Chapter 87: The Immortal Glitch: Why the Monarch’s Leverage Failed

Vilucious’s low chuckle died instantly, sucked into the humid, iron-tainted air of the chamber.

Creak- thud.

The heavy, gold-bordered blue robes shifted as the monarch rose from his high throne. He didn’t rush. He moved with the slow, terrifying leisure of a predator that knew every exit was sealed.

The heavy fabric dragged against the stone steps as he descended, his bloodshot eyes never unlocking from the bleeding, laughing boy suspended over the pit.

He stopped at the edge of the dais, looking down at Cassius with a look of genuine, warped admiration. A terrifyingly gentle smile spread across his pale face.

He looked less like a judge delivering an execution and more like a proud collector inspecting a rare, venomous insect.

"I love how the Kingdom Lordess truly did her work making you this courageous," Vilucious said, his voice dropping into a soft, intimate purr that carried flawlessly through the vault.

He spread his long, pale hands wide in a gesture of pure, generous psychopathy.

"Look at you. Defiant. Broken in body, yet roaring at the crown. It is a beautiful performance, defect. Truly."

Beside the throne, Florianthum’s spine went rigid as a steel rod. Under her heavy crimson cape, her fingers clawed into the palm of her hand so hard her nails threatened to pierce the skin, though her face remained a perfectly carved sheet of ice.

Kerwon’s visor tilted a fraction of a millimeter toward the King, the metallic joints of his gauntlet giving off another faint, warning hiss as his grip tightened.

"But courage," Vilucious whispered, the warmth instantly vanishing from his eyes, leaving only a cold, hollow vacuum, "is such a heavy thing to carry when your feet are dangling."

Cassius did not flinch. Instead, the bloody corners of his mouth twitched upward, pulling into a jagged, mocking smile that bared his teeth against the harsh overhead glare.

He let out a low, wet wheeze of a chuckle, the sound cutting through the rhythmic snap-splash of the thrashing reptiles below.

"Why go through all this trouble, Accantte?"

Cassius asked, his voice a gravelly, echoing scrape that vibrated off the black stone. He tilted his head, the ink-like tendrils of shadow lashing violently from his hollow sockets.

"Did something break in your precious kingdom again... and you automatically suspect the slave?"

He paused, letting out a sharp, breathless laugh that made his pinned shoulders shudder against the iron clamps.

"Oh, my grand, all-knowing Lord," he purred, his pitch-black eyes locking onto the monarch’s face.

"I see how it is. No one dares to stand against you. Is that why you keep me around? Because I am the only thing in this room you cannot bend?"

Down in the shadows, Fukuro’s chest heaved in silent panic. The wood splinters bit deep into his gums, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Cassius.

Stop talking, stop talking, please stop talking, his mind screamed against the gag of the mop handle.

Cassius leaned as far forward as the heavy wall restraints would allow, his bare, purple-bruised feet dangling just inches from a snapping, prehistoric jaw.

"Or maybe..." Cassius sneered, his voice dropping into a lethal, dripping mockery that pierced right through the King’s generous act.

"I am just the only toy you have left to play with when you get bored. Such a fragile, dependent king."

His head dropped to look at those deadly creatures swimming just below him, but the words from his mouth came undefeated...

"...You need my defiance... just to feel like you are still alive."

The gentle, psychopathic smile on Vilucious’s face vanished instantly, erased like chalk on stone. The flesh around his jaw tightened, turning a pale, sickly white under the buzzing glare of the artificial lights.

Slowly, his long, heavy- sleeved arms began to lift. His fingers uncurled, his palms turning upward as if he were preparing to give the silent, lethal signal to the automated wall restraints; or to the row of tranced firing squads behind him.

The air in the chamber grew suffocatingly thin.

But before Vilucious’s hands could reach their apex, Cassius cut through the tension with a sharp, bared-tooth grin.

"You forgot, my Lord," Cassius rasped, the low growl in his chest vibrating right through the iron clamps pinning his wrists. He didn’t look at the lifting hands.

He looked straight into the King’s bloodshot eyes.

"You cannot even turn me into pieces."

A wet, unhinged chuckle bubbled past his bloody lips, sending a fresh, thick drop of purple ink spilling from his eye sockets.

"Go ahead. Tear the flesh off. Feed it to them,"

Cassius sneered, gesturing with a tilt of his chin toward the thrashing, prehistoric jaws clicking violently just beneath his bare heels.

"You know it doesn’t matter. Only a few hours... I always come back."

The raised hands of the monarch dropped with a sudden, dead finality. Vilucious didn’t flinch or rage. Instead, the pale flesh around his mouth twitched, settling into a razor-thin line of pure, clinical amusement.

He walked directly to the lip of the high stone dais, his heavy boots making a hollow, grinding sound against the granite

He looked down at Cassius, completely unbothered by the thick, ink-like shadows pouring from the boy’s empty sockets into the thrashing pit.

"You are entirely correct, little defect," Vilucious said, his voice lowering to a smooth, conversational purr that carried effortlessly through the subterranean dampness.

"I cannot wash your defiance from this wall for more than a single cycle. You are an absolute, unchanging anomaly."

The King paused, letting out a short, quiet breath that sounded almost like a sigh of pity. He leaned over the edge, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Cassius’s jagged smile.

