

By now, his troops had charged into every part of Meereen to plunder wealth and food. If he hurled a rock over there, wouldn't he hit his own men?

Besides, once he ended his Titan transformation and the slave masters saw that the Colossal Titan was no longer at the harbor, they would surely flee this way too. Wasn't it better to wait here for them to come to him?

As for Modun and the Pure Titans, they could simply lie down, go prone, or crouch. All that mattered was that they could not be seen from a distance.

As time passed, smoke and wails filled the entire city.

By then, some slave masters had already noticed that the Colossal Titan at the harbor had been gone for a while. With some Unsullied they had purchased and slave soldiers, they were fighting their way over with their possessions.

When they drew a little closer, they discovered that although the Colossal Titan had disappeared, there were still Pure Titans ahead that posed a threat to them. Their fifteen-meter height was enough to make them tremble with fear, and more importantly, there were quite a few men here as well.

With wolves ahead and tigers behind, there was no escape. They had no choice but to steel themselves and charge forward. With so many people, perhaps luck would let them reach a ship and sail straight away.

The slave masters who reached the approaches to the harbor exchanged glances. Some ordered their slaves to charge straight ahead, while others dropped to their knees and begged for mercy, hoping they might preserve their lives.

But Modun and the others waiting for them would show no mercy. Before the battle, Eren had explicitly ordered them to kill the slave masters outright and take all the remaining slaves and commoners away. They would be kept to build various facilities in the future, then granted their freedom later.

Eren watched the slaughter in the harbor below from aboard the ship, without the slightest ripple in his heart. The cities of Slaver's Bay had been built on the blood and sweat of slaves. Destroying these cities was better for this world. In the future, places to sell slaves would not be as easy to find as they were now.

Although the slaves of Slaver's Bay would still be slaves at first after following him, he would free them later. Otherwise, these slaves were so accustomed to slavery that without slave masters, they would not even know what to do.

After they followed him, he would slowly guide these slaves toward new lives, making them the equivalent of workers in the future.

Having come from the modern world, Eren did not find slavery all that repugnant. Relations between people were inherently full of exploitation, and even a society as civilized as the modern world was full of exploitation and oppression. All he could do was reduce these things as much as possible.

When one percent of the world's people were slave masters, the whole world was full of exploitation and oppression. But when there was only one slave master in the world, although exploitation and oppression would still exist, their impact would be reduced to a minimum.

The most fundamental reason lay in people's tendency to compare themselves with one another.

Slave masters competed with one another out of vanity: you dressed better than I did, your slaves' hard work brought you more money than mine, and you ate better than I did. The consequences of all these comparisons would fall upon their slaves. They would only oppress and exploit their own slaves even more shamelessly to reap greater profits and satisfy their vanity. So many workers toiled in the factories of modern society, yet their wages were so pitiful. The money each person earned was truly only enough to scrape by. Once they fell ill, that little bit of money wasn't worth a damn. However much work they did, they were only contributing toward their boss's mansion and luxury cars.

But when there was only one slave master in the world, with everyone beneath him, he had nothing to compete over, because everything in the world was his for the taking. The only bad consequence of having a single slave master was that there were too many people in the world for him to manage.

And the empire Eren would build in the future would need no private factories or large enterprises. All factories and large enterprises would be brought under state ownership, wage standards for workers across the world would be unified, and everyone would be supervised to prevent corruption and abuse of the law. He would centrally direct all order and resources.

Eren already held the power needed to accomplish all this: the Coordinate. Through the Coordinate, he would control everyone in the world, monitor and deal with everyone, and keep track of the activities of all those at the top to prevent anyone from using power for personal gain, while giving everyone as much freedom and convenience as possible.

But Eren also understood very clearly that absolute freedom did not exist. Standing at the mountain's summit, he had gained freedom, yet he was also bound by the empire. The others stood at the foot of the mountain, granted as much freedom as possible but bound by him at the same time.

To him, standing at the summit and looking down at the foot of the mountain, everyone below was equal. And for everyone at the foot of the mountain, when they looked up, there was only Eren. In the future, the empire's laws would bind everyone except him. No matter how high their position, as long as they committed a crime, everyone was equal before the law. Everything in this world was his property.

He would stand at the summit, looking down on everything, controlling the entire empire from afar.

Dusk approached, and all of Meereen lay bathed in the setting sun. The light of sunset mingled with the firelight throughout the city.

Meereen was engulfed in a sea of flames. As far as Eren was concerned, he would eradicate the Meereenese people's culture, sever their faith, and cut off their heritage.

To eradicate a civilization, one had to destroy its culture and sever its faith, because as long as their faith remained, the Meereenese would not cease to exist.

But once their culture, heritage, and faith were cut off, after hundreds or thousands of years, the Meereenese would no longer exist. All that remained would be one unified people.