Chapter : 723

The weaver, Harun, let out a soft, guttural sound of pure despair. His wife, Aliza, buried her face in his shoulder, her weeping turning into the dry, silent sobs of a soul that had lost its final anchor of hope. They knew the name. Everyone knew the name. The jungle was said to be a living entity, ancient and hungry. Its canopy was so thick that the forest floor was trapped in a perpetual, gloomy twilight. The trees themselves were rumored to be carnivorous, their roots seeking out the warmth of living things. The air was thick with spores that could drive a man mad, and the water was teeming with invisible parasites. And then there were the beasts—creatures of nightmare, warped by the jungle’s potent, chaotic magic into mockeries of life, things with too many legs, too many eyes, and an insatiable hunger.

Seasoned mercenary companies, men who would charge a line of pikes for a handful of gold, refused contracts that required them to venture more than a few miles past the jungle’s edge. To seek something in its deep, hidden places was not a mission; it was suicide.

Sumaiya’s composure, which had been a fortress of iron will, finally showed a crack. Her dark eyes widened, the fire of her resolve momentarily flickering against a wave of cold, stark reality. “The Dahaka?” she repeated, her voice a strained whisper. “That’s… that’s impossible. The herbs you speak of, the Sun-Kissed Fern and the Moonpetal Orchid… they are myths. Stories told by alchemists to explain their failures.”

“Myths are often just truths that have become too dangerous to seek,” Lloyd replied, his voice still infuriatingly calm. He pulled a piece of chalk from a pouch at his belt and, on the grimy floorboards, sketched the delicate, serrated leaf of the fern and the crescent-shaped bloom of the orchid from the perfect images stored in his memory. “They are real. But their habitats are what make them legendary. The Fern requires direct, unfiltered sunlight to catalyze its healing properties. It grows only in the highest clearings, where the jungle canopy breaks. The Orchid, its opposite, thrives in darkness and moisture. It will be found in deep grottos, likely near the base of a waterfall where the air is cool and saturated with mist.”

His clinical, almost academic, description of the herbs’ habitats painted a clear, terrifying picture of the journey required. It was not a simple forage. It was a vertical assault, demanding a climb to the jungle’s highest, most exposed peaks and a descent into its deepest, darkest, and most treacherous chasms.

Sumaiya stared at the chalk drawings, her sharp, analytical mind piecing together the sheer, monumental impossibility of the task. Her gaze then shot to the small, still form on the mattress. “How long?” she demanded, her voice sharp, cutting through the despair in the room. “How long does he have?”

Lloyd did a quick mental calculation, factoring in the progression of the illness and the boy’s failing vital signs. “Without treatment, his lungs will fail completely within three days. Four at the most.”

The timeline was a death sentence. The Dahaka Jungle was a week’s journey to the east by fast horse, and that was just to reach its accursed border. To find two specific, extremely rare herbs in its depths could take weeks, even if one miraculously survived the attempt.

“Impossible,” Harun croaked again, his voice cracking with a final, shuddering finality. “It cannot be done.”

Sumaiya’s mind raced, her desperation turning into a frantic search for any solution, any resource she could leverage. “No,” she said, shaking her head, her gaze locking onto Lloyd’s. “There must be a way. I can pay. I can pay anything. We can hire the fastest horses in the kingdom! I will offer a king’s ransom to the Crimson Blades mercenary company—they are the most ruthless, they fear nothing! We can bribe the checkpoint guards for passage…” She was grasping at straws, her words a torrent of desperate, logistical solutions, throwing money and manpower at a problem that defied both.

Lloyd listened patiently, letting her frantic energy expend itself. When she finally fell silent, her chest heaving with the effort of holding back her own despair, he shook his head slowly.

“The Crimson Blades will not walk into that green hell, Sumaiya. Not for any price. Some things are beyond the reach of coin,” he said gently. “And horses cannot outrun time itself. The road is what it is. Your resources, vast as they may be, are useless against this challenge.”

