[Author Note: Hello, everyone, it’s your unworthy author here. I’ve written a total of 45 chapters (500-610) where the MC is inside the Farming System. While these chapters were written to satisfy my own grinding cravings, you can skip most of the content in these chapters and focus only on the skills the MC acquires, the monsters he defeats, and his current FC. Other than that, feel free to skim through the paragraphs. However, those who enjoy grinding chapters, you’re more than welcome to dive in! XD Just a heads-up in advance. As for my current update: I’ve drafted up to 710 chapters and outlined five arcs with summaries of future progressions. Hopefully, I can wrap up this novel within 6-7 arcs. I’m still unsure how to end it, but readers’ comments have been incredibly helpful in shaping my next major novel, "The Anime Man and Divine Children."]

  The name was a constant, low-level hum in the back of her mind, a paradox she could not solve, a puzzle she could not put down. The drab duckling. The disgraced failure from the Academy. The awkward, unimpressive heir. That was the man she had expected to find, the man she had been prepared to pity, perhaps even to mock.

  But the man she had found… he was something else entirely. A brilliant strategist who thought in terms of market saturation and psychological warfare. A surprisingly ruthless warrior who wielded a power she had never seen before. A man of hidden depths, of strange, anachronistic knowledge, of a quiet, unshakeable confidence that was utterly at odds with his public reputation. He was a paradox, an enigma, a walking, talking contradiction.

  And he was, she admitted to herself with a flicker of annoyance, utterly, completely, and infuriatingly, fascinating.

  Her thoughts were a jumble. She remembered the easy camaraderie they had shared in the makeshift studio, the way they had argued, laughed, and created together. It had been the most stimulating, most intellectually challenging, artistic experience of her entire life. He had pushed her, challenged her, forced her to see her own art, her own world, in a new, sharper, and more pragmatic, light. He had treated her not as a noblewoman to be flattered, not as a prize to be won, but as an equal. A colleague. A partner.

  She remembered the feel of his presence beside her, the quiet confidence, the unexpected humor. She remembered the way his dark eyes would gleam with a kind of predatory, intellectual delight when he was explaining one of his strange, brilliant, and deeply manipulative, marketing theories. She remembered the way he had looked at her, at her art, not with the empty, fawning praise of a courtly sycophant, but with a genuine, analytical appreciation, seeing not just the beauty, but the function, the purpose, the power within it.

  A strange, unfamiliar warmth bloomed in her chest at the memory, a feeling that was both pleasant and deeply, profoundly, unsettling. She frowned, her fingers tracing idle, meaningless patterns on the vellum. What was this feeling? This… distraction? This constant, intrusive presence of him in her thoughts? It was illogical. Inefficient. And deeply, deeply, annoying.

  He was married, for heaven’s sake. To the Ice Princess, Rosa Siddik. A woman as cold and beautiful and untouchable as the winter moon. Faria had seen them together at the Summit, a king and queen of a frozen, silent kingdom. She had seen the way the other nobles looked at Lloyd, with pity, with contempt, for being shackled to such a woman. And she had, she admitted, felt a flicker of the same.

  But now… now she saw it differently. She saw a man of immense, hidden power, of a brilliant, unconventional mind, trapped in a cold, loveless, political marriage. A dragon, chained to an iceberg. And the thought, for some strange, inexplicable reason, filled her with a new, different kind of emotion. Not pity. But a fierce, almost angry, sense of… injustice. He deserved more. He deserved a partner who could match his fire, not just reflect his light with a cold, distant sheen. He deserved…

  She stopped the thought, a flush of heat rising in her cheeks. Where had that come from? It was none of her business. His marriage, his life, it had nothing to do with her. She owed him a debt, yes. A life debt. And she had paid the first installment by painting his magnificent, vulgar, brilliant soap advertisement. The transaction was complete. Her duty was done.

  So why couldn’t she get him out of her head?

  She picked up the charcoal stick again, her grip tight, determined. She would sketch. She would focus. She would exorcise this strange, lingering ghost of a man from her thoughts. She stared at the blank vellum, her mind a determined, focused blank. And then, her hand began to move.

  She did not draw the sea. She did not draw the sky. She did not draw the graceful curve of the coastline. Her hand moved with a will of its own, the charcoal whispering across the vellum, her mind lost in a memory, in a feeling. The lines were sharp, clean, confident. The curve of a strong jaw. The intense, intelligent light in a pair of dark, amused eyes. The faint, almost invisible, smile of a man who held a universe of secrets behind a mask of quiet, unassuming competence.

