My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 9

Chapter : 17

But Roy Ferrum hadn’t been a complete fool. He’d been paranoid, perhaps, or just pragmatic. Days before the attack, during a strained lesson on Ferrum history in the dusty family archives – one of their rare, awkward attempts at father-son bonding – Roy had paused, his gaze distant.

(Flashback - The Archive)

"Pay attention, Lloyd," Roy had snapped, rapping his knuckles on a heavy, leather-bound tome detailing Ferrum military victories – the public version. Lloyd had flinched, his mind wandering as usual.

Roy sighed, a rare crack in his stern facade. He ran a hand over his face, looking suddenly weary. "This… this is just metal, boy. Hardness. Useful, yes. But limited." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper Lloyd had never heard before. "True strength lies deeper. In the foundations." He tapped a specific, unadorned section of the stone wall behind a towering bookshelf. "Remember this spot, Lloyd. Knowledge is the sharpest steel. Know your foundations." He’d straightened up then, the moment of vulnerability gone, the Arch Duke mask firmly back in place. "Now, about the Siege of Blackwood Ridge…"

(End Flashback)

Lloyd hadn’t understood then. Not until after the funeral, adrift in a sea of grief and hostile political currents, desperate for anything, any anchor. He remembered his father's cryptic words, the specific spot. He’d waited until the dead of night, slipped into the archive, heart pounding. Behind a false panel, just where Roy had indicated, lay another book. Smaller, older, bound in dark, unmarked leather. The Book of Ferrum: True Lineage.

Reading it by flickering candlelight felt like having scales ripped from his eyes, the world reconfiguring itself page by agonizing page. The Iron Body, the clumsy Iron Manipulation – a lie. A deliberate, centuries-old deception, a shield against enemies who would covet their true strength. The real Ferrum power, inherited only by the direct main line… Steel. Infinitely malleable, impossibly strong. And the Fire. An innate affinity, drawn from their very bloodline, allowing them not just to shape metal, but to forge it with thought, to imbue it with incandescent heat, to command it with silent will. Weaving defenses, deadly snares, whisper-thin blades from nothingness. It explained the legends, the fear, the power his father wielded so effortlessly.

Gods, Father, Lloyd thought, the old grief mingling with a fresh wave of awe and regret. You tried to tell me. You tried to prepare me.

The knowledge became his lifeline, his secret weapon in a court designed to chew him up and spit him out. Grief morphed into cold fury, a burning need for vengeance, for survival. He threw himself into mastering the true Ferrum power, hidden away in forgotten corners of the estate, practicing while his uncle consolidated power. His single Spirit Core remained a frustrating bottleneck for cultivating Spirit Power – still like trying to fill a bathtub with an eyedropper compared to Rosa's firehose. But the Void Power, the Steel and Fire… it was different. It wasn't about raw energy reserves; it was about precision, understanding, control. Less metaphysical muscle, more deadly finesse. Like learning intricate surgery versus swinging a sledgehammer.

And Lloyd, the overlooked heir, the quiet student forced into a lethal corner, discovered he had a terrifying, chilling aptitude for it. His 'below-average' status became utterly irrelevant when wielding a power designed for surgical lethality. Hours spent meditating, feeling the minute vibrations of metal, coaxing threads of steel finer than spider silk from the ambient potential, heating them to near-invisible incandescence with focused will.

He wasn't a battlefield powerhouse like his father. He became something else. A scalpel moving through the shadows of court intrigue. A ghost assassin.

Those three years… he’d learned to weave whispers of superheated steel through the air, unseen, unheard until the snap of severed sinew or the hiss of cauterized flesh. He’d practiced shaping micro-thin edges capable of slicing through hardened armor like parchment. He’d bypassed magical wards, not by overpowering them, but by threading slivers of heated metal through their energy matrix, causing subtle disruptions, short-circuits. He’d delivered poisons via nigh-invisible steel needles guided through keyholes. He’d caused 'accidents' – collapsing chandeliers, malfunctioning carriage wheels, sudden 'illnesses' – that left no witnesses, only whispers and growing unease in his uncle's and killer faction.

