Episode-246

Words : 1570 Updated : Oct 1st, 2025

Chapter : 491 And the System, in its infinite, inscrutable, and beautifully, wonderfully, insane logic, had just given him the one thing no warrior, no general, no king, in the history of any world, had ever truly possessed: more time. An almost limitless supply of it. He could spend a week in the Farm, a full week of relentless, uninterrupted training, and emerge back in his study less than two hours later. He could master his Steel Chains, practicing for what would feel like months, and miss only a single dinner. He could spend years, a decade even, in that private, timeless dimension, honing his skills, grinding for coins, perfecting his craft, and return to this world having aged only a month or two. The power disparity he had feared, the gap between himself and the ghosts of his past, was no longer an insurmountable chasm. It was just... a problem of logistics. A matter of time management. A grind. And he now had all the time in the world to complete it. He pushed himself away from the desk, pacing the small study, his mind ablaze with the new, almost infinite, possibilities. This wasn't just an advantage; it was an absolute. A cheat code written into the very fabric of his existence. He thought of his Void powers. His B-Rank Steel Blood. He could spend a subjective year in the Farm, practicing every single day, mastering the Chain Shackles until they were a seamless extension of his will, until he could weave them through stone and steel as if they were ghosts. He could perfect the art of the Forge Eye, spending countless hours in trial and error, learning to fuse his bloodlines, to create permanent, tangible objects from his gaze alone, until he could forge a perfect, flawless sword from nothing but a thought and a glance. He would emerge, mere days later in this world, with a level of mastery that should have taken him a lifetime to achieve. He thought of Fang Fairy. They could train together, for subjective years, in the goblin-infested depths of the Shadowfen Forest, honing their combat synergy until they moved as a single, fluid, and utterly unstoppable, entity. They could grind, endlessly, accumulating thousands, tens of thousands, of Farming Coins, converting them into the System Coins needed to push her from Transcendence to the next, almost mythical, stage of power. He thought of his own knowledge. The vast, untapped library of his eighty years on Earth. He could spend years in the Farm’s quiet, safe study, not just recalling his knowledge, but actively adapting it. He could redesign the rifle, perfecting its mechanics. He could write entire treatises on advanced metallurgy, on chemistry, on physics, on military strategy, creating a technological and intellectual arsenal that would be centuries ahead of anything this world could conceive. He was no longer just a player in the Great Game. He had just been handed the developer console. The ability to pause time, to enter a training simulation, to grind for experience points, and then to return to the main game, overwhelmingly, impossibly, powerful. A slow, cold, and deeply, profoundly, dangerous smile spread across his face. It was the smile of a man who has just realized he is no longer playing by the same rules as everyone else. The smile of a man who has just been handed the keys to the kingdom. Ben Ferrum, his crippled, steel-limbed nemesis, had warned him that he was no longer the one with the overwhelming force. And he had been right. For now. But the clock was ticking. Or rather, for Lloyd, it was ticking at a rate of 144 to 1. And with every passing minute in this world, he would be gaining hours, days, of power in the other. The race was still on. But the finish line, for his enemies, had just been moved infinitely further away. And his own starting blocks had just been replaced with a rocket sled. He stood by the window of his study, looking out at the sleeping city of Bethelham, at the distant, silent spires of the Academy. He saw not just a city, but a chessboard. He saw not just people, but pieces. And he, the quiet, unassuming professor, the revolutionary soap-maker, the drab duckling, was about to become the grandmaster. But first... he needed some sleep. A real sleep. In a real bed. Even a time-traveling, dimension-hopping, cosmically-empowered demigod-in-training, he decided, deserved a decent night's rest after a long, hard, eighteen-hour day of slaughtering goblins. The war could wait until morning. For now, the victorious, and very, very tired, general, was going to take a nap. — Chapter : 492 The air