Chương 57: Chapter 50 - Put some effort into it

Cassandra sure looked great next to space. The silver dress contrasted perfectly against the emptiness while catching the light of stars, her hair tied in a tight bun. She graced me with a smirk.

"I was wondering if you'd sleep through my visit. Though, admittedly, I have been to nicer places." I sat up on the bunk.

"It has its charm."

"It has a sink in the bedroom." She glanced at the sink the way one glances at roadkill.

"The ship is an appropriate shithole, too. Tsk tsk tsk. You are putting no effort into choosing the areas of our dates."

"You are the one who chose the place." She clicked her tongue.

"Talking back while making me wait, and trying to get out of bed instead of trying to get me in. Naughty, naughty. I should spank you." My brain finally finished rebooting and flagged the important part. I wasn't exactly in a findable location. For all the time until our last visit, I had been the one pursuing her or leaving baits. I wasn't the hunter right now.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"I'm not near any point of interest, and I'm pretty sure the pod lost me when I moved floors." Her smirk revealed a bit of her teeth.

"A lady never reveals her methods."

"A lady also doesn't cross dimensions to visit a filthy war criminal."

"A genocidal war criminal," she corrected me.

"But you are also filthy in all the right ways." She sat down on the bunk beside me, close enough that her heat soaked through my shirt.

"Don't undersell yourself. The Church declared your floor 25 stunt a genocide, and everyone else has given up arguing."

"You sound awfully happy about it."

"I find it exciting." Her crimson eyes caught the incense light.

"Violence is the spice of life. And I like my meals extra spicy." I lay back down, relaxing. She has never acted like this. Even last time, she had ten times more restraint than now.

"Is that what I am to you? A snack?" She leaned over me, her bun lining up with a star from beyond the window.

"Well, I did bring something hot and wet for you to eat. It would be expected to reciprocate." Talk about an escalation. That was a line out of a succubus playbook, and not Astarielle, because she had too much class for stuff like this. Someone was horny beyond her mind. But why? I didn't do anything, so I had to be missing something. But I was completely out of the loop due to being only in the tower. What happened on Earth that got her going like this?

"Glad my exploits entertain you."

"Oh, they do so much more than that." She said it low, with a vicious undertone.

"There is a specific charm to watching a man digging his own grave that never gets old." She licked her lips.

"And you are so intense at it. Making enemies, breaking conventions, ignoring rules and recommendations, going face-first against the rest of the world because you have yet to learn better. All in order to climb the tower, which no one can enter or stay in without my assistance. I love it." I realized what happened. The pod never really lost the connection to me. Through that, she found me. And through that, she could pull me back into the pod any time she pleased… couldn't she?

While I didn't have a timer inside the tower, I had nothing protecting me from a forced extraction. Also, I had no way to return to the tower by myself. If Cassandra blocked my pod profile and said it got bugged, that I couldn't climb the tower anymore, then I had no recourse, and I was never climbing the tower again. She had infinite blackmail potential over me, and the idea, the absolute power she had over me, got her going like nothing else. And my only option was to fully play into it.

"And I suppose you will teach me better." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"I might." She smirked, baring fangs.

"I might not, though. There is no entertainment in helping a man dig his grave. The charm is in leaving all the hard work to him." She placed a hand on my sternum.

"So, what did Henrik tell you in the silence barrier? He didn't make it to work against the pods unintentionally." Oh, she was good at this blackmailing game. The second I realized she had the blackmail, she immediately used it, smelling the blood like a hungry shark. Although she didn't hunt out of hunger. It was all desire with her. I had to give her something. And I was hiding two things, the accusation and the thumb drive, so the less important one had to go.

"That he suspects you of working with Paradise against the rest of us." She narrowed her eyes.

"Did he say why?"

"No. But he did mention it's awfully suspicious that the tower gives us shit for floors even without the overseer being present. You rigging the progression is the perfect explanation."

"So what if I am?" She leaned down, putting her face in front of mine.

