My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 107

Chapter: 213

Fiancée? Lloyd’s bewilderment intensified. Everything about this encounter felt… wrong. Dislocated from the reality he thought he knew. "A pleasure to meet you both," he managed, his voice carefully neutral, masking the whirlwind of questions and confusion in his mind. "My apologies for my… apparent lapse in memory, Lord Ben. The Summit has been… rather overwhelming."

"Understandable, of course," Ben replied, his single grey eye still holding that unnerving, knowing glint. "So many new faces. So many… old secrets… brought to light." He paused, letting the words hang, then his smile faded, replaced by an expression of quiet, focused intensity. "But I did not seek you out merely for pleasantries, Lord Lloyd. I sought you out because… we have much to discuss. Matters of… mutual interest. Matters that transcend mere family politics."

Lloyd felt his internal alarms, which had been on high alert all day, begin to scream. The way Ben spoke, the weight behind his words, the unsettling familiarity in his gaze… this wasn't just a forgotten cousin making a belated social call. This was something else entirely. Something… dangerous.

"Mutual interest?" Lloyd repeated, his own voice dropping, becoming more cautious, the earlier confusion solidifying into sharp, wary suspicion. "And what possible interest could a humble heir with a penchant for soap and a surprisingly competent wolf share with the son of the esteemed Lord Kyle?"

Ben Ferrum’s smile returned, but this time it was different. Colder. Sharper. Almost predatory. His single grey eye seemed to pierce right through Lloyd’s carefully constructed facade, seeing not just the nineteen-year-old heir, but the ancient, weary, battle-hardened soul trapped within.

And then, he delivered the line that shattered Lloyd’s world for the second time in as many days.

"It has been a while, hasn't it?" Ben Ferrum said, his voice a low, almost intimate murmur, yet each word landed with the force of a physical blow. "Major General."

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The world tilted. The stone floor beneath Lloyd’s feet seemed to dissolve into a shifting, uncertain mist. The air in the quiet corridor grew thin, hard to breathe. The polite, distant portraits of Ferrum ancestors on the walls seemed to blur, their stern gazes melting into a swirl of indistinct color. All sound faded, save for the frantic, roaring pulse in his own ears and the two words that echoed, sharp and impossible, in the sudden, terrifying silence of his mind.

Major General.

The title. His title. Not Lord Ferrum. Not the drab duckling. Not the accidental prodigy. But his rank. His identity. The one he had earned, bled for, lived and died with, on another world, in another lifetime. Major General KM Evan of the United States Army, designer of the Flying Mechanical Battle Suit, hero of a dozen forgotten conflicts on a planet called Earth. A secret so profound, so fundamental to his very being, that he hadn't even dared to whisper it to himself in the darkest hours of the night. A truth he believed was his, and his alone, buried under eighty-six years of time and an entire dimension of space.

And this boy… this impossible, broken boy in a wheelchair, this cousin he had no memory of, had just spoken it aloud. Casually. Knowingly.

Lloyd’s carefully constructed composure, the cynical armor of the eighty-year-old, the practiced calm of the nobleman, the confident swagger of the tournament champion… it didn’t just crack; it vaporized. In its place was the raw, primal, ice-cold reaction of a soldier, a strategist, who had just had his deepest, most secure flank inexplicably, impossibly, breached. His every instinct screamed threat. His every nerve ending fired with alarm. The polite, slightly bewildered young lord vanished, replaced in an instant by the wary, dangerous predator he had become in his first, brutal life after the assassinations.

His body didn’t move, but his entire presence shifted, condensed, becoming something hard, cold, and utterly lethal. The air around him seemed to drop in temperature, a subtle, almost imperceptible pressure emanating from him, a faint echo of the killing intent he had honed over years of shadow warfare. Fang, sensing the instantaneous, profound shift in his master, rose silently from the floor, a low, guttural growl rumbling deep in his chest, his golden eyes blazing, his form crackling with a barely suppressed nimbus of azure lightning.

