My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 119

Chapter: 237

Lloyd didn’t return the smile. He stopped a few paces away, his senses on high alert, Fang a low, growling presence at his side. The atmosphere in the conservatory, for all its beauty, felt charged, expectant. Trapped.

“I’m here for answers, Ben,” Lloyd stated, his voice cold, direct. “Not pleasantries. Let’s start with the big one. Who are you?”

Ben’s smile didn’t falter. He simply gestured to a small stone bench nearby. “Patience. All will be revealed. But not here. This is merely the… reception area.” He looked at Inari, who nodded once, then began to push his wheelchair slowly towards a less dense, more open part of the conservatory. “Follow me. Let us meet somewhere… quieter.”

Lloyd hesitated, his instincts screaming at him not to follow. But the promise of answers, the tantalizing pull of the System quest, was too strong. With a silent command to Fang to stay close, he followed.

They emerged into a large, open field that bordered the estate, the true night sky now a vast, star-dusted canopy above them. The air was cooler here, cleaner.

Ben signaled for Inari to stop. He sat there, his single eye fixed on the heavens, a look of profound, ancient weariness on his young, broken face.

“Have you ever looked at the stars, Lord Lloyd,” Ben asked softly, “and felt… a sense of homesickness? A longing for a place you can’t quite remember, but know, in your very soul, that you belong? A place with… different stars?”

The question, so specific, so pointed, sent a jolt of ice through Lloyd’s veins. Different stars. He fought to keep his expression neutral, but his heart began to hammer against his ribs.

“I can’t say that I have,” Lloyd replied, his voice tight. “The stars here are the only ones I’ve ever known.” A lie. A necessary, desperate lie.

Ben chuckled, a low, sad sound. “Of course. The soldier. Always maintaining cover.” He turned his gaze from the sky back to Lloyd, and his expression was no longer smiling. It was raw. Vulnerable. Filled with a pain so deep it seemed to eclipse the physical brokenness of his body.

“You asked who I am,” Ben said, his voice quiet, almost breaking. “The truth is… I am not Ben Ferrum. That is merely the name of this vessel. This… broken shell… I was forced to inhabit after my… previous life… came to a rather abrupt and violent end.”

He paused, then asked the question that shattered Lloyd's carefully constructed reality into a million pieces. “Tell me, Major General KM Evan. Does the name… ‘B’… mean anything to you?”

The name. The rank. The designation.

It was a catastrophic system shock. The world dissolved into a roaring static in Lloyd’s ears. Major General KM Evan. The name he had carried for eighty years on a world called Earth. And ‘B’. The designation for his most hated, most formidable, most brilliant nemesis.

B.

The enigmatic commander of Firefly, the world’s largest and most dangerous private military corporation. A shadow empire that presented a public face of cutting-edge technology and philanthropic ventures, but operated in the darkness, dealing in corporate espionage, political assassination, and trafficking stolen advanced weaponry. B was a ghost, a legend, a master strategist who had been his dark mirror for over a decade. They had never met face-to-face, their war fought through proxies, through intelligence networks, through clashes of technology and strategy across a global chessboard. B’s Firefly had been responsible for the theft of early Battle Suit prototypes, for the assassination of key scientists on his project, for acts of terror that had destabilized entire nations.

The realization crashed down on Lloyd with the force of a physical blow. The boy in the wheelchair… his knowing smile, his quiet confidence, his unsettlingly familiar intelligence… it wasn’t just a sharp mind. It was the echo of a mind he had fought, a mind he had hated, a mind from another world.

This wasn’t a political squabble of Riverio. This was a ghost from Earth. A ghost that knew his name.

And just as Lloyd’s mind, his world, his very understanding of reality, completely, comprehensively, shattered, the familiar, almost smug, chime echoed in his consciousness.

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

[Objective Achieved: True identity of ‘Ben Ferrum’ discovered. Subject identified as ‘B’, a significant and hostile figure from User’s previous life on Planet Earth. Acknowledgment of shared history confirmed.]

[Reward Issued: 100 System Coins (SC)]

[Current System Coins: 498 (Previous) + 100 (Reward) = 598 SC]

The coins, the System… it all faded into insignificance. All that mattered was the impossible, infuriating, hate-filled truth before him. His greatest enemy from Earth. He was here.

