Episode-955
Chapter : 1909
"Lucifer came to my house," Lloyd continued, his intensity rising with every word. "He stood in my courtyard. He fought my father, Arch Duke Roy. He summoned a spear that erased souls. He used Sovereign-level power. He didn't explode. He didn't melt. He looked perfectly fine. In fact, he looked bored. He stood there for twenty minutes giving a speech about how weak humans are."
Lloyd started counting on his fingers, his voice getting louder.
"And Bael. He has been running around the Southern Continent for years. He managed the Orchid House. He fought Rosa. He has been operating in the Pureland for a decade. He even wore a human disguise."
Lloyd stopped right in front of Eun-ha.
"So, here is the problem, Professor. If the atmospheric pressure is lethal to High Devils... if the laws of physics say they should turn into gas the moment they step out of the Abyss... then why aren't they dead?"
Eun-ha went still. The sad, resigned look on her face vanished, replaced by the sharp, analytical expression of the scientist Lloyd remembered from Earth. She looked caught.
Before she could answer, a lazy, sultry voice drifted from the side of the room.
"Oh, look at him," Monalisa purred.
The Prince of Sloth was lounging on a floating cushion of shadow near the pool, twirling a strand of her dark hair around a clawed finger. She looked at Lloyd with hungry, possessive eyes, like a cat watching a particularly interesting mouse that had just learned a new trick.
"The Little Lion is thinking," Monalisa teased, her voice dripping with amusement. "It’s so cute when his brain wrinkles like that. Look at how intense he gets. It makes me want to put him in a jar and shake him just to see what he does."
Monalisa floated closer, ignoring Ben’s disgusted sneer. She reached out, almost touching Lloyd’s face with a ghostly hand, but stopped when he shot her a warning look.
"You really are a prize, aren't you?" Monalisa continued, unbothered by his glare. "Most humans would just cry about their wife being stuck. They would write a sad poem and leave. But you? You want to argue about the rules of reality. I like that. Don't break him, Eun-ha. I need him to fix my plumbing later. He’s my favorite mechanic."
"Quiet, Monalisa," Eun-ha ordered, though her tone wasn't angry. It was focused. She looked at Lloyd, a spark of pride in her violet eyes. "You are right, Evan. It is a logical inconsistency. Based on the natural laws of this world, Lucifer and Bael should have suffocated the moment they stepped onto human soil."
"So how are they doing it?" Lloyd demanded, crossing his arms. "Is there a spell? A ritual? Because if there is a way for them to walk on the surface, there is a way for you. You are the Queen of Efficiency. Don't tell me you haven't figured it out."
Ben pushed himself off the pillar. The metallic thud of his feet was heavy and ominous in the quiet room. He walked over to join them, towering over the group.
"It is not a spell," Ben stated, his voice filled with contempt. "Magic is too unstable for long-term environmental regulation. A spell fluctuates. A spell fades. If Bael has been up there for years, he isn't using a chant. He would have to recast it every hour. That is inefficient."
Ben looked at Eun-ha, his red mechanical eyes whirring as they focused.
"He is using hardware," Ben said flatly. "He is using a life-support system."
Eun-ha nodded slowly. She raised her hand, and the obsidian map table in the center of the room flared to life again. But this time, it didn't show a map of the terrain. The blue light twisted and formed a complex geometric shape.
It showed a schematic.
"Ben is correct," Eun-ha said. "They aren't cheating the laws of physics with magic. They are cheating with technology."
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Lloyd stared at the hologram floating above the table. It was a complex, rotating 3D image of a device. It looked like a small, black mechanical heart, covered in glowing green geometric lines and runes that looked less like magic and more like circuitry.
Lloyd recognized the design aesthetic immediately. It wasn't the crude, hammered iron of Riverio. It wasn't the organic bone-craft of the Devils. It was sleek. It was modular. It was efficient.
It was Firefly tech.
