My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode-186

Chapter : 371

A fierce, almost painful, wave of emotion swelled in Roy Ferrum’s chest. It was an emotion so powerful, so unfamiliar in its intensity, that it almost choked him. It was not just pride. It was… awe. Awe at the sheer, audacious, terrifying scale of his own son’s ambition. The boy he had thought a drab duckling had not just learned to fly; he was trying to build a new sun.

He finally looked up at Ken, his dark eyes no longer cold or assessing, but blazing with a new, fierce, almost predatory light. The light of a father who has just realized his son is not just his equal, but perhaps… his superior.

“Ken,” Roy said, his voice quiet, but thrumming with a new, powerful energy. He did not ask questions. He did not express doubt. He gave a single, simple, and utterly, world-changing, command.

“Give him what he needs,” the Arch Duke of Ferrum ordered. “Give my son whatever he asks for. Quietly. And,” he added, a slow, dangerous, almost feral smile touching his lips for the first time in years, “do not, under any circumstances, let anyone get in his way.”

The gambit had been played. And the father, the Duke, the strategist, had just gone all-in on his son’s terrifying, brilliant, and revolutionary, new game. The age of soap was fine. The age of fire was about to begin.

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The wine in Viscount Rubel Ferrum’s goblet was the finest vintage from the Southern Reaches, a gift from a fawning minor lord hoping to curry favor. It was rich, complex, with notes of dark berries and a hint of spice. On any other night, he would have savored its bouquet, swirled it, appreciated its long, smooth finish. Tonight, it tasted like ash.

He stood by the tall, arched window of his study, staring out into the manicured darkness of his own estate gardens. The moon, a cold, indifferent silver disc, illuminated the perfectly sculpted hedges, the silent, elegant fountains. It was a picture of wealth, of order, of noble privilege. And it felt like a prison. A beautifully appointed, luxurious, and utterly, comprehensively, humiliating prison.

He took a long, deep swallow of the wine, the liquid a bitter fire in his throat. The fury, a constant, simmering cauldron in his gut for the past month, threatened to boil over. He wanted to scream. He wanted to smash the crystal goblet against the stone wall, to see the fine vintage spatter like blood. He wanted to tear down the heavy silk drapes, to shatter the priceless artifacts that littered his study, to reduce this entire monument to his diminished status to splinters and dust.

But he did nothing. He stood perfectly still, his hand gripping the stem of the goblet so tightly his knuckles were a ridge of white bone. He had learned, over decades of careful, patient maneuvering in the shadow of his brother, the art of control. To show anger was to show weakness. To show frustration was to admit defeat. And Rubel Ferrum, even now, even in this dark, suffocating pit of failure, would never, ever, admit defeat.

The events of the past month replayed in his mind, a relentless, torturous loop. The Summit. The absolute, public, soul-crushing humiliation. It had been his moment, his perfectly staged masterpiece of political theatre. He had had it all. The witnesses, terrified and compliant. The victims, pathetic and convincing. The accusation, so potent, so damaging. He had painted the perfect picture of Lloyd—his weak, foolish, unremarkable nephew—as an arrogant, violent liability. He had offered Roy, his brother, the Arch Duke, a golden opportunity on a silver platter: set aside the flawed heir, acknowledge the superior strength of the cadet branch, of his own son, Rayan. He had been so close. So close he could taste the power, the vindication, the sweet, sweet flavor of his family’s rightful place finally restored.

And then, it had all turned to ash.

Lloyd. The name was a curse on his tongue. The drab duckling, the quiet disappointment, the boy who had spent his youth staring at his own feet, had somehow, impossibly, transformed. He hadn’t panicked. He hadn’t crumbled. He had laughed. Laughed. In the face of the accusation, in the face of the Arch Duke’s fury. He had calmly, methodically, and with a terrifying, almost surgical precision, dismantled Rubel’s entire scheme piece by painful piece. He had exposed the witnesses, revealed their vulnerabilities, turned their coerced testimony into a damning indictment of Rubel’s own treachery.

