My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!
Episode : 87

Chapter : 173

The whirlwind of the Ferrum Family Summit, with its royal revelations and soap-fueled investment deals, had finally subsided, leaving Lloyd Ferrum in a state of buzzing, slightly bewildered, productivity. The ten thousand Gold Coins from his father and the additional five thousand from King Liam “James” Bethelham (a sum that still made his internal accountant do a series of astonished backflips) were slowly, agonizingly, making their way through the Ducal Bursar Periwinkle’s labyrinthine ledgers. Lloyd had spent the past few days in a frenzy of planning, sketching designs for a dedicated ‘Ferrum Family Finest Cleansing Elixir Manufactory’ (he was quite proud of that name, it had a certain ring of opulent hygiene), and fielding increasingly excited, if slightly unhinged, memoranda from both Grand Master Grimaldi (proposing a new ‘seven-stage distillation process for rosemary essence using only moonlight and ethically sourced unicorn tears’) and Master Elmsworth (projecting global soap market dominance by Q3 and suggesting a hostile takeover of the entire olive oil industry).

He was currently ensconced in his preferred garden sanctuary, the bench beneath the ancient willow, trying to make sense of a particularly dense alchemical treatise Grimaldi had optimistically lent him – ‘The Symbiotic Potencies of Volatile Oils and Saponified Tallow: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Accidentally Creating Sentient Bath Bombs’. Fang, looking significantly less like a traumatized survivor of mythological monster battles and more like a magnificent, slightly bored, harbinger of lightning-infused doom, lay at his feet, occasionally snapping at a particularly audacious butterfly.

“Okay, Fang,” Lloyd muttered, squinting at a diagram that looked suspiciously like a plumbing schematic for a very small, very angry dragon. “According to Grimaldi, if I get the lye-to-oil ratio wrong by more than 0.003 parts per million, I don’t get soap, I get… ‘spontaneously combustible oleaginous plasma’. Sounds… messy. And probably not great for repeat business. ‘Try Ferrum’s Finest Exploding Face Wash! Guaranteed to remove grime, skin, and possibly small buildings!’ Not the marketing angle I was going for.”

He was just contemplating the philosophical implications of whether ‘oleaginous plasma’ could be weaponized (and if the System would offer coins for it) when a shadow fell over his alchemical text. Not the dappled shade of the willow. This was a more… purposeful shadow. A shadow that smelled faintly of expensive Southern silks and residual Galla Forest trail dust.

Lloyd looked up, blinking, his mind still half-immersed in the terrifying world of volatile triglycerides.

Faria Kruts.

Standing before him, her crimson-violet hair a stark, beautiful slash of color against the placid green of the garden, her amethyst eyes holding an expression he couldn’t quite decipher – a mixture of weariness, resolve, and something else… something surprisingly vulnerable. She was dressed in practical, if impeccably tailored, traveling clothes, suggesting she was either just arrived or about to depart. Her usual entourage of formidable guards was conspicuously absent.

“Lady Faria,” Lloyd greeted, a flicker of genuine surprise, quickly masked, running through him. He hadn't expected to see her again so soon, if ever, after their dramatic, serpent-interrupted parting at the edge of Galla. He pushed himself up from the bench, offering a slight, respectful bow. “An… unexpected pleasure. To what do I owe this honor? Did you misplace another soul-eating nightmare-flower and require my patented ‘invisible wire retrieval service’?” He couldn’t resist the slight teasing, the memory of her stunned disbelief still a source of private amusement.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile, more a shadow than a true expression, touched Faria’s lips. “Hardly, Lord Ferrum. One encounter with a fifty-foot guardian serpent with a flower fetish is quite sufficient for several lifetimes, thank you.” Her voice was lower today, less imperious, tinged with a fatigue that went bone-deep. “And the Dark Vein bloom, thanks to your… unorthodox assistance… is safely with my mother’s alchemist.”

Faria’s gaze sharpened slightly, a flicker of her usual analytical intensity returning. “You encountered similar issues with your… ‘soap’… then?”

“Let’s just say my initial experiments with ‘hidden fire’ and rendered fat were… educational,” Lloyd said dryly. “And occasionally involved small, unscheduled explosions. But we digress. You didn’t seek me out to discuss the perils of amateur alchemy, I presume.” He gestured towards the empty space on the bench beside him. “Please. If you’re not in a hurry to wrestle any more mythological creatures.”

She hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then sank onto the bench with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of kingdoms. The movement lacked her usual fluid grace, betraying the deep weariness she clearly felt. She stared out at the tranquil garden for a long moment, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

Chapter : 174

“No,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper, her gaze distant. “No more monsters, thank the ancestors.” She turned to him then, her amethyst eyes, usually so bright with competitive fire or haughty disdain, now shadowed, haunted. “I came, Lord Ferrum… because I felt I owed you an explanation. For the flower. For the danger. For… everything.”

Lloyd leaned back, intrigued. An explanation? This was unexpected. “Lady Faria, you owe me nothing. As I recall, we were both spectacularly unprepared for the… enthusiasm… of Galla Forest’s local welcoming committee. And the flower,” he shrugged, “as I said, its purpose, for me, was served.” (Forty coins jingling merrily in his mental account. Best flower-picking trip ever, despite the near-death experiences).

“Perhaps,” Faria conceded, her gaze dropping to her tightly clasped hands. “But its purpose for me… it is far more than mere alchemy, Lord Ferrum. It is… a matter of life and death.” She took a deep, ragged breath, the carefully constructed walls of her aristocratic composure beginning to crumble, revealing the raw, desperate emotion beneath.

“It’s for my brother, Lloyd,” she said, her voice so low he had to lean closer to hear it, the use of his first name, so unexpected, so intimate, sending a strange jolt through him. “My younger brother, Elian.”

Lloyd frowned, trying to recall. Elian Kruts? He had a vague memory from his first life – a quiet, scholarly boy, always in Faria’s shadow, not particularly robust. “Your brother?” he prompted gently, sensing the depth of her distress. “Is he… unwell?”

A single tear, bright and crystalline, escaped from the corner of Faria’s eye and traced a shimmering path down her cheek. She didn't bother to wipe it away. The Princess of the art competition, the fiery noblewoman who had faced down a Mire Monster, was gone. In her place was a frightened, grieving sister.

“Unwell is… an understatement, Lloyd,” she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. “He is dying. Slowly. Horribly. Consumed from within by a curse.”

Lloyd stiffened. A curse? His mind flashed back to the whispers in Galla Forest, the thin veil between worlds, the ancient evils. "A curse?" he repeated, the word tasting foul. "From where? How?"

Faria’s head snapped up, her amethyst eyes blazing now, not with competitive fire, but with a cold, venomous fury that made the air around her crackle. “From Altamira!” she spat, the name a viper on her tongue. “From those treacherous, black-hearted snakes who rule Eldoria!”

Lloyd’s blood ran cold. Altamira. Again. The name was becoming a persistent, ominous refrain in his new life. “The Altamiras cursed your brother?” he pressed, his voice hardening. “Why? What possible reason could they have?”

Faria’s lip curled into a sneer of pure contempt. “Reason? They need no reason beyond their own twisted ambition and petty spite, Lloyd! But this… this was retaliation. Personal. Vicious.” She took another shuddering breath, her hands clenching so tightly her knuckles were white. “Because I refused him.”

“Refused who?” Lloyd asked, though a sinking feeling in his gut already told him the answer.

“You already know. The Crown Prince of Altamira,” Faria confirmed, her voice dripping with loathing. “That arrogant, preening peacock. Our fathers… they entertained the notion of an alliance, a marriage. For political expediency, of course. To secure trade routes, to ease border tensions.” She made a sound of disgust. “I met him. Once. He was… intolerable. Smug. Cruel. He spoke of art as if it were a commodity to be bought and sold, of people as if they were pawns on his private game board.” She shuddered. “I told my father, in no uncertain terms, that I would rather wed a Galla Forest Mire Monster than bind myself to such a creature. I made my… displeasure… known. Quite publicly, perhaps. I may have… inadvertently… humiliated the Crown Prince at a rather tedious state banquet. Suggested his taste in cravats was as questionable as his grasp of basic human decency.”

Lloyd almost choked. Knowing Faria’s fiery temperament and sharp tongue, he could well imagine the scene. “So, you turned him down,” he said slowly. “And the Altamiras… they took their revenge on your brother?”

“Precisely,” Faria confirmed, her voice tight with pain and fury. “Weeks later, Elian fell ill. A strange, wasting sickness that baffled every healer, every physician in the Southern Reaches. He grew weaker, paler, his spirit fading. Conventional magic offered no solace, no cure. Then, my mother’s alchemist, a man of great learning, finally identified the true nature of his affliction. It was not a disease, Lloyd. It was a curse. A meticulously crafted, insidious curse of Altamiran origin, designed to slowly, agonizingly drain his life force, leaving him a hollow shell.”