Chapter: 214

Lloyd took a slow, deliberate step forward, his eyes, no longer holding any trace of polite confusion, locking onto Ben Ferrum’s single grey eye with an intensity that could peel steel. His voice, when it came, was unrecognizable. It wasn't the voice of the nineteen-year-old heir. It was the voice of Major General KM Evan. Low, quiet, utterly devoid of emotion, and carrying the chilling, absolute weight of command. The voice of a man who had ordered strikes that leveled cities, a man who had stared into the face of death and made it blink first.

"Who," Lloyd breathed, the word a whisper of freezing air, "are you?"

The pressure he exerted, a non-magical, purely psychological force born of decades of command and life-or-death decision-making, was immense. A lesser man would have buckled, flinched, stammered an apology. The beautiful Inari, standing behind the wheelchair, visibly paled, her serene smile vanishing, replaced by a look of genuine alarm. She took a half-step back, her hand instinctively going to the hilt of a small, silver dagger tucked into her belt. She felt the shift, the sudden, terrifying transformation of the seemingly harmless young lord into something… ancient and deadly.

But Ben Ferrum… Ben Ferrum did not flinch. He did not look away. He simply met Lloyd’s terrifying, soul-piercing gaze with his own single, unnervingly calm grey eye. His faint, knowing smile didn’t waver. If anything, it widened fractionally, as if he had not only expected this reaction, but welcomed it. As if he were finally speaking to the man he had been waiting for all along.

“As I said,” Ben replied, his voice still quiet, almost conversational, utterly unperturbed by the crushing weight of Lloyd’s killing intent or the crackling, lightning-wreathed wolf now growling at his side. “I am Ben Ferrum. Third son of Kyle. Nothing more, nothing less.” He paused, letting the simple, impossible statement hang in the air. “As for how I know your… previous title… let’s just say that some memories, some echoes, are stronger than others. They leave… an impression. On the world. On certain… receptive individuals.”

Lloyd’s mind reeled. Receptive individuals? Echoes? What was he talking about? Was he another reincarnator? A psychic? Some kind of cosmic entity disguised as a crippled teenager with an impossibly beautiful fiancée? The possibilities were terrifying, endless.

“That’s not an answer,” Lloyd growled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. The pressure intensified. He took another slow step forward. “And you have approximately five seconds to provide me with a real one. Before my… ‘wolf’… decides to test the structural integrity of your very charming, but probably quite flammable, wheelchair.”

Ben’s smile finally faded, replaced by a look of weary, almost pitying, understanding. “Patience, Major General. You were always so… direct. So focused on immediate tactical solutions.” He sighed softly. “Very well. You want answers. I have them. Or at least, some of them. But not here. Not now.” His gaze flickered down the corridor, a silent acknowledgment of their lack of privacy, of the ever-present eyes and ears of the Ferrum estate.

“If you truly want to know who I am,” Ben stated, his voice regaining its quiet, firm authority, “if you want to understand how I know what I know, if you want to begin to unravel the true, complex, terrifying tapestry of the life you have been so unceremoniously thrown back into… then you will meet me. In a few days. After the Summit festivities have concluded. At my father’s estate, the Ironwood Manor. In the central conservatory. We will speak there. Alone.”

He met Lloyd’s murderous gaze without a trace of fear. “I will not be coerced, Major General. I will not be threatened. I am offering you a chance. A chance to understand. The choice, as always, is yours. Come. Or remain in the dark, wrestling with ghosts and building your… soap empire.” The faint, almost teasing, mockery in his tone as he said the last words was a clear sign that he knew far more about Lloyd’s recent activities than he had any right to.

Just as Ben finished speaking, just as Lloyd was about to press further, to demand more, the familiar, almost smug, chime echoed in his mind, sharp and clear.

[New Task Assigned!]

[Task: A Ghost at the Feast – The Ben Ferrum Enigma]

[Objective: Uncover the true identity and purpose of the individual known as ‘Ben Ferrum’. Investigate the source of his knowledge regarding your past life as ‘Major General KM Evan’.]

[Stipulation: Attend the proposed meeting at the Ironwood Manor conservatory. Gather intelligence. Survive the encounter.]

[Reward: 100 System Coins (SC)]