Chương 61: Chapter 54 - When everyone else knows

"You've been a bad boy." The sentence echoed a bit through the chamber. Cassandra sat on the worktable like it was a throne someone had commissioned specifically for her, in a dead mining gallery. Silver dress spotless. Not a speck of asteroid dust on her. The dust had probably asked for permission first and been denied. I sat up on my rock. It wasn't all that comfortable, in retrospect.

"Define bad."

"One minute." She tilted her head, chin still resting on her palm.

"Your connection simply stopped. No death signal, no timer, no interference pattern I recognize. Just... silence. What are you hiding from me?" I smirked.

"It wouldn't be much of a surprise if I told you, would it?"

"Someone can't wait to go to the Hague, does he?" Her crimson eyes tracked me with the lazy attention of a cat watching something that thought it was fast.

"You walked in a straight line for sixty seconds, Damian. People who go dark for exactly one minute and use it to walk in a straight line are either very boring or very careful. You have never once been boring." Right. So she'd already reconstructed most of it. But I was already prepared. What I needed to hide from her was Henrik's thumb drive. The cube was the sacrifice I had prepared. I reached into my pocket slowly, letting the movement read as theatre. By feel, I drew the cube out and held it up between us.

"Tribunal seems to be your big fan," I said.

"They brought me a cube to interrupt the connection. I tested it to see if it worked. It apparently has." Cassandra looked at the cube with apparent displeasure, because a chunk of rock and solder had managed to distort her magic, and I would have bet real money she'd believed that impossible. Then again, I would bet real money on two pairs, so it didn't mean all that much. She extended her hand. An invisible force reached after the cube. I tucked it into my hand, pulling it closer.

"Bad girls don't get new toys."

"Bad girls?" She grinned viciously, eyes sparking up.

"How am I a bad girl?"

"Well, for starters, you're hiding from the rest of the world that you can access the tower by yourself. Nobody knows that, do they?" For half a second, she froze. Oh, yeah, absolutely nobody knew about that about her. And they suspected her anyway. The ability to enter the tower made her a hundred times more suspicious, because it was a convenient answer of how she would get in contact with Paradise to cooperate with them. The half-second ended.

The boredom slid back on like a mask picked up off the floor, seamless.

"That would be unwise," she said.

"I am famous for the wisdom behind my actions."

"No, Damian." She turned to face me, and her voice stayed light, conversational, pleasant, which somehow made it worse.

"You misunderstand. I'm not telling you it would be unwise for you. Though it would. Spectacularly. I'm telling you that if that particular fact ever surfaces, it could well lead to all diving ending for the foreseeable future. I have less than stellar history with certain factions in the secret societies." Ah, so the promise of mutually assured destruction. If she's not having her fun, then no one is. I smiled.

"What did you do?"

"I don't see how that's relevant." Her smile caught a playful tinge.

"Focus more on what we will do tonight. You haven't picked the most inviting accommodations. I'm about to catch tetanus just breathing the air here." I got up and straightened, arranging my jacket and the cloak. I stepped to her.

"Do you have any better accommodations? If you can teleport around the tower freely, you can surely teleport me around too." She smirked.

"And let you out of your cage? Oh, no, I thoroughly enjoy how trapped you are." That was neither confirmation nor denial. I could use the intel on whether she could move others or not, because she might well be the person moving Peace around.

"Really? You want to do something here?" I motioned around the room. She slid off the table, turned with a bit of a pose, and bent over it very suggestively.

"I think we will manage."

"Oh, so you plan to just bend over the table and have me do all the work? Again?" If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. She smirked over her shoulder.

"Don't overplay your hand. The worst that can happen to me is that my access to the tower would be restricted. You could easily face execution for the floor 25 stunt." She blackmailed so naturally she must have done it hundreds of times. Of course she did.

"You're still too dressed." I woke up with quite the backache. Sleeping on rocks wasn't as comfortable as it looked. And it didn't look comfortable at all. I picked up the clothes I arranged to sleep on and started dressing up. The cloak of the wanderer functioned as a decent blanket. Though I did put Sarah's sword behind a rock. It didn't need to see the details of last night. A chill breeze licked my skin.

"Ku ku ku... Yushi has completed the mission, Damian-sama," echoed around. Yushi hung upside down from the rock ceiling like a chandelier of bad decisions, fan open across the lower half of her face, eyes crinkled with a joy so profound it should have been taxed. I continued dressing up.

"I suppose you're done mapping the floor."

"The trial is located at the far terrace, approximately eleven miles east," she continued, in the exact tone of someone reading a weather report.

"Also, and Yushi says this with only love and a deep commitment to Damian-sama's continued improvement, your handling of the pale princess is unnecessarily tender. She won't ask for it, but she needs a bit rougher treatment."

