Chapter 62: Lethal Blades and Spider-Nest Tunics!

The tension in the alcove hung like drawn wire, the threat of Kerwon’s words vibrating in the damp air. Cassius didn’t pull back, his gray eyes locked onto the elite’s gaze, calculating the distance between them and the weight of the promise behind Kerwon’s words.

Then came a sound.

It wasn’t the heavy slap of leather boots or the sharp rustle of silk. It was a pathetic, dragging scrape against the wet granite, accompanied by a ragged, wet wheeze.

The three of them froze.

From the shadows just outside the alcove, a hand clawed its way around the stone corner. Then another. Fukuro was literally dragging himself along the floor, his body flat against the damp stone like a deflated sack of flour.

The water bottle Kerwon had shoved into his hands was tucked awkwardly into his armpit, leaking a small trail of drops behind him.

"Fu... Fukuro?"

Florianthum’s voice left her in a slow, horrified whisper. Her eyes went completely round as she stared down at the sight of the elite clerk looking less like a dignified palace official and more like a human slug.

Fukuro didn’t look up at her. He didn’t look at Kerwon. With agonizing slowness, he hoisted his chin up just enough to look at Cassius’s bare feet, his gaze traveling up past the soot-stained ankles, up the scratched legs, all the way to the completely bare, bruised chest.

A heavy, exhausted sigh rattled through Fukuro’s throat. He let his forehead drop back onto the cold stone floor with a dull, miserable thud.

"Cassius..."

Fukuro groaned into the dirt, his voice muffled and utterly drained of all dignity.

"For the love of the gods... at least wear something in front of the elites. Have you no shame?"

The sheer absurdity of the comment sliced clean through the lethal atmosphere, leaving an awkward, sudden silence hanging over the damp corridor.

The heavy, exhausted silence in the corridor was broken by a sudden, frantic twitch from the floor.

Fukuro’s fingers flexed against the stone. With a miserable grunt, he rolled onto his back, his eyes unfocused but burning with a sudden, desperate sense of duty. He raised his hands into the air, his fingers trembling as he wove them through the damp space.

A faint, shimmering light sparked around his knuckles. Out of the thin, cold air, thick strands of coarse, unspun wool and jagged stitching thread began to manifest, floating like a cluster of tangled cobwebs between his palms. He was clearly trying to conjure a makeshift tunic.

"I will... assemble... a garment," Fukuro wheezed, his face twisting with the immense physical strain of using his magic while utterly depleted. The wool clumped together into a heavy, scratchy mass that looked like it would cause an immediate, agonizing rash.

"Cover yourself, you heathen..."

Cassius’s eyes widened in genuine horror at the monstrosity hovering in the air.

"No need! Stop! Absolutely do not!" Cassius snapped, his calculated composure instantly cracking into pure panic as he backed away a half-step.

He looked from the terrifyingly abrasive ball of unspun wool, to the bleeding bruise on his collarbone, and finally down at Fukuro’s pathetic form on the floor.

"I said no need!" Cassius repeated, his voice rising in deep, unbridled frustration as he threw his hands up.

"Look at that thing! It looks like a nest of angry spiders! I am dealing with secret assasins, a hostile palace, and a freezing magical curse, and your grand solution is to give me an immediate, agonizing rash?"

He shouted at last, "Put the string away! I am perfectly fine!"

Cassius exhaled a sharp, irritated breath, the lingering heat of his outburst smoking faintly in the damp, freezing air of the corridor. He didn’t give anyone a chance to break the sudden, stunned silence.

Pivoting sharply, he stepped right over the low amber light of the torch and reached down. Without an ounce of hesitation, he grabbed Fukuro by the back of his collar, hoisting the limp, completely drained clerk just enough to drag him along the cold granite floor.

Fukuro didn’t even protest; he merely let out a soft, resigned wheeze as his boots scraped helplessly against the stone like dead weight.

With Fukuro firmly anchored in one hand, Cassius closed the short distance back to Florianthum in three swift, silent strides.

Before she could pull away or process the absurdity of the sight, Cassius’s free hand shot out, his pale fingers wrapping around her wrist in a firm, unyielding grip. The residual chill of Vilucious’s magic humming beneath his skin flared at the contact, a stark, physical reminder of the stakes.

He didn’t pull her into the shadows this time. Instead, he stood his ground, dragging the pathetic clerk at his side while holding the woman tightly. His gray eyes, sharp and hyper-focused, locked directly onto Kerwon’s dark, dangerous gaze.

Cassius leaned forward slightly, his bare chest rising and falling as he looked right through the secret elite.

"Before she is your lordess," Cassius said, his voice dropping into a smooth, deadly purr that cut through the stagnant rot of the underbelly like a razor blade, "she is my-"

The smooth, lethal cadence of Cassius’s voice still hung in the air when the temperature in the corridor plummeted.

Kerwon didn’t break composure. His face remained an unreadable mask of elite discipline, his jaw relaxed, his dark eyes wide and terrifyingly calm. He didn’t shout. He didn’t even shift his footing.

Instead, his hands simply rose, moving through the damp air in a single, sweeping, hypnotic arc.

The weak amber light of the corridor instantly died, swallowed by a sudden, suffocating vacuum of magical pressure. Out of the pitch-black space above Kerwon’s head, the shadows violently condensed.

