Chapter : 1341

  He had tried chaining the stones together. He built a cluster of ten stones, hoping they would share the load. But getting them to talk to each other was a nightmare. Stone A would say "Move left leg," and Stone B would say "Fire missile," and the suit would end up doing the splits and exploding.

  "Coordination," Lloyd sighed. "I lack a central processor. I have a bunch of fingers but no palm."

  He looked at the pile of failed stones in the corner. It was a graveyard of expensive minerals.

  "Maybe I'm approaching this wrong," Lloyd thought. "Maybe I need a spirit? Can I stuff a spirit into the suit?"

  He shook his head. Spirits had their own wills. If he put a fire spirit in the suit, it might decide to burn the pilot because it was bored. He needed cold, hard logic. He needed a machine mind.

  He stood up and kicked a gear across the room. It Clattered loudly.

  "This is impossible," he growled. "I have the car. I have the gas. But I don't have a driver."

  He walked over to the main chassis of the Aegis. It stood in the corner, a silent metal giant. It looked intimidating. But right now, it was just a very expensive coat rack.

  "You're useless," Lloyd told the suit. "Beautiful, but useless."

  He needed a breakthrough. He needed something that could handle complex, simultaneous data processing. But magic in this world was intuitive. It wasn't binary code.

  "I'm trying to run a supercomputer on an abacus," Lloyd realized. "That's the problem."

  He rubbed his temples. His headache was coming back. He needed a break. But he couldn't stop. The image of Beelzebub was still burnt into his mind. He needed this suit.

  "One more try," Lloyd said, grabbing a fresh stone. "Maybe if I simplify the code. Remove the auto-balance. I can balance it myself. Maybe."

  He sat back down. He picked up the tool. He prepared to burn another stone. It was insanity. But he was an engineer. And engineers didn't give up. They just found new and expensive ways to fail until they succeeded.

  Three hours later, Lloyd was lying on the floor. He was staring at the ceiling. The smell of ozone and burnt crystal hung in the air.

  Another failure.

  He had tried to create a layered command structure. Stone A controls the legs. Stone B controls the arms. Stone C tells Stone A and B what to do.

  It worked for about ten seconds. The suit took a step. Then Stone C got confused because Stone A moved slightly faster than Stone B. The suit tried to correct, overcompensated, and fell over. It crashed into his workbench and destroyed a week's worth of alchemy supplies.

  "It's a dead end," Lloyd admitted. His voice was hollow.

  He sat up and looked at the wreckage. The Aegis was face-down on the floor. It looked like a drunk knight who had passed out.

  "The latency is too high," Lloyd analyzed. "The signal between the stones is too slow. By the time the 'balance' command reaches the legs, the suit has already fallen. In a real fight, a millisecond is the difference between life and death. If I lag, I die."

  He had hit the wall. The hard limit of this world's technology. He could build the mechanical parts because physics was the same. Gears were gears. Hydraulics were hydraulics. But computing? That was different.

  "I need a microprocessor," Lloyd said. "I need silicon chips. I need transistors. I don't have any of that. I have magic rocks that get confused if I ask them to chew gum and walk at the same time."

  He felt a deep, crushing frustration. He had the vision. He knew exactly what the Aegis could be. He could see it in his mind—flying through the air, firing beams of light, tanking demon fire. It was so close, yet infinitely far away.

  "I'm trying to build a jet with sticks and stones," he muttered.

  He stood up and walked over to the fallen suit. He patted its cold metal shoulder.

  "It's not your fault, buddy," Lloyd said. "You're just... empty."

  He had a powerful body. A fighting machine capable of tearing through stone walls. But without a brain to coordinate its movements, it was just a statue. A very heavy, very expensive statue.

  "Maybe I should just wear it as heavy armor?" Lloyd wondered. "Forget the powered movement. Just use my own strength?"

  Chapter : 1342

  He tried to lift the arm of the suit. It weighed a ton. Even with his reinforced body, moving this much metal without assist-servos would be exhausting. He would be slow. He would be a turtle. A turtle was safe, but a turtle couldn't fight Beelzebub.

  "No," Lloyd rejected the idea. "Speed is life. If I'm slow, I'm a target."

  He needed the powered assist. He needed the computer to manage the micro-adjustments.

  He slumped against the suit. He was defeated. For now.

  "There has to be a way," he whispered. "There is always a way. I'm just not seeing it yet."

  He thought about his other assets. His spirits. His void powers. His farm. Was there anything there?

  "Echo," he thought. "My doppelganger. It can follow commands. It has a semi-sentient mind."

  He paused. Could he put Echo inside the suit? Let the spirit act as the software?

  "No," he realized. "Echo mimics me. It doesn't know how to run a hydraulic system. It would just try to move the metal like it was flesh. It would strip the gears."

  Besides, Echo wasn't always available. If he ran out of mana, the suit would shut down. He needed an independent system.

