Chapter: 299
Fired with a purpose so profound it made his very soul tremble, Lloyd closed his eyes, then opened them again, willing the transformation. The world swam, and the familiar, unnerving black sclera and luminous bluish-white rings of the Black Ring Eyes blazed to life.
He looked at a piece of shattered stone on the floor. He focused his will, his intent. He tried not just to bind it, not just to seal it. But to change it. To infuse it with the essence of his Ferrum blood. To persuade it, with his gaze alone, to beco… steel.
He poured his will into the gaze, his mind straining, his Void power reserves, already depleted, groaning in protest.
He failed. Utterly.
—
---
The piece of shattered stone on the floor remained stubbornly, infuriatingly, a piece of shattered stone. Lloyd stared at it, his newly activated Black Ring Eyes blazing with an intensity that felt utterly wasted, pouring his will, his focus, his entire being into the single, impossible command: Beco steel.
Nothing happened.
The stone did not shimr. It did not transmute. It did not even twitch. It just sat there, a lump of grey, fractured rock, a silent, inanimate monunt to his spectacular, comprehensive failure. A wave of profound, frustrating disappointnt washed over him, so potent it almost made his transford eyes water.
He tried again. He focused on the air itself, trying to do as his mother had done, to create sothing from nothing. But where she had willed a colossal war hamr of pure energy into existence, he managed only… a faint, pathetic shimr. A brief, apologetic distortion in the air that lasted for less than a second before fizzling out with a sound like a sad, deflating balloon.
He grunted in frustration, the effort sending a sharp, stabbing pain through his head. The cool, controlled energy of his Austin bloodline felt slippery, elusive, a wild horse that refused to be tad, let alone saddled with the heavy, tangible burden of his Ferrum power. He could feel both powers within him, two vast, distinct rivers of potential. But getting them to rge, to flow together into a single, creative torrent… it was like trying to braid water and fire.
Across the ruined training hall, he could feel Rosa’s silent, analytical gaze on him. He didn’t need to look to know her expression. It would be that sa cool, detached curiosity, perhaps now tinged with a flicker of… sothing else? Pity? Disdain for his clumsy, failed attempts? The thought was a fresh spur of irritation.
“Patience, Lloyd,” his mother’s voice was calm, steady, a soothing balm on his frayed, frustrated nerves. She stood beside him, her own eyes back to normal, her expression one of gentle, understanding empathy. “Did you truly expect to master an art that has not been practiced in centuries in a matter of monts?”
She placed a cool hand on his shoulder. “What I demonstrated… that was the result of thirty years of dedicated, secret practice. Thirty years of study, of ditation, of slowly, painstakingly, learning to command the flow. And even I,” she admitted, a flicker of her own past struggles in her eyes, “can only manifest epheral energy. The fusion you are attempting, the forging of true, permanent matter with your gaze… that is a thousand tis more difficult. It requires a level of control, of focused intent, that is almost divine.”
She smiled, a small, encouraging smile. “Do not be discouraged by this first failure. Or the next hundred. Or the next thousand. The fact that you can even conceive of the process, that you can feel the two powers within you, that you awakened them both by sheer instinct… that in itself is a miracle. You have the potential. The rest… is rely practice.”
Lloyd let out a long, weary sigh, allowing the Black Ring Eyes to recede, the familiar, less intense world snapping back into focus. He felt drained, his head throbbing, his Void reserves scraped to the very bottom. “Practice,” he echoed, the word tasting like ash. “Right. Just… years of dedicated, mind-numbing, frustrating practice. Excellent. Sothing to look forward to.”
“It is the path of all true masters, my son,” Milody said simply. “There are no shortcuts to true power.”
Just as a fresh wave of despair at the prospect of decades of failed eye-forging was about to settle over him, the familiar, almost smug, chi echoed in his mind.
[System Notification: New Primary Goal Detected!]
