Chapter : 1371

Mina sat on a rock, staring at the water. She looked exhausted. The adrenaline had faded, leaving her hollow.

"I thought I was ready," she said softly. "I thought I could handle this. I am a scholar. I read about wars. I read about weapons."

"Reading about a fire and standing in one are two different things," Lloyd said, sitting beside her.

"I was useless," Mina said bitterly. "I panicked. I got caught. I slowed you down."

"You cracked the lock," Lloyd reminded her. "You found the tunnel. You identified the weapon. Without you, I would still be in the bar buying drinks for Jory."

He looked at her seriously. "You did good, Mina. You survived. That's the only metric that matters today."

Mina looked at him. "And you? You lost your prize. The Heart is still there."

Lloyd picked up a stone and skipped it across the stream. One, two, three, four. Not as good as Rosa.

"I lost the battle," Lloyd admitted. "But I gained intelligence. I know where it is. I know what it does. And I know Wilfred's weakness."

"What is his weakness?"

"Pride," Lloyd said. "He fired that shot to scare us. To show off. He wasted fuel and revealed his hand just to say 'I am strong'. A smart man would have kept it hidden. A smart man would have let us run and wonder. Wilfred is loud. Loud men make mistakes."

"He almost killed us," Mina pointed out.

"Almost," Lloyd grinned tiredly. "But 'almost' is the difference between a tragedy and a great story."

He stood up and offered her a hand. "Come on. We need to keep moving. I know a safe house near the border. Ken has a contact there. We can rest, eat something that isn't trail rations, and send a message to the capital."

Mina took his hand. "You are strangely optimistic for a man who just failed a heist."

"I'm an engineer," Lloyd said. "Failure is just data. Now I have the data. Next time, I build a better plan."

They reached the safe house by midday. It was a small farm run by a retired spy who owed Ken a favor. They were given food, a bath, and fresh clothes.

Lloyd sat at the kitchen table, writing a coded message on a scrap of parchment.

To: The King & The Arch Duke

From: The Decorator

Subject: Bad Weather in the West

Target located. Target is building a god. Confirmed Class-S threat. Magical orbital laser capability. Doomsday clock active. Requesting heavy support. Also, tell my wives I am alive and I am sorry.

He rolled up the scroll and gave it to the spy's swiftest messenger pigeon. He watched the bird fly off towards the east.

"Now we wait," Lloyd said.

Mina came into the kitchen. She was wearing a simple peasant dress. She looked like a different person. Softer. Vulnerable.

"What happens now?" she asked.

"Now I go back to the drawing board," Lloyd said. "I can't build the Aegis without the Heart. That project is dead in the water. So I need a new weapon. Something that can counter a golem."

"Another golem?" Mina suggested.

"No time," Lloyd said. "And I don't have the materials. I need something... asymmetrical. Something that breaks the rules."

He thought about his powers. His Void powers. His spirits. The Golem was physical. It was magic.

"I need an anti-magic shell," Lloyd mused. "Or a virus. A magical virus that infects the stone."

His mind spun with ideas. This was his comfort zone. The problem was massive, but it was a problem. Problems had solutions.

"We also need to deal with the political fallout," Lloyd added. "Wilfred just fired a weapon of mass destruction. The King can't ignore that. This is an act of war."

"Will the army march?" Mina asked.

"They'll try," Lloyd said. "But Wilfred has a mountain fortress and a laser. A siege would be a massacre. We need a strike team. The Wraiths."

"They aren't ready," Mina reminded him. "You said two months."

"They'll have to be ready," Lloyd said grimly. "Or we fake it."

He looked at Mina. "You should go home. Back to the estate. You've done your part. It's going to get ugly now."

Mina shook her head. "No. I am in this. I saw the weapon. I know the runes. I am the only one who can disarm the lock on the Vault if we get back in."

"It's dangerous, Mina."

"I know," she said. "But I am a Ferrum ally now. And a Siddik. We do not run from fights."

