Chapter : 773
He looked back at Lord Qadir, his eyes filled with a deep, sorrowful regret. “That is why, as things stand, the cure is impossible. I have the knowledge to remove the growth. I have the sight to guide my hand. But I do not have the power to keep your son’s soul anchored to this world while I do it. I am a healer, my Lord, not a god.”
He let the finality of his words sink in, a crushing, devastating blow. He had given them a glimpse of the promised land, only to tell them that the gate was locked and the key was lost. The flicker of hope in the room died, replaced by a despair that was even deeper and blacker than before.
Lady Zira let out a soft, heartbroken whimper. Lord Qadir’s face, which had been alight with a desperate hope, crumbled into a mask of pure, desolate agony. He had been so close.
Lloyd waited, his timing perfect. He let their despair reach its absolute nadir. And then, just as the last vestiges of hope were about to be extinguished, he delivered his masterstroke.
“There is… one possibility,” he said, his voice a hesitant, thoughtful whisper, as if the idea were just occurring to him. “A single, desperate chance. A legend. A theory I have only read about in the most ancient and esoteric texts.”
Every eye in the room snapped back to him.
“The texts speak of a way to stabilize a patient’s life force during a traumatic procedure,” he continued, his voice now filled with a new, academic excitement. “A way to create a… a spiritual anchor. A conduit to channel a constant, gentle stream of pure, healing energy directly into the patient’s Spirit Core, keeping it strong and stable even while the physical body is under immense stress. It would be like a splint for the soul.”
“What is it?” Lord Qadir demanded, his voice a raw, desperate command. “What is this anchor?”
Lloyd looked at him, his gaze direct and filled with a profound, almost tragic seriousness. He had laid his trap with the skill of a master hunter. Now, it was time to name the bait.
“The procedure’s success,” he declared, his voice ringing with an absolute, unshakeable certainty, “is entirely dependent on a single, irreplaceable tool. An artifact of immense and unique power. It requires a flawless, high-grade Lilith Stone, of a purity rarely seen outside of royal treasuries.”
He had done it. He had taken his own, secret objective—the acquisition of a priceless, strategic resource for his war machine—and he had masterfully transformed it into the one and only hope for a dying child. He had made his own selfish desire the key to their salvation. And he knew, as he looked at the desperate, grieving face of the most powerful warrior in the kingdom, that there was no price they would not pay, no secret they would not reveal, to get it for him.
---
The name ‘Lilith Stone’ fell into the charged, desperate silence of the sickroom with the weight of a royal decree. To the uninitiated, it might have been just another arcane term, another piece of a healer’s mystical jargon. But to a family like the Qadirs, and to the assembled experts in the room, the name was a thunderclap.
Lilith Stones were not common magical reagents. They were the very bedrock of advanced enchantment and artifice, the crystalline hearts of the kingdom’s most powerful magical artifacts. Low-grade stones were common enough, used to power simple light-globes or to focus the energy of a city’s defensive wards. But a high-grade stone, a flawless, pure specimen of the kind Lloyd had just described… that was a thing of legend. It was a treasure of kings, a strategic asset of incalculable value. A single, perfect stone could be the core of a war-golem, the focusing lens for a city-leveling magical cannon, or the heart of a royal treasury’s security system.
They were not things one simply bought. They were things that kingdoms went to war over.
The master alchemist was the first to find his voice, his earlier sneering arrogance now replaced by a sputtering, incredulous awe. “A high-grade Lilith Stone? For a healing ritual? That is… that is unprecedented! The sheer power within such a stone… it would be like using a volcanic eruption to light a candle! The energy would be too raw, too violent! It would overwhelm the boy’s Spirit Core, not stabilize it! It would annihilate him!”
The alchemist’s logic was sound, based on every known principle of magical theory. A Lilith Stone was a battery of raw, untamed power. To channel it directly into a fragile, dying child was an act of pure, unadulterated madness.
Chapter : 774
Lloyd, however, was prepared for this objection. He turned to the alchemist, his expression not one of a humble doctor, but of a master scholar patiently correcting a promising, if short-sighted, student.
“Your understanding is based on the conventional application of the stones, Master Alchemist,” he said, his tone respectful but firm. “You see them as a source of raw power, a hammer to be wielded. But the ancient texts I have studied speak of a different art. A more subtle one. The stone is not the hammer. It is the lens.”
He began to pace slowly, his new scholar’s robes swirling around him. He was no longer a participant in a conversation; he was a professor, delivering a lecture to a captive and terrified audience.
“The human body, our very life force, resonates at a specific spiritual frequency,” he explained, weaving his beautiful, intricate lie. “The boy’s frequency is weak, chaotic, like a poorly tuned lute string. The raw, untamed energy of a Lilith Stone is indeed a cacophony that would shatter him. But what if one could… refine that energy? What if one could use the stone not as a source, but as a focusing crystal? What if a healer, with the proper training and… sight… could use his own will to channel a gentle, healing energy through the stone, using its unique crystalline structure to filter, amplify, and tune that energy to the boy’s exact, unique spiritual frequency?”
He stopped his pacing and looked at them, his eyes burning with the fire of his fabricated genius. “The stone would not be a floodlight, overwhelming him. It would be a perfectly focused beam of pure, harmonic light, resonating with his soul, strengthening it, holding it together while the brutal work of the surgery is done. It would be a splint for his spirit, as I said. A perfect, custom-made support, forged from light and will.”
The theory was breathtaking in its audacity and its elegance. It was a complete, revolutionary re-contextualization of Lilith Stone mechanics. It was also, of course, complete and utter nonsense. But it was nonsense delivered with such profound, unshakeable authority, rooted in a concept so beautifully, plausibly esoteric, that it was impossible for them to refute. How could they argue against a secret, ancient art that he had just invented on the spot?
The physicians and the alchemist were silent, their minds struggling to process the heretical, paradigm-shattering ideas he had just presented. They were like medieval blacksmiths being lectured on the principles of quantum mechanics. They didn't have the foundational knowledge to even begin to form a counter-argument.
It was Lord Qadir who broke the stunned silence. The technical details, the magical theory—it was all irrelevant to him. He was a man of action, a man who saw only objectives and outcomes.
“This stone,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. “This flawless, high-grade stone you require. Does such a thing even exist?”
Lloyd turned to him, his expression now one of somber gravity. He had them. He had led them through the maze of his logic, and they had arrived at the exact destination he had intended.
“They are exceedingly rare, my Lord,” he said. “Most of the known mines were exhausted centuries ago. To find a stone of the required purity and size on the open market would be an impossible task. Most of the remaining specimens are in the hands of the great royal houses, or locked away in the deepest vaults of the Mage’s Guild.”
He let the implication hang in the air. The tool he needed was a treasure of kings, a thing that could not be bought with mere gold. He had just made his cure dependent on an object that was, for all practical purposes, completely and utterly unobtainable. He was pushing them to the absolute brink of despair, one final time.
Lady Zira, who had been listening with a breathless, desperate intensity, let out a soft, choked sob. The final, impossible hurdle had been placed before them. Hope had been given, and then cruelly snatched away again.
But Lord Qadir did not despair. A new, strange, and terrible light began to dawn in his stormy eyes. It was the look of a man who had just been presented with a problem that could not be solved by wealth or power, but by a secret he had guarded his entire life.
He looked at his wife, a long, silent exchange passing between them. He then turned his gaze back to Lloyd, and his expression was one of a man making the greatest gamble of his life.