Chapter : 1861

  He was the Rook. He was the heavy piece on the board that cleared the path. And he would not stop until the path was clear.

  With a final, guttural scream, Ben charged the remaining knights, a comet of iron and will, determined to turn the arena into a graveyard for anyone foolish enough to stand in his way.

  The transition from the physical world to the trap was not violent. It did not begin with an explosion or a flash of light. It began with a simple, quiet error in geometry.

  Lloyd Ferrum had been walking through the polished obsidian corridor of the Inner District, his boots clicking rhythmically against the black stone. Beside him, he could sense the heavy, metallic presence of Ben, the Ironwood Knight. The air was cool and smelled faintly of the ozone generated by his Aegis Suit. Everything felt solid. Everything felt real.

  Then, Lloyd blinked.

  In the microsecond that his eyes were closed, the world inverted itself. The sensation was immediate and nauseating, like stepping off a staircase and finding that there was no floor beneath your feet. Gravity didn't just disappear; it shifted sideways. The sound of Ben’s footsteps vanished instantly, cut off as if a heavy door had been slammed between them.

  Lloyd stopped moving. He didn't panic. He didn't flail his arms or shout for his partner. Instead, he stood perfectly still, letting his senses recalibrate.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was no longer in the corridor. The black stone walls were gone. The ceiling of the palace was gone. The path ahead and the path behind had dissolved into nothingness.

  Lloyd found himself standing on a surface that looked like liquid mercury. It was a silver, mirror-like floor that rippled with every breath he took, yet it felt as hard as concrete beneath his boots. Above him, there was no sky. Instead, there was a swirling, chaotic nebula of bruised violet and angry crimson mist. The clouds moved too fast, twisting and churning as if they were alive and in pain.

  "A Mirror Fold," Lloyd whispered to the empty air. His voice didn't echo. It sounded flat, as if the air itself was absorbing the sound waves. "High-level spatial distortion tailored to separate a squad. It isolates the targets and drops them into a pocket dimension constructed from their own subconscious fears."

  He looked down at his reflection in the liquid floor. For a moment, he didn't see his current face. He saw the face of the original Lloyd Ferrum—the weak, incompetent boy who had died in the first timeline. Then, the image shifted. He saw his face from Earth—the wrinkled, battle-hardened face of a military commander who had lived for eighty years. Finally, it settled back to his current appearance.

  "Clever," Lloyd admitted, his tone dry and unimpressed. "But creating a dimension based on the mind requires a very strong ego to anchor it. You have to believe you are a god to build a world."

  As if responding to his challenge, the red mist in front of him began to boil. A low, grinding rumble shook the liquid floor. It sounded like tectonic plates scraping together deep underground. The mist coalesced, darkening and thickening until it formed a massive, towering silhouette.

  Viscount Rubel appeared.

  But this was not the desperate, fleeing traitor Lloyd had chased through the Sloth Territory. This was not the man who had hidden behind Beelzebub’s skirts. This was Rubel as he saw himself in his own darkest fantasies.

  The projection was twenty feet tall, towering over Lloyd like a titan. His skin was armored in black scales that looked like obsidian plate mail. Massive, curved horns scraped the nonexistent sky, wreathed in green fire. Great wings made of bleeding shadows stretched out from his back, spanning the width of the mindscape.

  Rubel’s face was a mask of absolute arrogance. His eyes burned like twin suns of green fire, looking down at Lloyd with a mixture of contempt and pity.

  "Lloyd," Rubel’s voice boomed. It didn't come from his mouth; it vibrated from every direction at once, shaking Lloyd’s bones. "You little insect. You dare to chase me here? Into the domain of the mind?"

  Lloyd crossed his arms over his chest. He looked up at the giant demon, his expression bored. "You have a very high opinion of yourself, Uncle. Do you really need to be twenty feet tall? It seems like overcompensation."

  Rubel roared, a sound of pure psychic pressure. A windstorm kicked up, tearing at Lloyd’s coat.

