Episode-917
Chapter : 1833
To a normal mage, Monalisa would look like a blinding sun of dark energy. Her power was so immense that it would burn the eyes of anyone trying to sense it directly. But Lloyd’s eye was different. It broke that blinding light down into manageable streams of numbers and colors. He peeled back the layers of her existence one by one.
First, he looked past her physical form. He ignored the pale skin and the black hair. He looked at the muscle and bone beneath. Then, he went deeper. He looked at the Mana Circulatory System.
Every living creature in this world, whether human or demon, had a system of "veins" that carried magic through their body, just like blood vessels carried blood. For a being as powerful as a Prince of Hell, this system should have been magnificent. It should have been a roaring river of power, flowing fast and bright, illuminating her core like a nuclear reactor. It should have been smooth, efficient, and perfect.
But that is not what Lloyd saw.
What he saw made his engineer’s heart skip a beat. It wasn't awe he felt; it was the specific kind of frustration a mechanic feels when they open the hood of a very expensive car and realize the owner has never changed the oil.
Monalisa’s mana system was a disaster.
The flow of energy inside her was sluggish. It moved like cold molasses. But the speed wasn't the main problem. The problem was the pollution.
Lloyd zoomed in on the image in his mind. Inside her spiritual veins, there was a buildup of a thick, dark substance. In his mind, Lloyd immediately categorized it. It looked exactly like the carbon buildup inside an old combustion engine, or the calcium scale inside a neglected water pipe. It was jagged, sharp, and ugly.
"Abyssal Sediment," Lloyd thought, giving the substance a name.
He analyzed the composition of the sediment. It was a byproduct of her own power. Monalisa was the Prince of Sloth. Her power was based on stillness, on stopping things, on slowing down reality. But biology—even demonic biology—required movement. Life required flow.
Because she spent centuries doing nothing, channeling the power of absolute stillness, her own mana had started to stagnate. When water sits still for too long, it becomes murky and grows algae. When mana sits still for too long inside a body, it separates. The pure energy evaporates, but the heavy, gritty impurities are left behind.
This "grit" was settling in her arteries. It was coating the walls of her spirit core. It was dark, jagged, and heavy.
Lloyd watched the data stream with fascination and horror. He could see that the sediment was not just sitting there; it was hardening. It was undergoing a process of calcification. The "Abyssal Sediment" was slowly turning into "Abyssal Stone."
She wasn't just being lazy. She wasn't lying on those cushions because she enjoyed the comfort. She was lying there because her internal machinery was seizing up.
Lloyd looked at her Mana Core, the heart of her soul. It should have been a spinning vortex. Instead, it was grinding. He could almost hear the phantom sound of metal screeching against metal. The sludge was so thick around her core that every beat of her heart required a massive amount of effort.
She was petrifying from the inside out.
The realization hit Lloyd with the clarity of a mathematical equation. This was a biological paradox. The stronger she became as the Prince of Sloth, the more "stillness" she generated. The more stillness she generated, the more sediment formed in her blood. The more sediment formed, the harder it was for her to move.
Her power was literally choking her to death.
It was a slow, agonizing suicide. Every day she existed, she became a little more like a statue and a little less like a living being. The "sultry boredom" on her face wasn't just a personality quirk or a seduction tactic. It was a symptom of chronic, debilitating fatigue. She was exhausted because her body was fighting a losing war against its own fuel source.
Lloyd’s mind, trained in the rigors of Earth’s technology, immediately started drawing comparisons. He remembered working on high-end hydraulic systems in his previous life. If the hydraulic fluid wasn't cycled regularly, it would turn into a thick gel. Eventually, that gel would block the valves. When the valves blocked, the machine would stop moving. It didn't matter how powerful the motor was; if the fluid couldn't move, the machine was a brick.
Monalisa was a Ferrari with an engine full of tar.
