Episode-998
Chapter : 1995
Without the constant hum of mana in his veins, he felt... light. Frail. He flexed his fingers. He was just a human male, in decent shape, but nothing special. If a tiger jumped him right now, he couldn't use [Steel Blood] to harden his skin. He couldn't summon Iffrit to burn it. He would just be lunch.
"Back to basics," Lloyd muttered.
He reached down and picked up a heavy, broken branch. He tested the weight. It was heavy, solid teak wood. He pulled out his belt knife—a small, utilitarian blade made of high-quality steel from Riverio. He started to sharpen the end of the stick as he walked.
A spear. The first weapon of mankind. It wasn't a railgun, but it was better than nothing.
He trudged uphill for an hour. His legs burned. The rain soaked him to the bone, chilling him despite the heat. He was thirsty, but he knew better than to drink the muddy water from the ground. That was a quick way to die of dysentery.
Finally, the trees began to thin. The ground became rockier. He climbed over a ridge and saw it.
The temple.
It was closer than he thought. It was a small, ancient structure made of dark stone, overgrown with moss and vines. It looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. The roof was a curved stone tower, carved with intricate statues of gods and animals, though many were eroded by time and rain.
It offered shelter.
Lloyd moved faster, slipping on the wet rocks. He reached the entrance—a simple stone archway. He peered inside.
It was dark and dry. The smell of wet earth was replaced by the smell of cold stone and old incense.
He stepped inside, shaking the water from his hair. "Hello?" he called out.
His voice echoed. No answer.
He walked deeper into the small sanctuary. In the center was a stone lingam, a symbol of Shiva. There were dried flowers at its base, old but not ancient. Someone had been here, maybe a few weeks ago.
Lloyd collapsed against a dry wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the stone floor. He dropped his makeshift spear. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He was safe from the rain. He was safe from the predators. For now.
But as the adrenaline faded, the reality of his situation crashed down on him.
He thought of Mina. She was waiting for him to come back from the desert. She didn't know he was gone. She didn't know he was... when he was.
He thought of Rosa, frozen in the north, waiting for a husband who had just vanished from the timeline.
He thought of Amina, Faria, Seraphina. He thought of his parents. He thought of Ken Park.
They were all gone. They weren't just far away; they were in a different dimension. A different reality.
"Did I die?" Lloyd asked the empty temple.
It felt like death. He had been ripped out of his life, leaving everything unfinished. The war with the Fire Fly Corporation, the battle against the Devils, the Aegis project—it was all hanging in the balance, and he wasn't there to tip the scales.
He clenched his fists. No. He wasn't dead. He was breathing. He was thinking.
"The orb," Lloyd muttered. "The Reincarnation Orb."
Anthony had triggered it to send data back to his HQ. Lloyd had kicked it. The resulting instability had acted like a wormhole.
If there was a door in, there had to be a door out.
The Fire Fly Corporation had mastered interdimensional travel. That’s how they got to Riverio. That means the physics existed. The math existed.
Lloyd opened his eyes. In the dim light of the temple, his face hardened. The sadness was pushed aside by the cold, hard resolve of the engineer.
He was stranded in the 15th century. He had no tools. He had no magic.
But he had his mind. He had the knowledge of the 22nd century. He knew how to build steam engines. He knew how to make electricity. He knew chemistry, metallurgy, and ballistics.
He was a time traveler with a head full of blueprints.
"I built an empire out of soap," Lloyd whispered to the stone gods watching him. "I built a god-killing robot in a cave. You think a little thing like 'time' is going to stop me?"
He looked at his hands again. They weren't shaking anymore.
"I need resources," he planned. "I need metal. I need a workspace. And I need a way to detect dimensional rifts."
He looked out the temple door at the rain-soaked jungle. Somewhere out there were people. Civilization. Kingdoms.
He would find them. He would infiltrate them. He would build what he needed.
If he had to industrialize the entire 15th century to build a door back home, he would do it. If he had to conquer an empire to get the funding, he would do it.
Lloyd picked up his wooden spear. He stood up.
