Chapter : 613

His second persona, the CEO and Chief Innovator of Ferrum's Cleansing Elixirs, was a force of commercial nature. In the few hours he dedicated to his business each day, he, alongside the brilliant Mei Jing and the charismatic Tisha, managed an empire. The AURA brand was now a household name among the elite, its success an undeniable reality. But Lloyd was already looking beyond it. The plans for 'Radiance' laundry powder were finalized, and the initial, revolutionary proposal for 'Project Brine' had been fleshed out into a comprehensive business plan that had left his father, the Arch Duke, in a state of stunned, prideful silence. He was no longer just a soap-seller; he was becoming an industrial titan, his ventures poised to reshape the very economic foundations of the kingdom.

But it was his third, secret persona that was the true engine of his ascent. In the quiet, stolen hours of each day—a long afternoon, a silent night—he would retreat to his sealed study, step through the veil of reality, and become the warrior.

The Soul Farm became his true home. The Savage Brushland was his crucible.

He lived and breathed the hunt. The time-dilation effect was his greatest weapon, allowing him to compress weeks of combat experience into a single day. The initial, painful lesson of his first encounter with the boars had been seared into his memory. He never again attempted a Soul Merge. He never again put his own physical body on the front line. He became a true commander, a general directing his forces from a safe, strategic distance.

His mastery over his spirits grew exponentially. He learned to use Iffrit not just as a hammer, but as a scalpel of fire, creating precise, controlled jets of flame to herd the boars, to cut off their lines of retreat, to create walls of heat that were as much a psychological weapon as a physical one. He and Fang Fairy perfected their synergy, their minds so perfectly attuned that his thoughts became her actions without a moment's delay. Her lightning was no longer just a tool of paralysis; it was a complex web of area denial, a symphony of stuns, slows, and chain lightning that could dismantle a charge before it ever began.

His own combat role evolved as well. He became the ultimate support sniper. From a safe vantage point, his Steel Blood javelins became silent, invisible messengers of death. His skill grew to the point where he could launch three projectiles at once, each aimed at a different, vital target. He practiced using his Black Ring Eyes, not for direct, debilitating attacks, which were too draining, but for subtle, wide-area debuffs. A fleeting "Seal of Minor Disorientation" cast over an entire herd would cause a fractional delay in their reactions, a moment of confusion that was all his spirits needed to seize the advantage.

Each hunt was a brutal, exhausting, and mentally draining affair. He would spend what felt like days in the sun-scorched savanna, fighting, resting, and fighting again, pushing his mind and his power core to their absolute limits. The fatigue was a constant, gnawing presence, a deep, soul-level weariness that was the price of his accelerated growth.

But the rewards were undeniable.

His Farming Coin balance, the true currency of his power, began to climb at a dizzying rate. The passive, steady drip from his Echo's tireless work on the Slime Plains was a constant, comforting foundation. But the massive, lump-sum infusions from his own boar-hunting were the real engine of his progress. The 'Savage Cull' quest, with its 150 FC reward for every twenty boars, became his primary occupation. He completed it once, then twice, then five, then ten times.

The numbers on his internal ledger grew with a satisfying, relentless certainty. 350… 500… 650… 800…

He watched his wealth accumulate with the cold, detached satisfaction of a master investor watching his portfolio skyrocket. Every coin was a testament to his discipline, a validation of his strategy. He resisted the temptation to spend it on minor upgrades, on new skills, on temporary buffs. He had a singular, ambitious goal in mind, a target that had seemed impossibly distant just a few short weeks ago.

One evening, after a particularly grueling session in the Farm that had lasted a subjective forty-eight hours, he emerged back into his study. He felt the familiar, jarring temporal whiplash, the profound mental fatigue of two days of brutal combat crammed into the space of a single afternoon. He was drained, aching, and utterly exhausted.

Chapter : 614

He sank into the chair behind his desk, the comfortable, real-world solidity of it a welcome anchor. He closed his eyes, his mind a quiet, humming hive of post-battle analysis. He took a deep breath, and then, with a sense of grim, hard-won triumph, he checked his balance.