(Flashback - The Transcend User)

Chapter : 18

Captain Vorlag. Transcend stage with a powerful Earth Bear spirit. Loyal to Rubel, brutish, effective. Cornered Lloyd in a supposedly secure corridor. The air thick with Vorlag's merged power, stone rumbling. Lloyd felt the familiar cold calm descend. He didn’t fight the power head-on. He felt the connection, the energy flow between Vorlag and his merged spirit. A single, hair-thin filament of white-hot steel, woven through the air like a phantom dart, impacted the precise nexus point of their bond. Not enough to sever it completely, not yet, but enough to cause a jarring disruption, a momentary feedback loop. Vorlag roared, stumbling, clutching his chest as his spirit flickered. In that instant of vulnerability, three more threads, shaped like stilettos, found the gaps in his manifested earth armor. No sound but a soft sigh.

(End Flashback)

(Flashback - The Void User)

Baron Hessman. High-ranking Void User, renowned for his impenetrable earth defenses, 'Hessman's Fortress' they called his signature technique. Suspected architect of the assassination plot. Tracked him to a remote villa. Hessman surrounded himself in layered walls of rock, laughing. Lloyd stood outside, seemingly powerless. But he focused, extending his senses, feeling the steel reinforcing rods deep within the concrete foundations Hessman drew upon. He didn't attack the walls. He phased dozens, then hundreds, of superheated steel threads through the stone, following the rebar network, creating an intricate cage inside the earthworks. Then, he pulsed the heat. Not enough to melt the stone, just enough to turn the interior into an oven. Hessman's screams were muffled, short-lived. That had been just a month before his own death. A messy, brutal necessity, but a victory that had undoubtedly painted an even bigger target on his back.

(End Flashback)

The burning hot steel wire he had used just now against Rosa’s cabinet? Flashy. A party trick, relatively speaking. A mere exclamation point compared to the silent, deadly sentences he had learned to write. In terms of the raw power and effortless control his father, Roy Ferrum, possessed right now, in this current timeline? It wasn't even one percent. Roy could likely reshape the entire cabinet into a soaring bird sculpture or slag it into a puddle of molten metal with less effort than Lloyd used to swat a fly. Lloyd’s current nineteen-year-old body and reawakening abilities were a pale shadow yet.

But it didn't matter. The implication, the sheer lethal potential hinted at by that minor feat, was enough. Rosa wasn't stupid. Far from it. She understood power, its nuances, its applications. She would have instantly recognized the signature – the impossible fineness, the residual heat, the clean cut through iron. Not clumsy Iron Manipulation. Something else. Something hidden. She would understand, with chilling clarity, that if that same whisper-thin, impossibly sharp, superheated wire had been directed at her, even with her formidable Spirit Power and likely nascent defenses… the damage would have been catastrophic. Severed tendons, cauterized organs, bypassing magical shields through sheer speed and heat before she could mount a full defense. Death might not be certain, but crippling injury? Highly probable. That understanding, that sudden, terrifying glimpse of a hidden, lethal capability in the husband she dismissed as weak and 'unworthy', was the source of her profound shock.

The weight of these memories, the stark juxtaposition of the deadly skills he knew he possessed versus the current, frustrating limitations of his body and energy reserves, pressed down on Lloyd as he finally reached the secluded clearing in the garden. The ancient oak tree stood sentinel, its leaves rustling softly, offering dappled shade. Fang, the scrawny wolf-spirit, was nowhere in sight – probably off finding a comfortable, chicken-scented spot to sleep off his unexpected feast. Good. Lloyd needed solitude.

He sank onto the cool grass at the base of the tree, the rough bark a solid presence against his back. He closed his eyes, letting out a long, slow breath, consciously releasing the tension coiling tight in his gut. The confrontation had been necessary. The demonstration effective, perhaps even vital. But gods, it was draining. He needed a moment. A moment of peace, of quiet, before planning his next move. Coins. Still needed Coins. Ten to open the shop. Seven more days of chicken duty for Fang for five. Progress felt agonizingly slow.

He sat there for several long moments, just breathing. Listening to the cheerful, oblivious chirping of birdsong. Feeling the warmth of the midday sun filtering through the leaves onto his face. Trying to find his center amidst the swirling chaos of past lives and present dangers. Just as a semblance of calm began to settle over him, like dust motes gently landing after a disturbance, just as the turbulent echoes of the past began to recede into the background hum of memory…

Flicker.