  He looked at the scattered Lilith Stones. They twinkled innocently.

  "You guys are really disappointing," Lloyd told them.

  He gathered the stones and put them back in their velvet box. He cleaned up the broken glass. He lifted the Aegis upright and locked it into its stand.

  The project was stalled. It wasn't cancelled. He refused to cancel it. But he couldn't move forward until he solved the brain problem.

  "I need a new material," Lloyd concluded. "Or a new method. Or a miracle."

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He turned off the lights in the workshop. The Aegis stood in the darkness, a silent sentinel. It was a promise of power that he couldn't yet keep.

  Lloyd walked out of the workshop and into the cool night air. He felt the weight of his failure. But he also felt a strange resolve.

  "I'll find it," he promised himself. "I don't know where, and I don't know when. But I will find the brain for that suit. And when I do... the world better watch out."

  He walked back to his room. He needed sleep. Tomorrow, he had to be a professor. He had to be a lord. He had to be a spy leader. But tonight, he was just a frustrated engineer who couldn't get his robot to work. And that was the most annoying feeling in the world.

  Lloyd sat in his room, staring at the wall. He was in a bad mood. Actually, "bad mood" was an understatement. He was frustrated, annoyed, and incredibly tired of looking at rocks. For weeks, he had been trying to make the Aegis suit work. He had the body. He had the weapons. He had the cool metal plating that made him look like a knight from the future. But he didn't have a brain.

  The Lilith Stones were useless. They were like trying to run a kingdom with a single chicken. You could tell the chicken to peck, and it would peck. But if you told the chicken to peck, walk, and balance the budget at the same time, the chicken would just explode. And that is exactly what his expensive stones had been doing. Exploding.

  "I need a better rock," Lloyd muttered to himself. "Or a miracle. A miracle would be cheaper."

  He stood up and paced around the room. He needed advice. But who could he talk to? His father, the Arch Duke, would just tell him to hit the problem with a sword until it went away. His friends were geniuses, but they were alchemists, not computer engineers. He needed someone who knew about old, weird magic. He needed someone who knew the history of things that shouldn't exist.

  He needed his mother.

  Duchess Milody was usually in her private garden or reading books that were older than the castle itself. Lloyd found her in her solar, a room filled with light and plants. She looked calm. Lloyd did not look calm. He looked like a man who had been fighting with a math problem and lost.

  "Mother," Lloyd said, walking in. "I have a problem. A big, expensive, stupid problem."

  Milody looked up from her book. She smiled gently. "Hello, Lloyd. You look terrible. Have you been sleeping?"

  Chapter : 1343

  "Sleep is for people whose inventions actually work," Lloyd said, sitting down heavily in a chair opposite her. "I am trying to build something. Something important. But I am stuck."

  He explained the situation. He didn't use technical words like "central processing unit" or "multi-threaded logic" because that would confuse her. Instead, he used simple terms. He told her he built a suit of armor that could move on its own, but it was too dumb to walk and fight at the same time. He told her the stones he was using were too simple. He needed a core that could think. He needed a core that could handle a thousand commands at once without melting.

  Milody listened quietly. She didn't interrupt. When he was finished, she closed her book and looked out the window.

  "You are trying to give life to metal," she said softly. "That is a dangerous path, Lloyd. But it is not a new one."

  Lloyd blinked. "Wait. You mean someone has done this before? I thought I was being revolutionary."

  "Not exactly like you," Milody corrected. " But the concept of a 'thinking machine' is old. Very old. There are legends in the Austin family records. Stories that go back to the Age of Gods."

  Lloyd leaned forward. "Legends? I love legends. Especially legends that solve my engineering problems."

  "Have you heard of the Golem Heart of Anubis?" she asked.

  "No," Lloyd said. "Sounds ominous. Is it cursed? Please tell me it's not cursed. I have enough curses in my life."

  "It is not cursed," Milody said, though she didn't sound entirely sure. "It is an artifact. The legends say it was created by a master craftsman hundreds of years ago. He wanted to build a guardian that never slept and never tired. But he faced the same problem as you. Magic could animate stone, but it could not give it judgment. Golems are stupid. They follow orders, but they cannot adapt."

  "Exactly!" Lloyd exclaimed. "That is my problem. My suit is stupid. If I tell it to walk, it walks into a wall because I didn't tell it to stop."

  "The craftsman created the Heart," Milody continued. "It is a crystal sphere, inscribed with runes that are lost to modern magic. The legends say the Heart has a will of its own. It can learn. It can react. It can think. It does not just follow commands; it understands the intent behind them."

  Lloyd felt a shiver go down his spine. That was it. That was exactly what he needed. An adaptive AI core. A learning computer made of magic.

  "That sounds perfect," Lloyd said. "Too perfect. Where is it? Is it lost in a dungeon? Is it at the bottom of the ocean? Do I have to fight a dragon for it?"

