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.”