Episode-821
Chapter : 1641
"You're a masterpiece," Lloyd said, his voice thick with self-loathing. "And I hate it."
He turned away from her. He couldn't look at her perfection anymore. It was an insult to the messy, frightened, brave girl he had lost.
"We're going back," Lloyd said.
"Affirmative," she replied.
________________________________________
Back in the manufactory laboratory, Lloyd sat at his desk, surrounded by piles of books. Spirit Jasmin stood in the corner, exactly where he had told her to stand. She hadn't moved in an hour. She didn't shift her weight. She didn't scratch an itch. She just existed.
Lloyd was frantically flipping through the journals of Anubis. He was looking for a loophole.
"He did it," Lloyd muttered to himself. "Anubis revived his daughter. The Golem... she had memories. She had regrets. She spoke. She said 'I am sorry'. How? How did he do it?"
He scanned the pages of the translation Mina had provided. There were diagrams of the Golem Heart. Formulas for Aethel-Quartz resonance.
He found a section titled 'The Retention of Self'. His heart leaped.
He read it. And then his heart sank.
...The consciousness cannot be fabricated. It must be preserved at the moment of death. The soul must be captured before it dissipates into the Ether. I used the Soul Catcher array to hold my daughter's essence within the Quartz before her body failed. Without this capture, the data is lost. You cannot read a book that has been burned.
Lloyd slammed the book shut. Dust motes danced in the air.
He hadn't captured Jasmin's soul. He hadn't used a Soul Catcher. He had just watched her die.
"It's gone," Lloyd whispered. "The data is lost."
He looked at Spirit Jasmin. She was a blank book. A book with the same cover, but all the pages were white.
He walked over to her. He held up the Anubis journal.
"Read this," he ordered.
She took the book. She scanned the page in a second. "Text analyzed. Topic: Soul transference mechanics. Conclusion: Theoretically sound but ethically dubious."
"Do you remember who Anubis is?"
"Database search: Anubis. Ancient alchemist. Creator of the Golem Heart."
"Do you remember... do you remember the first time we met?" Lloyd asked. "In the kitchen? You dropped a tray."
She paused. The System light flickered in her eyes.
"Searching memory banks... Error. No file found. Would you like me to create a new file for this event?"
"No," Lloyd choked out. "No new files."
He took the book back. He felt a profound sense of defeat. He had the power of a god. He could summon demons. He could build railguns. But he couldn't fix this.
He realized then that he couldn't take her to Mrs. Weaver. The mother would know. A mother knows her child's soul. If he showed her this robot, this hollow shell... it wouldn't be a comfort. It would be a horror show. It would be like showing her a reanimated corpse.
"I can't use you," Lloyd said softly. "I can't show you to her."
"Does this render me obsolete?" Jasmin asked. "Do you wish to unsummon me?"
Lloyd looked at her. If he unsummoned her, she ceased to exist. Even this hollow version would be gone. He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill Jasmin again, even if it was just a copy.
"No," Lloyd said. "You're not obsolete. You're... you're my guard. You stay here. You protect the lab. You protect... me."
"Directive accepted: Protect Master," she said.
Lloyd sat back down at his desk. He felt older. He felt tired.
He had tried to cheat death. And death had cheated him back. He had bought a miracle, but he had forgotten to read the fine print.
He looked at the Golem Heart on the table. Anubis had succeeded where he failed. Anubis had saved his daughter's soul.
Why? Lloyd thought. What did he have that I don't?
He picked up the Golem Heart. It pulsed against his palm. Thump. Thump.
Anubis had love. Obsessive, world-breaking love. Lloyd had that too.
Anubis had the Aethel-Quartz. Lloyd had Lilith Stones.
But Anubis had captured the soul at the moment of death.
Lloyd realized his mistake. He was trying to download a file that had already been deleted. He needed a backup. But humans don't have backups.
Unless...
He looked at Jasmin again.
"System," he asked mentally. "Is there any trace? Any residual echo in the world? Karma? Anything?"