"So what if I work with Paradise? Imagine that I am. What would you do about it? Would you kill our relationship to be the good boy for the Golden Sands and run to them to tell on me?" Was she taunting me or flirting? I couldn't tell. I couldn't read her at all. This functioned as a fun, flirty chitchat, or as blackmail, or as a taunting admission.

"If that were the case, then I would have to find out your plan, spoil it for you, then tell Gilgamesh, and arrange for your punishment to be you becoming my personal attendant." She raised an eyebrow.

"Your sex slave?"

"No." I smiled.

"I've got a whole lineup of succubi for that. But I need a maid. My succubi complain all the time about doing chores. But I do need someone to do them." Cassandra leaned lower and kissed me. No hands, just mouth on mine, in a hungry, thorough way that made my mind go blank. When she finally detached, she had a grin that was everything but innocent.

"A fun plan," she said.

"But you're going to the Hague when you return to Earth. Then again, I could have Gilgamesh arrange for your prison to be in my cellar. He would find it funny. You, on the other hand, would find it very demanding." The ship's alarm went off. A full-blooded klaxon, ship-wide, followed by a voice that managed to sound bored and terrified at once.

"Collision alert. Fractured mass, vector seven-three-one, impact in ninety seconds. All hands to brace stations. Deflection rigs charging. This is not a drill. Bracing surcharges apply." Cassandra sat up on the bed, glaring out of the window. Indeed, a massive broken part of an asteroid flew straight at us. Mining apparently went wrong, so we had a few billion tons of rock heading our way. Great. Just as we were getting to the best part. She glowered at it, stretching out her arm with an open palm.

For a split second, I felt her mana. As if for that second, I stood in the middle of an ocean darkness, in an endless, still sea of blackness that was surrounding me, disrupted only by tiny ripples.

"Shatter." The word jerked me back to reality. The asteroid half-shattered into tiny stones. All at once, with no visual effects of the spell, no travelling time or even direction. It just shattered. What the fuck was that? Well, I knew what that was. An attack spell. No incantation, no preparation, no residual mana loss, a perfectly executed attack spell that destroyed an asteroid. This was a type of spell one spent a lifetime perfecting, and she cast it with no care for the mana cost.

Well, no wonder, because by a rough estimate, that sea of darkness was a mana reserve almost double the size of my maximum capacity. I had completely misclassified her. Originally, I thought she was a service worker. Then, a researcher, perhaps a mage at around the tier of Astarielle, just not focused on combat. I couldn't be more wrong. She was an absolute monster of a mage. The alarm stopped ringing. The voice behind it found nothing to say.

With a pleased smile, Cassandra sat over my stomach, straddling my midsection. She reached for her bun and pulled out three long needles. Her hair fell down in a waterfall, framing her face. Something about this look completely changed how she felt to me. The look in her eyes sent a chill down my spine. She could seal Astarielle into a jar. She could have me jailed in her cellar.

She could do with me anything she damn well pleased, because I couldn't fight her without summoning Elsha, but I could never survive in a fight against her for long enough to execute the summoning. She always knew that. I only realized it now. And she knew that I knew now.

"So," she said slowly.

"Where were we?" I smirked.

"You were about to lose the dress. It's in the way." She slipped the dress off her shoulders, letting it fall all the way.

"Indeed. Can't get such an expensive dress dirty, can I?" And I was going to have to pull off the performance of my life. I woke up alone. The incense stick had burned out. The bed still felt like a heated furnace, with marks of lipstick, smears of blood from my broken lip and scratched back, and other bodily fluids all over me. Now, this was one night I wasn't going to talk to Astarielle about. I got out of bed and started collecting my clothes.

After the shower, I washed them a bit, put them on, and arranged myself. I draped the cloak over my shoulders and tied Sarah's sword to my belt. If it could speak, it would be so angry that it would be giving me the silent treatment anyway. Upon the second look, all the bedding was ready to be thrown into the incinerator. All right. I had to find a way to climb the floor using the local trial. I walked out of the cabin and headed toward where I guessed the bridge would be.

When I approached the door at the end of the corridor, the door opened by itself. On its other side stood Chen and Yukiko. Ah, great. Just the people I needed.