  Chapter : 1862

  "Silence!" Rubel commanded. "You speak with the arrogance of a child who does not know his place. You think you are a hero? You think you are the savior of the Ferrum line? Look at you. You are small. You are weak. You are a fraud hiding inside a stolen suit of armor."

  The giant Rubel took a step forward, the liquid floor rippling violently under his massive weight.

  "I see your heart, Lloyd," Rubel hissed, his voice dropping to a whisper that sounded like snakes sliding over dry leaves. "I see the guilt rotting inside you. You act like a soldier, but you are just a failure."

  The mist around them began to change. It formed images—flickering, ghostly scenes from the past.

  Lloyd saw his father, Arch Duke Roy Ferrum, standing with his back turned, shoulders slumped in defeat.

  "Roy was a coward," Rubel taunted, pointing a clawed finger at the image. "He hid behind his duty. He let the family rot because he was too afraid to take power. And you are just like him. You claim to protect the North, but you are just waiting for it to die."

  The scene shifted. Lloyd saw the faces of the Ferrum family members who had died in the first timeline. He saw Mina, bleeding in the rain. He saw Rosa, frozen in a block of ice, looking at him with betrayal in her eyes.

  "You failed them," Rubel whispered. The giant leaned down, his face inches from Lloyd’s. The heat from his green eyes was palpable. "In the first life, you were trash. A useless waste of space. Do you think a few tricks and some future knowledge change that? Deep down, you are still that incompetent boy. You couldn't save your wife. You couldn't save your sister. You can't even save yourself."

  Lloyd stood firm, his boots planted on the shifting floor. His mental shields were like steel walls, forged over two lifetimes of discipline. He watched the images flicker, but he didn't flinch. He analyzed them. He saw the flaws in the projection. The "Mina" in the vision wasn't the real Mina; it was Rubel’s twisted memory of her.

  "Is that all you have?" Lloyd asked calmly. "Old family photos and insults? I expected better psychological warfare from a man who sold his soul to the Devil of Gluttony."

  Rubel’s eyes narrowed. "You think this is just a show? No, nephew. This is a merger."

  The giant raised his hands. The shadows of his wings expanded, blotting out the violet light. The air pressure in the mindscape spiked. Lloyd felt a sudden, sharp pain in the center of his forehead, as if a drill was slowly boring into his skull.

  "I am not just showing you your fears," Rubel thundered. "I am entering you. This is the Soul Merge. I will crack open your mind like an egg. I will pour my consciousness into yours. I will overwrite your ego with my own."

  Dark tendrils of energy shot out from Rubel’s chest. They were like black veins, seeking connection. They lashed out, wrapping around Lloyd’s body. They didn't squeeze his physical form; they squeezed his sense of self.

  Lloyd felt a wave of nausea. He felt foreign thoughts trying to invade his brain. He felt Rubel’s greed, his hunger for power, his hatred for the main branch—it all tried to wash over Lloyd, to drown his personality in a flood of toxic ambition.

  "Submit!" Rubel screamed. "Let me in! I will take your body! I will take your secrets! I will become the true Lloyd Ferrum, and you will fade away into a bad memory!"

  The pressure was immense. It was a psychic weight that would have crushed a normal man instantly. It was designed to shatter the fragile identity of a young noble.

  But Lloyd Ferrum was not a normal man. And he was certainly not fragile.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath in the suffocating air. He thought about his eighty years on Earth. He thought about the wars he had led, the machines he had built, the students he had taught. He thought about the discipline required to design a microchip, the patience needed to lead an army, the stoicism needed to accept death.

  His mind wasn't a small, empty room waiting to be filled. It was a fortress. It was a library filled with decades of knowledge, logic, and cold, hard facts. Rubel was trying to flood a fortress with a bucket of water.

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  Chapter : 1863

  Lloyd opened his eyes. The blue rings in his irises began to glow with a terrifying, calm light. He looked at the giant demon and sighed. It was the sigh of an engineer looking at a machine that was making a lot of noise but doing no work.