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Chapter: 238

The hundred-coin reward was a mocking, insignificant flash in the roaring inferno of Lloyd’s rage. The System had confirmed it. This broken boy, this manipulative ghost in a wheelchair, was ‘B’. The architect of a shadow war that had defined a decade of his life on Earth. The man whose actions had led to the deaths of colleagues and friends.

A pure, white-hot fury, colder and more dangerous than any bonfire, erupted in the core of his being. The carefully constructed facade of Lloyd Ferrum, the awkward heir, the burgeoning soap tycoon, vaporized. All that remained was Major General KM Evan, the warrior, confronting the specter of his greatest foe.

“You,” Lloyd hissed, the word a whisper of freezing venom. His eyes, which had been filled with wary confusion, hardened into chips of obsidian ice. “Firefly.”

The air in the open field, already cool, plummeted in temperature. The beautiful, serene Inari visibly paled, taking a half-step back, her hand flying to the silver dagger at her belt, her eyes wide with alarm at the sudden, terrifying transformation in Lloyd’s demeanor. Fang, sensing the shift to absolute killing intent in his master, sprang to his feet, a low, guttural growl rumbling in his chest, his form crackling with a barely suppressed nimbus of azure lightning.

B’s calm, almost weary smile finally faltered. He saw the shift, the pure, undiluted murderous rage in Lloyd’s eyes. This wasn't the reaction of a curious young lord; this was the reaction of a soldier confronting his nemesis.

“Major General…” B began, his voice losing some of its earlier confidence, a flicker of something—surprise? Miscalculation?—in his single grey eye. “Wait. It’s not what you think…”

But Lloyd was beyond words. He was beyond reason. He was pure, focused, righteous fury. This creature had crossed worlds, crossed lifetimes, to reappear before him. There was no room for negotiation. There was only erasure.

“You dare,” Lloyd whispered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate with the hum of his awakened Void power. “You dare to exist in the same world as me again. For that… for that, there is no forgiveness. There is only… consequence.”

He didn’t shout. He didn’t roar. He simply acted.

With a speed born of pure, unadulterated rage, he unleashed his power. The air around him shimmered, tore, as dozens, then hundreds, of whisper-thin filaments of gleaming Ferrum steel erupted from the void, not just from his hands, but from the very space around him. They weren’t the non-lethal binding wires from the tournament. These were different. Sharper. Colder. Imbued with a chilling, lethal intent, each one a razor-edged promise of a thousand cuts. They converged, a screaming, shimmering hornet’s nest of steel, and shot, with the silent, inescapable speed of thought, directly at the boy in the wheelchair.

This wasn't a warning shot. This wasn't a display. This was an execution.

But just as the deadly cloud of steel wires was about to reach its target, just as it was about to shred ‘B’ and his finely crafted wheelchair into a bloody, splintered ruin, the serene, beautiful Inari moved.

She moved with a speed that was utterly, breathtakingly, inhuman. One moment she was standing behind the wheelchair, a picture of delicate, floral grace. The next, she was a blur of motion, positioning herself directly between Lloyd’s attack and her charge, her gentle, serene expression vanished, replaced by a mask of fierce, cold, protective fury. Her blue eyes, moments before warm and kind, now blazed with a chilling, predatory light.

“You will not touch him!” she snarled, her voice no longer soft and melodic, but a low, dangerous growl that resonated with a power Lloyd’s senses hadn't even registered.

She didn't draw her dagger. She didn't need to. She simply thrust her hand forward, her Spirit Stone, a shard of what looked like polished, solidified night embedded in a simple leather bracelet, flaring with an explosive burst of dark, shadowy energy. “Kaelan! Intercept!”

The shadows in the field deepened, converged, coalesced before her, forming into a creature of sleek, terrifying, midnight beauty. It was a Puma, larger than any natural feline, its body seemingly sculpted from living, flowing shadow, its fur the color of a starless night sky. It wasn't solid, yet it possessed a terrifying, tangible presence. And its eyes… its eyes were twin pools of luminous, emerald-green fire, blazing with a savage, predatory intelligence and an absolute, unwavering loyalty to its mistress. It let out a silent roar, a concussive blast of pure, shadow-infused will that made the very air seem to curdle.

The Puma, Kaelan, met Lloyd’s screaming cloud of steel wires head-on.