Chapter : 683

‘Curse Deconstruction.’ The words seemed to leap out at him, a beacon of hope in the darkness of his failure. The description was tantalizing: Analyzes the core magical structure of a hostile enchantment or curse, identifying its foundational weaknesses and potential points of nullification. Does not break the curse, but provides the key to its lock.

This was it. This was the tool he had lacked. Not a sledgehammer to shatter the curse, but a lockpick to dismantle it from within. If he had possessed this ability an hour ago, Pia might still be alive. The thought was a fresh, sharp stab of grief.

But grief was a poison. He had to turn it into fuel.

He looked at the cost. To unlock the foundational skill of ‘Curse Deconstruction,’ it would require a significant investment. But he had his war chest. And this was the first, most vital weapon for his new war.

He made his decision. The vow he had made to Pia, to avenge her and to save her family, was not just a promise. It was now his primary mission directive. And to fulfill that mission, he needed to understand the very nature of the weapons his enemies wielded.

The study had become a sanctuary, a tomb, and a laboratory all at once. For Lloyd Ferrum, it was the only place in the world where the cacophony of his many lives could be silenced long enough for a single, coherent thought to form. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment, the faint, lingering aroma of the rosemary from his soap experiments, and something else—the almost imperceptible, clean scent of ozone that seemed to cling to him now, a permanent perfume from his time spent communing with gods of lightning and fire.

Tonight, however, the room was a testament to a singular, all-consuming frustration. The grand oak desk, usually a model of organized ducal business, was buried under a mountain of schematics. Parchment overflowed from its surface, spilling onto the floor in a chaotic tide of intricate lines, complex calculations, and furious, crossed-out annotations. To any observer from this world, it would have looked like the work of a mad genius attempting to map the heavens or design a new form of cathedral. To Lloyd, it was a monument to his own impotence.

He slammed his quill down, the sharp crack echoing in the silent room. A spray of black ink spattered across a particularly detailed drawing of a gyroscopic stabilization joint. He didn’t care. The frustration was a physical thing, a hot, tight knot in his chest. It was the unique, soul-crushing frustration of the master craftsman who has been given shoddy tools.

In his mind, the design was perfect. It lived and breathed, a symphony of engineering and artistry. The ‘Aegis,’ he called it. A fully articulated, power-assisted mechanical battle suit. It wasn’t the clunky, steam-driven golems that some of the kingdom’s more eccentric artificers had attempted to build. This was a true mech, a second skin of steel and power, an extension of the pilot’s own will. He had the knowledge. He had the materials—or at least, he could create them. With his B-Rank Steel Blood, he could forge alloys of a tensile strength and purity that would make the Royal Armory’s finest master smiths weep. He could craft the interlocking plates, the reinforced endoskeleton, the complex hydraulics.

But it was all useless. A beautiful, lifeless statue.

The core of the problem, the ghost in his perfect machine, was the control system. The feedback loop. The processing unit. In his previous life, as Major General KM Evan, the Aegis suit had been his magnum opus, the invention that had won him a Nobel Prize and had redefined the modern battlefield. Its heart had been a series of networked, quantum-entangled processing chips, each one capable of executing billions of calculations per second. They managed the suit’s balance, power distribution, and weapon systems, translating the pilot’s neural impulses into fluid, instantaneous motion.

Here, in the world of Riverio, there were no chips. There was no silicon. There was no concept of a logic gate, a microprocessor, or a computational engine. He could build the body of a god, but he had no way to give it a brain. He had tried to design a magical equivalent, using arcane conduits and spirit stones to create feedback loops, but it was like trying to build a supercomputer using abacus beads. The complexity was too great, the response time too slow. The suit would be a clumsy, lumbering coffin, not a nimble angel of death.

Chapter : 684

He slumped back in his chair, the weight of his eighty years of knowledge feeling less like an advantage and more like a curse. He was a man out of time, a ghost from the future haunting a world of the past. He had all the answers, but he couldn’t even begin to formulate the right questions for this reality.

He had spent days in the Soul Farm, grinding, fighting, and accumulating power. He had faced down his father in a god-like duel. He had set a trap for a traitor in his own ranks and watched her die before his eyes. Every event screamed at him, a chorus of voices demanding he get stronger, faster. The Aegis suit was his answer, his path to absolute, unchallengeable power. And it was a path that was blocked by a wall of fundamental physics he could not breach.

He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers tracing the faint, phantom ache of old wounds. For the first time in a long time, he felt truly stuck. Beaten. Not by an enemy, but by the sheer, unyielding reality of the universe he now inhabited.

His previous interactions with the System’s Administrator had been brief, focused on understanding the new functions of the 2.0 update. He had treated it like a software manual, a source for direct answers to direct questions. But he had never truly leveraged its vast, analytical potential. He had never asked it to solve a conceptual problem. He had been shouting his frustrations at the silent walls of his study when he could have been consulting the very engine of his reincarnation.

A surge of new energy, born of desperation and a sliver of hope, shot through him. He straightened in his chair, his eyes closing as he pushed aside the chaos of his emotions. He focused his mind, turning his consciousness inward, away from the ink-stained parchment and towards the silent, star-filled void of the interface.

He had to frame the query correctly. A simple “How do I build a battle suit?” would be useless. The System dealt in concepts and data, not in simple desires. He had to define the problem in its most fundamental terms.

He took a deep, calming breath and focused his will. He projected the thought, not as a word, but as a pure concept, a packet of intent aimed at the ghost in his machine.

Query initiated. The primary obstacle to the project codenamed ‘Aegis’ is the absence of a viable command and control system. Specifically, a non-organic, logic-based processing engine capable of executing complex, multi-variable, branching command instructions based on real-time sensory feedback. All known magical and alchemical solutions in this reality lack the necessary processing speed and complexity. An alternative is required. End query.

He sent the thought into the void and waited. The silence stretched, deep and absolute. He was met not with a voice, but with the familiar, dispassionate presence of the Administrator materializing in his mind.

[Query received. Processing…]

The synthesized, genderless monotone was an oddly comforting sound now. It was the sound of pure, unfiltered logic, a welcome anchor in his sea of frustration.

[Analysis complete,] the voice continued, its perfect, unnerving calm a stark contrast to his own internal turmoil. [Your assessment is correct. The technological and material prerequisites for the creation of a silicon-based micro-processing unit do not exist within the current parameters of this dimensional reality.]

Lloyd felt a fresh wave of despair, even though he’d expected the answer. It was official, then. A confirmation of his failure from the god-like entity that had brought him here.

“So that’s it?” he muttered aloud, the words tasting of ash. “It’s impossible?”

He didn’t expect a response to a spoken question, but the voice answered instantly in his mind, its tone as flat and unwavering as ever.

[The term ‘impossible’ is a subjective assessment based on limited data. The query was specific to a ‘non-organic, logic-based’ solution. The System identifies this as a failure of imagination on the part of the user. A more efficient query would focus on desired functionality, not on a preconceived methodology.]

Lloyd blinked. He was being chided. Again. By the cosmic super-entity. It was becoming a recurring theme in their interactions. A cosmic vending machine that was accusing him, a Nobel-laureate genius, of a failure of imagination.

The sheer, breathtaking audacity of it was so unexpected that it shattered his frustration. A short, sharp bark of laughter escaped his lips, a sound of pure, unadulterated disbelief. He was sitting in a room haunted by the ghost of a murdered spy, planning a war against a rival kingdom, and he was being condescended to by a disembodied voice with the personality of a GPS navigator.