Chapter : 697
“Allow me to handle it,” Mei Jing said, her eyes gleaming with a new, cold fire. She was already stepping into her new role, taking command. “I will not recruit from the capital. The risk of another embedded agent is too high. Instead, I will use my family’s network in the countryside. I will find young, ambitious, and intelligent men and women from outside the political sphere. People with clean histories, whose families are known to us, whose loyalty can be vetted and secured. I will build a new administrative layer, a staff that is loyal not just to the ducal house, but to us. To this family we have built.”
She looked at him, her expression a promise of absolute loyalty and ruthless efficiency. “You have built this house, my lord. I will protect it. I will keep the fires lit until you return. And I will make sure that when you do, it is stronger and more secure than when you left it. You have my word.”
Lloyd looked at her, at the fierce determination in her eyes, and felt a profound sense of relief. He had made the right choice. His house was in good hands. The burden of leadership, which had felt so heavy just moments before, now felt a little lighter. He had a true second-in-command.
“I accept your counsel, and I grant you the authority to proceed,” he said formally. “Build our fortress, Mei Jing. I am counting on you.”
With the succession settled and the future of his enterprise secured, the final piece was in place. He was now free to turn his full attention to the journey ahead, to the kingdom of merchants and the "certain fate" that awaited him there.
The weight of Lloyd’s trust settled onto Mei Jing’s shoulders, not as a burden, but as a mantle of authority she had unknowingly craved her entire life. For years, she had been a brilliant mind in a gilded cage, her gender and lack of a high noble title placing a firm ceiling on her ambitions. She could advise, she could strategize, she could influence, but she could never truly lead. Lloyd Ferrum had not just broken that ceiling; he had obliterated it. He had seen her for what she was—a general, not a lieutenant—and had handed her an army. The gratitude she felt was a fierce, burning thing, a fire that forged her already strong loyalty into something unbreakable, something akin to tempered steel.
She immediately took command, her mind shifting from subordinate to leader. “Lyra,” she said, her voice crisp and clear, “I need a full audit of our current supply chain vulnerabilities, with a focus on single-source dependencies. I want a report on my desk by tomorrow evening.”
Lyra, who respected efficiency above all else, gave a single, sharp nod of assent. “It will be done.”
“Tisha,” Mei Jing continued, her gaze softening slightly, “your role is now more critical than ever. You are our public face. With Lord Ferrum away, rumors will fly. You will manage our public relations. Project an image of stability, confidence, and business-as-usual. Quash any whispers of instability with overwhelming charm and professionalism.”
Tisha’s smile returned, this time genuine and filled with a new sense of purpose. “They won’t know he’s even gone. Consider it handled.”
“Jasmin,” Mei Jing said, turning to the quiet forewoman. “You knew Pia better than any of us. You also know the heart of this manufactory. I am entrusting you with internal morale. Be the eyes and ears among the workers. Listen to their concerns, their fears. We cannot afford to let the poison of suspicion fester. You are our shield against internal rot.”
Jasmin, who had been struggling with her grief, looked up, her expression filled with a new, solemn responsibility. She had lost a friend, but she would not lose the family she had found here. “I understand,” she whispered, her voice steady. “I will not let you down.”
Lloyd watched the exchange with a deep, quiet satisfaction. He had planted a seed, and it had grown into a formidable tree with strong, capable branches. His departure would not weaken his organization; it would temper it, forcing its leaders to grow into the full measure of their potential.
The meeting concluded, and the team dispersed, each member moving with a new, clear-eyed purpose. Lloyd was left alone in the study, a strange sense of peace settling over him. He had faced the betrayal, endured the loss, and had come out the other side with a team that was not just intact, but stronger, more united, and more resolute than before.
Chapter : 698
The [All-Seeing Eye] was a presence now, a cool, latent energy that resided behind his own vision. It was a lens he had yet to master, a key to a billion locks he had yet to find. The initial euphoria of the acquisition had been swiftly replaced by the cold, hard pragmatism of the engineer. A powerful tool was useless in the hands of an untrained operator.
He had tested it again, just briefly. He had focused his will and looked at a simple iron quill stand on his desk. The world had dissolved into that breathtaking, terrifying new reality. He saw the familiar, solid object, but he also saw its inner life. He saw the microscopic imperfections in the casting, the subtle crystalline lattice of the ferrous metal, the faint, lingering heat signature from where his hand had rested moments before. The sheer volume of data was an avalanche, a tsunami of raw information that threatened to overwhelm his consciousness. It was like trying to listen to every conversation in a bustling city simultaneously. He could hear the noise, but he couldn't understand the language.
That was the crux of the problem. He possessed a divine instrument of analysis, but he lacked the foundational knowledge to interpret what he was seeing. In his previous life, he could have looked at a human body with this power and instantly identified the tibia, the fibula, the circulatory system, the nervous system. He could have named every organ, every bone, every muscle, because he had spent decades studying the schematics of the human machine.