"Yushi."

"Furthermore, the worktable was the boring choice. Do not let her get away with the simplest of setups. She can and will work for it if pushed a bit. And push her, you should." I unsummoned her. The cold breeze died, and she vanished into mist. As I dressed, I didn't find the cube. Of course, she took it. I did start having a decent amount of mana. A touch over a hundred and forty million. Enough for quite the party. Come to think of it. Yushi. With a giggle, Yushi reappeared.

"That was the shortest timeout Yushi has ever received. Have you rediscovered the wisdom in Yushi's words?"

"You've spied on me the whole night, didn't you?"

"I had to make sure you were safe when you slept."

"Did Cassandra search my clothes?"

"Of course she did." Yushi giggled again.

"The pale princess checked all the pockets and the phone, using your finger to unlock it. Yushi thought about stopping her, but decided to savor the consequences instead." How unsuspecting. My phone had nothing on it, but still. I finished arranging myself and headed out. If my reading of Cassandra was correct, she would be sending climbers to other floors soon. She spent the night with me, so now on Earth, it was morning, the diving time. I headed to the main hall adjacent to the chamber where I left the beacon.

Before I even reached the intersection, I heard steps. A smirk crept onto my face.

"I've been expecting you," I shouted into the tunnel. Within a moment, Liu and Henrik walked out.

"Fellow anti-daoist," Liu Wei said, a smile spreading over his face.

"The heavens weave our paths together once more. The three emperors reunite." Behind him, Henrik looked up from his tablet. He wore his usual high-collared wizard ensemble. His glasses caught the dark and shimmered with a fresh scan.

"You seem to be in good health, though at a limited power capacity." I smiled.

"How much time do you have on the timer?"

"About six hours," Henrik said.

"This is a floor for five. The single beacon can misdirect only two people at most." Liu moved his flowing robe, revealing six other Yamato Syndicate beacons tucked into his belt.

"And a part of our purpose is to deploy these on the next floor." I frowned.

"You shouldn't be showing this to me. She is watching me through the pod."

"Unlikely at the present," Henrik pushed his glasses up his nose.

"For as long as the sun is up in the sky, her unliving highness is fast asleep. Once she wakes up, she will see us being misdirected, so she will know, anyway." I froze in the spot. How did he just call her?

"Why did you call her an unliving highness?" They glanced at each other.

"There is no way he doesn't know," Henrik said.

"Heavens sometimes perform the funniest of plays. An outsider to our societies might not actually know."

"Know what?" Henrik tried to fight the smirk, but failed.

"Your organization seems to have skipped the basic introduction. Cassandra Laen'Ash is one of the five high vampires of our world. The youngest of them, but still a high vampire." A giggling chorus echoed through the hallway. I unsummoned Yushi. The sounds vanished. With a heavy exhale, I rubbed my face with my palm. Of course, she was lying about the vampire thing. And about a dozen other things too.

"Why isn't she cold?" They both stepped forward. We could speak while we walked. I matched their pace.

"As far as my knowledge of high vampire physiology goes," Henrik said conversationally.

"They lack most human organs, and in their place, have six hearts that circulate magically compressed blood through a vein system an order of magnitude more complex than a human's. All the circulation causes friction, which heats them up." Right. Of course. Not even human anatomy. So she wasn't just a monster, but effectively an alien-type magical being. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. So much for me having a relationship with someone normal.

I set out to find someone more human than a succubus, and ended up hooking up with a woman significantly less human than the succubi.

"Who knows about it?"

"Everyone with some basic security clearance in the Secret Societies." Liu snorted.

"Except for the anti-daoist, apparently." We headed slowly to the populated section.

"Can you give me a rundown of how a high vampire matches the common fiction?"

"Of course." Henrik switched to a lecturing tone.

"The common fiction has a few things correct. High vampires burn in the sun, though it takes a while due to their super regeneration. Every high vampire has access to blood magic, through which they feed, and can turn into mist. They cannot be seen in mirrors, do not need to breathe, but sleep during the day. Silver disrupts their regeneration slightly; a wooden stake would probably work if one could stake all six hearts, which is untested, and they tend to be exceptional mages."

"As we can verify with the pod transference," Liu added. She didn't burn in the sun, though. That wasn't her out-regenerating anything. The sun didn't bother her. And it wasn't an illusion either. I would have noticed that. So, she did reveal some deeper secrets for the sake of the relationship. I smiled.

"Thanks."

"Why so interested?" Henrik followed up.

"Were you thinking about asking her for a date?" Good that I had Yushi unsummoned.

"Something like that. Anyways, let's focus on the mission. We've got six hours to get all the information we can."