Chapter : 372

The punishment had been swift, brutal, and exquisitely public. Stripped of his primary cadet status. Removed from the Ducal Council. Relieved of his military command. And that fine… one hundred Gold Coins, a sum that was a mere pinprick to his wealth, but a cannonball to his pride, paid as a public admission of his folly. He had been neutered. Defanged. Reduced from a powerful, influential Viscount, a kingmaker in his own right, to a mere footnote in the family hierarchy, a cautionary tale to be whispered about in the halls of power.

He drained the goblet in a single, angry gulp, the wine now tasting sour, acidic. He could still feel the weight of their eyes on him as he had stumbled from the Grand Hall. The pity from his allies. The smug, triumphant satisfaction from his rivals. And the cold, dismissive contempt from his own brother. Roy hadn't just defeated him; he had enjoyed it. He had savored the moment, turning the knife with that final, devastating elevation of Kyle Ferrum, that staunch, boring traditionalist, to Rubel’s former position.

“Father,” a sullen voice mumbled from the shadows near the hearth.

Rubel turned, his expression hardening further. Rayan. His son. His proud, powerful son, the instrument of his ambition, now sat slumped in a heavy leather armchair, staring into the cold, empty fireplace. The arrogant swagger was gone, replaced by a sullen, resentful bitterness that was a mirror of Rubel’s own. The boy’s face, usually so handsome and confident, was clouded with the memory of his own public humiliation. Beaten. Not just beaten, but toyed with, made a fool of, by the very cousin he had despised his entire life.

“What is it?” Rubel snapped, his voice harsher than he intended.

Rayan didn’t look up. “The servants… they whisper,” he muttered, his voice thick with resentment. “They talk of him. Of Lloyd. They call him the ‘Silent Lion’. They say… they say he is the true heir, a dragon disguised as a lamb.” He kicked at the hearth with a booted foot. “And they talk of his… his soap. This ridiculous ‘AURA’. They say even the King of Bethelham himself has endorsed it. They say a single bar costs more than a common man earns in a month. They say Lloyd is becoming not just powerful, but wealthy. In his own right.”

Rubel’s hand tightened on the empty goblet, his knuckles creaking. Soap. It was the ultimate insult. His grand political machinations, his lifetime of ambition, undone not by a rival army or a political masterstroke, but by a bar of bloody soap. The thought was so absurd, so humiliating, it made his teeth ache.

“He is a fool who got lucky,” Rubel snarled, trying to reassure his son, and perhaps himself. “A fluke. An anomaly. It will not last. His arrogance will be his undoing.”

“Will it, Father?” Rayan finally looked up, and the look in his eyes was not one of youthful arrogance, but of a new, colder, more dangerous understanding. The humiliation of his defeat had burned away some of his bluster, leaving behind a core of pure, venomous hatred. “I faced him. I felt his power. It was not luck. It was… something else. That trick with my senses… it was not Ferrum power. And that wolf… it was no ordinary spirit.” He shuddered, a memory of the Thousand Chirp Strike echoing in his mind. “He is not the Lloyd we knew. He has changed. He is dangerous.”

Rubel fell silent. He knew his son was right. The Lloyd who had stood in the Grand Hall, calm and confident amidst the chaos, was not the nephew he had dismissed for two decades. Something had changed. But what? Where had this power, this knowledge, this terrifying new competence, come from?

Paranoia, a cold, familiar serpent, began to uncoil in his gut. He had dismissed the rumors, the whispers of Lloyd’s strange activities since his marriage to the Siddik girl. But now… now they took on a new, more sinister light. The confrontation with the street toughs. The incident at the Guild Hall. The impossible retrieval of the Dark Vein flower from Galla Forest, a story he had heard in hushed, awestruck tones from Marquess Kruts himself. And now this. The soap. The tournament. The public dismantling of Rubel’s entire power base.

It wasn't a series of lucky flukes. It was a pattern. A deliberate, systematic, and terrifyingly effective, series of moves on a chessboard he hadn't even realized he was playing.

He is not just a threat to my ambition anymore, Rubel realized with a jolt of ice-cold fear. He is a threat to my very existence.