  Milody smiled. "No. It is not lost. It is quite famous, actually. But nobody knows what it really is. To most people, it is just a very pretty, very useless antique."

  "Where?" Lloyd demanded.

  "The City of Ramos," Milody said. "In the Military Museum. It sits on a pedestal in the Hall of Ancients. People look at it, admire the carving, and move on. They think it is a decorative orb. They do not know it is the brain of a human."

  Lloyd sat back, his mind racing. Ramos. That wasn't too far. It was a neutral city, known for its scholars and its history.

  "A museum," Lloyd said, a grin spreading across his face. "It's sitting in a museum. That is hilarious. The ultimate weapon is being used as a paperweight."

  "It is listed as a 'Non-Functional Relic'," Milody added. "Many mages have tried to activate it over the centuries. None succeeded. They poured mana into it, and nothing happened. So they assumed it was broken."

  "They didn't know the password," Lloyd said, tapping his temple. "Or they didn't know how to interface with it. But I have the System. I have the All-Seeing Eye. If anyone can turn it on, it's me."

  "Be careful, Lloyd," Milody warned. "Artifacts with a 'will of their own' can be tricky. They might not want to help you."

  "I can be very persuasive," Lloyd said. "I'll buy it flowers. I'll take it to dinner. I just need that Heart, mother. If I have that, the Aegis will work. And if the Aegis works, I can survive anything."

  Chapter : 1344

  Milody looked at her son. She saw the fear hidden deep in his eyes, the fear of the enemies coming for them. She knew he wasn't building this suit for fun. He was building it to stay alive.

  "Then go," she said. "Go to Ramos. Find the Heart. But do not steal it, Lloyd. We are a noble house. We do not steal from museums."

  "Borrow," Lloyd corrected. "I will permanently borrow it. Or buy it. I have a lot of money now. I can probably buy the whole museum."

  He stood up and kissed his mother on the cheek. "Thank you. You are the best librarian in the world."

  "I am a Duchess," she corrected him with a smile. "Now go. Before you change your mind."

  Lloyd left the solar, his step light. The despair was gone. He had a target. He had a location. He had a solution. The technological dead end was over. The road to the future went through a museum in Ramos. And Lloyd was going to be the first visitor in line.

  Lloyd didn't rush straight to the stables. He was excited, yes, but he was also a careful man. A reckless man ran into a dungeon without a torch. A careful man went to the library first to read the map.

  He headed to the Austin family archives. It was a dusty, quiet place filled with the smell of old paper and history. He loved it. It was much safer than a battlefield.

  He spent hours searching through the records his mother had mentioned. He needed to be sure. He didn't want to travel all the way to Ramos only to find out the "Golem Heart" was actually just a petrified melon.

  He found the text in a crumbling leather book. The pages were yellow and brittle. The handwriting was spidery and hard to read.

  The Heart of Anubis, the text read. Forged in the fires of the Star-Fall. A core that mimics the mind of man. It perceives. It calculates. It commands. It was the center of the Guardian of the Sands, a giant of stone that defended the old kingdoms.

  "Guardian of the Sands," Lloyd whispered. "So it ran a giant robot before. That's good. That means it has experience."

  He read on. The text described how the Guardian was destroyed in a great war, but the Heart remained intact. It was indestructible. It was passed down through kings and warlords, none of whom could make it work. Eventually, it ended up in Ramos, a curiosity for tourists.

  "It perceives and calculates," Lloyd noted. "That's exactly what I need. Perception for the sensors. Calculation for the movement. It's a magic CPU."

  He closed the book. The confirmation gave him a surge of confidence. This wasn't a wild goose chase. This was a recovery mission.

  He started planning the trip in his head. Ramos was a city of stone and iron, located in the mountainous region to the west. It was independent, governed by a council of retired generals and scholars. It was a place where history was respected more than gold.

  "Buying it might be hard," Lloyd thought. "Scholars are stubborn. They hate selling history. They prefer to keep it in glass boxes where it gathers dust."

  He would need a cover story. He couldn't just walk in and say, "Hello, I am building a suit of power armor to fight a demon lord, please give me your best artifact." That would raise too many questions.

  "I'll go as a scholar," Lloyd decided. "A researcher. I'm researching... ancient magical conduits. Yes. That sounds boring enough to be true."

  He walked out of the library and headed towards his room. He needed to pack. But more importantly, he needed to figure out the logistics.

  He couldn't take his whole team. This was a personal project. The Aegis was his secret. If the King knew he was building a weapon that could rival an army, things would get complicated politically. If the enemy knew, they would try to destroy it before it was finished.

  "I'll go alone," Lloyd decided. "Or maybe with Ken. Ken is good at carrying heavy things. And he doesn't ask questions about why I'm staring at a rock for three hours."

  He reached his room and pulled out a map of the continent. He traced the route to Ramos. It was a week's journey by carriage. Maybe four days on a fast horse.