My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!-Episode-842
Chapter : 1683
She was flying faster than she had ever flown before, pushing her Sovereign-level mana to dangerous limits. The platform of condensed ice beneath her boots was cracking and reforming millisecond by millisecond, struggling to maintain integrity under the sheer force of her acceleration. Below her, the landscape of the kingdom was reduced to a meaningless blur of greens and browns. She ignored the landmarks. She ignored the trade roads she had spent years securing. She ignored the delicate political boundaries of the noble houses she passed over.
Her mind was a singular, focused laser, locked onto a specific energy signature pulsing in the north.
Lloyd.
The name didn't sound like a name in her head anymore. It sounded like a curse. It sounded like the noise a bone makes when it snaps.
As she tore through the upper atmosphere, the air around her freezing into a cone of vapor, her mind replayed the last hour on an agonizing loop. Mina’s face. The way her sister’s hand had hovered protectively over her stomach. The silence that had filled the library—a silence louder than any confession.
They thought I was blind, Rosa thought, the bitterness coating her tongue like ash. They thought the Ice Queen was too cold to notice, too absorbed in her cultivation to see what was happening right under her nose.
She remembered the last few months with a clarity that made her sick. She remembered the "late nights" Lloyd spent at the manufactory. She remembered Mina’s sudden interest in industrial history. She remembered the way they would look at each other across the dinner table when they thought no one was watching—a look not of lust, but of a deep, quiet understanding. A shared world that Rosa was not invited to enter.
It wasn't just the infidelity that tore at her sanity; it was the usurpation. Mina was the sister Rosa had looked up to, the steady scholar, the wise widow. And Lloyd... Lloyd was the only man who had ever managed to thaw the permafrost around Rosa’s heart. He was her project, her partner, her husband.
She had fought devils for him. She had climbed Mount Monu for him. She had carried his broken body down cliffs while her own bones were fracturing. She had rebuilt herself from a broken spy into a Sovereign powerhouse, all so she could be strong enough to stand beside him.
And while she was doing that, while she was bleeding and fighting and training, he was finding comfort in the arms of her sister.
"You have no jurisdiction," a voice in her head whispered. It was a logical, cold voice—Lloyd’s voice.
"I am the jurisdiction!" she screamed into the roaring wind.
Her scream carried mana. It rippled outward, freezing the moisture in the clouds instantly. A localized hailstorm erupted in her wake, pelting the forests below with chunks of ice the size of fists.
She crossed the mountain range that divided the fertile southern plains from the industrial north. The air here was naturally colder, thinner. Usually, this transition brought her peace. The north was where logic prevailed, where the harshness of the elements stripped away the pretense of court life. But today, the cold gave her no comfort. It only fueled her power.
She could feel him now.
Serrum Town.
It was a jagged scar on the horizon, a sprawling grid of grey slate, black iron, and billowing smokestacks. Even from miles away, she could taste the soot in the air. It was a place of smoke and noise, a grim industrial hub where Lloyd had been overseeing the expansion of the AURA distribution lines.
It was exactly the kind of place Lloyd loved. It was ugly, functional, and efficient. It was a place where emotions were secondary to production quotas. It was his sanctuary.
He is hiding, Rosa realized, her eyes narrowing as the town rushed closer. He isn't hiding from the war. He isn't hiding from the politics. He is hiding from me.
The thought added a new layer of fuel to the engine of her rage. He knew what he had done. He knew the consequences. And instead of facing her, instead of coming to the estate to confess, he had buried himself in logistics and supply chains. He was checking lists while she was discovering that her family tree had been set on fire.
She slowed her descent, hovering a thousand feet above the town. The wind howled around her, whipping her blue dress—the dress she had worn to bring gifts to her sister—against her legs.
Chapter : 1684
She closed her eyes, expanding her sensory field. She didn't need to look for him with her eyes. She knew his soul. She knew the texture of his Void mana better than she knew the beat of her own heart. She filtered out the noise of the factories, the heat of the furnaces, the myriad weak spirit signatures of the workers and guards.
There.
In the central square. A dense, calm, powerful void. It felt like steel. It felt like fire suppressed under layers of absolute control.
He was just standing there.
He wasn't cowering. He wasn't running. He was working. The audacity of it took her breath away. He was down there, likely holding a clipboard, likely checking the purity of some ore, acting as if he hadn't just destroyed her life. As if he hadn't planted a seed in her sister's womb and then walked away to check shipping manifests.
The calmness of his aura infuriated her more than anything else. While she was tearing herself apart, while she was screaming in the sky, he was calm. He was unaffected.
"You think you can just work?" she whispered, her voice trembling with a deadly frequency. "You think you can build walls of commerce to keep me out?"
She opened her eyes. They were no longer the grey of a winter sky; they were the blue of a glacier that crushed mountains. The pupils had dilated, swallowing the iris, turning her gaze into a weapon.
She angled her trajectory downward. She didn't glide; she dropped. She cut the mana flow to the levitation runes and poured everything into propulsion. She fell like a meteor, a streak of vengeance aimed at the heart of the town.
The air screamed as she broke the sound barrier again, a thunderclap that announced the arrival of the Queen. She was coming for him. And she was bringing the winter with her.
Serrum Town was bustling with the rhythmic, metallic heartbeat of industry.
It was late afternoon, and the shift change was approaching. Carts laden with wooden crates stamped with the AURA logo rumbled over the cobblestones. The smell of sulfur, molten iron, and unwashed bodies hung thick in the air. To a nobleman from the capital, it would have been a hellscape of noise and grime. To Lloyd Ferrum, it was a symphony.
Lloyd stood in the center of the town square, a clipboard made of reinforced steel in his hand. He was dressed in simple, practical clothes—a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, dark trousers stained with grease, and sturdy dragon-leather boots. He looked less like a High Lord of the Empire and more like a foreman.
He was inspecting a shipment of star-frost ore that had just arrived from the deep mines. He picked up a chunk of the rock, turning it over in his hand. His [Black Ring Eyes] activated for a fraction of a second, analyzing the density and magical conductivity of the material.
"This batch is acceptable," Lloyd said, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of the market. "But the purity is only at eighty-five percent. The contract stated ninety."
The merchant standing beside him, a portly man named Master Garon, wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. "My Lord, the deep veins are running dry. To get the ninety percent purity, we have to dig past the frost line. It takes twice as long."
"Efficiency is the currency of this trade, Master Garon," Lloyd said, handing the rock back. He marked the clipboard with a piece of charcoal. "But time is the one resource we cannot manufacture. I will accept this batch at a ten percent discount. Use the difference to hire more excavators for the deep veins. Do not let the supply chain falter again."
"Yes, my Lord! Thank you, my Lord!" the merchant stammered, bowing repeatedly.
Lloyd handed the clipboard to a nearby assistant—a young goblin with spectacles who looked terrified to be so close to the boss. Lloyd turned away, rubbing his temples. A familiar headache was building behind his eyes, a dull throb that had been his constant companion for weeks.
He walked over to a stack of crates and leaned against them, taking a moment to breathe. He was tired. Not physically—his body, reinforced by the blood of the Titan and the agility of the Fang Fairy, could work for weeks without sleep. He was spiritually and emotionally exhausted.
He knew he was hiding.
.
!
Episode-842
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