Chapter : 973
He was cut off from his loyal servants. He was severed from his weapons. He was alone in a way he had not been since the moment of his awakening in this new world. The void was not just a loss of power; it was a loss of self, a profound, spiritual loneliness that left him feeling hollowed out, a king who had just had his kingdom, his army, and his very soul ripped from him.
Beside him, Rosa stumbled, a sharp, choked gasp escaping her lips. Her experience was, in its own way, even more profound. For her entire life, her immense spiritual pressure had been a part of her, as natural and as constant as the beating of her own heart. It was a shield, a weapon, a declaration of her very being. The field did not just suppress it; it extinguished it. The raging, internal blizzard that had defined her existence was snuffed out like a candle flame in a vacuum.
For the first time since she was a small child, she felt… nothing. The absence of that power was a physical shock, a sensory deprivation of the soul. She felt light. Fragile. Vulnerable. The icy fortress she had built around her heart, a fortress forged from her own immense power, had just been vaporized. She was no longer a goddess of winter. She was just a woman, standing on the edge of a hostile, primordial wilderness, and for the first time in her life, she was truly, completely, and terrifyingly cold.
She looked at Lloyd, her eyes wide with a new, raw, and undisguised vulnerability. He saw it, and he saw his own profound sense of loss reflected there. In that moment, they were not a lord and a lady. They were not a husband and a wife. They were two survivors, two castaways, who had just had the very foundations of their reality ripped out from under them.
But their Void powers remained. The deep, innate, and personal energies that were tied not to their spirits, but to their very blood and bone, were untouched by the field. Lloyd could still feel the familiar, solid hum of his Steel Blood in his veins. Rosa could still feel the cool, quiet potential of her own family’s power, a deep, still reservoir within her. They were not entirely powerless. They were not commoners. They were warriors who had been stripped of their divine weapons but were still left with their swords.
Lloyd was the first to recover. The soldier, the survivor, the man who had faced the void of death itself, reasserted his control. He pushed aside the aching loneliness, the profound sense of loss, and focused on the immediate, the tactical.
“It’s done,” he said, his voice a low, steady anchor in the oppressive silence. “There’s no going back. From this moment on, we rely only on ourselves.”
He looked at her, and his gaze was no longer that of a husband or a lord. It was the gaze of a commander, assessing the state of his only soldier. He saw her fear, her vulnerability. But he also saw the core of steel beneath it. He saw the queen, stripped of her crown and her magic, but still a queen nonetheless.
He gave a single, sharp nod, a gesture of command and of a shared, grim purpose. “Our path begins now,” he said, his voice a low, hard instrument of pure, unyielding will. “Stay close. Stay alert. And trust in nothing but my lead.”
Without another word, he turned and began to walk deeper into the dark, silent, and now terrifyingly real world of Mount Monu. And after a moment’s hesitation, Rosa, the Silver-Haired Queen, the fallen goddess of winter, took a deep, steadying breath and fell into step beside him. Their new, unspoken partnership had just been baptized in the absolute, terrifying silence of the spirit-sealing mountain. They were alone. They were vulnerable. And for the first time, they were truly, completely, and absolutely together.
Chapter : 974
The severing of his spiritual bonds was a familiar agony for Lloyd, a chilling echo of the Soul Catcher’s forbidden magic. But this was different. The assassins’ cage had been a violent, artificial imposition. This was a natural law, a fundamental and unalterable truth of this cursed place. The void left by his four spirits was not just an absence of power; it was a profound, soul-deep silence, a quiet so absolute it was a scream. He had become accustomed to the constant, subtle hum of their presences in the back of his mind—Fang Fairy’s electric crackle, Iffrit’s deep rumble, the fluidic whisper of Echo, the cold stillness of Abyss. They were not just his weapons; they were his companions, his council, his silent, ever-present family. Now, they were gone. He was a king who had just lost not just his army, but his entire court, his entire kingdom, in a single, silent instant. The loneliness was a crushing weight.
Beside him, Rosa gasped, her body stumbling as if struck by a physical blow. Her reaction was even more visceral. The immense, ever-present spiritual pressure that had been a core part of her identity for her entire life, a constant, internal blizzard that was both her shield and her weapon, was gone. Not suppressed, not dampened, but utterly, completely extinguished. The sudden, absolute silence in her soul was a sensory deprivation so profound it was disorienting. She felt… empty. Light. Frighteningly, terribly fragile. The goddess of winter had been unmade, her icy divinity stripped away, leaving only a mortal woman shivering in the face of a primordial, god-killing power.
She looked at him, her dark eyes wide with a raw, undisguised vulnerability he had never seen before. The mask of the Ice Princess had not just cracked; it had shattered. In her eyes, he saw a perfect, chilling mirror of his own profound sense of loss and isolation.
In that single, shared moment of absolute, soul-stripping vulnerability, the last vestiges of their old relationship—the lord and the lady, the husband and the wife, the political allies—were burned away. They were simply Lloyd and Rosa. Two survivors, two castaways, stripped of their gods, their powers, their very identities, standing together on the shore of a hostile and alien world.
But they were not entirely defenseless. Beneath the void left by their spirits, a deeper, more ancient power remained. Lloyd could still feel the familiar, solid weight of his Steel Blood, a quiet, steady hum in his veins, a power that was part of his very flesh and bone. Rosa, too, could feel the cool, deep, and still reservoir of her own family’s unique Void power, an untouched wellspring of quiet strength. They were not commoners. They were still warriors. They had simply been forced to discard their legendary, divine artifacts and were now left with nothing but the simple, unadorned, and brutally honest steel of their own making.
It was this realization that allowed the general in Lloyd to reassert control. He ruthlessly suppressed the aching void, the profound loneliness, and focused on the mission. He was a soldier, and a soldier adapts. He looked at Rosa, at the fear and vulnerability in her eyes, and he saw not a weakness, but a truth. For the first time, she was not looking at him through a filter of political calculation or cold disdain. She was just… looking at him. And he was seeing her.
He gave a single, sharp nod, not of command, but of a shared, grim understanding. “The field is absolute,” he said, his voice a steady, grounding force in the oppressive silence. “Our spirits are gone. From this moment on, we have only ourselves. Our wits, our training, and the power in our blood. It will have to be enough.”
He unslung the heavy pack from his shoulders, its weight a comforting, tangible reality. He began to lay out the components of their impossible machine—the folded, resin-treated silk of the canopy, the coils of griffon-sinew cordage, the lightweight but incredibly strong ironwood frame of the basket.
“The air is thin here,” he said, his voice taking on the familiar, confident tone of the engineer, the professor. “The temperature will drop precipitously as we ascend. Our first task is to establish a secure, defensible base camp. Our second is to assemble the envelope. The work will be difficult, and the cold will be our first enemy.”
He was not just giving orders. He was creating a new reality. He was replacing the overwhelming, terrifying mystery of the mountain with a series of small, logical, and achievable tasks. He was building a new fortress, not of power, but of purpose.