  She was halfway through sketching his face before she even realized what she was doing. She gasped, her hand freezing, the charcoal stick snapping in her suddenly tight grip. She stared at the image on the paper, at the face that had been haunting her thoughts, now brought to life by her own, treacherous hand.

  “Oh, by the ancestors,” she whispered, her heart hammering in her chest, a wave of horrified, flusttered comprehension washing over her. “What… what is wrong with me?”

  It was in that moment of profound, private, and deeply, deeply, confusing self-revelation, that a new voice, gentle, warm, and laced with a familiar, maternal amusement, broke the silence of the pavilion.

  “He must be a very captivating subject, my love,” her mother, the Marquess-Consort Joynab Kruts, said softly from behind her. “To draw your attention so completely from such a beautiful day.”

  Faria yelped, jumping as if struck, frantically trying to cover the incriminating sketch with her hands. Her face, which had been pale with shock, now flushed a brilliant, furious, and utterly, comprehensively, guilty, crimson. She had been so lost in her thoughts, she hadn't even heard her mother approach. And her mother, whose eyes missed nothing, had seen everything. The distraction. The faraway look. And now, the face on the page. The face of Lloyd Ferrum. The game was up.

  The garden pavilion, which had moments before been a sanctuary of private, confused turmoil, now felt like a courtroom. The single, incriminating charcoal sketch on the easel was Exhibit A, a stark, undeniable testament to her distraction. Faria Kruts felt a hot, mortifying blush spread from her neck to the very tips of her ears. She felt like a child caught stealing honey-cakes from the kitchen, her guilt absolute, her defenses non-existent.

  Her mother, the Marquess-Consort Joynab Kruts, did not press. She did not demand an explanation. She simply moved to stand beside her daughter, her movements as fluid and graceful as a southern breeze. Joynab was a woman of quiet, formidable strength, her beauty less fiery than Faria’s, more serene, but her eyes, a warm, intelligent shade of hazel, held a depth of perception, a shrewd understanding of the world, that was as sharp and keen as any blade. She looked at the sketch on the easel—the half-finished but unmistakably recognizable face of Lloyd Ferrum—and then at her daughter’s furiously blushing, utterly flustered face. And she smiled. A slow, gentle, and deeply, profoundly, knowing smile.

  “So,” Joynab murmured, her voice a low, calm, and utterly non-judgmental hum. She picked up a fallen petal from a nearby jasmine vine, twirling it between her fingers. “The young Lord of the North. The soap-maker. The unexpected dragon. It seems he has made quite an… impression.”

  “Mother, it is not what you think!” Faria stammered, her usual fiery confidence completely deserting her, replaced by the flustered, defensive panic of a teenager. “We were merely… collaborating! On an artistic project! It was a professional arrangement! A settlement of a debt! Nothing more!” She was babbling, she knew, her protests sounding weak and unconvincing even to her own ears.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Of course, my love,” Joynab replied, her voice still impossibly, infuriatingly, calm. “A professional arrangement. Which apparently requires you to commit his every feature to memory with the devotion of a court painter creating a royal portrait.” She glanced at the sketch again, her eyes twinkling with a gentle, maternal amusement that only made Faria’s blush deepen. “The likeness is quite remarkable. You’ve captured the… intensity… in his eyes perfectly.”

  Faria let out a small, strangled groan of pure, unadulterated mortification. She wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole. She wanted to snatch the drawing, tear it into a thousand pieces, and throw it into the sea.

  “It is… a study,” she insisted weakly. “A memory exercise. To keep my skills sharp.”

  “Ah, a memory exercise,” Joynab echoed, her voice still laced with that same gentle, knowing amusement. “And does this exercise also require you to sigh dramatically every time you look at the horizon, and to pace the halls of this house like a caged lioness, your mind clearly a thousand leagues away in a certain northern capital?” She finally turned to her daughter, her expression softening, the teasing replaced by a quiet, serious understanding. “My dearest Faria,” she said, her voice a gentle balm. “I am your mother. Do you truly think I have not noticed? You have not been yourself since your return. You are distracted, restless, your heart and your mind are clearly… elsewhere. And now,” she gestured to the sketch, “it seems we have a name, and a face, for this ‘elsewhere’.”

  Faria finally slumped onto a nearby stone bench, her shoulders slumping in defeat. The pretense was useless. Her mother saw right through her. “I do not know what is wrong with me, Mother,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, filled with a genuine, miserable confusion. “He is… infuriating. Arrogant, in his own quiet way. He thinks of art as a tool for… for commerce! He is married! And yet…” She trailed off, unable to articulate the strange, compelling pull he exerted on her thoughts.

