Chapter 106: Really a Contagious Apocalypse? (Trade For A Secret Reveal)

Cassius didn’t even look up from the scrap heap.

He just shifted his massive weight, letting his spine settle deeper against the corroded boiler wall with a slow, heavy lean that looked entirely effortless... like a boulder sliding into a permanent bed of mud.

"And why," Cassius muttered, his dry voice barely lifting over the steady drip-plop of the ceiling runoff,

"...should I waste the breath telling you?"

He didn’t stop the steady, rhythmic scrape of his thumbnail against the magnetic plate.

Skritch... skritch.

Fukuro let out a sharp, breathless bark of a laugh.

It was a chaotic, erratic little sound that rattled through his narrow ribs and bounced off the low brick vaulting like a loose screw in a metal bucket.

He bobbed his head, his crooked wire-rims slipping another fraction of an inch down his grease-shiny nose.

"Oh, brilliant! Spectacular!" Fukuro cheered, slapping his own thin thigh with a wet smack of his hand.

"The birdy speaks from his throne of rust! You think my skull is packed with pond-mud, don’t you? You think I’ve got a three-second frog brain and can’t be of any use to the great, invincible?"

Cassius stopped the thumbnail.

He didn’t look at the scavenger, but his thick jaw shifted slightly as he let out a flat, gravelly puff of air through his nose.

"Yes," Cassius said.

The word was dead, solid, and entirely unbothered.

Cassius just reached into the dark space between his thigh and a crumpled zinc sheet.

Clink-clank.

His thick fingers dragged out a heavy iron spanner.

Fukuro’s toothy grin twisted, his eyes keeping that manic glitter behind the grease-smeared lenses. He leaned closer.

Squish.

The wet wool of his socks sank into the brick mud.

"Always the stone wall," Fukuro hummed, his voice dropping into a sing-song whisper.

"But even stone cracks. You think you’re the only one who hears the pipes hum?"

Cassius adjusted his grip on the tool.

Rub-rub-scrap.

His scarred thumb rubbed a crust of white salt off the handle.

"The giraffe governor," Fukuro sneered, his head bobbing. "He’s just a long-necked puppet. A walking bone-stack in a velvet vest."

Cassius didn’t look up.

"But the strings," Fukuro whispered, pointing a dirty finger upward.

"They go right into the high-roofs. Where the blood smells like cinnamon."

Cassius let out a flat, gravelly puff of air through his nose.

"If your tongue was iron, Fukuro," he muttered, his voice flat as a frozen ditch,

"I could smelt it."

Fukuro bristled. "You aren’t---"

"Go lick the governor’s boots," Cassius added.

"The kings general militant army!" Fukuro hissed, his fingers darting out like little hair-pins to snatch at the air.

"The ones with the red eyes ...the generals? They brought three heavy crates through the north slaveric cage cave."

Cassius set the spanner down on a flattened lard tin.

Tink.

"Heavy, Mr. Victus," Fukuro pressed, his face darkening. "Six-vampires lift. Sealed with lead-solder at the seams."

Cassius grunted, leaning his head back.

"The crates must be tallow-soap for the laundry-shafts. Go find some wire to chew on."

That did it. The chaotic energy in Fukuro’s shoulders went stiff. His face turned a dark, bruised plum color under the sewer-soot.

Heee-ugh.

A sudden, jagged gasp rattled right down to his ribs.

He snatched his glasses off his face, his small, bare eyes bulging with a furious, red-rimmed rage.

"IT’S NOT SOAP, YOU MUD-BRAINED ANVIL!" Fukuro screamed.

Skreeee-ch!

The raw, wet screech echoed off the damp bricks like an iron pipe snapping in two. He threw his arms out wildly.

Thud-clank.

His knuckles hit a rusted copper valve.

"They brought the those new vampire’s rib-cage, hands, legs, heads, and those injective sacred fluid shi* down!" he yelled, his spit flying into the gray light.

"An elite vampire! The one who made the courage to go far with his actions in the bloody gala without king’s permission---"

Cassius didn’t blink. His jaw just tightened.

He finally spoke as Fukuro paused, "speak."

Fukuro lowered himself sitting down besides him on the trash metal, his voice slowed down,

"His body was kept in pieces covering everyone else’s... They say the king took their soul before executing them. They got executed because the Lord thought they were useless---"

Cassius spoke cutting his sentence,

"And they begged for infront of him to kill them as he already captured their soul?"

Cassius didn’t open his eyes.

He just let his massive chin drop half an inch toward his grease-crusted collar, his frame sinking into the junk heap with a heavy, deceptive stillness.

Crunch-shhh.

The scrap beneath him groaned, then went dead quiet.

To anyone else, he looked like a broken furnace left to rot in the mud. But the skin around his scarred temple was tight, a thin, blue vein jumping under the soot.

His voice came out flat, dragging through his throat like a heavy chain over stone.

"What do you expect," Cassius muttered,

"...from a vampire who cleared humanity’s existence?"

Fukuro froze.

Fug.