Chapter : 1834
Suddenly, a cold, genderless voice echoed in Lloyd’s mind. It was the System Administrator, the mysterious interface that had accompanied him since his reincarnation. It confirmed his diagnosis with brutal efficiency.
[Alert: Diagnostic complete.]
[Target: Monalisa Belphagor (Prince of Sloth)]
[Condition: Advanced Mana Stagnation / Systemic Petrification.]
[Analysis: The target’s mana pathways are 85% obstructed by crystallized Abyssal waste. The core is operating at critical pressure levels.]
[Forecast: Probability of total petrification and permanent biological shutdown within the standard year: 94.7%.]
[Note: Current life signs are only being maintained by massive, conscious mana suppression. The target is manually forcing her heart to beat through the blockage.]
Lloyd blinked behind his visor, the data streams fading slightly as he looked back at her physical form. The awe he had felt earlier vanished completely. He no longer saw a monster or a god. He saw a patient. He saw a broken system that was crying out for repair.
He watched her hand twitch. She was trying to lift a finger to adjust a lock of hair that had fallen across her face, a movement designed to look alluring, but Lloyd saw the micro-tremors of effort it cost her.
To anyone else, it looked like a graceful movement. But Ben, standing a few feet to Lloyd's left, let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. The sound was harsh, cutting through the silence like a blade. He didn't look nervous; he looked contemptuous. He leaned on his heavy lance, his posture arrogant and relaxed despite the crushing aura of the Demon Prince.
"Look at that efficiency rating," Ben muttered, his voice dripping with the disdain of a commander reviewing a sloppy drill. "It's pathetic. If I ran my territory like this, I'd have been overthrown in a week. Her motor functions are lagging by at least three seconds. That isn't grace, Lloyd; that is systemic failure."
Ben tapped the side of his helmet, his single eye glowing with critical analysis. "My tactical read says she's running on fumes. She isn't sleeping; she's stalled. It’s hydraulic lock. Her system is flooded with waste data."
Lloyd glanced at his cousin. Ben wasn't cowering. The Ironwood Sovereign was analyzing the enemy with the cold precision of the Major General he used to be on Earth. He wasn't overwhelmed by the magical pressure because he had simply decided not to be part of it.
Around Ben, the air was strange. It was still. Perfectly still. While Lloyd’s Aegis suit whirred to compensate for the pressure, Ben stood in a bubble of absolute calm. He had activated his secret Spirit: Sloth. He was freezing the causality of the air around him, negating the demon's aura by simply pausing its effect on his body. He was matching her concept with his own, proving he was not just a guest, but a peer.
"She’s in pain," Lloyd noted, ignoring Ben's arrogance.
"She’s inefficient," Ben countered, flexing his prosthetic hand. The heavy, jagged steel of his fingers groaned. He hadn't used a manual to build those limbs; he had forced the metal to obey him through sheer will and his Steel Blood. "If my gear ran that poorly, I’d scrap it and start over. Are we going to fix the junker, General, or should I just put it out of its misery? I bet if I hit her hard enough with a density-shift, she’d shatter like cheap glass."
"Stand down, Rook," Lloyd said. "We need her alive."
"For now," Ben grumbled, his single eye scanning the room for structural weak points. "But if this negotiation drags on, I’m going to start breaking furniture. I hate waiting."
Lloyd stood motionless in the center of the vast throne room, the data from his scan still scrolling across his internal display. He looked at Monalisa Belphagor, the terrifying Prince of Sloth, through a lens that no one else in this world possessed.
He saw her not as an ancient evil, but as a machine with a terminally flooded engine.
It was a perspective that only Lloyd Ferrum could maintain. Anyone else standing in front of a Prince of Hell would be crushed by the spiritual pressure. They would be too busy trembling in fear of her magic to notice the subtle signs of her decay. But Lloyd was an engineer from Earth. He was a man who had built robots, designed weapons, and fixed things that were deemed impossible to repair.
To him, the "Curse of the Abyss" or the "Will of the Void" were just fancy words for bad maintenance.