  "You really don't get it, do you?" Lloyd said softly.

  The black tendrils slowed down. Rubel paused, confused by the lack of fear.

  "You think you are a god because you made yourself big in a dream," Lloyd continued, his voice cutting through the wind. "But size in a mindscape doesn't represent power, Rubel. It represents insecurity. You made yourself huge because you feel small. You shout because you are afraid no one is listening."

  Lloyd took a step forward. The liquid mirror floor rippled outward from his boot, calming the chaotic waves.

  "And you made one fatal mistake," Lloyd added, a cold smile touching his lips. "You invited an engineer into your operating system. You think this is a battle of souls? No. To me, this is just data. And you are just a rogue file taking up too much space."

  ________________________________________

  The giant projection of Rubel froze. For a moment, the thunder and the wind in the mindscape stopped. The demon looked down at the small human figure, sensing a shift in the atmosphere. The prey was not acting like prey. The fear Rubel had expected to taste was completely absent.

  "Data?" Rubel scoffed, his voice regaining its booming quality. "You speak nonsense. I am power incarnate! I am the nightmare that eats you!"

  Rubel raised a massive clawed hand, preparing to crush Lloyd flat. "Enough talk. I will squash your mind like a bug!"

  The hand descended, a mountain of black scales and green fire falling from the sky. It blocked out the light, promising absolute oblivion.

  Lloyd didn't dodge. He didn't summon a shield. He simply looked up at the falling hand and visualized a command.

  "System," Lloyd whispered to his own mind. "Initiate the Void Wood Protocol. Target: Conceptual Entity. Mode: Aggressive Deletion."

  Usually, the [Void Wood] was a physical power—grey roots that burst from the earth to consume mana. But here, in the mental realm, physics did not apply. Willpower was the only law. And Lloyd’s willpower was a razor-sharp blade honed by two lifetimes of struggle.

  He visualized the power not as wood, but as code. He imagined the grey roots as algorithms of consumption, designed to eat entropy and disorganized energy.

  The liquid floor beneath Lloyd exploded.

  It wasn't a splash of water; it was an eruption of grey light. A massive, spectral tree burst from the "ground" of Lloyd’s consciousness. It grew faster than the eye could follow, shooting upward with the force of a missile.

  The trunk of the tree was not made of bark; it was made of static and grey fire. It was wide as a castle tower, solid and unyielding. Its branches were not leaves and twigs; they were hundreds of grasping, skeletal hands made of grey light.

  BAM!

  The tree slammed into Rubel’s descending hand. The impact shook the entire dimension. The demon’s hand didn't crush the tree; it shattered against it. Rubel screamed—a sound of genuine, shocked pain—as the grey branches lashed out.

  "What is this?!" Rubel shrieked, recoiling. "Get off me!"

  The grey branches moved like vipers. They wrapped around Rubel’s wrist, then his arm. They shot upward, coiling around his chest, his wings, and his throat. The "Tree of the Mind" wasn't just holding him; it was rooting itself into him.

  "It's gardening," Lloyd said, his voice amplified by the mindscape, echoing louder than the demon’s roar. "Hold still, Uncle. This might sting."

  Lloyd raised his hand, and the tree obeyed. The roots dug deep into Rubel’s projection.

  Rubel tried to fight back. He summoned his green mental fire, trying to burn the wood. "Burn! Burn, you cursed weed!"

  But the Void Wood didn't burn. It pulsed. It drank the fire. The green flames were sucked into the grey bark, vanishing instantly. The tree glowed brighter, feeding on Rubel’s attack.

  "You can't burn hunger, Rubel," Lloyd explained calmly, watching the spectacle with detached interest. "The more you fight, the more energy you give it. This tree eats egos. And you have such a big, juicy ego."

  The consumption began in earnest.

