Episode-890
Chapter : 1779
The ghost looked at the ceiling of the manufactory, as if he could see through the metal roof to the stars beyond.
"She launched a star," the Reflection whispered. "Don't let it burn out."
And then, he was gone.
The light in the room didn't change, but the atmosphere felt different. The heaviness was gone. The presence that had been with Lloyd since he woke up in this timeline—the nagging, sarcastic, guiding voice of his subconscious—was silent.
Lloyd was truly alone.
He stood there for a long time, listening to the hum of the mana-generators. He felt a strange emptiness in his chest, but it wasn't a bad emptiness. It was the feeling of a clean slate. The ghost of his failure was gone. The misunderstanding that had fueled his hatred for Rosa was gone.
He walked over to the small window of the manufactory and looked out at his territory. He saw the lights of the town he had built. He saw the smoke rising from the factories producing the soap that had made him rich.
"It wasn't for the money," Lloyd whispered to the glass. "It was never just about the money."
He thought of the current Rosa Siddik. In this timeline, she was still the "Ice Queen." She was still distant. She was still political. She didn't know that in another life, she had died for him. She didn't know that she had saved his soul.
A wave of guilt washed over him. He had treated her with suspicion. He had treated her like a rival.
"I have to fix this," Lloyd said.
But he couldn't just walk up to her and tell her she was a martyr in a past life. She would think he was insane. He had to show her. He had to prove to her that he wasn't the weak boy she expected him to be, and he had to prove to himself that he could trust her.
He turned back to his desk. He waved his hand, and the System Interface materialized in the air. It was a blue, translucent screen—a construct of the Administrator, interpreted by his own brain.
[User: Lloyd Ferrum]
[Status: Awakened]
[Current Balance: 10,510 System Coins]
He stared at the number. In the past, he would have looked at that number and thought about what he could buy. He would have thought about upgrades, skills, or blueprints. He would have treated it like a high score in a video game.
But now, he didn't see a score. He saw resources. He saw ammunition.
He didn't open the shop. He didn't browse the catalog for new "Anime Abilities" or futuristic weapons. He just stared at the balance, letting the reality of his situation sink in.
"Ten thousand coins," Lloyd muttered. "And an empire of steel and various power."
He swiped the screen away. He didn't need to buy anything right now. He had everything he needed to start the real work.
He walked over to the Aegis suit. He placed his hand on the cold metal chest plate. He closed his eyes and reached out with his bloodline. He didn't use the System to interface with it. He just used his mind. He felt the iron atoms in the alloy. He felt the magnetic polarity of the joints.
The metal hummed under his touch. It wasn't magic. It was physics. It was structure. It was the language he spoke better than anyone else in this universe.
The Reflection was right. The time for hiding was over. The time for playing the "dismissed heir" was over.
Mammon was out there. somewhere in the shadows, waiting to find a crack in Lloyd’s life. The Devil was probably already weaving his webs, planting his spies, and writing his scripts of despair.
"You want a tragedy?" Lloyd asked the silent room. His voice was cold, sharp, and precise. It was the voice of the Major General.
He opened his eyes. The Blue Rings in his irises spun slowly, glowing with a hard, electric light.
"I don't do tragedies anymore," Lloyd said. "I do demolitions."
He grabbed a fresh roll of blueprints from the rack and slammed it onto his desk. He grabbed his pen. He wasn't going to wait for Mammon to make the first move. He was going to build a fortress that no lie could penetrate. He was going to engineer a future where his family survived.
Lloyd Ferrum began to draw. The ghost was gone, but the Lion had just woken up.
Chapter : 1780
The silence in the room was heavy, but it was a silence Lloyd had grown used to over the last twelve months. It had been exactly one year since the battle with Lucifer ended. The dust had long since settled on the Ferrum estate, but the war inside Lloyd’s head had only expanded. He sat in his chair, his mind no longer replaying memories, but calculating the cold, hard data of a continent he now effectively ruled.
For a year, he had lived with the truth the System had finally revealed. Rosa Siddik wasn't the villain; she was the sacrifice. The System, that glowing blue box that governed his life, had spent 365 days reminding him of his greatest tactical error: he had spent two lifetimes hating the only person who was truly on his side.
"Mammon," Lloyd whispered, the name feeling like poison on his tongue. The Devil Prince of Greed. That manipulator had spun a web so thick and sticky that Lloyd had been caught in it for two lifetimes. Rosa hadn't run away to save herself. She had run into the fire to save them. She was the hero of a story Lloyd hadn't even bothered to read until the final page.
He stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the Ferrum estate was being rebuilt. Stone by stone, the workers were patching up the holes left by the demons. But there was a hole in the North that no amount of stone could fix.
"System," Lloyd said, his voice flat. "Scan for mana signature. Target: Rosa Siddik."
[Scanning...] The blue text hovered in the air. [Scan complete. Target not found.]
"Widen the range," Lloyd commanded. "Cover the entire Northern Waste. Check the Dead Zones. Check everywhere."
[Scanning... Energy consumption high... Scan complete. Target not found.]
Lloyd slammed his fist against the window frame. The glass rattled, but didn't break. He had the [All-Seeing Eye]. He could see the microscopic cracks in a steel beam. He could see the flow of magic in the air like rivers of light. He could see through walls. But he couldn't see his wife.
He had sent the Wraiths. His elite spies, the ghosts he had trained to find anything and anyone. Ken Park had led them personally. They had combed the glaciers. They had searched the frozen caves where the wind screamed like a dying animal. They found nothing. No footprints. No ice statues. No body. Just endless, white emptiness.
It had been 12 months. The seasons changed and came back, the snow melted and returned, and still, there was nothing.
"She’s gone," Lloyd said to the empty room. He didn't cry. He didn't scream. He just felt a cold, hollow ache in his chest, right where his heart used to be. It was a tactical failure. A strategic blunder of the highest order. He had won the battle against Lucifer, but he had lost the reason he was fighting.
A knock on the door broke his concentration.
"Enter," Lloyd said, not turning from the window.
His mother, Duchess Milody, walked in. She looked more like a Queen Mother than a Duchess now. "The anniversary commemorations are prepared, Lloyd," she said. "The people are mourning the 'Sleeping Duchess' Rosa just as we planned."
"The lie is holding, then," Lloyd said.
"It is more than a lie now; it is the foundation of our stability," Milody reminded him. "Marrying Mina six months ago was the only way to secure Leo’s line and keep the vultures at bay. The public sees the devoted sister stepping in to raise the child of a tragic, comatose hero. We have successfully turned a scandal into a fairy tale."
Lloyd looked at his mother. "A fairy tale built on a foundation of necessary deceit. Fine. If the North is secure, that is all that matters."
"It is the only way," Milody said. "Rosa... Rosa is gone, Lloyd. We have to accept that. But her sister is here. The child is here. We can unite the houses. We can protect the boy."
"And Rosa?" Lloyd asked. "What do we tell the world? That I lost one wife and just replaced her with the spare?"
"No," Milody said, her eyes hard. "We tell them a story. A story they can understand. A story that protects everyone."
Lloyd let out a short, dry laugh. "A lie. You want to tell a lie."