[Task: The Eye of the Forge – The First Spark of Creation]
[Objective: Successfully create one (1) tangible, non-epheral, non-ring-shaped object using the combined generative power of the Black Ring Eyes and the substance of the Ferrum Steel Blood.]
Chapter: 300
[Stipulation: The object must maintain its form for a minimum of ten seconds without continuous application of will from the User.]
[Reward Upon Completion: 200 System Coins (SC)]
Lloyd’s eyes widened. A new task. A new Primary Goal. And a reward. A very, very generous reward. Two hundred System Coins. For creating one, single, tiny object.
The frustration, the despair, the daunting prospect of years of tedious practice… it all vanished, replaced by a surge of pure, unadulterated, System-fueled motivation.
Patience? Practice? Who needed patience and practice when you had a cosmic shopping list offering you a massive cash prize for achieving the impossible?
Two hundred coins. The number glead in his mind, a beautiful, brilliant beacon of hope. That was almost half the cost of Fang Fairy’s Ascension. It was enough to rank up his Steel Blood from F to E and still have change. It was a significant, tangible leap forward.
The task wasn't just a challenge anymore; it was a promise. The System was not just acknowledging the new path his mother had laid out for him; it was actively, powerfully, incentivizing it. It was confirming that this ‘new alchemy’, this fusion of his two bloodlines, was not just a theoretical possibility, but a key, designated step in his own power progression.
A slow, determined, almost wolfish grin spread across Lloyd’s face. He looked at his mother, his eyes shining with a new, fierce light. “You’re right, Mother,” he said, his voice ringing with a newfound conviction that made her blink in surprise. “Practice. It’s all about practice.” He looked back at the shattered stone on the floor, no longer a symbol of his failure, but a challenge. A 200-coin challenge.
“And I,” he declared, to his mother, to Rosa, to the ruined training hall, and most of all, to the silent, watching System, “am a very, very dedicated student. Especially when the grades are this good.”
The frustration of a novice was gone, replaced by the relentless, pragmatic, reward-driven focus of a gar who had just been handed a new, incredibly difficult, but incredibly lucrative, main story quest. The path ahead was still long, still frustrating, still fraught with failure. But now, at the end of it, there wasn't just the vague promise of mastery. There was a prize. A very big, very shiny prize.
And Lloyd Ferrum was a man who always, always, played to win. The frustration could wait. The forge of his eyes had just been lit, and he would not let it go out until he had claid his reward.
---
The next few days were a study in intense, mind-numbing, and spectacularly unsuccessful, frustration. Fired with the dual motivations of maternal encouragent and the tantalizing promise of two hundred System Coins, Lloyd threw himself into the task of Void Energy Molding with the fervor of a man possessed.
He abandoned the bustling manufactory to i Jing and his capable team. He ignored the summons to Master Elmsworth’s lectures on inter-ducal trade deficits. He even, to Rosa’s silent, veiled astonishnt, gave up his designated spot on the lumpy sofa, choosing instead to spend his nights in the ruined, dusty, but now intensely private, training hall.
He practiced. And he failed.
Over and over and over again.
He would sit for hours amidst the debris of his mother’s lesson, his Black Ring Eyes blazing, his focus absolute, trying to coax a single, tangible object into existence. He started small, a simple steel needle. The air would shimr, his head would throb, and… nothing. Or, worse, a faint, wispy, needle-shaped distortion would appear for a fraction of a second before dissolving with a pathetic fizzle.
He tried a cube. The result was a wobbly, semi-translucent blob that looked less like a cube and more like a piece of very sad, very ethereal jelly, which promptly collapsed into nothingness.
He tried to replicate the simple, open-pald binding rings his mother had dismissed as rudintary. He could manage those now, at least. He could project a single, shimring ring of bluish-white energy that could hold a small rock in place for a few seconds before his concentration wavered and it vanished. But the System was clear: a non-ring-shaped object. And it had to be tangible, non-epheral. It had to be forged of his Ferrum Steel, not just the fleeting energy of the Austin power.
Reviews
All reviews (0)