CHAPTER 58: LEVERAGE
The rest of the day after the bloodbath at the Rusty Anchor did not open in a damp, rat-infested execution cell.
Instead, it started with John standing inside an opulent, mahogany-paneled office that smelled faintly of expensive tobacco.
And shaking the cold, sweat-filled hand of the city's Governor.
How did that happen? Well, it was a surreal ordeal, to say the least.
A few hours earlier…
Minutes after the slave master's body hit the floorboards of the tavern, the room had remained frozen in a suffocating, dead silence.
John had casually wiped the blood off the Evolstice Blade, dismissed it back into his soul space, and pulled out a chair for the shivering Bestiar girl.
He had even turned back to the pale, hyperventilating waiter to re-order their meal as if he had merely swatted an annoying fly off the table.
Before the food could arrive, however, the wooden doors of the tavern were kicked wide open.
A squad of eight fully armored city guards poured into the room.
At the head of the unit was the senior guard captain—the very same man who had paid their entry fee at the gate only an hour earlier.
The middle-aged woman, who was both the tavern manager and had been trying to defuse the situation between John and the slave master, had slipped out the back door the moment the blade hit the man's chest.
And it seemed she had been the one to call the guards.
Right now, she cowered behind the captain, pointing a trembling finger toward John's table.
"That's him! He slaughtered Master Ronald in cold blood!" she shrieked.
The guard captain took in the scene with a sharp, trained eye.
He looked at the pool of dark blood congealing around the corpse, then at the bruised Bestiar girl sitting stiffly on a chair, and finally at the young waiter standing frozen with a tray in his hands.
"Father!" the young waiter blurted out, his voice cracking a little with panic.
"It... it wasn't like that! Ronald was harassing everyone, he tripped me, he threatened them—"
"Silence, boy," the captain shouted, though his eyes softened for a fraction of a second as he looked at his son.
As it turned out, the Rusty Anchor was owned and operated by the guard captain's wife, and the young waiter who had been humiliated and tripped by the slave master was his only son.
The captain knew Ronald's reputation all too well—the man was a ruthless, arrogant brute who used his wealth to push around anyone weaker than him.
Still, the law was the law.
The captain stepped forward, his steel boots thudding against the floorboards. He lowered the tip of his spear toward John's chest, his face hardening into an unreadable mask.
"By order of the city watch... you are under arrest for murder," the captain declared. "Drop any weapons and surrender peacefully."
Beside John, Princess Raven's eyes flickered with a dangerous glint.
Her fingers twitched toward her waist, ready to summon her undead and slaughter the entire squad where they stood.
She glanced at John, waiting to see how he would respond.
John, however, didn't move. He sat completely still, staring blankly at the tip of the spear hovering inches from his throat.
Inside his mind, a violent war was raging.
Am I going insane? John asked himself, staring into the dark depths of his own psyche.
The realization was a bitter pill to swallow. He had just brutally executed a man in broad daylight, in the middle of an unfamiliar city, over a spilled plate of stew and a slave he didn't even know.
And the worst part? He was actually happy he did it.
The moment he felt the blade bite through muscle and bone, the agonizing headache had finally become manageable.
My physique... It's changing me, he thought, a cold sweat breaking out across his back.
It feeds on violence. If I keep letting it drive me like this, I'm going to lose my mind completely. I'll turn into a mindless monster.
A surge of panic filled his chest, but then, amidst the turmoil, a bizarre, twisted epiphany came to him.
Wait... why am I trying to fight it?
He stared at the guard captain, his thoughts spiraling into a strange, analytical loop.
If my mind is going to go insane anyway... what if I just act insane on purpose? If I choose when to be crazy, then the madness isn't controlling me—I'm controlling the madness. It's just a tool. A switch. On when I need it to be, off when I need to think.
It was a completely absurd, insane piece of logic—a desperate mental defense mechanism conjured up by a mind pushed to its absolute limits.
But to John, in that exact moment, it made absolute, undeniable sense.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and consciously tried "flipping the switch" back to rational logic mode.
Looking up at the guard captain, John didn't show an ounce of fear or anger. His eyes were cold and completely composed.
"Captain," John said flatly. "I want to talk to your Governor."
The captain blinked, caught off guard by the young man's absolute composure and absurd request.
He looked at John's high-grade clothes, his unbothered posture, and the sheer lethality radiating off him.
The captain hesitated. John had saved his son from being beaten by Ronald, and executing a high-ranking noble without proper approval could easily result in his entire squad being executed by the city's rulers later.
"Go outside," the captain grunted, motioning with his spear. "We move through the main street. And no sudden moves."
The morning sun hit them as they stepped out of the tavern. John, Raven, and the mute Bestiar girl walked in the center of a tight guard formation, surrounded by eight armed men.
