Chapter : 971
But before she could commit to such a blind leap, her analytical mind seized upon a fundamental flaw in the premise. A question that demanded an answer.
“Why there?” she asked, her voice cutting through the heavy, expectant silence. It was not a challenge to his plan, but to its very foundation. “Why would a mythical, life-giving ingredient, a thing of pure spiritual essence, grow in the one place in the world where spiritual energy is nullified? It is a paradox. It contradicts the fundamental laws of alchemy and nature.”
It was a brilliant question, a perfect, logical, and deeply insightful probe that cut to the very heart of the mystery. Mina and Yacob looked at him, their own faces now a mask of renewed confusion. Rosa had just exposed a gaping, impossible hole in the beautiful, heroic narrative he had just woven.
Lloyd, however, did not falter. He did not seem surprised by the question. In fact, a slow, appreciative, and deeply, profoundly approving smile touched his lips. He was a professor who had just been asked a magnificent, insightful question by his star pupil.
“That is the very question that the High Alchemist, and every other scholar who has ever studied the legends, has failed to ask,” he said, his voice now a low, conspiratorial hum, the sound of a master sharing a secret with a worthy peer. “They see the Lotus as a thing of spiritual power. They are wrong. They have fundamentally misunderstood its nature.”
He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with the fierce, passionate light of a man who has discovered a new, and very, very dangerous, truth.
“The Heavenly Jade Lotus is not a product of the mountain’s spirit-sealing field,” he explained, his voice a quiet, revolutionary instrument. “It is the source of it.”
The statement was a second, and even more profound, bombshell.
“The legends are a mistranslation of a much older, pre-cataclysmic text,” he continued, weaving a beautiful, elegant, and completely fabricated lie with the seamless confidence of a master historian. “The Lotus does not contain spiritual energy. It consumes it. It is a spiritual parasite, a natural, biological anomaly that feeds on the ambient magical energy of the world. That is why it can only grow in a place of such immense, natural power as Mount Monu. It has, over millennia, literally drunk the mountain’s spirit dry, creating the seal as a byproduct of its own existence.”
He let the breathtaking, heretical theory sink in. He was not just rewriting a legend; he was rewriting the very laws of their world’s magical ecosystem.
“And that,” he concluded, his gaze meeting hers, a look of profound, shared, and brilliant understanding in his eyes, “is why it is the only thing in the universe that can cure your mother.”
Rosa’s eyes widened, her mind, a magnificent, quicksilver engine, making the final, terrible, and beautiful connection before he even had to say the words.
“The curse,” she whispered, the words a sound of dawning, horrified awe. “It is a spiritual parasite.”
“Exactly,” he confirmed, his voice a triumphant whisper. “It is a foul, artificial, and malevolent entity that is feeding on your mother’s soul. And what is the natural, and most absolute, predator of a spiritual parasite? Another, more powerful, and infinitely more hungry parasite.”
He had just transformed their quest from a simple, magical fetch-quest into a beautiful, elegant, and deeply, profoundly logical biological equation. They were not seeking a mythical, life-giving elixir. They were hunting a predator. A specific, and very, very dangerous, predator, to unleash upon the even more dangerous one that was devouring her family from within.
The fear and despair that had gripped Rosa were burned away, replaced by a new, and far more powerful, emotion. Certainty. A cold, hard, and absolutely, magnificently logical certainty. The mystery was solved. The paradox was explained. The path was clear.
She looked at the man before her, and the last, final, and most profound wall of her skepticism, of her doubt, of her cold, distant disdain, crumbled into dust. He was not a madman. He was not a fool. He was a genius. A beautiful, terrifying, and utterly, completely, and absolutely magnificent genius. And he was, whether she liked it or not, the only, single, and absolute hope she had left.
The alliance was forged. The impossible quest had its champion. And Rosa, the Ice Queen, the master of logic, had just, in a single, quiet, and world-altering moment, put her entire, and very logical, faith in the hands of the most illogical, and most brilliant, man she had ever met.
Chapter : 972
The name, Mount Monu, had been a thunderclap in the quiet, grief-stricken chambers of the Siddik estate, a name that had drained the color from Mina’s face and filled Yacob’s young eyes with a primal, story-fed fear. For Rosa, however, after Lloyd’s brilliant, heretical explanation, it had become a simple data point. A destination on a map. A logical, necessary, and utterly terrifying variable in the equation of her mother’s survival. Her resolve, once forged in the blind fire of desperation, was now tempered with the cold, hard steel of a logical, albeit insane, purpose.
She had declared her intent to be his partner, a statement of fact that Lloyd had accepted with a quiet, almost imperceptible nod of respect. The alliance was forged. The impossible quest had its champions.
And now, after a week of frantic, meticulous preparation, of acquiring the strange, esoteric tools he had demanded, they stood at the foot of the beast itself.
Mount Monu was not a mountain. It was a jagged, black tooth, a fang of dead, volcanic rock that tore at the sky, its peaks perpetually wreathed in a crown of angry, bruised-looking clouds. The forest that covered its lower slopes was a dark, menacing thing, a wall of ancient, twisted trees that seemed to lean in, as if to whisper secrets of the horrors that lay within.
But the most unsettling thing was the silence. The world at the mountain’s base was profoundly, unnaturally quiet. There were no birds. No insects. No rustle of wind in the leaves. The air itself felt heavy, thick, and oppressive, as if the very sound had been crushed out of existence by the sheer, malevolent weight of the mountain’s presence. It was the silence of a tomb. The silence of a place that life itself had abandoned.
Lloyd and Rosa stood before it, two small, insignificant figures against the backdrop of a primordial, sleeping god. Their packs were heavy on their backs, filled with the strange assortment of ropes, pitons, and alchemical supplies he had deemed necessary for his secret, unspoken plan.
“This is it,” Lloyd said, his voice a low murmur that seemed to be instantly swallowed by the oppressive quiet. “The point of no return. Once we step past that line of dead trees, the field will take hold. There will be no turning back.”
He looked at her, his face a grim, unreadable mask. This was her final chance. He had given her every reason to retreat, to accept the impossibility of their quest. He had offered her a mystery, a riddle, not a plan. He would not fault her if she chose to turn back now.
Rosa did not look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the terrifying, cloud-wreathed peak of the mountain. Her face was pale, her lips a thin, tight line. He could see the fear in her eyes, a raw, honest fear that he respected far more than any blind bravado. But beneath the fear, there was something else. A core of pure, unyielding, and utterly unbreakable steel. She had made a promise, a commitment, based on a single, fragile act of faith in him. And she was not a woman who broke her promises.
She did not speak. She simply took a single, deliberate step forward, crossing the invisible boundary between the living world and the dead one.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
The moment Rosa crossed the invisible threshold, a cold, metaphysical wave washed over them, a silent, psychic tsunami that was more jarring than any physical blow.
For Lloyd, the sensation was one of profound, multi-layered amputation. The constant, warm, and living presences that had become a part of his very soul, the four pillars of his impossible strength, were violently, brutally severed.
Fang Fairy’s crackling, ever-present storm, the feeling of contained lightning that was a constant hum in the back of his mind, was extinguished, leaving a cold, static-filled void.
Iffrit’s deep, volcanic rumble, the feeling of a contained, sleeping inferno that was a source of his own fiery will, was snuffed out, leaving an empty, ashen coldness.
The two new spirits, the fluidic potential of the Doppelganger, Echo, and the cold, predatory pressure of the White Shark, Abyss, were simply… gone. Erased. The four vibrant, living colors that had painted the landscape of his soul were ripped away, leaving only a stark, aching, and monochromatic grey.