Chapter : 1910
"This," Eun-ha said, her voice turning cold, "is a Reality Anchor. It is a piece of high-grade implant technology provided by the Firefly Corporation. Lucifer, Bael, Mammon... they all have one."
"An implant?" Lloyd asked, leaning in to study the floating image. "Where is it? I scanned Bael’s anchor point when I fought his projection, but I never saw this."
"It’s inside," Eun-ha said, tapping her own chest, right over her sternum. "It is surgically grafted directly onto the Spirit Core. It acts as a parasite, but a beneficial one. It feeds off the core’s output to power itself."
Ben walked over to the table, analyzing the schematic with his newly upgraded soul-circuitry senses. He squinted at the design, his lip curling in a sneer.
"I recognize this architecture," Ben grunted. "It’s a micro-environment stabilizer. We used similar tech for deep-space EVA suits for biological assets that couldn't handle vacuum. But this... this is a cheap version. Look at the intake valves."
"How does it work?" Lloyd asked, ignoring Ben’s critique for a moment.
"It creates a bubble," Eun-ha explained. She waved her hand, and the hologram changed to show a simulation of a demon figure. A faint, spherical grid appeared around the figure.
"The device generates a tiny, invisible field around the demon’s body," she said. "It stays about two millimeters off the skin. Inside that field, the device actively manipulates the atmospheric pressure and mana density."
She pointed to a small chamber inside the device schematic.
"It carries a compressed supply of Abyssal mana—liquidized essence. It recycles the demon’s own exhaust energy, filters it, mixes it with the compressed supply, and pumps it back into the field. It tricks the body."
She looked at Lloyd.
"Lucifer isn't actually standing in the Human Realm, Evan. He is walking around inside a personal, portable bubble of Hell. As long as the device is active, the universe thinks he is still in the Abyss. He carries his own atmosphere with him, like a diver wearing a helmet."
Lloyd felt a chill run down his spine. It was brilliant. It was simple. And it was terrifying.
"So that’s why they are so strong," Lloyd murmured, his mind flashing back to his father’s defeat. "They aren't being weakened by the human world. My ancestors... they relied on the fact that demons got weaker the longer they stayed in the North. It was a war of attrition. But now?"
"Time is on their side," Eun-ha said. "The Reality Anchor removes the time limit. They fight at 100% efficiency because, biologically, they never left home."
Monalisa let out a bored sigh from her cushion. She was playing with a strand of mana, twisting it into shapes of little animals.
"It’s such a cheat," she complained, her voice dripping with disdain. "Lucifer walks around strutting like a peacock, pretending he’s a god. But take away his little toy? He’d pop like a balloon. It’s tacky. Real power shouldn't need batteries."
She looked at Lloyd with a sultry grin, her eyes half-closed.
"That’s why I like you, Little Lion. Your power is all natural. Very... robust. You don't need a little green machine to keep you hard... I mean, solid."
Lloyd ignored the innuendo, though he saw Ben roll his eyes so hard it was audible.
"If they are using implants," Lloyd said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "then the war has changed. We aren't fighting monsters. We are fighting cyborgs."
"Correct," Eun-ha said. "They are biological weapons augmented by interstellar technology. That is why the Satan Faction is losing. We are fighting flesh and blood against machines that don't get tired."
Ben laughed. It was a harsh, barking sound. He pointed a metal finger at the hologram.
"You call this a machine?" Ben asked, incredulous. "Professor, look at the heat dissipation vents. Look at the mana-conversion ratio. This isn't high-end tech. This is garbage."
Ben looked at Lloyd.
"This is Third-Generation Firefly surplus. This is the stuff they throw away in the recycling bins on the homeworld. They gave the Devil Kings their trash."
"Trash or not," Lloyd said, "it keeps them alive. It lets them invade my home."
"It is inefficient," Ben insisted. "The energy leakage is massive. If I had a scanner, I could probably track Bael from orbit just by the waste heat this thing puts out. Firefly is mocking them. They gave them tech that works, but just barely."
Lloyd looked at the schematic. A plan was forming in his mind. The engineer was waking up.