Chapter : 1373

Suddenly, the door swung open. A tiny, withered old man stood there. He was barely five feet tall, with a beard that dragged on the floor and eyes that looked like polished obsidian. He was holding a broom like a spear.

"No!" the old man shouted. "I don't want any! Go away!"

"We aren't selling anything," Lloyd said, putting on his best 'trustworthy doctor' smile. "We are seekers of knowledge."

"Seekers of nonsense!" the old man spat. "Last week it was a man selling magic beans. The week before that, a woman selling insurance for dragon attacks. I have no gold! I have no beans! I have a broom!"

"We don't want gold," Mina stepped forward. She bowed respectfully. "Elder Corin. We have come to ask about Anubis. And the Golem Heart."

The old man froze. The hand holding the broom trembled. The irritation in his eyes vanished, replaced by a deep, ancient fear. He looked at Mina, then at Lloyd. He sniffed the air, as if smelling their intentions.

"Anubis," he whispered. The name sounded like a curse on his lips. "Why do you speak that name? It is a dead name. A buried name."

"Because someone dug it up," Lloyd said grimly. "And they are trying to wake up the dead."

The old man stared at Lloyd for a long, uncomfortable minute. Then, he sighed. It was a sound like wind blowing through dry leaves. He stepped back and lowered the broom.

"Come in," he croaked. "But touch nothing. If you break my teacup, I will curse your cows."

"I don't own any cows," Lloyd said, stepping inside. "But I will be careful."

The inside of the hut was a chaotic museum of scrolls, gears, and dried plants. It looked like the workshop of a genius who had given up on organizing fifty years ago. Elder Corin shuffled to a small stove and poured three cups of tea.

"You saw it," Corin said. He didn't ask. He stated it. "You saw the purple light in the sky."

"We did," Lloyd confirmed. "Lord Wilfred. He found the blueprints. He stole the Heart. He's building a god."

Corin let out a harsh, barking laugh. "A god? No. He is building a tomb. A walking tomb."

The old man sat down on a rickety stool. He looked at the steam rising from his tea. "You think you know the story. The legend. Anubis the great inventor. The man who wanted to protect the world."

"That's what the history books say," Mina said.

"History books are written by liars and idiots," Corin snapped. "Anubis was not trying to protect the world. He was trying to save one person. His daughter."

Lloyd sat up straighter. "His daughter?"

"She was dying," Corin said, his voice drifting back into the past. "A sickness of the blood. No magic could cure her. No medicine could save her. Anubis... he went mad with grief. He refused to let her go. He believed that if the body was weak, he simply needed to build a better one. A perfect, immortal vessel."

Lloyd looked at Mina. This was not a military project. It was a tragedy.

"The Golem Heart," Corin continued, "was not a weapon processor. It was a soul anchor. He wanted to transfer her consciousness into the stone. He wanted to give her a body of diamond and steel so she would never feel pain again."

"Did it work?" Mina asked softly.

"He never got the chance to finish," Corin said. "The government found out. The pre-Bethelham warlords. They didn't see a father trying to save a child. They saw a giant, indestructible soldier. They saw a weapon that didn't need to eat or sleep. They raided his lab. They stole his research. They killed him."

Lloyd felt a cold knot in his stomach. "And then?"

"And then," Corin whispered, "they built the Five."

The hut seemed to grow colder as Elder Corin spoke. The fire in the hearth crackled, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like mechanical monsters on the walls.

"The Five," Lloyd repeated. "Five golems?"

"Five apocalypses," Corin corrected. "The warlords... they were arrogant. They thought they understood Anubis's design. They built five colossal bodies. Mountains of iron and rune-carved stone. They installed the Hearts. But they had a problem. The Hearts needed a power source. A massive amount of energy to animate that much dead weight."

"Aethel-Quartz," Lloyd said. "The Whispering Crystal."

Corin nodded slowly. "Yes. But quartz is just a rock. It amplifies. It does not generate. You need an input. You need fuel."

