Chapter : 1797

  Lloyd blinked. He looked at Isabella. He looked at his three wives standing a few feet away. Faria looked like she was about to explode. Amina looked like she was calculating the tax implications. Mina just looked tired.

  "Princess," Lloyd said, his voice flat. "Please stand up. You're getting glass in your knees, and I am really, really not in the market for another wife. I have a full set. It’s a collector’s edition. No more slots available."

  "I am not asking for a slot," Isabella said, standing up but not backing down. "I am offering an alliance of blood. The people saw what you did today. They need a hero. They need you. And my lineage... it can anchor you. It can give you legitimacy that no foreign alliance can provide."

  "I have legitimacy," Lloyd argued. "I have a giant robot and a bank account that scares god. That’s plenty of legitimacy."

  "It is not enough," Isabella insisted. "The Firefly... these metal demons... they will come back. We need to be united. Completely."

  Lloyd groaned. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Isabella, listen to me. I appreciate the offer. Really. It’s very flattering. But my life is a logistical nightmare. I have to schedule appointments just to eat a sandwich. Adding a fourth wife? That’s not a marriage; that’s an administrative crisis."

  "I can handle the administration," Isabella said earnestly.

  "No," Lloyd said firmly. "The answer is no. I’m tired. I’m covered in robot dust. And I really just want to go home and stare at a wall for six hours."

  He turned to walk away, desperate to escape the suffocating weight of expectation. But a hand landed on his shoulder. It was heavy, firm, and familiar.

  "Lloyd," King Liam said.

  Lloyd stopped. He looked at the King. Liam Bethelham looked older tonight. The lines on his face were deeper, etched by the stress of a war that had just arrived on his doorstep. But his eyes were clear. Sharp.

  "Your Majesty," Lloyd said. "Please tell your daughter that I am not a collectible item."

  "Walk with me, Lloyd," the King said quietly. "We need to talk. Alone."

  Lloyd looked at the King, then back at the chaos of the ballroom. "Can it wait? I have a mess to clean up."

  "No," Liam said. "It cannot wait. The game has changed, Lloyd. And you need to know the rules before you make your next move."

  There was something in the King's voice. A tone Lloyd hadn't heard before. It wasn't the tone of a monarch speaking to a subject. It was the tone of a soldier speaking to a comrade in the trenches.

  "Fine," Lloyd sighed. "Lead the way."

  King Liam led Lloyd away from the noise and the light of the shattered ballroom. They walked through corridors lined with tapestries depicting ancient battles—knights fighting dragons, mages holding back tides of darkness. It all seemed so quaint now. So primitive.

  They reached the King’s private study. It was a small room, cluttered with books and maps. No servants. No guards. Just two men and a bottle of very expensive brandy that the King poured into two glasses.

  "Sit," Liam said, pointing to a leather armchair.

  Lloyd sat. He took the glass but didn't drink. "So. The wedding proposal. You're going to tell me to take it, aren't you?"

  "I am," Liam said, sitting opposite him. "Isabella is right, Lloyd. You are powerful, yes. But you are new money. New power. The ancient laws of this land... they are stubborn things. They bind the land to the blood of the founders. If you want to lead this continent against what is coming, you need that anchor. Isabella gives you that."

  "I don't want to lead the continent," Lloyd said, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. "I want to kill the bad guys and go to sleep. Why does everyone keep trying to give me a crown? They’re heavy and they mess up my hair."

  "Because you are the only one who can," Liam said. "But that is not why I brought you here."

  The King leaned forward. The jovial, slightly bumbling demeanor he usually wore in public evaporated. His posture changed. He didn't sit like a medieval king anymore. He sat like a man who was used to sitting in a command chair.

  "Lloyd," the King said. "That weapon you used. The arm cannon. Nova."

  "It's a spirit," Lloyd said cautiously. "A very expensive, very weird spirit."

  "It's a plasma discharge weapon," Liam corrected. "Variable frequency. High-yield output. Designed to overload shielding matrices. Specifically, the Type-4 Anti-Magic barriers used by the Firefly Corporation."

