Chapter 75: Playing the Elite Governor Like a Fiddle: Survival Instincts?

Kerwon’s command hit Fukuro like a physical blow. The clerk scrambled up, his knees shaking violently. His knuckles turned white against the damp floorboards as he forced himself to stand.

His boots scuffed into an awkward, wide V-shape.

His knees knocked together. Refusing to look Kerwon in the eye, Fukuro raised his trembling hands. He tapped his two index fingers together, head-on. Then, he jerked his head toward a dark corner. It was a desperate, silent plea to talk in private.

"Can... Y-you..." Fukuro stuttered. His voice was a pathetic, trembling whisper.

Kerwon didn’t budge. He closed his eyes. A slow, irritated breath hissed through his teeth.

What the heck this dirt particle is upto now, the governor thought. The sheer absurdity of the clerk’s twitching grated on his last nerve.

Kerwon snapped his eyes open. His blue irises bored into the clerk. He didn’t lean in. He didn’t step toward the corner. He just tightened his white-knuckled grip on the heavy halberd, his dominating presence pinning the smaller man to the floor.

"Last chance, speak," Kerwon barked. Cold. Flat. Unyielding.

Fukuro took a shallow, trembling breath, desperation completely overriding his survival instinct. He leaned forward, his eyes darting frantically toward the dark corner of the room again.

"I-I found the secret stash of forbidden catnip wine you hid under the floorboards, sir!"

Fukuro blurted out, his voice cracking into a high-pitched squeak. "And... and I think the Lordess’s handmaid knows you accidentally shrank the royal ceremonial cape in the wash!"

The sheer absurdity of the statement hung in the heavy air.

Kerwon’s face went entirely still. The pure, unadulterated nonsense coming out of the clerk’s mouth broke the final thread of his patience.

Thwip.

Before Fukuro could utter another syllable, Kerwon’s large, calloused hand shot forward with blinding speed. He didn’t strike the clerk. Instead, he pinched both of Fukuro’s lips tightly between his thick thumb and index finger, clamping them together like a crow’s beak.

"Mmph?!" Fukuro gasped through his nose, his eyes widening in sheer shock.

With a brutal, effortless twist of his wrist, Kerwon stretched the clerk’s mouth forward and sideways, pulling Fukuro’s face right up to his own gleaming, furious eyes. Fukuro was forced onto his tiptoes, his cheeks pulled taut and his spectacles sliding dangerously low on his nose.

"Do I look like a man who cares about capes right now?" Kerwon hissed, his voice dropping into a terrifying, gravelly whisper.

Cassius watched the spectacle with a completely blank stare, but inside, his calculated mind faltered.

What in the hell are these two doing? he thought. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the governor pulling his clerk’s face into a duck bill almost made him break character. Yet, beneath the confusion, a cold wave of relief washed over him.

At least Fukuro wasn’t making another catastrophic blunder. The idiot was playing it safe, drawing Kerwon’s lethal focus away from the table, even if it meant sacrificing his own dignity.

As the governor continued to stretch the clerk’s face, the ambient noise in the room faded into a dull hum. Cassius’s mind instantly pulled backward, flashing to the frantic, high-stakes minutes right before Kerwon even came to the secret base’s entrance:

The micro-device in his ear had clicked frantically, signaling Kerwon’s heavy, charging strides down the hallway. Cassius had only seconds.

With desperate speed, he had grabbed a stray scrap of paper from the table, his blood-magic ink flowing rapidly from his fingertips as his eyes completely turned void pitch black. He used the sharp tip of the table to cut his fingers to leak his own magical blood and as he scratched down a frantic message after mixing it with his black shadow fire coming out of his eyes.

He held the scrawled note directly over Madam Florianthum’s face as he shoved her against the heavy wooden table, pinning her wrists down.

On the paper, his jagged handwriting spelled out the urgent truth:

I cannot survive without bloodsucking or doing any hunt just like any other vampire because of your dead ass ex... Only you could save this.

Her eyes had flared with sudden, sharp panic as she read the words. She bucked against him, her teeth clamped shut in rigid, silent defiance, her eyes screaming for him to get off. Her pupils dilated with raw fury. Her hands twisted violently beneath his grip, her nails digging into his skin as she tried to wrench her head away.

She glared at him, a silent, burning promise of execution flashing in her eyes as she fiercely resisted his weight. But her gaze kept flicking to the written words, absorbing the layout of the trap in a split second.