Chapter : 1374

He looked at Lloyd with eyes that had seen too much horror. "Do you know why Anubis chose Aethel-Quartz? Because it resonates with the frequency of the soul. It is psycho-reactive. It bridges the gap between matter and spirit."

"So," Lloyd reasoned, "to power the golems, they needed... mana?"

"No," Corin said. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Life force. Pure, raw life force."

Mina gasped. She covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh gods."

"The warlords figured it out," Corin said grimly. "They realized the golems wouldn't move with simple magic stones. They were too hungry. So, they used the quartz as a siphon. A vacuum."

He gestured with his gnarled hands. "When they activated the Five, the quartz didn't just hum. It screamed. It pulled. It drained the life from everything around it. The grass died. The trees withered. And the people..."

Lloyd felt a chill run down his spine. It wasn't just a laser. It was a life-eater.

"The people who operated the golems died first," Corin said. "Turned into husks in seconds. But the machines... they woke up. They didn't have the consciousness of Anubis's daughter. They were empty. They were hungry. And they were programmed for war."

"What happened?" Lloyd asked, though he dreaded the answer.

"They marched," Corin said. "They marched across the plains. And everywhere they went, the quartz sucked the life out of the land to keep the engines running. They were self-sustaining storms of death. They didn't just step on you. They drank you."

"Half a million," Corin whispered. "That is the number. Half a million people died before the energy overload caused the cores to crack. The golems consumed so much life they burned themselves out. They collapsed. The warlords were executed. The technology was banned. Buried. Erased."

Lloyd sat back, his mind reeling. Wilfred wasn't building a tank. He was building a vampire. A mechanical vampire the size of a skyscraper.

"Wilfred doesn't know," Lloyd said. "Or maybe he does. He's hoarding the quartz. He thinks it's just fuel. He doesn't realize the fuel is... us."

"He is a fool," Corin spat. "A greedy, arrogant fool playing with the fire of the gods. If he activates that machine fully, if he installs the Heart and feeds it enough quartz... he won't control it. It will eat him. And then it will eat Ramos. And then it will keep eating until there is nothing left but dust."

"The beam we saw," Mina said, her voice trembling. "The purple light. Was that...?"

"Concentrated entropy," Corin said. "It was projecting the draining field. Vaporizing matter by extracting the binding energy of existence. It is an abomination."

Lloyd stood up. He couldn't sit anymore. The scale of the threat had just multiplied by a thousand.

"We have to stop him," Lloyd said. "We can't just sabotage it. We have to obliterate it. We have to make sure not a single piece of that quartz is left."

"You cannot fight it," Corin said, shaking his head. "The Golem is immune to magic. It eats magic. It is immune to physical damage. It heals by draining the earth. You are one man. You are an ant fighting a volcano."

"I am a very stubborn ant," Lloyd said. "And I have a sledgehammer."

He looked at the old sage. "Thank you, Elder. You have given us the truth. Now we know what we are fighting."

Corin looked at him with pity. "You are walking into a grave, boy. Anubis died of a broken heart. You will die of a stopped one."

"Maybe," Lloyd said. He adjusted his scarf. "But I have a really good health plan."

He turned to Mina. "We're leaving. We have a lot of planning to do. And I need to figure out how to kill a vampire robot."

Mina stood up, bowing deeply to the sage. "Thank you, Elder. We will do our best to ensure the tragedy is not repeated."

"Go," Corin waved his hand. "Go before I change my mind and hit you with the broom. Young people. Always wanting to save the world. They never ask if the world wants to be saved."

Lloyd and Mina left the hut. The walk down the mountain was silent. The wind howled around them, but Lloyd didn't feel the cold. He only felt the weight of the truth.

Half a million dead. That was the legacy of the Golem Heart. And Wilfred, in his arrogance, was about to open the door to the slaughterhouse again.

"Lloyd," Mina said softly as they reached the bottom. "Can we stop it? Really?"