  Chapter : 1798

  Lloyd froze. The glass in his hand stopped swirling.

  "That's... very specific terminology, Your Majesty," Lloyd said slowly. "For a King who grew up riding horses and swinging swords."

  "I didn't grow up riding horses," Liam said. A small, sad smile touched his lips. "I grew up riding hover-bikes in one of the poor countries of South Asia."

  The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Lloyd stared at the man he thought he knew.

  "What did you say?" Lloyd whispered.

  "Liam Bethelham is a title," the King said. He reached up and loosened his cravat, as if the fabric was choking him. "It’s a role I’ve played for hundred years. My name... my real name... is James Khan."

  Lloyd’s blood ran cold. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor, spilling brandy onto the rug. He didn't even notice.

  James Khan.

  The name hit him like a physical blow. It wasn't just a name. It was a legend. A ghost story from the archives of Earth’s colonial wars.

  "The Devil's Hand," Lloyd breathed.

  "I see you didn’t forget about me," Liam—James—said dryly.

  Lloyd laughed, a harsh, incredulous sound. "You were a myth. Once I search for you, I reach your friends, but they said you vanished during the Siege of Centauri."

  "I didn't die," James said, pouring a second drink with steady hands, a dark amusement dancing in his eyes. "I didn't die on Earth. One moment I was breaching the Central Command of the Firefly fleet, and the next... I was gone. Pulled across the void. I woke up in the body of a screaming infant, the son of a Viscount in the Austin Nation... one hundred and twenty years ago."

  Lloyd stared at him, the glass trembling in his hand as the pieces of a century-old puzzle slammed together. The tactical genius. The smirk. The specific way he held himself. It wasn't just a legend from a history book.

  "A grin tugging at the corner of Lloyd mouth, disbelief warring with recognition. "The Devil Hand. The Joker Card of Humanity. You crazy son of a bitch."

  "It's been a long time, Major General," James said, raising his glass in a mock salute.

  "We held the line at the Lunar perimeter together," Lloyd said, the memory vivid and raw. "We fought back-to-back in the trenches of Sector 4. I thought you were MIA. I thought they finally got you."

  "They couldn't kill me there, and they can't kill me here," James replied. "I utilized the Austin family's connections, infiltrated the Bethelham royal line, and took the throne. I needed a position of absolute authority to prepare for them."

  "You knew it was me," Lloyd stated, not asking. "You knew the moment I started making moves. Why the hell didn't you say something? We fought together! I would have trusted you instantly!"

  "Because I had to be sure you were still the man I fought beside," James said, his voice dropping to that familiar, cold steel whisper Lloyd remembered from the battlefield. "Transmigration changes people, Lloyd. It breaks minds. I saw the soap, the assembly lines... that told me KM Evan the scientist was here. But I didn't need the scientist. I needed the Devil. I needed the man who held the breach when everyone else ran."

  James leaned forward, his eyes burning with intensity.

  "I’ve been waiting a hundred years for my worthy collegue, Lloyd. But I couldn't risk revealing myself to a man who had gone soft. I needed to see you fight. I needed to see you bleed. And tonight... tonight I saw you jam a plasma cannon into the brain of a Command Unit and pull the trigger without blinking. That is the soldier I remember."

  Lloyd leaned back in his chair, a laugh escaping his lips. It wasn't a laugh of humor, but of sheer, overwhelming relief. He wasn't alone. He wasn't just fighting with medieval knights and magic. He was sitting across from the Joker Card.

  "So," Lloyd said, the tension leaving his shoulders. "You've been preparing the board."

  "For a hundred years," James nodded. "I built the kingdom. I fortified the logistics. I prepared the 'stage.' But a stage is useless without a lead actor. I'm the strategist, Lloyd. I'm the Joker. I create chaos. I set traps. But I'm not the front-line breaker. I can build the gun, but I can't pull the trigger."

  James looked at Lloyd with a gaze that was terrifyingly intense.

  Chapter : 1799

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "I built the board," James said. "I set the pieces. I prepared the kingdom. But I didn't have a Queen. I didn't have a Rook. I didn't have the piece that kicks down the door and breaks the enemy's nose."

