Chapter : 577

It was not a small, dry chuckle. It was a deep, genuine, and utterly unrestrained, roar of pure, unadulterated amusement. It was a sound of such surprise, of such profound, cathartic release, that it seemed to shake the very dust from the scarred stone walls. He laughed until tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes, until he had to lean against a broken pillar for support, his entire powerful frame shaking with a mirth that was as shocking as it was absolute.

Ken Park, who had been a silent, stone-faced sentinel throughout the entire duel, actually blinked. It was a small, almost invisible reaction, but for Ken, it was the emotional equivalent of a full-blown, theatrical double-take. He had never, in his twenty years of service, seen the Arch Duke laugh like this. Not once.

Lloyd watched, a mixture of embarrassment and relief washing over him. His father wasn't angry. He wasn't disappointed. He was… amused. Deeply, profoundly amused by the sheer, glorious absurdity of his son.

Finally, Roy’s laughter subsided, a wide, genuine, and completely disarming, smile still on his face. He looked at Lloyd, and the gaze was no longer that of a challenger, or a master, or even a Duke. It was the gaze of a father, looking at his strange, brilliant, and utterly, comprehensively, baffling son with a new, profound, and deeply, deeply, impressed affection.

“Salt,” Roy managed, shaking his head, another chuckle escaping him. “By the ancestors, Lloyd. Salt.” He walked over to his son, his movements relaxed, easy, the immense weight of his ducal authority seemingly lifted. He clapped Lloyd on the shoulder again, the gesture firm, familiar, a gesture of pure, undisguised pride.

“You are a paradox, my son,” Roy said, his voice still holding the warm afterglow of his laughter. “You wield the power of storms and demons. You duel with a ferocity that would make your grandfather proud. You have the mind of a master strategist, the soul of a revolutionary, and,” he grinned, “the obsessive, detail-oriented spirit of a particularly fastidious quartermaster.”

He shook his head again in wonder. “I summoned you here today to test your strength, to gauge the limits of your power. I expected a warrior. I expected a mage. I did not expect… an industrialist with a passionate grievance against impure sodium chloride.”

He sobered slightly, his expression becoming one of profound, almost reverent, respect. “You were defeated today, Lloyd. Decisively. In a contest of pure power and experience, you are not yet my equal.” He paused, then his smile returned, wider, prouder than before. “But you are not broken. Your spirit… it is unyielding. Your first thought, upon tasting defeat, was not of your own pride, not of your failure. It was of a problem. An inefficiency. A way to make our house stronger, more prosperous, even in some small, mundane way.”

He looked at Lloyd, and the final, lingering traces of his old disappointment, his old fears for his son’s inadequacy, were washed away completely, replaced by a new, unshakeable certainty.

“That, my son,” Roy Ferrum declared, his voice ringing with a conviction that was absolute, “is the true mark of a leader. Not the power to win a duel. But the vision to build an empire. Even if that empire begins… with salt.”

He clapped Lloyd on the shoulder again. “Come,” he said, his voice warm, companionable. “The lesson is over. Let us return to the house. And you,” he added, his eyes twinkling with a shared, new amusement, “can draft me a formal proposal on the complete and total revolutionary overhaul of the ducal salt procurement and refinery process. And this time, try not to break any teacups when you present it.”

Lloyd looked at his father, at the genuine warmth, the shared laughter, the absolute, undisguised pride in his eyes. And he felt a sense of victory more profound, more complete, than any simple win in the training ground could ever have been. He had not won the duel. But he had, finally, and irrevocably, won his father’s respect. And his love. The unbroken spirit, it seemed, was the only victory that truly mattered.

The training ground, scarred and silent, bore witness to the strange, almost surreal, aftermath of the duel. The air, which had been a chaotic maelstrom of elemental fury, had settled into a quiet, almost contemplative stillness, thick with the scent of ozone, molten stone, and a father’s profound, world-altering reassessment of his son. Roy Ferrum’s laughter, a sound more shocking than any of Iffrit’s fiery explosions, had faded, leaving behind a new, unfamiliar warmth that lingered between them, a bridge built from the wreckage of their battle.