Chapter : 724

His words were a quiet, brutal execution of her last hopes. He saw the fight drain from her eyes, replaced by the same numb, hollow resignation he saw on the faces of the parents. She had fought, she had schemed, she had offered everything she had, and it was not enough. She was defeated.

He let the silence stretch, letting the full weight of the impossibility settle upon them all. He had tested her, and she had shown her quality. She had the will, the resources, and the compassion. But she was bound by the rules of their world. He, however, was not.

It was time for the Saint of the Coil to perform his first true miracle.

He stood up, brushing the chalk dust from his hands, his movement drawing their weary eyes. The humble, quiet doctor seemed to grow in stature, his presence filling the small, miserable room with a new, unshakeable authority.

“Stay here,” he said, his voice no longer gentle, but imbued with a calm, absolute command that made them all sit up straighter. “Keep him as comfortable as you can. I have what I need from my clinic to manage the fever for a time.”

Sumaiya stared at him, her mind unable to process his words. “What… what are you saying?”

Lloyd turned to face the door, his back to them. “The boy needs the cure,” he stated, as if it were the simplest, most logical fact in the universe. “And the cure is in the jungle.”

He paused, a final beat of silence.

“So I will go and get it.”

The declaration was so simple, so utterly insane, that it defied all comprehension. Sumaiya and the weavers could only stare at the back of this quiet, mysterious man who had just promised to walk into a living hell for a stranger’s child, as casually as if he were stepping out to buy a loaf of bread. The doctor’s mask had not slipped, but behind it, the Major General had just accepted his mission, and the Lord of Ferrum had just committed to a journey from which he might never return.

The silence in the small, oppressive room was a physical weight. Lloyd’s declaration, so simple and so utterly insane, hung in the air, seemingly displacing the very oxygen. Harun and Aliza, the weaver and his wife, stared at him with the blank, uncomprehending expressions of people who had been pushed so far past the brink of despair that their minds could no longer process new information. They had been told the cure was locked in a fortress of myth and nightmare, and this quiet doctor had just volunteered to kick down the door.

It was Sumaiya who finally broke the spell. She rose to her feet, her movements fluid and decisive, the brittle desperation of moments before now forged into a core of unyielding steel. Her piercing black eyes, which had been wide with a frantic, pleading energy, were now narrowed, analytical, and filled with a profound disbelief.

“No,” she said, the single word sharp and absolute. It was not a suggestion; it was a command. “That is out of the question.”

Lloyd turned from the doorway to face her, an eyebrow raised in mild, academic curiosity. He had expected shock, perhaps even a tearful gratitude. He had not expected a direct, unequivocal refusal. The mask of Doctor Zayn remained perfectly in place. “The boy is dying, Sumaiya. The cure is in the jungle. The logic seems quite straightforward.”

“The logic is that of a madman or a saint, and I have learned not to trust either,” she countered, her voice low and intense. She took a step closer, her presence filling the small room, a stark contrast to the cowering weavers. “The Dahaka is not a forest; it is a tomb. It consumes all who enter. You are a healer, a man of books and poultices. You would not last a single day. To walk in there alone is not heroism; it is a pointless suicide, and it will not save this child.”

Lloyd felt a flicker of grudging respect. She was not just emotional; she was a pragmatist. Her mind worked with a cold, strategic clarity that he recognized. She saw the variables, calculated the odds, and had arrived at the correct conclusion: a lone healer stood zero chance. Of course, her foundational data was catastrophically flawed. The man she was addressing was no simple healer.

“Your concern for my well-being is noted,” he said, his tone still maddeningly placid. “However, the assessment of risk is my own. I have… a certain proficiency in traversing difficult terrain. And a familiarity with hazardous flora and fauna.” It was a masterpiece of understatement, the equivalent of a dragon claiming a passing familiarity with campfires.