Here, in Riverio, the biology was similar, but subtly different. The presence of Spirit Cores, the flow of mana through the body, the way a person’s life force interacted with their physical form—these were all new variables, new layers of data his new eye was presenting to him without context. He was seeing the answers to questions he didn't even know how to ask. He needed a lexicon. A textbook. A Rosetta Stone to translate the divine language of his new perception into the functional knowledge of this world.
There was only one person who possessed such a library, and more importantly, the esoteric understanding to curate it.
He rose from his chair, his movements deliberate. The path to mastering this new, subtle power would not begin in the training yard or the Soul Farm. It would begin in a place he had avoided for most of his life: the quiet, scholarly world of his mother.
Duchess Milody Austin Ferrum was an enigma. To the world, she was the serene, graceful wife of the Arch Duke, a picture of quiet nobility and gentle warmth. To her children, she was a loving but often distant presence, a calming force in the storm of their formidable father. But Lloyd, now armed with the knowledge of two lifetimes and the burden of his awakened Austin bloodline, was beginning to see the truth. His mother was not just a duchess; she was a guardian of secrets, the inheritor of a power so profound and reality-bending that it made the Ferrum’s famous Steel Blood look like a blacksmith’s parlor trick.
He found her not in her formal receiving chambers, but in her private solarium, a magnificent glass-domed room filled with exotic plants and the soft, melodic sound of a small, enchanted fountain. The air was warm and humid, thick with the scent of blooming night-orchids and damp earth. She was sitting in a simple wicker chair, a cup of herbal tea steaming gently on the table beside her, her attention focused on a delicate, silver-leafed plant she was carefully pruning with a pair of small, ornate shears.
She looked up as he entered, and a genuine, warm smile touched her lips. It was a smile that always managed to reach her eyes, which held a wisdom that seemed as ancient and deep as the earth itself.
“Lloyd,” she said, her voice a soft, musical chime. “This is an unexpected pleasure. Your duties at the manufactory and the Academy seem to consume you these days. I was beginning to think you had forgotten your old mother.”
There was a light, teasing quality to her words, but her gaze was sharp, analytical. She was studying him, he realized, just as he was studying her. She would have felt the shift in him, the echo of the new power settling into his soul.
“Never, Mother,” he replied, approaching her and offering a respectful bow. “In fact, it is my studies that bring me here. I have a request to make of you.”
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Chapter : 699
Milody set down her pruning shears, her full attention now on him. “A request? Of me? This is a rare occasion indeed. Usually, it is your father you seek for matters of steel and strategy, or your tutors for matters of coin and commerce. What knowledge does an old woman tending her garden possess that a rising star like yourself could possibly need?”
He knew she was subtly probing, testing him. He decided on a direct, if partial, truth.
“My recent… awakenings… have presented me with a new set of challenges,” he began, choosing his words with care. “My control over the family’s Steel Blood is progressing. My spirit partners are… formidable. But the power from your side of the family, the Austin lineage… it is different. It is a power of perception, of seeing things as they truly are. But the more I see, the more I realize how little I truly understand.”
He met her gaze, his expression one of earnest, scholarly frustration. “I can perceive the inner workings of things, Mother. The flow of energy in a spirit stone, the stresses within a piece of steel. But when I look at a living thing… I see a machine of breathtaking complexity, but I don’t have the schematics. I don’t know the names of the parts. I see the flow of life force, but I don't understand its language.”
He saw a flicker of profound understanding, and perhaps a touch of pride, in her deep, violet eyes. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She had walked this path herself.
“I need knowledge,” he stated simply. “The foundational knowledge of this world’s physical laws. I need to study the machine before I can hope to repair it, let alone improve upon it. I have come to ask for your permission to borrow some of the books from our family library. Specifically, from the Austin collection. The medical texts. The anatomical atlases. The treatises on the nature of curses and spirit-sickness.”
The request hung in the warm, humid air of the solarium. For a long moment, Milody was silent. She picked up her teacup, taking a slow, deliberate sip, her eyes never leaving his. He had the distinct feeling that she was seeing far more than the son standing before her. She was seeing the echo of a thousand ancestors, a long line of Austin scholars and reality-benders, and she was assessing whether he was truly ready to walk among them.
Finally, she set the cup down with a soft click. Her smile returned, but it was different now. It was a smile of shared secrets, of a mentor welcoming a new, promising apprentice into the fold.
“For years, I have watched your father try to teach a songbird how to be a lion,” she said softly, a profound, almost sorrowful affection in her voice. “And all this time, it seems the eagle was simply waiting for its own wings to grow.”
She rose from her chair, her movements as graceful and unhurried as the blooming of a flower. “Come with me, Lloyd. The library has been waiting for you for a very long time. Let us find you the right set of eyes to make sense of what you are seeing.”
