Chapter : 797
He was not just carving stones. He was creating a new alphabet, a new language of magic, one based not on ancient words of power, but on the cold, pure, and universal language of mathematics. And as Sumaiya watched him work, she realized she was not just witnessing the creation of a tool. She was witnessing the birth of an entirely new kind of magic, a strange and wonderful architecture that was being built, piece by meticulous piece, by the quiet, humble doctor she had thought she understood.
---
The night wore on, the city outside the clinic’s small, shuttered window falling into a deep and dreamless sleep. But inside, a quiet, world-altering revolution was taking place. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and the faint, almost imperceptible hum of contained power, the collective whisper of the dozen stones Lloyd was patiently, meticulously transforming.
Sumaiya remained in her corner, a silent, unmoving statue of rapt attention. Her initial, simple fascination had deepened into a profound, almost religious awe. She was a woman who had lived her entire life in the shadow of great and terrible power—the political power of the court, the spiritual power of the priests, the martial power of the kingdom’s knights. She had thought she understood its forms and its functions. But what she was witnessing now was a power so fundamentally different, so alien in its very conception, that it felt like she was watching a visitor from another star system build a machine from first principles.
Lloyd worked with the tireless, obsessive focus of a master craftsman lost in his art. He seemed to have forgotten her presence, forgotten the world outside, forgotten even the need for rest. His entire universe had shrunk to the small, illuminated circle of his workbench, to the gleaming silver of his tools and the cool, milky white of the stones.
He finished carving the last of the small “processor” and “memory” chips, as he called them. He had created twelve of them, each one a unique component in his grand, magical engine. He laid them out on a piece of dark velvet cloth in a precise, intricate pattern, a constellation of his own design.
“The individual components are now complete,” he murmured, more to himself than to her, his voice a low, distracted hum. “Each one is a single, simple thought. A single instruction. Alone, they are useless. But together… together, they can form a mind.”
He then produced his final, most impressive component. It was a large, perfectly clear, flawlessly cut crystal, roughly the size of a human head, that he had procured from a high-end gem merchant in the city’s artisan quarter. It was a magnificent, if magically inert, piece of quartz.
“And this,” he said, placing it in the center of his workbench, “will be the mind’s voice. The display screen.”
For the next hour, he began the delicate, painstaking process of assembly. He took a thin, flat sheet of polished slate as his base, his “motherboard.” He then began to arrange the dozen carved Lilith Stone “chips” onto the slate, placing them in the exact, complex pattern he had designed in his mind.
He then produced a spool of the finest, purest silver thread, a material he explained was an excellent conductor of refined spiritual energy. With the steady hand of a master jeweler, he began to connect the stones. He laid the silver threads in a precise, intricate network, linking the “input receiver” to the “processing cores,” the cores to the “memory units,” and all of them, finally, to the large, clear crystal at the center.
The final result was a thing of strange, breathtaking beauty. It looked like a piece of abstract, futuristic art. It was a mosaic of dull white stone and gleaming silver thread, a geometric web of connections that converged on the perfectly clear, central crystal. It was a machine that had no moving parts, no gears, no levers. Its work was to be done in the invisible, silent world of energy and intent.
Lloyd leaned back, a faint, tired smile on his face. He looked at his creation, a look of paternal pride in his eyes. “It is… crude,” he said with a self-deprecating sigh. “A child’s toy, really. A prototype. But it should be enough to demonstrate the principle.”
He turned to Sumaiya, who was staring at the device as if it were a holy relic. “You have been a very patient observer, my friend,” he said, his voice warm with a genuine appreciation for her silent, supportive presence. “Would you care to witness the first, faltering thoughts of my new creation?”
Chapter : 798
She could only nod, her throat suddenly too dry to form words. She rose from her stool and came to stand beside him at the workbench, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and a powerful, almost overwhelming curiosity.
Lloyd took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. He had the theory, he had the components, he had the design. But would it work?
For a moment, the crystal was filled with a swirling, chaotic vortex of blue light. And then, the light coalesced. It formed a single, perfect, shimmering numeral that hung suspended in the very heart of the crystal, a beautiful, impossible ghost in the machine.
The number ‘4’.
Sumaiya let out a sharp, involuntary gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. Her mind, which had been stretched to its absolute limit, finally broke. She stared at the glowing number, at the strange, beautiful device that had produced it, and at the quiet, tired man beside her.
Magic, as she knew it, was an art of power and persuasion. It was a tool to move objects, to heal flesh, to call down fire or ice. It was a force of nature, to be bent and shaped by the will of a powerful user.
But this… this was not that. This was different. This was not a tool that bent the world. This was a tool that thought.
And that single, simple, glowing number felt more miraculous, more terrifying, and more world-altering than any demon of fire or any healing ritual she had ever witnessed.
---
The glowing, ethereal ‘4’ hung suspended in the heart of the crystal, a silent, luminous testament to a new and impossible kind of magic. It was so clean, so perfect, so utterly and beautifully logical, that it seemed to defy the chaotic, intuitive nature of the world itself. Sumaiya stared at it, her mind a complete and utter blank. She was a scholar of courtly secrets, a survivor of the jungle’s primal terrors, but this quiet, shimmering number was the most profound and terrifying thing she had ever seen.
Her brain, which was sharp, analytical, and firmly rooted in the realities of her world, struggled to find a category for what she was witnessing. Was it a spirit? No, it had no life, no will of its own. It was a machine. Was it an enchantment? No, there had been no chanting, no runes, no binding of a conceptual force. It was… a construction. An artifice.
“What… what is it?” she finally managed to whisper, her voice a reedy, awestruck sound.
Lloyd, who had been watching her reaction with a quiet, paternal amusement, allowed himself a small, tired smile. “It is,” he said, his voice filled with a carefully calibrated, dramatic weight, “a calculation engine.”
He reached out and, with another series of precise touches on the input stone, entered a new sequence of commands. He cleared the previous result and entered a more complex problem: 17 x 3.
The azure light once again flowed through the silver pathways of the device, a silent, lightning-fast conversation between the crystalline components. The vortex of light swirled in the central crystal, and a new set of numerals appeared, shimmering and perfect: ‘51’.
“A calculation engine,” Sumaiya repeated, the words feeling foreign and meaningless on her tongue. “It… it solves sums? Like an abacus?”
“Precisely like an abacus,” Lloyd agreed with a cheerful nod. “Except it is made of stone and light, it never makes a mistake, and it is approximately five hundred times faster. A minor improvement on the existing technology, I admit.”