Cameron's fingers trailed lower, his hand pressing firmly against my backside as he pulled me flush against his side. The crude, possessive gesture would have made any ordinary girl freeze, but I merely let a soft, compliant hum escape my lips, leaning deeper into his shoulder to maintain the facade of his utterly brainwashed, beloved wife. He truly believed his ocular charm had me entirely under his thrall.
He looked over my head, his gaze shifting toward the right side of the balcony where the towering captain stood.
"Victor, Have you received any fresh intelligence updates from our informants inside Caria City?" Cameron called out, his tone shifting from casual flirtation to the serious, cold pitch of a faction commander.
Victor snapped to attention, his fingers tightening slightly around the leather-wrapped handle of his heavy combat mace.
"What is it, Lord Cameron? Has the Bureau mobilized their inner wall garrisons?"
"Worse, there is a highly volatile, predatory anomaly moving along our perimeter, and she is far more lethal than our tactical divisions initially anticipated. Tell me, Victor... have you heard reports of the high-tier bounty hunter? Eirene Rynd. The sister of that shadow-walking squire?"
Victor grunted, his crimson eyes scanning the dark horizon.
"I've only read about her exploits in the leaked district chronicles and the morning newspapers. They say she operates like a ghost."
"Good, then you understand the threat level, she is an extraordinarily dangerous opponent. The woman single-handedly dismantled two established S-rank bounties… Oksana and Don Anthony… in a span of just two weeks. Her baseline combat output is monstrous. If she discovers the localized mana coordinates to this castle, she has the exact physical potential required to breach our vanguard line and claim my head." Cameron said, a rare flicker of genuine apprehension crossing his aristocratic features.
The sheer, staggering irony of his words vibrated through the air, threatening to rip the Glasgow smile right back onto my face.
The very executioner he was losing sleep over was currently wrapped tightly in his embrace, her newly grown pale arm resting on his shoulder, systematically mapping the exact placement of his carotid artery beneath his collar. He was trembling over a ghost while the phantom was holding his waist.
Playing the act with flawless, terrifying precision, I tilted my head upward, letting Vanessa's hazel eyes wide with a perfectly fabricated expression of intense, fierce devotion. I reached up, gently placing my hand against his cheek to offer a comforting, brainwashed touch.
"Don't worry, my love, I hope that Eirene never finds her way to these mountains to hurt you. If she ever dares to cross that stone bridge... I will personally protect you from her." I cooed, my voice dripping with the sweet, synthetic affection of a hypnotized doll.
Cameron smiled down at me, completely reassured by the absolute compliance of his prize vanguard. He had no idea that my internal system was merely counting down the seconds, waiting for the moon to dip just low enough to cast the balcony into total, unreadable shadow.
Victor shifted his heavy mace from his right hand to his left, the metal rings on his gauntlets clinking softly against the leather wrap.
"Well, what should we do then, Lord Cameron? If this Eirene Rynd is as catastrophic a threat as the registries claim, we cannot simply sit beneath our mana wards and wait for her to map our blind spots."
Cameron let out a low, analytical chuckle, his fingers tracing the curve of my waist with an air of absolute, smug superiority.
"I have been engineering a strategic counter-plan for a very long time, Victor, and the chronological timing of the current district deployment is nothing short of mathematically perfect. My inner-ring espionage units have been tracking Eirene's recent operational signatures. The reports state she consistently deploys wearing a distinct fire-resistant crimson trench coat and a bone-plated mask. More importantly, my deep-cover informants within the Bureau confirmed that her highly overprotective older brother… the high-tier investigator… is currently stationed all the way out in Lulu City, completely tied up in a localized jurisdictional inquiry."
He paused, his hazel eyes gleaming with cold, calculated malice as he looked out across the jagged valleys of Rebelbub.
"With her primary familial support line entirely severed by geography, she is vulnerable. If we happen to orchestrate a coordinated ambush and send our elite vanguard units to claim her head right now, we will neutralize the threat before she can even register our coordinates. We would make the entire job significantly easier."
Cameron's gaze drifted from the mountain peaks back to Victor, his expression hardening into something deeply predatory.
"But she is only the first piece of the puzzle. Victor, you are well aware of the legends surrounding the Crimson Phantom… the roaming, blood-sucking winged demon currently tearing through the syndicates, carrying an astronomical, unprecedented bounty of 16 gold pieces from the high council."
Victor nodded slowly, his expression growing exceptionally grim. "Every high-tier combatant from here to the capital knows of the demon, Lord Cameron. They say it leaves entire fortresses drained of life, slaughtering S-rank lords in a single night."
"Exactly, and that is precisely why we are not going to destroy it. We need to actively hunt down, corner, and capture that Crimson Phantom. We will make it our ultimate tactical weapon. Thanks to the absolute compliance matrix of my high-tier ocular charm ability, I don't care how monstrous or S-rank its biological instincts are. The moment that winged demon establishes direct eye contact with my irises, I will systematically tame it. We will use that catastrophic entity to completely crush the Capital Knights Bureau Association once and for all."
I stood perfectly still, my cheek pressed against his shoulder in the ultimate act of wifely devotion, while my internal processors ran a diagnostic check on the sheer, unfathomable magnitude of the irony bleeding through his words.
The structural stupidity of his grand strategy was a work of absolute art. Step one: orchestrate a fatal ambush to execute Eirene Rynd. Step two: hunt down and brainwash the 16-gold nightmare known as the Crimson Phantom to turn it into a mindless pet.
But Cameron wasn't finished. He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that vibrated right through my dark-iron breastplate.
"Furthermore, Victor... do you recall the highly classified intelligence reports regarding the massive prison break at the Dodorant Citadel? Specifically, the ultra-max security fugitive designated as Inmate 345... Keane Leon?"
Victor's eyes widened slightly, his posture stiffening.
"Keane Leon... the ghost of the western sectors. I didn't think the rumors were true."
"They are entirely verified, we need to track down, intercept, and aggressively recruit that man into the vanguard line of the Immoral Knights. According to the encrypted military broadcasts, he successfully executed a flawless, solo escape from the inescapable, high-security penal matrix of the Andromeda Citadel. A master infiltrator and survivalist of that caliber would give our rebellion an unbreachable tactical monopoly." Cameron stated, his tone laced with profound, professional respect.
The irony was now absolute, an unreadable, geometric joke that only my super-intelligent slime biology could fully appreciate.
First, this green-haired strategist was standing on a balcony plotting the violent assassination of Eirene Rynd… the exact identity I had buried under a false casket. Second, he was arrogantly boasting about his ability to visually dominate and tame the horrific, S-rank Crimson Phantom… completely oblivious to the fact that the demon's massive blood wings were currently folded neatly inside my bone marrow, waiting for the cover of total darkness. And third, he was desperately planning a high-stakes continental manhunt to locate and recruit Inmate 345, the legendary fugitive Keane Leon who had broken out of the inescapable deep-space architecture of Andromeda... which was yet another historical cellular identity cataloged deep within my own shifting DNA.
He was looking for three legendary, world-shaking targets to either kill, enslave, or recruit, and all three of them were currently wearing Vanessa Katt's underwear, standing right in front of his face, and hugging his arm.
"It's a brilliant strategy, my beautiful love," I murmured against his neck, my voice a flawless, synthetic echo of his brainwashed wife.
I slowly shifted the alignment of my fingers against his shoulder, my pale, regenerated left hand subtly feeling the exact, soft tissue gap between his iron gorget and his jawline. The setting moon was dropping rapidly now, the long, sharp shadows of the Rebelbub towers creeping across the stone floor of the balcony like black ink.