  "And that's me?" Lloyd asked, already knowing the answer.

  "You," James said. "You are the Major General. The operator. The man who can merge magic and tech into something that makes Firefly wet their pants. I’ve been hoarding toys for you, Lloyd. Toys that I couldn't use, but you... you can make them sing."

  Lloyd looked at the shattered glass on the floor. He looked at the King who was actually a legendary warlord from another star system.

  "You want me to marry Isabella," Lloyd said, connecting the dots. "Not for tradition."

  "For control," James said. "If you marry her, you become Prince Consort. You gain access to the Royal Vaults without question. You gain command of the armies by law, not just by favor. It streamlines the chain of command. And in a war against Firefly, efficiency is life."

  Lloyd let out a long breath. "So, the romantic proposal... the kneeling... that was..."

  "Isabella loves you," James shrugged. "That part is real. She’s my daughter. She has my stubbornness and her mother’s fire. But the timing? The public display? That was me. I signaled her. It was a tactical play."

  "You manipulated your own daughter?"

  "I manipulated a piece on the board to save the world," James said coldly. "Don't look at me like that, Lloyd. You've done worse. We are soldiers. We do what is necessary."

  Lloyd couldn't argue with that. He had faked his own death. He had manipulated Rosa. He had built a life on lies.

  "Okay," Lloyd said. "Okay. You're James Khan. I'm... well, you know who I was. We're both ghosts. So what now? We swap war stories? Drink to the good old days?"

  James stood up. He walked to the bookshelf behind his desk. He pulled a specific book—a dusty tome on agricultural history.

  CLICK.

  A hidden mechanism engaged. The entire bookshelf swung open, revealing a dark, steel-lined elevator shaft. It wasn't medieval masonry. It was smooth, cold, industrial metal.

  "Now," James said, a grim smile spreading across his face. "Now, I show you what I’ve been building in the basement for the last twenty years. Come on, Major General. It’s time to gear up."

  Lloyd stood up. He felt a thrill of anticipation that he hadn't felt in a long time.

  "After you, Joker," Lloyd said.

  They stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut with a pneumatic hiss that didn't belong in this century. They began to descend, going down, deep into the secrets of the King who was actually a soldier.

  The elevator descended smoothly, a stark contrast to the clunky, chain-driven lifts Lloyd had built in his own manufactory. This was silent. Magnetic. It hummed with a frequency that vibrated in Lloyd's fillings.

  "Magnetic levitation," Lloyd noted, running a hand along the smooth metal wall. "Where did you get the power source? A Lilith Stone network?"

  "Geothermal tap," King Liam—James—replied, staring at the floor indicator numbers counting down. "There's a magma vent three miles under the capital. I tapped into it fifteen years ago. Unlimited clean energy. The drawback is that if the containment field fails, the entire city turns into a volcano. But hey, high risk, high reward."

  "You built a geothermal plant under a medieval city," Lloyd said, shaking his head. "And nobody noticed?"

  "People see what they want to see," James said. "They see 'Royal Hot Springs.' I see a thermal generator. It’s all about marketing."

  The elevator slowed and came to a stop. The doors slid open with a soft chime.

  Lloyd stepped out and stopped dead in his tracks.

  He had expected a dungeon. Maybe a secret lab. He had expected dusty crates and maybe a few prototypes.

  He was not expecting this.

  They were standing on a gantry overlooking a massive, cavernous hangar. The space was enormous, carved out of the bedrock and reinforced with steel plates and glowing rune-lines. The air was cool and recycled, smelling of gun oil, preservative grease, and cold steel.

  Rows upon rows of racks stretched out into the distance.

  "Welcome," James said, spreading his arms wide, "to the Toy Box."

  Lloyd walked to the railing, his eyes wide.

  It wasn't swords. It wasn't spears. It wasn't wands.

  It was guns.

  Thousands of them.

