Chapter : 1341

He had tried chaining the stones together. He built a cluster of ten stones, hoping they would share the load. But getting them to talk to each other was a nightmare. Stone A would say "Move left leg," and Stone B would say "Fire missile," and the suit would end up doing the splits and exploding.

"Coordination," Lloyd sighed. "I lack a central processor. I have a bunch of fingers but no palm."

He looked at the pile of failed stones in the corner. It was a graveyard of expensive minerals.

"Maybe I'm approaching this wrong," Lloyd thought. "Maybe I need a spirit? Can I stuff a spirit into the suit?"

He shook his head. Spirits had their own wills. If he put a fire spirit in the suit, it might decide to burn the pilot because it was bored. He needed cold, hard logic. He needed a machine mind.

He stood up and kicked a gear across the room. It Clattered loudly.

"This is impossible," he growled. "I have the car. I have the gas. But I don't have a driver."

He walked over to the main chassis of the Aegis. It stood in the corner, a silent metal giant. It looked intimidating. But right now, it was just a very expensive coat rack.

"You're useless," Lloyd told the suit. "Beautiful, but useless."

He needed a breakthrough. He needed something that could handle complex, simultaneous data processing. But magic in this world was intuitive. It wasn't binary code.

"I'm trying to run a supercomputer on an abacus," Lloyd realized. "That's the problem."

He rubbed his temples. His headache was coming back. He needed a break. But he couldn't stop. The image of Beelzebub was still burnt into his mind. He needed this suit.

"One more try," Lloyd said, grabbing a fresh stone. "Maybe if I simplify the code. Remove the auto-balance. I can balance it myself. Maybe."

He sat back down. He picked up the tool. He prepared to burn another stone. It was insanity. But he was an engineer. And engineers didn't give up. They just found new and expensive ways to fail until they succeeded.

Three hours later, Lloyd was lying on the floor. He was staring at the ceiling. The smell of ozone and burnt crystal hung in the air.

Another failure.

He had tried to create a layered command structure. Stone A controls the legs. Stone B controls the arms. Stone C tells Stone A and B what to do.

It worked for about ten seconds. The suit took a step. Then Stone C got confused because Stone A moved slightly faster than Stone B. The suit tried to correct, overcompensated, and fell over. It crashed into his workbench and destroyed a week's worth of alchemy supplies.

"It's a dead end," Lloyd admitted. His voice was hollow.

He sat up and looked at the wreckage. The Aegis was face-down on the floor. It looked like a drunk knight who had passed out.

"The latency is too high," Lloyd analyzed. "The signal between the stones is too slow. By the time the 'balance' command reaches the legs, the suit has already fallen. In a real fight, a millisecond is the difference between life and death. If I lag, I die."

He had hit the wall. The hard limit of this world's technology. He could build the mechanical parts because physics was the same. Gears were gears. Hydraulics were hydraulics. But computing? That was different.

"I need a microprocessor," Lloyd said. "I need silicon chips. I need transistors. I don't have any of that. I have magic rocks that get confused if I ask them to chew gum and walk at the same time."

He felt a deep, crushing frustration. He had the vision. He knew exactly what the Aegis could be. He could see it in his mind—flying through the air, firing beams of light, tanking demon fire. It was so close, yet infinitely far away.

"I'm trying to build a jet with sticks and stones," he muttered.

He stood up and walked over to the fallen suit. He patted its cold metal shoulder.

"It's not your fault, buddy," Lloyd said. "You're just... empty."

He had a powerful body. A fighting machine capable of tearing through stone walls. But without a brain to coordinate its movements, it was just a statue. A very heavy, very expensive statue.

"Maybe I should just wear it as heavy armor?" Lloyd wondered. "Forget the powered movement. Just use my own strength?"

Chapter : 1342

He tried to lift the arm of the suit. It weighed a ton. Even with his reinforced body, moving this much metal without assist-servos would be exhausting. He would be slow. He would be a turtle. A turtle was safe, but a turtle couldn't fight Beelzebub.

"No," Lloyd rejected the idea. "Speed is life. If I'm slow, I'm a target."

He needed the powered assist. He needed the computer to manage the micro-adjustments.

He slumped against the suit. He was defeated. For now.

"There has to be a way," he whispered. "There is always a way. I'm just not seeing it yet."

He thought about his other assets. His spirits. His void powers. His farm. Was there anything there?

"Echo," he thought. "My doppelganger. It can follow commands. It has a semi-sentient mind."

He paused. Could he put Echo inside the suit? Let the spirit act as the software?

"No," he realized. "Echo mimics me. It doesn't know how to run a hydraulic system. It would just try to move the metal like it was flesh. It would strip the gears."

Besides, Echo wasn't always available. If he ran out of mana, the suit would shut down. He needed an independent system.

He looked at the scattered Lilith Stones. They twinkled innocently.

"You guys are really disappointing," Lloyd told them.

He gathered the stones and put them back in their velvet box. He cleaned up the broken glass. He lifted the Aegis upright and locked it into its stand.

The project was stalled. It wasn't cancelled. He refused to cancel it. But he couldn't move forward until he solved the brain problem.

"I need a new material," Lloyd concluded. "Or a new method. Or a miracle."

He turned off the lights in the workshop. The Aegis stood in the darkness, a silent sentinel. It was a promise of power that he couldn't yet keep.

Lloyd walked out of the workshop and into the cool night air. He felt the weight of his failure. But he also felt a strange resolve.

"I'll find it," he promised himself. "I don't know where, and I don't know when. But I will find the brain for that suit. And when I do... the world better watch out."

He walked back to his room. He needed sleep. Tomorrow, he had to be a professor. He had to be a lord. He had to be a spy leader. But tonight, he was just a frustrated engineer who couldn't get his robot to work. And that was the most annoying feeling in the world.

Lloyd sat in his room, staring at the wall. He was in a bad mood. Actually, "bad mood" was an understatement. He was frustrated, annoyed, and incredibly tired of looking at rocks. For weeks, he had been trying to make the Aegis suit work. He had the body. He had the weapons. He had the cool metal plating that made him look like a knight from the future. But he didn't have a brain.

The Lilith Stones were useless. They were like trying to run a kingdom with a single chicken. You could tell the chicken to peck, and it would peck. But if you told the chicken to peck, walk, and balance the budget at the same time, the chicken would just explode. And that is exactly what his expensive stones had been doing. Exploding.

"I need a better rock," Lloyd muttered to himself. "Or a miracle. A miracle would be cheaper."

He stood up and paced around the room. He needed advice. But who could he talk to? His father, the Arch Duke, would just tell him to hit the problem with a sword until it went away. His friends were geniuses, but they were alchemists, not computer engineers. He needed someone who knew about old, weird magic. He needed someone who knew the history of things that shouldn't exist.

He needed his mother.

Duchess Milody was usually in her private garden or reading books that were older than the castle itself. Lloyd found her in her solar, a room filled with light and plants. She looked calm. Lloyd did not look calm. He looked like a man who had been fighting with a math problem and lost.

"Mother," Lloyd said, walking in. "I have a problem. A big, expensive, stupid problem."

Milody looked up from her book. She smiled gently. "Hello, Lloyd. You look terrible. Have you been sleeping?"