  Joynab sat beside her, taking her daughter’s hand, her touch firm, reassuring. “And yet,” she prompted gently, “he is also brilliant? Unconventional? He saved your life, and the hope of your brother. He treated you not as a pretty ornament, but as an equal, a colleague whose talent he respected and challenged. And he, a man everyone dismissed as a failure, has a fire in him, a vision, that you find… compelling.” It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.

  Faria stared at her mother, stunned. “How… how did you know all that?”

  Joynab’s smile was a masterpiece of maternal wisdom and political acumen. “My dear, your letters, while ostensibly about your progress with the painting, were filled with him. Every other sentence was ‘Lloyd says…’, ‘Lloyd believes…’, ‘Lloyd and I debated…’. You wrote more about the economics of soap branding than you did about your own brushstrokes. A mother learns to read between the lines.”

  She fell silent for a moment, her gaze drifting out towards the sea. The gentle, maternal expression faded, replaced by the cool, pragmatic assessment of the Marquess-Consort, a woman who had navigated the treacherous waters of court politics her entire life.

  “The situation is… complicated, of course,” Joynab said, her voice becoming more thoughtful, more strategic. “He is the Ferrum heir. He is married to the Siddik girl. An alliance forged by two great houses, blessed by the King himself. It is a powerful, unshakeable bond. On the surface.”

  Faria winced at the mention of Rosa. The Ice Princess. The beautiful, cold, and entirely suitable, wife. A woman she could never hope to compete with, not in terms of power, or political suitability.

  But Joynab was not finished. She turned back to her daughter, her hazel eyes sharp, analytical. “But you are forgetting the nature of the world we live in, my love. You are thinking with the heart of an artist. You must learn to think with the mind of a Marquess’s daughter.” She paused, then delivered the statement that was so brutally, shockingly, pragmatic that it took Faria’s breath away.

  “For a man like Lloyd Ferrum,” Joynab stated, her voice a calm, level assessment of political reality, “a man of his rapidly ascending power, his immense future wealth, his proven, almost supernatural, brilliance… a single wife is not a political reality. It is a starting point.” She met her daughter’s shocked, disbelieving gaze without flinching. “Polygamy, my dear, is not just a possibility for a man of his stature. It is an expectation. It is a tool. A way to forge new alliances, to consolidate power, to secure his legacy with multiple heirs from multiple powerful bloodlines.”

  She squeezed her daughter’s hand gently. “The Siddik girl is his primary wife, yes. The one who will give him his primary heir. That is a political fact, sealed by the Arch Duke and the King. It cannot be changed. But a secondary wife? A consort? A powerful, beloved partner who holds his heart, who shares his passions, who stands beside him not as a political necessity but as a chosen companion?” Her eyes held a new, calculating gleam. “That position, my dearest Faria… that position is very much… open for applications.”

  Faria stared at her mother, her mind reeling. Secondary wife? A consort? The idea was… it was scandalous. It was… it was the accepted, if rarely spoken of, reality of their world. Great lords, kings, emperors—they often took multiple wives, multiple concubines, to secure their power, to ensure their lineage. It was a practice as old as the kingdoms themselves. She had just never, not once, considered it in the context of herself.

  “You… you are suggesting that I…?” Faria stammered, the very thought making her face flush a brilliant crimson again, but this time, it was not a blush of embarrassment, but of a new, shocking, and deeply, profoundly, unsettling possibility.

  “I am suggesting,” Joynab said, her voice a low, careful, strategic murmur, “that you are the daughter of House Kruts. A house that now owes Lord Ferrum an immeasurable debt. A debt he has, as yet, refused to name a price for. I am suggesting that you are a beautiful, intelligent, and powerful young woman who has clearly, undeniably, captured the fascination, the respect, and perhaps even the affection, of the single most promising young man in this entire kingdom.”

  She stood up, walking to the edge of the pavilion, her gaze fixed on the distant, powerful horizon. “His marriage to the Siddik girl is a cage of ice. Cold. Political. Necessary. But a man of fire, a dragon like the one he is becoming… he will not be content to live in a cage of ice forever. He will seek warmth. He will seek a fire that matches his own.”

  She turned back to her stunned, speechless daughter. “I am not telling you what to do, Faria. I am merely advising you to… consider the possibilities. To understand the game as it is truly played. Our house has been powerful, yes. But an alliance with this new, ascendant House Ferrum, a personal, intimate alliance, not just a political one… it would secure our future for a thousand years.”