The word hit his skull like a dropped sledgehammer.

Humanity. It was a ghost-word, a sin-word the system filters wiped forty cycles ago.

Even if a red-eyed general heard Cassius spit that out loud, they’d scrape their names off the vault bricks until the masonry bled.

Thought Fukuro in his head.

Cassius 8didn’t knew the complete deep-rot history but was analytical and a genius. It was terrifying.

It made Fukuro want to bolt right up the grease-pipe.

He swallowed hard, his throat making a dry, clicking gulp that felt like sand.

"They don’t call it that up there," Fukuro whispered, his teeth chattering once before he clamped them together.

He leaned sideways, his narrow shoulder rubbing against Cassius’s stiff canvas sleeve.

"You shouldn’t say that name, Mr. Victus. It’s... it’s bad luck for the zinc."

Cassius didn’t budge. Not a twitch.

"They call it the ’Great Scouring,’" Fukuro continued, his voice dropping into a shaky, hurried whistle.

He picked at a loose thread on his bare sock, his fingers trembling.

Fukuro continued, his voice dropping into a shaky, hurried whistle.

He picked another loose thread on his bare sock, his fingers trembling.

"The upper courts... they wrote it down as a ledger correction. Cleaned the slate. Took the names, the records, the old cities, and just... poof."

He took a deep breath effortlessly and continued,

"...Made it all grease I know this much from Madam Florianthum. The elite vampire who did it... Rumours say he didn’t even use an iron blade. Just the sacred fluid which was originated by the lord in a very less quantity."

Cassius’s silence made Fukuro more envolve in spitting every fact. Then he said:

"One drop in the well-heads, and half of the species turned into soup within three sun-turns, making the sky bleed forever."

A thick drop of water fell from a copper conduit overhead, striking Fukuro’s crooked lenses with a sharp splat.

Plip.

He didn’t even blink.

He just stared at the dark, unmoving profile of the Cassius’s face.

Cassius opened his eyes slowly, "Was it contagious or like an apocalypse too?"

He continued while lifting his weight up to sit, "If it was all at once the other half was hunted by the first half’s infection, right?"

Fukuro was silently glaring at him confused. He took his glasses of and while cleaning it from the edge of his T-shirt he spoke,

"What are you even talking about I don’t get it... How an infection? They use that fluid injection after one is brought here."

Cassius remained absolutely motionless, his gaze pinning Fukuro with the heavy, unblinking weight of a stone idol.

The gray, grease-mist from the street grate hung between them, but the giant’s eyes never wavered, tracking the slight, nervous twitch of the scavenger’s eyelids with a cold, magnifying intensity that made Fukuro’s breath stick in his throat.

He leaned forward, his iron-tin boots clanking hard against a rusted iron beam.

Clang-thud.

The grease-soaked rags around his ankles oozed a thick, black bead of transformer fluid onto the bricks.

"A human," Cassius muttered, his gravel-grated voice dropping so low it felt like a vibration in the floor stone.

He didn’t use the grand titles or the scavenger jargon.

He just let the forbidden word sit between them, raw and heavy.

Fukuro’s hand froze halfway down the hem of his dirty shirt, the crooked wire-rims dangling loosely from his soot-stained fingers.

"What happened to you, how you ended here?" Cassius demanded, his chest expanding with a slow, deep intake of the damp sewer air.

His jaw muscle gave an angry, tight twitch under the dark skin. "I want to know your story. Exactly."

Fukuro stared back, his bare, watery eyes looking incredibly small and naked without the lenses.

The silence in the vault stretched thin, punctuated only by the distant, rhythmic thump-thump of the water pumps two levels down.

Thump... thump.

"My... my story?". Fukuro squeaked, his voice cracking slightly as he shuffled his bare-socked heels backward, his knuckles twitching against a loose piece of copper tubing.

Tink.

Fukuro’s small, bare eyes darted toward the dark drainage pipe on the left, then back to the giant’s massive, soot-smeared face.

He swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the damp quiet.

Gulp.

The furious, red-rimmed rage from a moment ago was gone, replaced by a tight, defensive stubbornness that pinched his mouth into that fish-pout again.

He didn’t want to talk about it.

His thin fingers white-knuckled the frame of his crooked wire-rims, twisting the thin copper metal until it groaned.

"Why should I?" Fukuro shot back, his voice dropping the theatrical screech but keeping a sharp, defiant edge.

He slid his bare-socked heels back another inch, his knuckles knocking against a loose zinc plate.

Clink.

"You think you can just pull a lever and make the scavenger leak his guts? No way, Mr. Victus. No transaction."

Cassius didn’t break his stare.

His massive, canvas-clad shoulders stayed jammed against the boiler wall, flat and heavy as a slab of tombstone.

"A trade,"

Fukuro suddenly blurted out, a chaotic, manic little spark lighting up his naked eyes as he shoved his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose with a rough click-tink.

He leaned forward, his nose nearly touching the grease-line on Cassius’s knee.

"We do a trade-off. A gamble for the zinc."