Chapter : 481
He turned and began the slow, weary walk back towards the light, back towards the world of the living, of the ducal courts and the demanding princesses and the impossible, heartbreaking girls who sold vegetables in the market. He was free of this imdiate threat, yes. But his thoughts were already turning to the future. To the power he still lacked. To the war he still had to fight. And to the imnse, and now slightly diminished, pile of System Coins that was his only true weapon in that war.
The study at the manufactory, which had so recently been a clandestine command center and an impromptu war room, now felt like a sanctuary. The heavy oak door was barred, the shutters drawn against the first, pale fingers of dawn. The air was still, thick with the lingering scent of ozone from Fang Fairy’s dissipated form and the ghosts of revelations that had shattered Lloyd’s world. He sat in the large, comfortable armchair—a recent acquisition, a small indulgence funded by the first wave of AURA profits—and stared into the cold, empty hearth, his mind a turbulent sea.
The events of the past twenty-four hours replayed in a relentless, chaotic loop. The public confrontation with Victor, a necessary but distasteful display of dominance. The chilling, almost parental, pride in the Headmaster’s ancient eyes. The impossible, heartbreaking sight of Airin in his classroom, a ghost from another world wearing the face of his greatest love. The cold, hard ledger detailing the Gilded Hand’s pathetic treachery. The terrifying battle with the Black Spirit chira. And finally, the confession. The na, Jager. The symbol of the ouroboros.
The weight of it all was imnse, a crushing pressure that threatened to suffocate him. He was a man fighting a war on three fronts. The first was the public front, the delicate, high-stakes ga of politics and comrce he played as Lord Lloyd Ferrum. A ga of building his soap empire, of navigating the treacherous currents of the ducal court, of managing the expectations of his father, his King, and his fiercely intelligent, and deeply unimpressed, new faculty colleagues.
The second was the secret front, the shadow war against the ghosts of his past. Jager, the Black Spirit user. The Ouroboros syndicate, an organization from his Earth life now operating, impossibly, in the shadows of Riverio. These were his true enemies, the ones who knew his history, the ones who would not be satisfied until he was erased from this life as he had been from his last. This was a war of assassins, of spies, of dark magic and forbidden knowledge.
And the third front… that was the internal one. The war within his own soul. The battle between the cold, pragmatic Major General and the raw, wounded heart of the man who had loved and lost Anastasia. Airin’s presence at the Academy was a constant, agonizing reminder of that loss, a beautiful, terrifying ghost that threatened to shatter his carefully constructed composure at any mont.
He felt stretched, fragnted, a man of three lifetis trying to hold together a reality that was threatening to tear itself apart at the seams. He needed a unifying force. He needed a foundation upon which to build his defenses against all these threats. He needed power. Not the fleeting power of political favor or comrcial success. But real, tangible, and absolute, power.
He closed his eyes, sinking into the cool, logical, and blessedly uncomplicated, world of the System. The numbers glowed in the darkness behind his eyelids, a beacon of pure, quantifiable potential.
[Current System Coins: 1110 SC]
One thousand one hundred and ten. The bounty from the Rotwood Scourges. The price of justice, delivered with a lightning spear. It was a fortune. A war chest. A single, montous decision point.
He saw the two paths laid out before him again, stark and clear. The path of the farr, and the path of the warrior.
The Farming function. It beckoned to him, a promise of a quiet, sustainable, and ultimately infinite, power. He pictured it in his mind: a private dinsion, a world of his own, where he could cultivate resources, generate coins, build his strength thodically, safely, away from the prying eyes of his enemies. It was the engineer’s dream. The long-term solution. The path of wisdom, of patience, of building a foundation so strong that it would be unshakeable for centuries. It was the smart move. The right move, in any rational, strategic assessnt.
But then, he thought of Jager’s green-glowing eyes. He thought of the ouroboros pin, a symbol of an organization that had operated on a global, high-tech scale on Earth. He thought of Ben Ferrum’s warning: They are already here. They have been here for decades. They are stronger than you.