A massive, towering weapon materialized into his grip- not a sword, but a colossal, heavy-bladed executioner’s halberd, its crescent blade gleaming with a wicked, silver edge that looked heavy enough to cleave a stone pillar in two.

With terrifying, instantaneous speed, Kerwon brought the massive weapon down.

The air shrieked as the blade sliced forward in a brutal, perfectly vertical arc, aimed directly down the center of Cassius’s skull to split him in half.

Cassius’s hyper-analytical brain registered the displacement of air a millisecond before the blow landed. Jerking his frame backward with explosive force, he violently yanked Florianthum and the dragging weight of Fukuro along with him.

BOOM!

The massive blade missed Cassius by a mere fraction of an inch, burying itself deep into the granite floor. The impact shattered the stone, sending a violent shockwave of dust and sharp rock splinters exploding into the narrow corridor.

Florianthum’s hands instantly flew to her own mouth, her fingers pressing hard against her lips to stifle a sharp, terrified gasp. Her eyes were completely wide, staring at the deep, jagged trench split into the stone right where they had been standing a second prior.

Beside her, Fukuro’s head lolled backward, his eyes rolling up as he completely passed out from the sheer shock, his limp body becoming absolute dead weight in Cassius’s grip.

Yet, Cassius didn’t even flinch.

He remained completely still, his bare feet anchored to the trembling ground, his gray eyes locking right back onto Kerwon through the swirling dust. The heavy, terrifying presence of the executioner’s weapon hadn’t broken him. If anything, the proximity to death seemed to fuel his hyper-analytical arrogance.

A low, smooth chuckle vibrated in Cassius’s chest, breaking the dead silence of the hallway. Slowly, his lips curved into a sharp, mocking smirk.

"What happened?" Cassius purred, his voice entirely devoid of fear as he tilted his head.

"Are you jealous? Like king, like servants, it seems. Do you like Florianthum too?"

Kerwon’s face remained perfectly still, a frozen mask of aristocratic composure. But as the insult hit the air, his dark eyes underwent a sudden, striking transformation. Right through that terrifyingly calm expression, his irises ignited, flaring with the eerie, brilliant hue of a fire-light blue.

It was the color of a chemical flame, a vivid and lethal blue light that cut cleanly through the dim amber shadows of the corridor, betraying the absolute fury locked behind his serene exterior.

"Or should I say you too are obsessed with her," Cassius mocked, his tone dripping with velvety poison, "just like your king. The Bastard Vilu-"

SCHWRRRR-TCH!

Before the final word could clear Cassius’s lips, the corridor exploded.

The massive halberd ripped out of the fractured granite with a horrific, grinding screech. In a fluid blur of crimson and silver silk, Kerwon unleashed his next strike. The heavy crescent blade whistled through the air, charting a lethal path aimed straight for Cassius’s throat.

But Cassius was already gone.

To the naked eye, it looked like a flash. His hyper-analytical mind had calculated the muscle contraction in Kerwon’s forearm before the weapon even moved. Letting go of Florianthum and dropping the unconscious Fukuro safely to the stone, Cassius moved like a shadow caught in a sudden breeze.

CRUNCH-SMASH!

The blade sheared through the empty air where Cassius had been standing, slicing a massive chunk off the recessed alcove wall. Dust and sparks rained down, but Cassius materialized several paces back, completely unbothered, his bare feet shifting gracefully on the grit.

"Missed," Cassius taunted, a breathless laugh escaping his throat as his feet lightly touched the floor further down the hall. "Is that the best the elite guard can do?"

Kerwon didn’t pause. The elite executioner pivoted with mechanical precision, unleashing a relentless, blinding storm of steel. The massive weapon became a blur of vertical splits, horizontal cleaves, and brutal thrusts.

WHIP! BOOM!

The air screamed as the blade cut downward. Cassius ducked, the metal passing so close the wind of it whipped his dark hair into his eyes.

CRACK!

A horizontal swing cleaved a heavy stone pillar directly to Cassius’s left, showering the floor with jagged shrapnel. Cassius vaulted backward over the falling debris, his bare skin narrowly dodging the razor-sharp rocks.

"Stand still, if you have real guts!" Kerwon hissed, his voice finally losing its smooth veneer, cracking with a low, vibrating growl as his fire-blue eyes burned through the gray haze.

"I prefer to keep my head where it is, thank you!" Cassius fired back, spinning on his heel to slip beneath a brutal thrust that gouged a deep hole into the ceiling.

THUD-CLANG!

The narrow underbelly corridor was systematically dismantled. Granite walls split, ceiling stones cracked and showered the ground with debris, and the weak torchlight flickered violently against the chaos. Yet, through it all, Florianthum and the blacked-out Fukuro remained completely untouched by the carnage.

Kerwon’s precision was terrifying; he carved around them with surgical malice, his entire focus hyper-fixated on the elusive ghost slipping through his fingers.

No matter how fast, how heavy, or how calculated the elite’s execution methods were, Cassius simply wasn’t there when the blade landed. He moved with a terrifyingly human fluidity, always half a breath ahead of the metal, a mocking shadow dancing in the ruins of the palace underbelly.