Chapter 89: The Ultimate Leap of Faith: Why Mops Betray?

The chamber became an absolute vacuum.

The King’s mind frantically recoiled, trapped in a sudden, violent paradox. He knows.

The thought screamed through Vilucious’s consciousness, loud and terrifyingly clear. The shape-shifting particles, the claustrophobic nightmare of his near-fatal betrayal... it wasn’t a phantom echo.

The slaveric idiot hanging from the iron clamps is indirectly admitting to it. He was the architect. Vilucious thought.

Lord Vilucious made a theory that Cassius might be the one who had engineered the tragic end Vilucious had barely crawled away from.

Yet, as the King’s long, pale fingers curled into a tight, trembling fist inside the folds of his large sleeves, a suffocating realization paralyzed him. I have absolutely nothing to prove it.

Vilucious opened his mouth to speak, to demand a confession, to order the firing squad to tear the boy to shreds, but the words died instantly in his throat, choking him worse than the ancient poison.

He couldn’t say it. He dared not say it out loud.

Across from him, Kerwon’s jaw locked so hard a thick cord of muscle jumped under his tanned cheek. His bare face, unprotected by any helmet, was entirely visible under the buzzing lights.

His eyes narrowed into sharp, scanning slits, fixed on the corner of Vilucious’s mouth. A frantic hiss of steam rose as his broad shoulders twitched, his thick gauntlets tightening into fists.

The exposed lines of his face hardened into a mask of pure, intense calculation: he was hyper-analyzing the subtle, unspoken panic written all over his monarch’s features.

If Vilucious spoke the words, if he directly accused Cassius of the attempted assassination right here, in front of the Raw Court, the fragile, systemic lock on the room would shatter.

The universal call he had issued to save his life, the ancient golden magic that had violently hijacked the minds of his military vanguard and Florianthum herself, relied on absolute, unthinking obedience.

They were robots right now, bound by a synchronized, unblinking trance. But magic of that magnitude carried a lethal, structural tax.

If the King brought the memory of his near-death experience back into the active conscious air of the room, if the puppets remembered the true depth of his vulnerability while his magic restraints were currently draining him... the backlash would ignite within his own failing cells.

The golden pressure would turn inward, tearing his curdled veins to pieces before he could even draw another breath. He was holding a tiger by the tail, and Cassius knew it.

A profound, suffocating confusion rippled through the dark corners of the vault. Down in the shadows, Fukuro’s jaw ached intensely against the wood splinters of the mop handle.

He could feel the ambient pressure shifting, a heavy, static electricity that made his hair stand on end.

He didn’t understand what was happening, but he could see it on the King’s face... the absolute dominance had fractured into a rigid, defensive terror.

Vilucious stood frozen at the lip of the stone dais, his light grey eyes darting from Cassius’s left socket to his right, searching for a single slip, a single tear in the boy’s blank armor.

He was completely terrified that Cassius would just speak the full truth out loud, shattering the illusion of his absolute sovereignty in front of the entire court.

"You speak in riddles, defect," Vilucious finally rasped, his smooth, conversational purr utterly gone, replaced by a tight, strained, forced composure that made his voice sound dangerously dry.

He didn’t dare mention the bedchamber. He didn’t dare mention his death.

"A desperate attempt to stall the inevitable." Cassius’s low, empty chuckle bubbled past his bloody lips again, a cold, dead sound that mocked the King’s forced silence.

He had an idea of why the monarch was choking on his own tongue, but he was a few lengths away from finding the real cause.

"Then go ahead, Your Majesty," Cassius whispered, his pitch-black, void-filled eyes locking onto the King’s fracturing composure with absolute, terrifying dominance.

The King didn’t wait for Cassius to speak again. The slave’s words were poison, and Vilucious needed to kill the tension before he lost control.

He stepped backward onto the dais. The coarse rasp of heavy velvet and gold trim scraping against rough granite echoed like grinding teeth. Drawing his pale hands from his sleeves, he raised his chin as his jaw tightened into a mask of pure, absolute sovereignty.

"The time for courtly banter is concluded," Vilucious announced, his smooth purr echoing off the wet masonry. "Feed the anomaly to the deep."

A synchronized, deafening cheer erupted from the tranced firing squads and elites above. It was a chilling, uniform roar... completely devoid of human warmth.

Clack-clack-clack.

Down in the dark, the swarming crocodiles broke the murky surface with heavy sloshes. Their prehistoric jaws snapped in rapid succession, splashing iron-tainted water against the stone.

The mockery on Cassius’s face instantly evaporated.

His illusion of having nothing to lose shattered into raw panic. Under the buzzing lights, the lethal blankness in his pitch-black sockets dissolved into a wide, hollow stare. A heavy drop of purple sweat cut through the dried blood on his cheek, his composure giving way to a dead mask of terror.

Cassius didn’t yell. He just stared up, his bruised toes curling tightly as the air beneath his dangling feet grew freezing cold.

Vilucious looked down at the trembling boy, his mouth twitching into a razor-thin smirk. The slave’s terror was the ultimate proof of his dominance.

Without another word, the King raised his pale hands to their apex- and dropped them down with dead finality.

Crack-shhhk!

The automated wall restraints fired in perfect unison. The heavy iron clamps snapped open, releasing Cassius with a sharp, metallic clank.

Florianthum’s breath caught in a suffocating gasp. Instinct overrode her perfect composure, and her head violently snapped to the side, her eyes squeezing shut against the harsh overhead glare.

She couldn’t watch him fall. Her crimson cape whipped around her shoulders like a bloody shield, her teeth clenching hard enough to crack as she forced herself to stare blankly at the rough stone of the pillar beside her.

Cassius plummeted.

The vertical stone wall rushed past as his body cut through the humid air, his arms flailing helplessly. Below him, dozens of prehistoric jaws clicked violently apart, their jagged teeth reflecting the harsh glare as they swarmed the center of the pool.

Down in the shadows, Fukuro’s brain completely short-circuited.

Sliiiip—clack!

The smooth wood slid right out of his mouth. In a desperate, clumsy reflex, Fukuro hissed under his breath, his spine arching like a frightened cat as he lunged forward to claw at the wood before it hit the floor. His fingers missed completely.

The mop handle hit a jagged piece of loose granite, bounced once, and rolled directly out of the deep shadows, settling under the buzzing glare of the artificial lights.

Clatter-clatter-roll-thud.