Chapter : 809
She had answered his question. The Jahl Challenge was a path, a legitimate, socially accepted way for a commoner to earn a great prize. But the price of entry was a near-certain, horrific death. She believed she had just presented him with a final, absolute dead end, a path so terrible that even a man of his ambition and courage would be forced to dismiss it.
She had just handed him the key.
He was quiet for a long moment, his face a mask of deep, scholarly thought. He looked from her worried face to the map on his desk, his gaze settling on the dark, jagged peaks of the Jahl Mountains.
“The mine,” he said softly, more to himself than to her. “The royal mine is in the Jahl region. The Demon, this Ifrit, is the captured god of the Jahl clans. And the Challenge is named for the very same region.” He looked up at her, a new, strange, and terrifying light beginning to dawn in his eyes. It was not the warm light of the compassionate healer, nor the dreamy light of the visionary. It was a cold, hard, predatory gleam. “It is all connected, isn’t it? The Demon, the mine, the Challenge. It is all one story.”
He then asked the final, critical question, his voice a low, intense hum of pure, focused intent. “This year, Sumaiya. What is the prize for the Jahl Challenge this year?”
He already knew the answer, of course. The System, in its infinite, cosmic cruelty and convenience, had already provided him with that particular piece of intelligence. But he needed her to say it. He needed her to be the one to speak the impossible words, to unwittingly offer him the very prize he had been hunting for all along.
Sumaiya’s face went pale. She knew what the prize was. It had been the talk of the court for weeks, a proclamation so audacious, so impossibly generous, that most believed the Sultan had gone mad. She had dismissed it as an irrelevant piece of high-level politics. But now, in this small, quiet room, in the context of their desperate search, the prize was no longer just a rumor. It was a terrifying, beautiful, and world-altering possibility.
Her expression remained carefully, painfully neutral, her voice devoid of all emotion as she delivered the fatal, wonderful news, hoping against hope that the humble, gentle healer before her would understand the unspoken warning, that he would see the impossible gulf that separated his world from this one.
“This year,” she said, her voice a flat, dead whisper, “to mark the tenth anniversary of his ascension to the throne, the Sultan has offered a prize that is said to be… impossible. A reward so great that it is meant to be a symbol of his divine generosity, a prize that can never be claimed.”
She took a shaky breath. “He has offered a twenty-five percent share in the annual output of the royal Lilith Stone mine.”
She had said it. She had laid the final, perfect, terrible card on the table. She looked at him, her eyes filled with a desperate, pleading prayer that he would see the insanity of it, that he would laugh at the sheer absurdity.
But he was not laughing.
The quiet, gentle healer was gone. And in his eyes, she saw a new, cold, and absolutely terrifying fire ignite. She realized with a sudden, sickening wave of horror that she had not warned him away from the path of blood and stone.
She had just shown him the front door.
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The words hung in the air between them, shimmering with a terrible, seductive light. A twenty-five percent share in the annual output of the royal Lilith Stone mine. It was not just a prize; it was a kingdom. It was a level of wealth and influence so staggering that it could elevate a common man to the status of a great lord in a single, fiery afternoon. It was, as Sumaiya had said, a prize designed to be impossible, a grand, theatrical gesture from a Sultan who was completely, utterly confident that no one would ever be able to claim it.
Sumaiya watched Lloyd’s face, her heart a cold, heavy stone in her chest. She had delivered the information as a warning, a piece of dangerous, high-level intelligence that she assumed would be so far beyond the scope of his world that he would immediately understand its irrelevance. She expected him to shake his head in wonder at the madness of kings, to sigh at the unattainable nature of the treasure he sought, and to return to the humble, practical reality of their small clinic.
But he did not.
Chapter : 810
She felt a sudden, visceral chill, a primal sense of danger that she had not felt since the moment the Crimson-Striped Sabercat had exploded from the jungle shadows. She had a horrifying, sickening realization: she had not just given him a piece of information. She had given a starving wolf the keys to the butcher’s shop.
“Zayn?” she whispered, her voice a fragile, trembling thing. “Zayn, you must not… you cannot be thinking…”
He did not seem to hear her. His gaze was distant, his focus turned inward. He was no longer in the small, cluttered clinic. He was in a vast, sun-drenched arena, facing a roaring demon of fire. The Major General, the master strategist, the man who had waged a hundred impossible campaigns in another life, was already processing the new intelligence, his mind a whirlwind of calculations and probabilities.
The Jahl Challenge. A public, sanctioned, and legitimate path to the prize. It bypassed all the complexities of politics, of bribery, of infiltration. It was a straight line, a direct, brutal, and beautifully simple solution to his entire problem. The System hadn’t just presented him with a random series of obstacles; it had laid out a perfect, elegant questline, and this was the final, glorious boss battle.
He saw the path forward with a sudden, blinding clarity. The persona of the humble doctor, which had been his shield and his disguise, was about to become his greatest weapon. He had established himself as a man of peace, a selfless healer. For such a man to enter the most brutal, blood-soaked competition in the kingdom… it would be an act of such profound, desperate self-sacrifice that no one would ever question his motives. He would not be seen as an ambitious warrior seeking glory, but as a saint, willing to face hell itself for the sake of his dream of healing the world. The narrative was perfect.
A slow, cold smile touched his lips. It was a smile that did not belong on the face of the gentle Doctor Zayn. It was the smile of a hunter, of a killer, and seeing it, Sumaiya felt a wave of pure, unadulterated terror.
“No,” she said, her voice now a sharp, panicked command. She moved to stand in front of him, physically blocking his view of the distant, imagined arena. She grabbed his arms, her grip surprisingly strong. “Listen to me. You are a healer, not a fighter. I have seen you in the jungle, yes. You are brave. Your spirit is powerful. But that was a beast. This is a Demon. A Transcendent-level entity bound by an Archmage. It is a creature of pure, elemental chaos. It is a force of nature. To face it is not courage; it is madness!”
Her words were a desperate, frantic torrent, an attempt to pull him back from the precipice she had unwittingly led him to.
He looked down at her, his eyes slowly focusing on her face, as if seeing her for the first time. The cold, predatory light in his gaze softened, replaced by a look of profound, almost paternal gentleness.
“Sumaiya,” he said, his voice a low, soothing hum. He gently took her hands, disentangling her desperate grip from his arms. “You are a good and loyal friend. Your concern for my safety… it touches my heart more than you can know.”
He was using his doctor’s voice, the calm, reassuring tone that had soothed a hundred frightened patients. But underneath it, she could still feel the cold, unshakeable bedrock of his resolve.
“You are right,” he continued, his voice taking on a tone of tragic, noble resignation. “It is madness. It is a fool’s hope. A man like me has no place in a warrior’s arena. It would be a suicide. I understand that.”
A wave of profound relief washed over her. He had listened. He had understood. The danger had passed.
And then he delivered the final, devastating blow.