Chapter : 482
The long-term was a luxury. A privilege afforded to those who were not being actively hunted by trans-dinsional assassins. What good was a magnificent, self-sustaining farm if the farr was dead before the first harvest?
The warrior’s path. The path of imdiate, overwhelming, and potentially reckless, power. To pour his resources not into the future, but into the now. To upgrade his own abilities, to Transcend Fang Fairy, to forge himself into a weapon so sharp, so deadly, that he could et the coming storm head-on. It was a gamble. A high-risk, high-reward gambit that prioritized imdiate survival over long-term stability.
The debate, which had seed so complex before, now felt brutally, terrifyingly simple. The farr could plan for a perfect harvest. The soldier had to survive the next battle.
A grim, hard resolve settled in his heart. The decision was made. It was not the decision the eighty-year-old engineer would have made. It was the decision of the Major General, a man who understood that sotis, the only way to win a war was to go all-in on the first, decisive engagent.
But what to invest in? He had already Transcended Fang Fairy. Her power was imnse, a magnificent tool. But her power was still, fundantally, tied to his own Spirit Core. It was a shared resource pool. He needed to broaden his own foundations.
He thought of his Void powers. His B-Rank Steel Blood was formidable, yes. But it was a known quantity to his enemies now, after the tournant. His Black Ring Eyes… they were his true ace in the hole. A power of terrifying, insidious potential, a power from a different lineage, a power his Earth-based enemies would have no context for. But it was still at F-Rank. Untrained. Unrefined. He had barely scratched the surface of its capabilities.
He needed to rank it up. He needed to master it. But the skill tree, the roadmap to that mastery, was locked behind a fifty-coin paywall. And the ranks themselves were expensive.
No. He needed sothing more fundantal. He needed a new source of power. A new well from which to draw. He needed to stop being just a farr of a single, small plot of land. He needed to own the whole damn county.
He looked at the number again. 1110 SC. The Farming function cost a thousand. It would consu almost his entire fortune. It was a monstrous, terrifying gamble. To spend everything he had, not on a direct power-up, not on a new weapon, but on a promise. A potential. A new world.
It was insane. It was reckless. It was a leap of faith into a complete unknown.
And it was, he realized with a sudden, chilling certainty, the only move that made sense. He couldn't just keep reacting to threats. He had to change the very nature of the ga. He had to create his own resource, his own power base, one that was completely independent of this world’s gold, of its politics, of its limitations.
“You have to spend money to make money,” he whispered to himself, the old Earth adage a strange, comforting mantra in the silent, magical room.
[System Function: Farming]
[Access Cost: 1000 System Coins]
[Unlock?]
He did not hesitate. His will was a shard of steel.
“Yes.”
The mont the ntal command was given, the world did not just change. It ended.
---
The transaction was instantaneous. A thousand System Coins, a fortune earned through blood, sweat, and soap, vanished from his account with a silent, clinical finality. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. He was still in his study, the lamplight still flickering, the scent of rosemary still in the air. A flicker of doubt, of buyer’s remorse, pricked at him. Had he just spent his entire war chest on… nothing? A locked feature?
Then, the world dissolved.
It was not a gentle fading, not a dreamlike transition. It was a violent, physical wrenching. He felt a sensation like being turned inside out, his very atoms un-woven and re-spun in the space of a single, silent, agonizing heartbeat. The study, the palace, the entire world of Riverio, vanished, replaced by a rushing, roaring vortex of pure, colorless, soundless non-existence. He had no body, no senses, only a singular, terrified point of awareness, tumbling through an endless, featureless void.
And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.
He was standing. On solid ground.
He blinked, his senses flooding back with a sudden, jarring rush. He took a deep, shuddering breath. The air here was different. It was clean. Impossibly clean. It held no scent of dust, or decay, or the complex, organic slls of a living world. It slled of… nothing. A pure, neutral, almost sterile, potential.
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