Lloyd smiled. She was tough. Tougher than she looked.

Chapter : 1372

"Okay," he said. "Welcome to the team. Your code name is 'The Librarian'."

"I hate it," Mina said.

"It'll grow on you," Lloyd assured her.

They spent the rest of the day resting. As night fell, Lloyd went out to the porch. He looked west, towards Ramos. He couldn't see the fortress, but he could feel it. A dark spot on the horizon.

He had failed to get the Heart. He had failed to stop the weapon. He was running away with his tail between his legs.

But he wasn't defeated.

"Enjoy your victory, Wilfred," Lloyd whispered to the wind. "Build your toy. Polish your crown. Because I'm coming back. And I'm bringing a storm with me."

He clenched his fist. His Steel Blood hummed. He felt the unified power of his spirits in his core.

He didn't have the Aegis. He didn't have the perfect plan. But he had his mind. He had his allies. And he had a very, very big grudge.

The adventure in Ramos was over. The War for the West had just begun.

And somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled, as if the sky itself was agreeing with him.

The morning sun hit Lloyd’s face with the enthusiasm of a Golden Retriever waking up its owner. It was bright, it was annoying, and it meant he had to get up. They had spent the night in a safe house near the border, but safety was a relative term when a madman with a magical orbital laser was building a doomsday device a few miles away.

Lloyd sat at the wooden table, nursing a cup of coffee that tasted like hot mud. Mina sat across from him, looking remarkably put-together for someone who had just committed high treason, jumped off a castle wall, and ridden a horse through the night. She was holding a map.

"We need answers," Lloyd said, staring into his mud-coffee. "We know Wilfred has the Golem Heart. We know he has the quartz. We know he has a giant robot body. But we don't know how it works. And if we don't know how it works, we can't break it without blowing up half the continent."

"Anubis," Mina said, tapping the map. "It all comes back to him. The creator."

"He's been dead for five hundred years," Lloyd pointed out. "He is currently unavailable for comment."

"But his knowledge survived," Mina countered. "I did some cross-referencing in the archives before... before we became fugitives. Anubis had a student. A man named Thoth. And Thoth had a student. And that student had a student."

"It’s a pyramid scheme of knowledge," Lloyd muttered. "Let me guess. The current student lives in a cave on top of a mountain and speaks only in riddles?"

"Not a cave," Mina corrected. "A hut. And not a mountain. A very steep hill. His name is Elder Corin. He is one hundred years old. He was the last apprentice of the line of Anubis before the school was disbanded."

"A hundred years old," Lloyd sighed. "Great. He probably thinks the steam engine is a passing fad. Where is he?"

Mina pointed to a spot on the map labeled 'The Whispering Crag'. It looked desolate. It looked rocky. It looked like exactly the kind of place a hermit would live if he wanted to avoid door-to-door salesmen.

"Pack your bags, Librarian," Lloyd said, standing up. "We are going to visit a senior citizen."

The journey to the Whispering Crag was less of an adventure and more of a cardiovascular punishment. The "steep hill" Mina had described was actually a jagged spire of rock that seemed to hate human ankles. Lloyd grumbled the entire way up. He complained about the dust. He complained about the wind. He complained about the lack of an escalator.

"You are a powerful warrior," Mina observed as Lloyd wheezed next to a goat. "You fought a fire demon. Why are you defeated by a slope?"

"Fighting demons is adrenaline," Lloyd gasped. "This is just walking. Walking is boring. And uphill walking is tyranny."

Finally, after what felt like three days but was only three hours, they reached the summit. There, nestled between two large boulders, was a small, crooked hut made of driftwood and stone. Smoke curled from the chimney. It smelled of herbs and old soup.

Lloyd straightened his coat. "Alright. Let's go charm the secrets out of him."

He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. Still nothing.

" maybe he's deaf," Lloyd suggested. "He is a hundred."