Close your eyes... Cassius gave a last gesture from his fingers pointing to her eyes gently.

With a fluid, practiced motion, he balled up the paper, threw it under the heavy table into the deep shadows where it vanished completely, and immediately tore at the fine fabric of her dress to expose her collarbone.

Understanding the play, the fierce resistance vanished from her gaze. She gave him one final, sharp look of begrudging compliance before her eyelids fluttered shut.

She went completely limp against the dark grain of the wood, beginning to perfectly mimic absolute unconsciousness, allowing him to press his fangs to her skin just as soon as Kerwon finally noticed what was going on inside.

A sudden, wet whine from Fukuro snapped Cassius back to the present. The standoff was still waiting, and the clock was ticking in the form of water droplets sound coming from the pipeline area nearby.

Kerwon’s grip didn’t loosen, keeping Fukuro’s lips stretched tightly forward. The clerk’s eyes watered, his muffled whimpers growing increasingly desperate until he managed to weakly point toward the corner one final time.

With a low grunt of absolute disgust, Kerwon finally released his hold. He shoved the clerk backward. Fukuro stumbled, massaging his throbbing jaw, but he didn’t waste a second. He frantically gestured for the governor to step away from the center of the room.

Kerwon glanced back at Cassius, who still stood unbothered by the table. Slowly, the governor lowered his halberd, keeping the broad blade angled toward the vampire as he retreated three paces into the deep shadows of the corner with Fukuro.

"You were clearly watching that, weren’t you?" Kerwon hissed, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low rumble.

Fukuro swallowed hard, his voice a trembling whisper. "Yes, sir... because Madam was awake before all of this happened."

Kerwon leaned closer, his brow furrowing.

"I know you are fond of Madam," Fukuro continued quickly, his eyes darting frantically.

"That’s why I trust you with this. Please, don’t let this out. For her sake."

"Speak carefully," Kerwon demanded.

"You know what the Lord would do to her," Fukuro breathed, his hands shaking. "Ever since the bloody gala, she has been mentally tortured. She saw him clearly biting..."

Kerwon’s jaw tightened, the revelation cutting straight through his irritation. His bloodshot eyes darted toward the unconscious lady, then back to the clerk.

"No need to speak further," Kerwon cut him off sharply, his voice a tight, icy thread.

"I don’t want to see this rat unexpectedly mapping his way into her good graces. If I ever see this again, I will kill you myself and take matters into my own hands."

Fukuro shuddered at the death threat, but he couldn’t let the governor make a blind mistake. He leaned forward again, desperately pleading against the governor’s wrath.

"But Sir Kerwon... she allowed it!" Fukuro scrambled to explain.

Kerwon froze.

"I couldn’t interfere," Fukuro stammered, backing away slightly. "She allowed it... or else she wanted him to erase her memory."

He took one last shallow breath before delivering the final blow. "She once said she knows him!"

Kerwon stood entirely paralyzed in the shadows, the information completely upending his strategy as he stared back out at Cassius.

Kerwon ran a heavy, calloused hand over his face. The rigid posture he usually maintained seemed to fracture, the raw tension draining from his shoulders only to be replaced by a sudden, exhausting weight.

There was no point in squeezing Fukuro any further. The clerk was an idiot, but he wasn’t a liar... not about this. If the order had come directly from Lordess Florianthum, and if she truly considered this rat an acquaintance from her past, the governor’s hands were tied.

Turning his back completely on the trembling clerk, Kerwon dragged his heavy boots across the dirt floor, marching back toward the center of the dim chamber.

Cassius hadn’t moved an inch from the heavy wooden table. He was leaning back against the dark grain, entirely unbothered by the towering governor’s approach. With slow, mechanical deliberation, Cassius raised his hand to his mouth.

His tongue flicked out, nonchalantly licking away a stray smear of crimson from his thumb where Florianthum’s nails had dug into his skin during their frantic struggle.

As Kerwon stopped a few paces away, the heavy shaft of his halberd resting uselessly against his side, Cassius slowly lowered his hand.

The corner of his blood-stained lips tugged upward, flashing a sharp, mocking smirk directly into the governor’s bloodshot eyes as his own eyes turned back to normal. It was a silent, venomous victory, unbound by the fear of the heavy steel blade that had almost cleaved him in two moments before.

"You are summoned to appear before our gracious Lord," Kerwon said.

He stood rigid in front of the table, his voice flat and drained of its earlier thunder, though the absolute coldness in his delivery remained unyielding.