The Ferrum family library was not the grand, public-facing repository of knowledge that graced the main wing of the estate. That was a space for show, filled with handsome, leather-bound volumes of history, philosophy, and poetry, designed to impress visiting dignitaries. The true library, the Austin Archive, was hidden away in his mother’s private wing, behind a simple, unadorned oaken door that was protected by wards so ancient and potent they made the air around it hum.
Milody placed her palm flat against the wood. There was no incantation, no flare of magical light. The hum simply ceased, and the heavy door swung inward with a whisper of displaced air, revealing the sanctuary beyond. Lloyd followed her inside, and the scent of the solarium’s damp earth and sweet flowers was instantly replaced by the dry, intoxicating aroma of old paper, cured leather, and the faint, sharp tang of alchemical preservatives.
Chapter : 700
The room was a breathtaking contrast to the martial severity that defined the rest of the Ferrum estate. It was a circular, two-story rotunda, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with towering shelves of dark, polished ironwood. A spiral staircase, seemingly carved from a single piece of the same wood, wound its way up to a narrow balcony that ringed the second level. The only light came from a massive, enchanted skylight in the domed ceiling, which currently bathed the room in the soft, diffused glow of a late afternoon sun. It was a space of profound, scholarly silence, a temple dedicated to the quiet, relentless pursuit of knowledge.
“The Ferrums collect swords,” Milody said, her voice a soft murmur that seemed to be absorbed by the thousands of books around them. “The Austins collect truths. Be warned, my son. The truths in this room can be far sharper, and more dangerous, than any blade.”
Lloyd’s eyes scanned the shelves, his heart quickening with a scholar’s excitement. The spines of the books were a testament to the eclectic and often esoteric interests of his maternal ancestors. He saw titles on celestial mechanics, advanced elemental theory, and treatises on the metaphysical nature of Void power that likely contained knowledge lost to the wider world for centuries. This was not just a library; it was a treasure vault.
“The medical and biological texts are on the upper level, to the west,” his mother guided, her voice gentle. “They are the foundation. One cannot hope to mend what one does not understand.”
He ascended the spiral staircase, his hand trailing along the smooth, cool wood of the railing. The view from the balcony was even more impressive, a sea of accumulated wisdom stretching out below him. He found the section his mother had indicated. Here, the books were older, their bindings more worn, their pages filled not with elegant script, but with precise, hand-drawn diagrams and cramped, scholarly annotations.
He began to select his curriculum. His choices were methodical, guided by the specific gaps in his knowledge that his new All-Seeing Eye had revealed.
First, he took down a massive, heavy tome titled The Inner Architecture: An Anatomical Atlas of the Races of Man and Mer. He carefully opened it, the old parchment crinkling in protest. The page he turned to was a stunningly detailed, full-color illustration of the human nervous system, every major nerve and ganglion rendered with an artist’s precision. He could already see how this would serve as a map, allowing him to put names to the intricate, glowing web he could now perceive within his own body.
Next, he chose a series of smaller, more focused volumes. The Three Cores and the Flow of Spirit, a text detailing the relationship between a person’s spirit cores and their physical health. Maladies of the Soul: A Study of Spirit-Sickness and Aura Decay, which he hoped would give him insight into curse-like afflictions. The Herbalist’s Compendium, a thick, encyclopedic guide to the medicinal and alchemical properties of the continent’s flora.
He paused before a more secluded, locked section of the shelf. The books here were bound not in simple leather, but in dark, iron-banded covers, their titles written in a spidery, archaic script. A faint, almost imperceptible aura of cold emanated from them.
“Those are more… specialized,” his mother’s voice came from behind him. He hadn’t even heard her ascend the stairs. “They deal not with the mending of the body, but with its deconstruction. The nature of curses, the application of poisons, the art of anatomical warfare. They are dangerous knowledge, Lloyd.”
He turned to face her, his expression serious. “The enemies we face do not fight with honor, Mother. They use curses and assassins. To defend against a weapon, one must first understand how it is made.”
She studied his face for a long, silent moment, her violet eyes searching his. She saw no morbid curiosity, no lust for forbidden power. She saw only the cold, hard pragmatism of the soldier, the quiet determination of a man preparing for a war he did not choose but would not lose. She saw the same look she sometimes saw in her husband’s eyes, but tempered with an analytical, scholarly depth that was purely Austin.
She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod of assent. A small, silver key appeared in her hand, seemingly from nowhere. She unlocked the grate and pulled out a single, thin volume bound in what looked like black snakeskin. The title was stark: The Withering Touch: An Analysis of Necrotic and Soul-Binding Curses.
“Knowledge is a tool, not a temptation,” she said, her voice a soft warning as she handed him the book. “Use it wisely. Do not let its darkness stain you.”