  Chapter : 1800

  There were racks of assault rifles that looked like modified M4s, but sleek, black, and etched with glowing blue runes along the barrels. There were crates of heavy machine guns. There were anti-tank rocket launchers leaned against the wall like brooms. There were pallets of grenades—fragmentation, flash-bang, incendiary.

  "My god," Lloyd whispered. "It's beautiful."

  "It's necessary," James corrected, walking beside him. "When I first arrived here, I tried to learn magic. I really did. But let’s be honest, Lloyd. Casting a fireball takes, what? Three seconds? Four seconds for a big one? In a modern firefight, three seconds is an eternity. Three seconds is death."

  "So you built this," Lloyd said.

  "I recreated it," James said. "My System... it’s called the [Architect]. It allows me to blueprint and fabricate anything I understand the engineering of. The problem is materials. Earth steel is garbage compared to what we have here. So I improvised."

  They walked down the stairs to the main floor. Lloyd approached a rack of rifles. He picked one up. It was heavy, solid. The balance was perfect. It felt like an extension of his arm.

  "Composite stock," Lloyd muttered, examining it. "Mithril alloy receiver. And the barrel... is that Star-Frost Ore?"

  "Good eye," James nodded. "Star-Frost keeps the barrel cool during rapid fire. And it doesn't warp when you channel mana through it."

  "Mana?" Lloyd asked, looking at the magazine. He ejected it. It wasn't filled with brass cartridges. It was filled with glowing blue crystals, shaped like bullets.

  "Mag-Tech," James explained. "That was the hardest part. Gunpowder is unstable here. The atmospheric mana density makes chemical explosives unpredictable. Sometimes they fizzle, sometimes they blow your hand off. So, I ditched gunpowder."

  James took the rifle from Lloyd and slapped the magazine back in. He racked the slide.

  CLACK-CHUCK.

  The sound was pure nostalgia.

  "These are railguns, essentially," James said. "Miniaturized. The trigger activates a rune array in the chamber. It dumps a kinetic pulse into the crystal bullet. The bullet accelerates to Mach 3 before it leaves the barrel. No explosion. No recoil. Just pure, armor-piercing velocity."

  "And the bullets?" Lloyd asked. "Are they just crystal?"

  "Core of depleted Adamantine," James grinned. "Wrapped in a mana-conductive shell. Upon impact, the shell shatters, releasing a localized disruption field. It’s designed specifically to punch through Firefly’s shields."

  Lloyd looked at the rows of weapons. There were enough here to arm a division.

  "You've been busy," Lloyd said.

  "I knew they were coming," James said, his face darkening. "Firefly. The Corporation. They are locusts, Lloyd. They strip-mine worlds. They enslave populations. And Riverio... this planet is special. The mana density here is off the charts. To them, this isn't a kingdom. It’s a battery. A Mana Farm."

  "They want to harvest the planet," Lloyd said.

  "They want to hook it up to their grid and suck it dry until it’s a dead rock," James said. "I saw them do it to the Proxima system. I wasn't going to let them do it here. Not to my daughter. Not to my people."

  Lloyd walked past the rifles to the heavy weapons section. He saw a massive, shoulder-mounted cannon that looked like it could take out a tank.

  "But you didn't use them," Lloyd said. "Why? You could have conquered the continent in a week with this gear."

  "And then what?" James asked. "I conquer the world, and I'm just another tyrant. And when Firefly arrives, I have an army of peasants holding rifles they don't understand, led by a King who can't be everywhere at once. No. I needed the world to get strong on its own. I needed the magic users to reach their peak. I needed the sword masters to be legends."

  James stopped in front of a glass case. Inside was a sniper rifle. It was a monster of a gun, matte black, with a scope that looked like a telescope.

  "I needed a General," James said softly. "I'm the Joker, Lloyd. I'm the guy who sets the trap. I'm the guy who rigs the deck. But I'm not the guy who leads the charge. I'm not the guy who inspires men to run into a meat grinder. That's you. KM Evan. The Hero of the Mars Front."

  Lloyd looked at the sniper rifle. He felt a pull towards it. It wasn't magic. It was muscle memory. It was the ghost of who he used to be.

  "You want me to take command," Lloyd said.