[Scanning... Negative. The subject 'Jasmin' is fully deceased. The Spirit is a reconstruction based on System observation data, not soul data.]
It was final.
Chapter : 1642
Lloyd put his head on the desk. He stayed there for a long time. The Diamond Queen stood watch over him, a perfect, beautiful, unfeeling statue.
He had failed Mrs. Weaver. He would have to go back and tell her the truth. Or lie again. A better lie. A crueler lie.
He closed his eyes. He missed his friend. He missed her stutter. He missed her bad tea. He missed her humanity.
And now, he had to live with her ghost staring at him every day, reminding him of exactly what he had lost.
The library in the underground manufactory was usually a place of quiet contemplation, or at least the frantic scribbling of equations. Tonight, it felt like a tomb. The air was thick with the smell of old paper, dust, and the metallic tang of anxiety. Lloyd sat at a large wooden table, surrounded by a fortress of books. These weren't just any books; they were the recovered texts from Ramos, the legacy of the ancient alchemist Anubis. They were fragile, crumbling things, written in a dialect that made Lloyd’s head hurt.
"I hate dead languages," Lloyd muttered, rubbing his temples. "Why couldn't ancient geniuses write in simple common? Or better yet, binary. I understand binary. This looks like a chicken danced on the page with ink on its feet."
Mina, sitting across from him, didn't look up from her own stack of scrolls. "It is a dialect of High Archaic, Lloyd. It is precise. It is beautiful. And stop complaining. You are the one who wanted to play god."
"I don't want to play god," Lloyd corrected, flipping a page that crumbled slightly at the corner. "I want to file a customer service complaint with the universe. There is a difference."
He looked over his shoulder. In the corner of the room, standing perfectly still, was Spirit Jasmin. She hadn't moved in three hours. She was staring at a blank section of the wall with the intensity of a statue. She looked exactly like Jasmin. The same brown hair, the same maid uniform, the same height. But she didn't fidget. She didn't hum. She didn't breathe, not really. She was a high-definition photograph of a person, lacking the messy, chaotic spark of life.
"Status report," Lloyd said to the spirit.
"Status: Optimal," Spirit Jasmin replied instantly. Her voice was smooth, melodic, and completely empty. "Battery levels at 98%. No threats detected. Awaiting input."
Lloyd winced. It was like talking to a vending machine that looked like his best friend. "Right. Good. Keep... standing there. Good job."
"Affirmative," she said.
Lloyd turned back to the book. He felt a wave of nausea. He had bought a shell. He had spent a fortune to buy a haunting.
"We are running out of time," Lloyd said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Ken sent a message an hour ago. Mrs. Weaver is fading. The healers say it's a matter of hours, maybe a day. If we don't find something in these books... I have to take that to her." He gestured to the spirit.
Mina looked up, her eyes tired behind her reading glasses. "Taking the Spirit to her is a risk. A mother knows her child. If Mrs. Weaver looks into those eyes and sees nothing... it might kill her faster."
"I know," Lloyd said grimly. "That's why we need a miracle. We need Anubis's secret. He brought his daughter back. He put a soul into a rock. How did he do it? Did he use a specific spell? A ritual? A really good battery?"
"Anubis was obsessed," Mina said, tracing a line of text with her finger. "He spent fifty years searching. We have had these books for a few days. You cannot expect to replicate a lifetime of genius in a weekend."
"Watch me," Lloyd said. "I'm very motivated. Panic is a great motivator."
He went back to reading. The text was dense, filled with alchemical theories about soul resonance and etheric binding. It was brilliant, but it was all theory. It explained how a soul stuck to a body, but not how to grab one that had already left.
Lloyd slammed the book shut. Dust motes danced in the mana-light.
"This is useless," he said. "It's all mechanics. It's like reading a manual on how to build a car when what I need is a map to find the driver who walked away."
He stood up and paced the room. He walked past Spirit Jasmin. She tracked him with her eyes, her head turning smoothly like a turret. It was unnerving.