As they marched down the cobblestone streets, Raven stepped closer to John, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried over the clatter of armor.
"What is your plan?" she murmured, her eyes scanning the rooftop archers posted along the street. "If we go to their Governor, we are walking straight into their seat of power. In my kingdom, public murder is met with immediate decapitation."
"I'm working on it," John replied quietly, massaging his temple. "First, we need information. We don't even know where the hell we are."
"And you thought of that now, after you stabbed a man in broad daylight?"
"Give me a break… I am sure you were thinking of it too."
Raven nodded subtly, leaving John to handle his internal chaos.
She turned her head toward the guard captain walking beside them. Her cold, aloof expression shifted into a look of regal, polite curiosity.
"Captain," Raven began, her voice smooth as velvet.
"I must admit, your city's watch is remarkably efficient. However, the architectural styles here differ greatly from what I am accustomed to. What province of the kingdom is this again?"
The guard captain's posture instantly straightened. His chest puffed out beneath his iron breastplate.
If there was one thing Captain Vane loved more than his family, it was his homeland.
He was an intense, die-hard patriot—in fact, his overwhelming pride in his nation was the exact reason he still served on the city watch despite his wife earning more than enough money running the Rusty Anchor.
"You are currently in the frontier city of Oakhaven, my lady," the captain announced proudly, eager to boast to a foreign noble.
"The crown jewel of the South! We stand under the glory of Sagtiarus, Empire of the Sun, the greatest on the vast continent of Helion!"
Raven stopped dead in her tracks for a fraction of a second before forcing her legs to keep moving.
Helion? How the hell did we arrive on another continent?
Raven exchanged a glance with John.
The broken spatial artifact they had used to flee the Obsidian Covenant's fortress hadn't just miscalculated its coordinates. It had completely gone crazy.
So much so that it had flung them across an ocean, or perhaps an entirely different realm, onto a completely different continent.
By the time they reached the Governor's manor—a grand, white-stone estate surrounded by manicured gardens—the sun was high in the sky.
Captain Vane escorted them through the massive iron gates and up the marble steps, leaving his squad outside while he led John, Raven, and the Bestiar girl into the main building.
After a brief, tense exchange with the guards at the door, they were ushered into the Governor's private office.
The room was opulent, furnished with rich velvet drapes, heavy oak bookcases, and a massive mahogany desk at the far end.
Sitting behind the desk was a middle-aged man with slicked-back brown hair, sharp features, and fine silk robes that hugged his fit figure.
Governor McGraw looked up from a stack of parchment, his brow furrowing in deep annoyance as Captain Vane bowed before him.
"What is the meaning of this, Vane?" McGraw sneered, his voice nasally and impatient. "I am in the middle of balancing the quarterly tax reports. Why have you interrupted me?"
"My Lord," Captain Vane said respectfully, keeping his head bowed.
"This young man committed a public homicide. He slew Master Ronald of the Merchant Guild. However..."
"I observed they were high foreign nobility. I believed it prudent to bring them before you rather than risk an international incident after executing them."
Governor McGraw scoffed, tossing his quill onto the desk. He leaned back in his leather chair, crossing his arms as his cold eyes swept over John and Raven.
"Nobility?" McGraw laughed, a bitter, mocking sound.
"I don't give a damn who your parents are back in whatever backwater domain you crawled out of. In this city, my word is absolute law."
"You slaughtered a registered guild merchant in broad daylight. Royalty or not, you just committed a red card offense, and that means you are a pain in my ass."
Raven immediately stepped forward, her regal posture radiating absolute authority.
"Governor, I advise you to watch your tongue. I am Princess Raven of the—"
"Save it, girl," McGraw cut her off with a wave of his hand, utterly unimpressed.
"I don't care about your titles. Vane, throw them in the lowest cell. Strip them of their belongings and let the guild handle them."
Raven's jaw tightened, her hands clenching into fists as dark Ether began to silently gather at her fingertips.
John, however, didn't look angry. In fact, he had gone completely still.
He stood near the back of the room, his dark eyes fixed entirely on Governor McGraw's face.
A red card offense?
The phrase echoed in John's mind, ringing louder than the throbbing headache in his skull.
It wasn't just the words. It was the delivery, the cadence, the casual phrasing.
That specific phrase was an absolute anomaly.
It's an Earth slang, John realized, a jolt of electricity shooting down his spine.
John stepped past Raven, brushing right by her side.
He walked straight toward the mahogany desk, ignoring Captain Vane, who instinctively went into combat mode.
"John, what are you doing?" Raven whispered sharply.
John ignored her. He stopped two feet from the desk, leaned down slightly, and stared directly into Governor McGraw's eyes.
"You're a Champion, aren't you?" John said, his voice dropping into a flat, blunt whisper.
The entire office went deathly quiet.