"But you seem to have forgotten a very simple rule of this court being a little vampire from slaveric tribune,"

The King murmured, his voice dripping with a terrifyingly gentle warmth.

"I do not need to break your body to ruin you. Have you already forgotten the green slaveric stains of your... parents, right?"

Cassius’s head smoothly raised again to look at the ruthless king, as his smile dropped into true fear.

Beside the throne, Florianthum’s jaw clenched so tight the muscles in her cheek trembled, a sharp, suffocating catch in her breathing that she tried to mask by drawing her crimson cape tighter around her frame.

Vilucious didn’t look back at her. He kept his gaze fixed entirely on the suspended slave.

The unhinged defiance in Cassius’s chest suffocated completely, replaced by a low, frantic rattling as something deep within his shadow began to stir.

The ink-like tendrils spilling from his hollow sockets reversed direction, whipping violently against the stone wall. At his feet, the dripping dark purple blood slowed to a crawl, defying gravity as it began to creep upward along his ankles.

It bubbled and thickened, blending with the swirling shadows into a heavy, dark purple viscous fluid that hummed with a dangerous frequency.

Down in the shadows, Fukuro’s jaw ached intensely. The splinters of the mop handle bit directly into his gums as the ambient pressure in the room suddenly shifted, the air growing heavy and suffocating.

Only Vilucious noticed.

His bloodshot, light grey eyes tracked the rising, viscous mass as it crawled past Cassius’s ankles, threatening to forge something lethal. The King didn’t look afraid; his features simply hardened into a cold expression of absolute dominance.

With a minimal, lazy flick of his wrist, Vilucious cut the magic entirely.

A sharp, dark blue flash erupted through the subterranean dampness, cracking the air like a localized whip strike...

crack-shhhk.

The pressurized blast slammed directly into the vertical stone wall. Instantly, the rising purple mass fractured under the impact.

The gathering shadows dissolved into harmless gray wisps, and the viscous fluid lost its weight entirely, splashing violently back down into the murky lake below.

Splash! Splash!

The sudden, brutal cancellation left Cassius completely flabbergasted. His eyes widened into hollow voids of pure shock as the backlash rippled through his system.

A raw, strangled sound... halfway between a choked gasp and a frustrated roar, tore from his throat as the heavy iron restraints jerked violently against his weight.

"You!" he rasped, his voice cracking against the subterranean dampness.

The swarming crocodiles snapped into the falling spray, their prehistoric jaws clicking shut as the build-up was forcefully suffocated before it could even breathe.

Cassius’s head sagged back down against his collarbone, his chest heaving violently under the renewed weight of the iron restraints.

Looking down at the boy’s fracturing composure, the corners of Vilucious’s mouth twitched upward into a slow, deliberate smirk.

But beneath that cold pane of supreme arrogance, the monarch’s mind was privately tracking a dark, phantom echo from his own past... the claustrophobic nightmare of his own near-fatal betrayal.

He remembered the bedchamber.

The terrifying perfection of his absolute helplessness when those shape-shifted particles had colonized his throat like liquid ice, turning his dark blue royal lineage into a glowing, hollowed-out cage on his sapphire sheets.

But it wasn’t the suffocation that made him smirk. It was the memory of the absolute, violent salvation that followed.

Right at the threshold of his impending paralysis, deep within his failing cells, an ancient golden aesthetic shimmering magic had violently ignited.

It didn’t just warm his curdled veins; it tore through the suffocating violet-crimson poison like a celestial tear.

The gold radiated outward from his chest in heavy, structural ripples, acting as a profound cosmic beacon.

It was an overwhelming, majestic pressure that didn’t stay hidden... the immense gravity of the golden aura had flooded the entire palace, violently commanding the absolute attention and terrifying submission of every living thing.

Vrrrrm... thud.

The golden sensation had issued a universal call, forcefully hijacking the consciousness of his entire empire.

In a single, terrifyingly synchronized heartbeat, the minds of minor aristocrats, high-ranking elites, and thousands of armor-clad soldiers were completely blanked out, overwritten by the golden pull.

Vilucious remembered the distant, rhythmic thud-clack echoing through the grand hallways as the entire military vanguard and Florianthum herself- were instantly reduced to hollow, unblinking puppets.

Their eyes glazing over into a rigid, systemic trance, they had turned in unison and begun marching like mindless, mechanical robots down the long stone corridors, drawn to his chamber to enforce his absolute will.

A sharp, metallic clang from Cassius’s hanging chains snapped Vilucious right back into the cold reality of the Raw Court.

Cassius’s chest stopped heaving. The frantic, panicked clattering of his chains slowed to a dead, heavy freeze against the black rock face. He didn’t yell. He didn’t rage.

Instead, a low, empty chuckle rattled deep inside his throat: a cold, dead sound that lacked any of the frantic hysteria from before.

Slowly, his head smoothly tilted back up, his pitch-black, void-filled eyes locking straight onto Vilucious’s bloodshot, light grey gaze.

The fear on his face was entirely gone, burned out in a single fraction of a second to reveal a completely hollow, lethal blankness.

"Do whatever you want with them," Cassius whispered, his voice a flat, razor-sharp scrape that carried flawlessly through the absolute silence of the room.

"Because this time... you left me with absolutely nothing to lose."