in the private chambers of the Viscountess Nilufa Siddik was a fragile, preserved thing. It was a pocket of time, held in stasis by the sheer, unwavering force of her family’s desperate hope. The scent was a carefully curated blend of medicinal herbs, clean linen, and the faint, sweet perfume of the moon-petal flowers that were her favorite, arranged in fresh bouquets on the bedside table each morning. Sunlight, filtered through heavy, cream-colored silk drapes, cast a soft, almost reverent, glow upon the room, illuminating a scene of quiet, heartbreaking stillness. Viscountess Nilufa lay in the center of a massive, four-poster bed, a figure of tragic, sleeping beauty. Her dark hair, once a vibrant river of midnight silk, was now streaked with premature silver, spread out like a halo upon the pristine white pillows. Her face, though pale and thin from seven long years of a wasting, mysterious illness that had baffled every healer in the southern provinces, still held the echoes of its former, legendary beauty. She was not dead, not exactly. She was... absent. A beautiful, empty vessel, her spirit lost somewhere in the deep, silent, and unreachable waters of a magical coma. Rosa Siddik sat in a simple, high-backed chair by her mother’s bedside, a silent, emerald-clad sentinel. Her veil was off, her face an exquisite, unreadable mask of alabaster calm. She held her mother’s hand, a hand that was cool, limp, and unresponsive to her touch. The contact was a ritual, a silent, one-sided conversation she had been having for seven years. She did not weep. She did not pray. She simply... sat, her immense, coiled power, her icy composure, a stark, silent contrast to the fragile, sleeping woman in the bed. She would sit like this for hours whenever she visited the Siddik family estate, her mind a quiet, logical engine, analyzing her mother’s condition, reviewing the healers’ reports, searching for a pattern, a weakness, a logical key that could unlock the prison of her mother’s slumber. It was a puzzle she had yet to solve, and the failure was a cold, hard, and constant weight in the core of her being. The heavy, sound-dampening door to the chamber opened with a soft, almost soundless, click. Rosa did not turn her head. She knew who it was. There was only one other person who dared to enter this sacred, sorrowful space without a formal announcement. “Staring at her will not wake her, little sister.” The voice was cool, crisp, and laced with a familiar, weary pragmatism that was a signature of the Siddik lineage. Mina Siddik, Rosa’s elder sister, stepped into the room. She was a stark, beautiful contrast to her younger sibling. Where Rosa was all cool, dark, raven-haired beauty, Mina was a creature of warm, sun-kissed gold. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat, her eyes a sharp, intelligent hazel, and her face, while possessing the same fine, aristocratic bone structure as Rosa’s, was more animated, her mouth perpetually on the verge of a sharp, witty, and often quite cutting, observation. She was dressed in the severe, dark, and elegant mourning gowns she had worn for the past two years, since the death of her own husband in a border skirmish, but she wore her grief not as a shroud of sorrow, but as a kind of armor, a testament to her own unyielding, pragmatic resilience. Mina moved to the other side of the bed, her gaze settling on their mother’s pale, sleeping face. A flicker of pain, of a deep, familiar sorrow, crossed her features, there and gone in an instant, replaced by her usual mask of cool, competent control. She then turned her sharp, intelligent gaze on Rosa. “You have been here for three days, little sister,” Mina stated, her voice quiet but firm. “You have barely eaten. You have not left this room except to sleep. This... vigil... it is admirable. But it is not productive. The healers are doing all they can. Your presence, however much you may wish it otherwise, is not a catalyst for a cure.” Rosa finally turned her head, her obsidian eyes meeting her sister’s hazel ones. “It is my duty,” she replied, her own voice a low, cool murmur. “It is,” Mina agreed with a sharp nod. “But you have other duties now, Rosa. Duties you have been, if the whispers from the capital are to be believed, rather spectacularly neglecting.” Rosa’s expression did not change, but a subtle, almost invisible, tightening of her jaw signaled her displeasure at the shift in topic. “The whispers of the capital are the idle chatter of bored, foolish people. They are irrelevant.”

Episode-246

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