Episode-954
Chapter : 1907
"I wouldn't just die, Evan. I would sublime. I would turn into gas and memory in less than three minutes. I wouldn't even have time to say goodbye."
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The silence that followed Eun-ha's explanation was heavy and suffocating. It wasn't the silence of a problem being solved; it was the silence of a funeral.
Ben, standing near the portal, looked from Lloyd to Eun-ha, his metal faceplate reflecting the anguish in the room. He took a step back from the rift, realizing that the door to home was actually an execution chamber for the woman who had just saved him.
Lloyd didn't move. He stood there, his mind racing at a million miles an hour. He was the Major General. He was the man who built robots in a medieval world. He didn't accept "impossible." He accepted "engineering challenges."
"No," Lloyd said firmly. He started pacing, his armored boots clanking on the crystal. "No. I don't accept that. It’s a resource management problem. That’s all it is. Fuel supply versus consumption."
He spun around, pointing a finger at her.
"We build a suit," Lloyd said, the words tumbling out fast. "Like a deep-sea diver’s suit. A containment field. We use Star-Frost Ore to seal it so the mana doesn't leak out. We pump it full of compressed Abyssal air. I have the materials in the North. I can forge it."
"I ran the simulation, Evan," Eun-ha said gently, her voice filled with a sad patience. "A containment suit would work for maybe an hour. But the moment a seal cracked? The moment I had to use magic? The pressure differential would rupture the casing. Boom."
"Batteries, then," Lloyd countered, refusing to stop. He was desperate now. He pulled up a holographic schematic from his System interface, his fingers flying through the air. "I have Lilith Stones. I have the Golem Heart technology. We can build a portable mana-generator. You wear it like a backpack. It feeds the core directly."
"Do you have a King-Grade Spirit Stone?" she asked.
Lloyd froze, his hand mid-swipe in the air. "What?"
"To sustain my core in a vacuum," she said, "I would need to consume the equivalent of a King-Grade Spirit Stone every forty-five minutes. Do you have a warehouse full of them, Lloyd? Do you have a mine that produces infinite, high-grade energy?"
Lloyd clenched his fists. A King-Grade stone was a national treasure. Wars were fought over single fragments. He didn't have one. He certainly didn't have enough to feed her one every hour for the rest of her life.
"So that’s it?" Lloyd asked, his voice rising in frustration. "You conquered Hell. You organized the Devil Race. You became a Sovereign. And the prize is a life sentence? You’re the Warden, but you’re also the prisoner?"
"I am the structure," she said. "I became the castle, Evan. And a castle cannot get up and walk away."
She sat down on the steps of the dais, her posture slumping for the first time. The regal Queen vanished, leaving only a tired woman who missed her husband.
"I tried, you know," she whispered. "Five years ago, when I first woke up. I tried to go to the border. I tried to step into the neutral zone."
She pulled up the sleeve of her shadow-dress. On her pale forearm, there was a scar—a jagged, ugly pattern where the flesh looked like it had been burned away by acid.
"I put my arm through a rift for ten seconds," she said, looking at the scar. "It took six months to heal. The pain... it wasn't like a burn. It felt like my soul was being pulled out through my pores. That is the reality of the Pureland, Evan. It rejects me."
Lloyd walked over to her. He knelt down, his armor clanking, until he was eye-level with her. He took her hand, running his thumb over the scar. He felt the immense density of her skin, the hum of the power beneath it. She wasn't human anymore. She was a reactor in the shape of a woman.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice thick with guilt. "I didn't know. I was up there, playing house, building factories... and you were down here, trapped in a pressure cooker."
"Don't be sorry," she said fiercely, gripping his hand with her claws. "Be angry. Be smart. That’s what we do. We don't mourn the problem; we fix it."
Chapter : 1908
Lloyd looked up at her. He saw the fire in her eyes. She wasn't asking for pity. She was asking for a solution. And he realized that solution wasn't something he could build in five minutes with a wrench. It was a project. A massive, world-altering project.
"I can't fix it today," Lloyd admitted, the words tasting bitter. "I don't have the materials. I don't have the power source."
He stood up, pulling her with him.
"But I will," he vowed. "I’m going to go back up there. I’m going to turn my entire empire—the salt, the soap, the weapons—I’m going to turn it all into a research project. I will find a material that can hold Abyssal pressure. I will find a power source that doesn't run out. I will build you a door, Eun-ha. Even if I have to tear the physics of this planet apart to do it."
Eun-ha smiled. It was a watery, fragile smile, but it was real. "I know you will. You never did like following the rules."
"Never," Lloyd agreed.
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The emotional weight of Eun-ha’s confession still hung in the vast, crystalline throne room. The idea that she was trapped—a prisoner in her own kingdom due to the crushing difference in atmospheric pressure between the Abyss and the Human Realm—was a heavy blow. It was a tragic, scientific reality. She was a deep-sea creature, and the surface world was a vacuum that would tear her apart.
Lloyd Ferrum stood near the shimmering spatial rift that led back to his workshop. He looked at the swirling vortex of light, then back at his wife, the Devil Prince Leviathan. She looked resigned, like a queen accepting her exile with quiet dignity.
But Lloyd wasn’t just a husband who accepted bad news. He was an engineer. And engineers didn’t accept tragedy; they looked for the design flaw. They looked for the variable that didn't fit the equation.
His mind, sharpened by eighty years of military strategy on Earth and two lifetimes of survival on Riverio, began to replay the data. He looked at the problem from every angle. Pressure differentials. Mana density. Biological collapse. It all made sense on paper. The math was solid.
And yet, something was wrong. A massive, glaring variable didn't fit the model.
Lloyd stopped pacing. He turned his back on the portal. His eyes, usually warm when looking at Eun-ha, narrowed into the cold, calculating slits of the Major General. He tapped his metal fingers against the side of his leg, a nervous tic from his old life.
"Wait," Lloyd said. His voice echoed sharply against the obsidian walls, cutting through the somber mood. "Hold on a second. Pause the pity party."
Ben Ironwood, who was inspecting his newly upgraded metal fingertips with a look of supreme boredom, glanced up. He leaned against a polished black pillar, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He looked like a statue of war that had decided to take a nap.
"Finally," Ben rumbled, his voice deep and dripping with arrogance. "I was wondering how long it would take you to spot the error, Lord Lloyd. I calculated the inconsistency five minutes ago."
Lloyd shot Ben a glare. "If you saw it, why didn't you say anything?"
Ben scoffed, a short, sharp sound that sounded like grinding gears. "It is not my job to hold your hand while you do basic math. I am your heavy artillery, not your tutor. Besides, watching you struggle with simple logic is... mildly entertaining. It reminds me that even geniuses have lag."
Lloyd ignored the jab. He was used to Ben’s ego. He turned his focus back to Eun-ha, who was watching him with a confused expression.
"Eun-ha," Lloyd said, stepping closer to the dais. He walked with the purpose of a man who had just found a smoking gun at a crime scene. "Let's review the parameters. You said that a High-Rank Devil—a being with a core as dense as yours—cannot survive in the Human Realm. You said the lack of mana pressure would cause you to explode. Like a balloon in space."
"That is correct, Evan," Eun-ha said gently. She looked tired, as if explaining gravity to a stubborn child. "It is a fundamental law of physics in this universe. The Human Realm is a 'Pureland.' It rejects Abyssal biology. The density difference is too great."
"Then explain something to me," Lloyd said, his voice hard and demanding. "Explain Lucifer."
The name dropped into the room like a stone into a quiet pond.