  Chapter : 1864

  It was a horrifying sight. The twenty-foot-tall demon began to shrink. The vibrant, terrifying details of his armor blurred. The green fire in his eyes flickered and dimmed. The tree was literally sucking the "self" out of him. It was stripping away the layers of his personality, his memories, and his stolen power.

  "No! I am a King! I am chosen!" Rubel wailed, his voice shrinking along with his body. He sounded less like a monster and more like a frightened old man. "I am the future of the Ferrum line! You cannot do this!"

  "You are a snack," Lloyd replied mercilessly. "You are just a battery with a bad attitude."

  The giant form collapsed inward. The wings dissolved into grey mist. The horns crumbled to dust. Rubel was pulled down, dragging his heels, screaming in a silent psychic frequency as he was deconstructed. The tree condensed his massive form, pulling all that sprawling, chaotic energy down through the branches and into the trunk.

  Within seconds, the giant was gone. The mindscape fell silent. The red and violet storms calmed down, leaving a quiet, grey sky.

  Lloyd walked over to the spectral tree. On a lower branch, right at eye level, a single fruit had grown.

  It wasn't like the red fruit from the city trap. This one was small, about the size of a plum. It glowed with a soft, eerie violet light. It pulsed gently, like a small brain.

  "The Psyche Fruit," Lloyd murmured. "All of Rubel’s knowledge, his plans, and his secrets... compressed into a zip file."

  He reached out and plucked the fruit. It felt warm and tingling in his mental hand. He didn't hesitate. He crushed it in his fist.

  The fruit didn't squish; it exploded into a mist of violet light. The mist swirled around Lloyd’s hand and absorbed directly into his skin.

  Instantly, a flood of information rushed into Lloyd’s brain. It wasn't mana; it was pure intel. It played like a movie in fast-forward behind his eyes.

  He saw the map of Gator City. He saw the secret tunnels beneath the palace. He saw the layout of the Inner Sanctum—a fortified bunker buried deep underground.

  He saw more. He saw Rubel’s memories of the last few days. He saw Rubel kneeling before a massive, bloated figure—Beelzebub. He heard the terms of their deal. He saw the passwords to the remaining traps in the hallway. He saw the exact location of Rubel’s physical body, sitting on a throne of bones, hooked up to a life-support system of dark magic.

  "Found you," Lloyd whispered, his eyes snapping open.

  The violet mist faded. The grey tree dissolved. Lloyd stood alone on the liquid floor.

  He had the map. He had the keys. The trap had failed completely. Instead of breaking Lloyd’s mind, Rubel had inadvertently handed him the blueprints to the entire fortress.

  "System," Lloyd commanded. "Exit simulation."

  He raised his hand and pulsed his [Blue Ring Eyes]. He visualized the weak point in the Mirror Fold spell—a flaw he now knew existed because he had just eaten the memory of the man who cast it. A ripple of blue energy shot out from his hand, hitting a specific point in the empty air.

  CRACK.

  The sound was like a gunshot. The red sky shattered. The liquid floor cracked like a broken mirror. Shards of the mindscape fell away, dissolving into nothingness.

  Lloyd stumbled forward, landing hard on solid ground.

  He blinked, his vision adjusting to the dim light. He was back in the physical world. He was standing in the dark corridor of the Inner District. The air was cold again. The smell of ozone and old dust returned.

  He looked around. Ben was gone. The trap had worked in one regard—it had separated them. Ben was likely fighting for his life in another part of the maze.

  But Lloyd wasn't worried. He knew Ben. The Ironwood Knight was stubborn. He wouldn't die easily.

  Lloyd straightened his coat and dusted off his sleeves. He looked down the dark hallway. Before, it had been a confusing maze of reflections and shadows. Now, thanks to the intel he had harvested, it looked like a straight line. He knew exactly which tiles were trapped. He knew exactly which mirrors were illusions.

  He adjusted his gloves, his face setting into a grim, determined expression. He moved with a new, frightening speed. He was no longer an explorer cautiously navigating a dungeon; he was a hunter who knew exactly where the wolf was sleeping.