Chapter : 578

Lloyd stood, his body a symphony of deep, resonant aches, his pride a bruised but strangely resilient thing. He had been comprehensively, almost contemptuously, defeated. He had thrown gods at a mountain, and the mountain had simply, calmly, refused to yield. And yet… he did not feel defeated. He felt… seen. Acknowledged. For the first time in his three lifetimes, he felt that his father had looked at him and seen not just the son, not just the heir, but the man. The paradox. The engineer. The quartermaster with a passionate grievance against impure salt.

And that, he realized with a clarity that was as sharp and clean as the salt he now craved, was a victory more profound than any simple win in a duel could ever have been.

“A proposal,” his father’s voice was a low, amused rumble, pulling him from his thoughts. Roy was looking at him with those new eyes, eyes that held not just authority, but a deep, wary, and almost excited, curiosity. “You wish to revolutionize my salt supply. In the middle of my training ground. Immediately after I have soundly thrashed you in a duel that nearly leveled my ancestral home.” He shook his head, a gesture of pure, baffled amusement. “You are truly, comprehensively, your mother’s son. She has the same infuriating, and brilliant, inability to let a single inefficiency lie.”

Lloyd allowed himself a small, weary grin. “Inefficiency is the enemy of prosperity, Father. And our current salt contract is an act of economic treason.”

“So you have said,” Roy replied dryly. “Elaborate. You spoke of… evaporation? Crystallization? These are the words of an alchemist, not a logistics manager. Convince me, Lloyd. Show me the vision behind this new, and I must say, deeply unexpected, obsession. Show me Project Brine.”

Project Brine. The name, which had just sprung, fully formed, into Lloyd’s mind, felt right. It felt solid. Practical. The perfect, mundane, and potentially revolutionary, counterpoint to the esoteric, secret fury of Project Chimera. One project to defend the house with fire and shadow. The other, to build its foundations with salt and gold.

He took a deep breath, the exhausted warrior receding, the passionate, visionary engineer stepping forward once more. He began to pace, his movements still stiff, his body still protesting, but his mind was sharp, clear, alive with the beautiful, elegant logic of his new plan.

“Father,” he began, his voice gaining strength, confidence, the tone of a professor delivering a lecture he knew would change the world. “What is salt, in its purest form? It is a crystal. A mineral. And its primary source in this world is either through the brute-force mining of rock salt deposits, a process that is costly, dangerous, and yields an impure product, as we have so painfully seen. Or,” he paused, “it is dissolved, invisibly, in the great ocean that borders our own duchy to the south.”

He stopped, turning to face his father, his eyes gleaming with the fire of a new idea. “We have been thinking of it as a rock to be mined. We should be thinking of it as a treasure to be harvested. From the water itself.”

Roy’s brow furrowed, his own sharp, strategic mind instantly grappling with the concept. “Harvesting salt from seawater? I have heard of such things. Small, coastal villages, boiling away seawater in massive iron pots over fires. A slow, costly, and incredibly inefficient process, yielding only a few pounds of crude, bitter salt for a forest’s worth of firewood. It is not a scalable model for a duchy.”

“You are correct, Father,” Lloyd conceded instantly. “Boiling is the brute-force method. Inefficient. Wasteful. But you are forgetting the single greatest, most powerful, and most wonderfully, gloriously, free source of heat in this entire world.” He gestured upwards, towards the vast, empty sky. “The sun.”

He began to sketch in the air with his hands, his movements animated, his vision sharp and clear. “Imagine it, Father. Not boiling pots, but vast, shallow ponds. Evaporation ponds. Dug into the earth of the southern salt marshes, where the land is flat, the sun is relentless, and the tides bring in an endless supply of raw material. A series of interconnected, shallow basins, lined with clay to prevent seepage.”

He described the process, the simple, beautiful, and centuries-old Earth-based technology that would be, here, a revolution. “We use a simple, windmill-driven pump—a design I can provide—to draw seawater into the first, largest pond. And then, we simply… let the sun do the work. The water evaporates, leaving the salt behind, increasing the salinity, the concentration of the brine. This more concentrated brine is then channeled into a second, smaller pond. And then a third. And a fourth.”