Governor McGraw froze mid-breath.
The dismissive sneer on his face instantly melted away, replaced by pure, unadulterated shock.
His complexion turned a sickly, ghostly white, and his pupils shrank to the size of a needle prick.
"What... what did you just say?" McGraw said with a trembling voice.
John watched the man's reaction, every piece of the puzzle falling flawlessly into place.
He was right. Governor McGraw wasn't a native of this world. He was someone like John—an Earth soul brought to this realm, a reincarnated Champion granted power to act as a secret agent for a god.
Just as Jynx had tried to make John his champion, another had also approached the Governor… and he had accepted.
From his brief conversation with Captain Vane, John knew that Sagtiarus was a fanatically religious empire devoted strictly to the Sun God, Ra.
Heresy was punished by public burning.
If the Church of Ra ever found out that the Governor of Oakhaven was secretly a Champion serving a foreign deity, McGraw wouldn't just lose his position—he would be tortured and executed brutally.
And McGraw had seen them in action enough times to be absolutely terrorized by those fanatics.
McGraw's gaze darted toward Captain Vane, then back to John. Sweat poured down the Governor's face, soaking his fine silk collar.
Slowly, McGraw's right hand went beneath the edge of his desk.
How the fuck did he find out? No matter, I will just have to silence him.
Beneath the wood lay a hidden magical rune—a trap that would engulf the place in an isolated space, allowing the Governor to dispose of John with no witness.
If he killed John, Raven, the slave girl, and even Captain Vane right now, he could frame it as a dangerous criminal uprising and bury his secret forever.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," John said smoothly.
McGraw's hand froze inches from the button.
With a calm, casual motion, John reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cracked, blackened glass orb.
It was the deactivated spatial tracking artifact they had used to escape the Covenant base—completely drained of energy, its internal array fractured and useless.
John tossed the orb lightly into the air, catching it with a soft smirk.
"Do you know what this is?" John asked, his voice dripping with terrifying confidence.
"It's a specialized recording and tracking artifact. The exact second my heart stops beating, or the moment my energy fluctuates in death, this little orb will instantly transmit everything recorded in this room—including your cozy little secret—straight to my mother, the Empress of the Crimson Tempest Kingdom."
It was a complete, deliberate, massive lie. The artifact was dead junk, and John had no idea if a transmission would even work on this continent.
But Governor McGraw didn't know that.
To McGraw, John was a terrifyingly calm, mysterious youth who had casually uttered the most dangerous word in his existence.
Seeing the complex, foreign runic structure of the spatial artifact in John's hand, McGraw's courage completely shattered.
The Governor slowly pulled his hand back from beneath the desk, lifting both palms into the air in a posture of complete surrender. Sweat dripped off his chin, splashing onto his tax reports.
"Vane..." McGraw rasped, his voice shaking. "Leave us. Now."
Captain Vane blinked in utter confusion. "My Lord? But the murder—"
"I SAID GET OUT!" McGraw screamed, slamming his fist onto the desk in a panic.
"Leave the building! Clear the corridor! Do not let anyone near this office until I call for you!"
Captain Vane looked between the terrified Governor and the completely unbothered John.
Realizing something far beyond his pay grade was happening, the captain bowed tightly and backed out of the room, shutting the doors behind him.
The moment the doors clicked locked, McGraw slumped back into his leather chair, looking as though he had aged twenty years in a single second.
"What... what do you want?" McGraw whispered, staring at John as if he were a demon wearing human skin. "Who sent you?"
John stepped right up to the mahogany desk, resting his hands on the polished wood. He leaned in close, a broad, charming, yet deeply unsettling smile spreading across his face.
"Nobody sent me," John said softly. "I just had a very bad night, a very bad headache, and a very unfortunate run-in with a slave master in your city."
John extended his right hand across the desk.
"So, Governor... instead of becoming enemies, I propose a simple alternative."
McGraw stared at John's outstretched hand, swallowing hard. "An... alternative?"
"A partnership," John grinned, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, dark light. "You keep our presence completely off the books. You wipe my criminal record clean, give us valid travel passes, and provide us with enough coin and information to leave this continent smoothly."
John paused, his smile growing sharper.
"And in return... I don't drop this little glass orb off at the church I saw on my way here. What do you say?"
Silence hung heavy in the room. Beside John, Raven watched the exchange with a mixture of shock and quiet awe.
She had been ready to fight her way out of the city, yet John had completely dismantled the man with just words.
Governor McGraw looked at John's outstretched hand.
Finally, realizing he had been thoroughly, completely backed into a corner by a total lunatic, McGraw wiped his sweaty palm on his trousers and slowly reached out.
Their hands met in a firm, lingering handshake.
"Partner," McGraw choked out, his voice trembling.
John's smile broadened. "Pleasure doing business with you, Governor..."