  Her mother’s words, so cold, so pragmatic, so utterly, shockingly, strategic, hung in the warm, jasmine-scented air of the pavilion. She had not just acknowledged Faria’s feelings; she had reframed them, transformed them from a foolish, impossible infatuation into a potential political masterstroke. She had given her daughter not a scolding, but a strategy.

  Faria was left sitting on the stone bench, her heart hammering, her mind a chaotic, brilliant, terrifying storm of new, and deeply, profoundly, dangerous, possibilities. The ghost of Lloyd Ferrum was no longer just a distraction. He was now, impossibly, a destiny.

  The Soul Farm was a world of stark, almost beautiful simplicity. To the left, the endless, serene, and now blessedly empty, Slime Plains, their impossibly green grass still bearing the faint, ghostly scorch marks of his recent, industrial-scale harvest. To the right, a dark, jagged line on the horizon, a wall of shadow and menace: the Shadowfen Forest. Lloyd stood at the crossroads of these two realities, the clean, neutral air of the Farm a welcome respite after the complex, cloying atmosphere of politics and betrayal he had left behind in the real world.

  He took a deep, centering breath. The weight of his dual life, the constant, draining performance of being Lord Ferrum and Professor Ferrum, seemed to lift from his shoulders the moment he stepped through the shimmering, translucent gate into this private dimension. Here, the rules were simple. The objectives were clear. There were no hidden motives, no veiled threats, no ghosts with his dead wife’s face. There were only monsters. And a quota.

  His recent, brutal grind on the Slime Plains had been a resounding success. He had cleared the first foundational quest, accumulated a respectable starting balance of 200 Farming Coins, and, most importantly, had discovered the staggering, game-changing secret of the Farm’s time-dilation effect. The knowledge was a potent, intoxicating drug. Every minute he spent in the real world now felt like a wasted opportunity, a moment he could have spent here, in his private temporal accelerator, grinding, training, and exponentially widening the gap between himself and his enemies.

  He had returned to his suite at the Royal Palace after the harrowing encounter with Airin and the subsequent confrontation with Princess Isabella, his mind a chaotic storm. But he had not allowed himself to dwell on it. He had eaten a simple, nourishing meal brought by a silent royal servant, had endured a few hours of fitful, dream-haunted sleep, and then, at the first hint of pre-dawn light, he had retreated here. To his true work. To the grind.

  He looked at the new quest glowing in his System interface, a clear, direct, and wonderfully straightforward, directive.

  [Foundational Quest: Goblin Suppression]

  [Objective: A tribe of feral Goblins has established a foothold in the Shadowfen Forest. Their presence is a blight on the Farm’s integrity. Eradicate all goblin encampments and eliminate their chieftain.]

  Goblins. The word itself was a welcome change from the gurgling, jiggly reality of the slimes. Goblins were a proper enemy. They were cunning, they were vicious, they used weapons and tactics. They would bleed when cut. They would scream when burned. They would provide a far more satisfying, far more engaging, challenge. And, according to the System’s internal logic, a more challenging enemy meant a greater reward. More Farming Coins per kill. A more efficient path to the 500 FC he needed for his first, crucial System Upgrade.

  “Alright, Fang Fairy,” he murmured, his voice a low, determined hum in the stillness. “The age of jelly is over. The age of the goblin begins.”

  She materialized beside him, not with a flash of light, but with a silent, fluid ripple in the air, her Transcended form a stunning, ethereal presence against the stark backdrop of the Farm. Her silver-grey hair, a river of liquid moonlight, flowed around her, and her golden eyes, now holding a profound, sentient wisdom, surveyed the dark, menacing line of the forest with a calm, analytical curiosity.

  They are a tribal, primitive species, Master, her voice was a melodic, resonant chord in his mind, a silent, perfect communication that still sent a thrill of awe through him. Their strength is in their numbers and their low cunning. They favor ambushes, pit traps, and overwhelming their prey with sheer, vicious ferocity. They are… an upgrade from the puddles, at least. There was a faint, almost imperceptible, note of dry, divine sarcasm in her tone.

  Lloyd grinned. “My thoughts exactly. More challenging. More profitable. And significantly less… sticky.” He began to walk towards the forest, his stride confident, purposeful. Fang Fairy glided silently at his side, a guardian of storm and starlight. “The plan remains the same. Efficiency is key. We do not engage in prolonged, honorable duels. We engage in swift, ruthless, and overwhelming, extermination. We are not heroes, Fang Fairy. We are harvesters.”

  A role I am beginning to find… surprisingly cathartic, Master, she replied, a flicker of what might have been amusement in her golden eyes.