Episode-919
Chapter : 1837
He waited for her answer, watching the data stream. He watched her heart rate spike. He watched the hope flare up in her chest, fighting against the sludge.
"Well?" Ben asked loudly, checking his lance. "Are we fixing the engine or scrapping the car? Make up your mind, lady. I have a traitor to kill."
Lloyd knew that for the first time in centuries, the Prince of Sloth was wide awake. And she was looking at him not just with desire, but with necessity.
The silence in the Palace of Stillness was usually heavy and threatening, a crushing weight that forced lesser beings to their knees in acts of desperate submission. But right now, the silence was different. It was the quiet of a war room where a tactical briefing was taking place, interrupted only by the scratch of charcoal.
Lloyd Ferrum stood in the center of the vast, shadowy throne room. He was not holding a weapon. Instead, he held a piece of rough parchment and a stick of charcoal he had pulled from his inventory. He was drawing with rapid, precise strokes.
Ben Ferrum, the Ironwood Sovereign, did not stand behind Lloyd like a bodyguard. He leaned against a nearby obsidian pillar with his arms crossed, radiating an aura of supreme boredom and irritation. His heavy, jagged armor—forged by his own will through the raw, brute-force application of Steel Blood—creaked ominously as he shifted his weight. He wasn't watching the guards with fear; he was dissecting them with a predator's gaze, calculating exactly how much mass he would need to manifest to crush their skulls.
"Are you done sketching, General?" Ben drawled, his voice dripping with impatience. "If I wanted to watch an art class, I would have stayed in the capital. We are currently standing in a hostile kill-box, and you are doodling. If you don't hurry up, I'm going to start dismantling the architecture just to hear something break."
"Done," Lloyd said, ignoring the jab. His voice was flat and calm, breaking the tension.
He turned the parchment around and held it up for the Demon Prince to see. To the uninitiated, the drawing looked like a mess of squiggly lines, circles, and arrows. But Ben, possessing the memories of a Major General from Earth, recognized it instantly. It wasn't a spell; it was a fluid dynamics schematic.
Monalisa watched him through half-lidded eyes, a sultry smile playing on her lips. She didn't look at the paper; she looked at his hands. "A drawing? For me?" she purred, her voice low and intimate, recalling their dance at the wedding. "You spoil me, little lion. Is this a love letter? Or perhaps a map to your bedroom?"
"It is a plumbing schematic," Lloyd replied, immune to the charm. "Specifically, it is a design for a 'Spiritual Dialysis Machine.' It is a conceptual device."
He pointed to a large circle in the middle of the drawing. "This represents your Mana Core—your heart. Right now, it is a pump that is trying to push mud through a straw. That is why you are in pain. That is why you are turning to stone. The 'Abyssal Sediment' has blocked the exit pipes."
Lloyd moved his finger to a series of loops he had drawn on the side. "This is the bypass. I cannot fix the engine while it is running inside you. So, I am going to build a temporary detour. I will use my 'Blood Steel' to create hollow tubes. I will insert them into your mana veins here, and here."
He tapped two spots on his own arm to demonstrate.
"I will pull the dirty mana out of your body," Lloyd continued, speaking as if he were a mechanic explaining a car repair to a customer. "It will flow through these tubes into a filter that I will create using Void energy. The filter will catch the heavy, black sediment. Then, the clean mana will flow back into your body through a second tube."
Monalisa stared at the drawing, her amusement shifting into genuine fascination. For centuries, mages had told her that her condition was a curse. They said it was the price of her power. Now, this human—this man who had fascinated her enough to make her leave her throne once before—was telling her it was just a clog.
Chapter : 1838
"You speak of my soul as if it were a machine," Monalisa said, shifting her hips on the cushions, a deliberate movement that drew attention to the curve of her waist. "Do you treat all your women this way, Lloyd? Disassembling them to see how they tick? It is... strangely exciting."
"Complexity is just a lot of simple things stacked on top of each other," Lloyd said with a shrug. "Your body is a container for energy. Energy needs to move. If it stops, it stagnates. You are the Prince of Sloth. Your nature is stillness. But your biology still needs flow. That is the conflict. Your power is fighting your life."
He lowered the paper and looked her directly in the eyes. "I can clean the pipes, Monalisa. I can flush the system. It won't be pleasant, and it won't be permanent. But for a few days, you won't feel like you are carrying a mountain on your chest."
Monalisa shifted again. The movement was small, but Lloyd saw the wince of pain that accompanied it. The sediment in her veins was grinding against her insides like broken glass. She was tired of the pain. She was tired of the sleep that wasn't really sleep, but a coma to escape the agony.
"A few days..." she whispered. The concept sounded like a dream. "To move without pain? To dance again without feeling like stone?"
"Maybe a week if you take it easy," Lloyd added. "But don't get too excited. As I said, this is a patch, not a cure. As long as you are the Prince of Sloth, your body will keep producing this sludge. I can clean the garage, but if you keep parking a muddy car in it, it’s going to get dirty again."
Ben pushed himself off the pillar, his prosthetic metal foot cracking the stone tile beneath him. He didn't lower his voice. "She understands the concept of an oil change, Lloyd. She's ancient, not stupid. The real question is whether the hardware can handle the stress."
Ben looked at Monalisa, his single eye narrowing critically. "He's going to pressurize your system. If your core is too brittle, you're going to pop like a cheap gasket. Are you durable enough for this, or are we wasting our time?"
"Ben," Lloyd warned, though his tone was mild.
"What?" Ben challenged, spreading his heavy, jagged steel hands. "It's a valid safety concern. I don't want to be in the blast radius if Her Highness detonates."
Monalisa looked at Ben. Instead of being offended, a small, tired amusement touched her lips. "Your companion has... a sharp tongue. Just like my brother Beelzebub, though significantly less fat. But he is right. The risk is mine."
"If you can do this," Monalisa said, her voice gaining a tiny bit of strength, focusing back on Lloyd with a hungry intensity. "If you can give me even one hour of relief... I will give you what you want. And perhaps... a little more."
Lloyd nodded. "The deal is simple. I fix the pipes; you give me the traitor. I need to know where Rubel is, and I need a way to get to him without fighting every guard in the Abyss."
Monalisa let out a small, dry laugh. It sounded like dry leaves rustling together. "You want to find the little rat? That is easy. He is a nuisance. If you fix me, I will not only tell you where he is, I will open the back door for you."
"Then we have a deal," Lloyd said.
He folded the parchment and put it away. He rolled up the sleeves of his black coat, revealing the Aegis armor beneath. He didn't look like a warrior preparing for battle. He looked like a surgeon scrubbing in for an operation.
Lloyd turned to Ben. He didn't issue an order; he knew better than to command the Lord of Ironwood. He simply stated the tactical reality.
"I need the room locked down," Lloyd said. "If I get bumped while I am connected to her core, the feedback loop will kill us all. I can't watch my back while I'm doing microsurgery."
Ben scoffed, hefting his massive lance onto his shoulder. "So, I'm on perimeter control? Fine. I suppose I can lower myself to keep the riff-raff out while you play doctor with the Queen."