The rain outside was beginning to slow. The monsoon was taking a breath.
Lloyd Ferrum walked to the edge of the temple and looked out over the vast, green, ancient world.
"Round two," Lloyd said. "Let’s get to work."
Chapter : 1996
The blinding, blue-white light of the Kohinoor Diamond didn’t just fade; it seemed to evaporate like mist in the morning sun. The Ferrum Estate was empty, a cavernous space of cold marble and silent shadows. Suddenly, the air warped and twisted with a sound like a thunderclap trapped in a jar.
When reality snapped back into place, two figures stood in the center of the room.
Lloyd Ferrum let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for days. He stood tall, but he looked like he had walked through a war zone. The Aegis Mark I suit—or what was left of it—clung to his body. The matte-black armor, forged from Star-Frost Ore, was tattered and scorched. Wires sparked faintly near his shoulder, and the smell of ozone and burnt oil radiated off him. Despite the damage, the suit hummed with a low, steady vibration. It wasn't the erratic, dangerous energy of the battle in India; it was a stabilized resonance. Lloyd had used his [Spatial Power] to anchor the chaotic energy of the diamond, forcing the universe to accept their location. He was no longer lost in time. He was home.
Beside him stood Rosa Siddik.
She didn't look like the woman who had fled this house months ago. The heavy, suffocating aura of the "Ice Queen" was gone, replaced by something far more fragile but undeniably real. Her silver hair, once a symbol of her isolation, now caught the light of the chandeliers above. She wore the clothes of a distant land, the silk torn and stained with the dust of a foreign road. She stood with a quiet grace, her eyes wide as she took in the familiar surroundings of the Ferrum estate. She wasn't standing in a defensive posture anymore. She was simply standing.
The silence in the hall lasted for exactly three seconds.
Then, the doors to the inner solar burst open.
Mina Siddik stood in the doorway. She was holding a bundle of blankets tight against her chest—her son, Sullivan. Behind her stood Lady Nilufa, Rosa and Mina’s mother, leaning heavily on a cane but looking more alive than she had in a decade.
Mina froze. Her eyes locked onto the silver-haired figure standing next to Lloyd. The basket of linens she had been instructing a maid about dropped from her free hand, spilling white cloth across the floor.
"Rosa?" Mina whispered. The word was barely a breath, too scared to be loud.
Rosa turned slowly. When she saw her sister, the composure she had held onto through battles, time travel, and heartbreaks finally cracked.
"Mina," Rosa said, her voice shaking.
That single word broke the dam.
Mina handed the baby to a startled nursemaid with frantic speed and ran. She didn't run with the dignity of a Duchess; she ran with the desperate, stumbling speed of a little sister who thought she had lost everything.
She crashed into Rosa, throwing her arms around her neck. The force of the impact nearly knocked them both over, but Lloyd reached out a steady hand to the back of Rosa’s armor to keep them upright.
"You're alive," Mina sobbed, burying her face in Rosa’s neck. "You're really here. I thought... we thought..."
Mina couldn't finish the sentence. The weight of the secret pregnancy, the birth of Sullivan, the terrifying lie that they had annulled Rosa’s marriage—all of it came pouring out in a storm of tears. For months, Mina had lived with the crushing guilt that she had stolen her sister’s life while Rosa was out in the cold, dying. Seeing Rosa here, breathing and warm, was a relief so violent it bordered on hysteria.
Lady Nilufa moved slower, but her emotion was no less intense. She had spent ten years in a cursed coma, missing her daughters' lives. When she woke up, she found out her eldest, her "Winter Flower," had exiled herself to the frozen north to die. Nilufa had lived with the knowledge that her recovery had cost her daughter’s sanity.
Now, seeing Rosa returned from the dead, the matriarch let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. She reached them and wrapped her arms around both her daughters. Rosa, who had spent years flinching away from touch, melted into the embrace. She clutched her mother and sister as if they were the only solid things in a world of ghosts.
"I'm sorry," Rosa wept, her voice muffled by Mina’s shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
"Hush," Nilufa said, stroking Rosa’s silver hair. "You are home. That is all that matters."