The numbers glowed in his mind, clear and bright and beautiful.

[Current Balance: 900 FC]

Nine hundred.

He was almost there.

Nine hundred Farming Coins. The number was a monument. It was a testament to the dozens of herds of furious, powerful boars he had slain. It was a testament to the countless hours of mental and spiritual exertion he had endured. It represented the brutal, bloody, and efficient harvest of his secret, private war. Each coin was forged in the fire of Iffrit’s rage, sharpened by the edge of Fang Fairy’s lightning, and minted by the cold, hard currency of his own indomitable will.

He sat in the deepening twilight of his study, the world outside his window painted in the soft, gentle colors of the evening, a stark, peaceful contrast to the harsh, sun-bleached violence of the world he had just left. The profound dichotomy of his existence had never been clearer. He was a being of two worlds, a man living two lives, and he was beginning to master the art of balancing them on the razor's edge of his focus.

The exhaustion was a physical presence, a heavy cloak draped over his soul. But beneath it, a new, powerful current was flowing. It was a sense of profound, unshakable confidence. Not the arrogant, brittle confidence of a young man who has known only victory, but the deep, quiet certainty of a veteran who has faced his limitations, who has been broken and has rebuilt himself stronger.

He now had a clear, sustainable, and terrifyingly efficient path to power. The cycle was perfect. His real-world ventures, the AURA empire and the nascent Project Brine, were commercial juggernauts that generated the immense wealth he needed to max out his daily System Coin conversions. Those System Coins, in turn, allowed him to purchase the critical upgrades for his core abilities—his Steel Blood, his Black Ring Eyes, the skills for his spirits.

But the true engine of his growth was the Soul Farm. It was his training ground, his resource generator, his temporal sanctuary. The Farming Coins he earned here were the key to upgrading the System itself, to unlocking new functionalities, to making the entire engine of his power more efficient.

He had become a self-sustaining ecosystem of power acquisition. Each part of his life fed and fueled the others in a perfect, continuous loop of exponential growth.

He looked at his balance again. Nine hundred. The next major upgrade to the Farming System, the details of which were still locked and hidden, cost a thousand coins. He was just one hundred short. One more successful hunt. One more 'Savage Cull' quest completed. It was so close he could taste it.

A new horizon was dawning. The initial, desperate scramble for survival, the reactive, frantic rush to accumulate power to face the ghosts of his past, was over. That had been the phase of the warrior, the soldier fighting a defensive battle from a compromised position.

Now, he was entering a new phase. The phase of the emperor.

He was no longer just reacting to threats. He was proactively building an empire of power so vast, so unassailable, that any threats would break against its walls like waves against a granite cliff. His vision expanded beyond simply surviving his reincarnated enemies. His new goal was to accumulate a level of power so absolute, so fundamentally overwhelming, that when he finally chose to confront them, it would not be a battle. It would be an execution.

This was the true gift of the Soul Farm. It hadn't just given him a place to train; it had given him a new perspective. It had given him the time and the resources to think not like a soldier trapped in a trench, but like a god planning the creation of a new world.

His world.

He stood, the weariness in his bones now feeling less like a burden and more like the satisfying ache of a hard day's work. He walked to the window and looked out at the glittering lights of the capital beginning to awaken for the night. Down there, the political games continued. The whispers and plots of nobles and kings played out in their slow, predictable rhythm. His enemies were out there, too, moving in the shadows, confident in their power, secure in the knowledge of the rules of their world.

They had no idea. They couldn't possibly comprehend the true nature of the game he was playing. While they schemed for a month, he lived for half a year. While they trained for a season, he fought a hundred battles. He was operating on a timeline they couldn't even perceive, building a fortress in a dimension they didn't know existed.

A slow, cold, and utterly confident smile touched his lips. The hunt was far from over. The real work had only just begun. But for the first time since his reincarnation, for the first time since he had been plunged into this new, dangerous, and beautiful world, Lloyd Ferrum felt something that had been a foreign concept for a very long time.

He felt inevitable.