Chapter : 805 For more chapters visit NoveI~Fire.net Her mission, which had once been a vague, frustrating hunt for whispers and rumors, now had a sharp, clear, and singular purpose. She had to find him his high-level stones. It was no longer just a favor for a friend; it was a crusade. The future of healing, the fate of the countless thousands his genius could save—it all rested on her ability to procure the one resource he so desperately needed. She began her hunt anew, but this time, with a ruthless, single-minded focus that was terrifying in its intensity. She became a true ghost in the palace, her every moment, her every conversation, a calculated move in her grand, secret game. She used her mistress, Lady Anissa, not as a source of direct aid, but as a key to unlock the palace’s deeper, more hidden reservoirs of information. She spent hours in the Royal Library, not reading the common histories, but poring over ancient, dusty shipping manifests, geological surveys, and the private ledgers of long-dead royal quartermasters. She was searching for any anomaly, any mention of a rare, high-value crystalline mineral that was not accounted for in the official records. She cultivated new sources. She used a portion of her own considerable, secret savings to bribe a disgruntled cartographer in the Royal Corps of Engineers, a man with a gambling problem and access to the kingdom’s most sensitive geological maps. She paid a silver-tongued court historian to recount the forgotten tales of the kingdom’s founding, listening for any mention of a hidden treasure, a lost mine, a secret source of the royal family’s initial wealth. She became a master of her craft. She was no longer just a listener of whispers; she was a weaver of them, a skilled operative conducting a full-spectrum intelligence-gathering operation, all in the service of her humble, unsuspecting slum doctor. Lloyd watched her transformation with a quiet, clinical satisfaction. He had forged a perfect, unstoppable advocate. He had created a weapon of pure, unshakeable faith and had aimed it at the heart of the kingdom’s most guarded secrets. He continued to play his part, the quiet, grateful genius, occasionally offering her a small, seemingly insignificant piece of advice—a suggestion to check the records of a specific, obscure mining guild, a question about a particular, long-forgotten noble family. Each piece of advice was, of course, a carefully calculated nudge, a subtle course-correction to guide her hunt in the direction he already knew it needed to go. Their evenings in the clinic took on a new, charged energy. They would huddle over a map of the kingdom spread out on his desk, the candlelight illuminating their two faces, a strange and unlikely pair of conspirators. She would point out a potential lead, a whisper of a forgotten mine in the northern mountains. He would listen, his expression one of deep, scholarly concentration, and then he would gently, logically, point out the flaws in the theory, the logistical impossibilities, the reasons why it was a dead end. He was not just her analyst; he was her sparring partner, sharpening her own considerable intellect, forcing her to refine her search, to discard the fanciful and focus on the plausible. And through it all, her belief in him only grew. She saw a man who was not just a healer, but a brilliant, strategic mind, a man whose intellect was as sharp and as powerful as any of the great lords she had served. The fact that this incredible mind was trapped in the body of a humble, selfless doctor only made her resolve burn brighter. She was so close to him, so deep inside his confidence, and yet she was completely blind to the true, breathtaking scale of the game he was playing. She saw a man who wanted to build a better world. She had no idea she was helping a man who intended to conquer it. Her mission was one of pure, altruistic devotion. And it was leading her, and him, closer and closer to the one, brutal, and glorious truth that would be the key to everything. Sumaiya returned to the clinic that evening with a new, and very different, energy. Gone was the quiet, methodical focus of the researcher. In its place was a feverish, triumphant excitement, the look of a detective who has just, after a long and arduous hunt, found the final, critical clue. It was a magnificent performance, and it was entirely for his benefit. She burst through the door, a rolled-up, and very ancient-looking, map clutched in her hand, her dark eyes blazing with a carefully crafted, theatrical thrill. Lloyd looked up from his work on the crystal calculator, his expression one of mild, academic surprise. “Sumaiya,” he said. “You look as if you have just wrestled a griffin and won.” “Better,” she said, her voice a breathless, excited rush. She unrolled the map on his desk, the parchment crackling in the quiet room. It was a detailed topographical map of the kingdom, a genuine, three-hundred-year-old artifact she had "discovered" in the deepest, dustiest corner of the archives. She pointed a single, trembling, and perfectly steady finger to a rugged, inhospitable-looking mountain range on the kingdom’s northern border. “There,” she said, her voice a low, triumphant whisper. “There it is. The Jahl Mountains. The homeland of the Demon in our arena. And the source of the stones you need.” She then proceeded to lay out her entire case, her words a torrent of brilliant, deductive reasoning that she had been rehearsing for days. She presented the evidence from the historical texts, the discrepancies in the royal ledgers, and the profound strategic logic of the connection. “Don’t you see, Zayn? The mine and the Demon are the same story! The Sultan didn’t just happen to find a source of wealth. He found the source of power. I believe the stones from that mine are what fueled the magic to bind the Jahl in the Coliseum. The secrecy of the mine is tied to the secrecy of the binding spell itself! It is the kingdom’s greatest, and most closely guarded, magical and military secret.” It was a flawless piece of intelligence analysis, a presentation so perfect, so logical, that it would have made her father’s own spymaster weep with pride. And it was all a beautiful, intricate, and utterly necessary lie. She had not deduced this; she had known it all along. She was simply… feeding him the truth, piece by piece, and making him believe he was the one discovering it. Lloyd listened, his own performance a perfect mirror of her own. His expression shifted from mild curiosity to a dawning, profound awe. He was, of course, utterly unsurprised by her conclusion. He had been gently nudging her towards it for the entire week. But he allowed himself to look utterly, completely, and magnificently astonished. To see her lay out the truth with such brilliant, intuitive logic… it was a thing of beauty. He had thought he was forging a weapon, and he had been right. But the weapon was even more magnificent, more capable, and more intelligent than he had ever imagined. He let her finish, his silence a testament to his feigned shock. When she was done, he was quiet for a long moment, looking from the map to her flushed, expectant face. “Sumaiya,” he said, his voice filled with a perfect, calculated reverence. “You are… truly extraordinary.” The simple, sincere praise, which he meant in a way she could not possibly comprehend, was a more potent reward than any gold. A faint, genuine blush colored her cheeks, and she looked down, suddenly shy. “I… I only did what was necessary. For the dream.” “You have done more than that,” he said. “You have given the dream a destination. A name.” He looked at the map, his face a mask of somber, scholarly contemplation. “But this… this changes everything. A royal mine, the source of the magic that binds a Trans-cendent-level Demon… it would be the most heavily guarded place in the entire kingdom. It is inaccessible. We have found the treasure, my friend, but it is locked in a vault that we can never hope to open.” He had done it again. He had taken her "triumph" and had immediately presented her with a new, even more insurmountable obstacle. He was testing her now, pushing her, waiting to see if she would be the one to present him with the final, insane, and glorious key. He watched her face, saw the triumphant fire in her eyes flicker, replaced by a new, dawning frustration. She had found the what and the where. But the how… the how was still a towering, impossible wall. And he, the master manipulator, was about to watch as his own, brilliant, unwitting advocate, arrived at the exact, terrible, and perfect conclusion he had been leading her to all along. The test was almost complete. The revelation of the royal mine in the Jahl Mountains was a double-edged sword. It was a magnificent, triumphant discovery that had, in the same breath, presented them with a problem so immense, so fundamentally insurmountable, that it made their previous struggles seem like child’s play. The treasure was no longer a myth, but its location within the kingdom’s most dangerous and heavily guarded region made it as inaccessible as the moon.