Chương 227: Chapter : 227

"That is not the point!" Naomi shouted. Her grip on his collar tightened.

"You cannot just walk into a Royal Prince's private collection and take things! That is a crime, Ken! A serious, punishable crime!" Her voice cracked slightly on the last word. It was not just anger. It was fear. Fear for him. Fear of what could have happened if he had been caught. Fear of what might still happen if the theft was discovered. Ken looked at her. For just a moment, his lazy, goofy expression softened into something else. Something quieter. Something that looked almost like gratitude.

"I know," he said softly.

"But Luna needs this. I had to try." Naomi stared at him. Her hands were still gripping his collar, but she had stopped shaking him. Her green eyes searched his face, looking for the joke, the punchline, the silly remark that would ruin the moment. It did not come. She let go of his collar. She stepped back. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The jungle air was thick and wet in her lungs, but it steadied her.

"If you ever steal from royalty again without telling me first," Naomi said, her voice low and firm, "I will end you myself."

"Deal," Ken said. He straightened his muddy jacket with as much dignity as he could muster, which was not very much. Mud dripped from his sleeve onto the ground. He did not seem to notice or care. Iris stepped forward. She looked at Ken with a mixture of disbelief and grudging respect.

"You slipped into a Royal Prince's private library and stole a book without anyone noticing?"

"It was not that hard," Ken said, waving his hand dismissively.

"The security guard was asleep. The Vice-Captain was busy. The engineers were distracted. It was basically an open invitation."

"It was not an invitation," Sayma said from behind her glasses.

"It was a restricted area with three locks and a security ward."

"Three very easy locks," Ken corrected.

"And the ward was more of a suggestion, really." Iris pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I am not going to ask any more questions about this. I am just going to accept that we have a map and move on before my brain processes the full implications of what you just did." Sayma had already taken the journal from Ken's hands and was studying the map with intense, hungry focus. Her trained eyes traced the routes and landmarks, cross-referencing them with the data from Hephaestus's encyclopedia.

Her finger moved along a dotted line that wound through the jungle, past a river bend, over a ridge, and down into a valley.

"This is authentic," Sayma announced, pushing her glasses up. Her voice was full of quiet, relieved excitement.

"The cartography matches. Someone explored this jungle thoroughly and documented the Dimitri tribe's location. The weeping waterfall is marked. The path is drawn." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. She turned a page and found more handwritten notes.

"The journal also contains observations about the tribe's movement patterns. They stay near the waterfall during the dry season and move to higher ground during the rains. If this is accurate, they should be near the waterfall right now."

"How far?" Iris asked immediately. Sayma calculated quickly, her finger measuring distances on the map.

"A few miles east. If the map is accurate and the terrain matches, we could be there by nightfall." The weight that had been pressing down on the entire team seemed to lift just slightly. Laxmi straightened up from her defeated slump. Zinia's shoulders loosened. Even Ira's blank expression seemed a fraction less grim. They had a real direction now. A real destination. A real chance. Iris looked at the map, then at Ken.

"We would not have known where to look without this," she said quietly. Ken shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah, well. I am good at finding things. Especially things that are not mine." Naomi shot him a look, but there was no real anger in it anymore. Just exasperation. And something warm underneath it that she would never, ever admit to out loud.

"Move out," Iris commanded.

"We follow the map." The team pushed forward into the jungle with renewed energy. The stolen map led them through a narrow gap between two massive boulders, down a slope covered in slippery moss, and along the bank of a fast-moving stream that the map labeled as the Serpent's Spine Creek. The path was still difficult. The mud still sucked at their boots and the vines still grabbed at their arms. But now there was a purpose behind every step. Now there was a reason to keep pushing through the misery.

The stolen map proved surprisingly accurate. The Serpent's Spine Creek appeared right where the map said it would be. The narrow gap between two boulders was exactly as drawn. For the first time all day, the jungle was not fighting them. It was leading them somewhere. Ken walked near the back of the group, his hands in his pockets, his sleepy eyes scanning the trees. He was humming a little tune to himself, something off-key and annoying that made Naomi's eye twitch every time she heard it.

"Could you please stop humming?" Naomi asked, her patience hanging by a thread.

"I could," Ken said.

"But then the jungle would be too quiet and scary. My humming is a public service. I am providing ambiance."

"Your ambiance is terrible."

"My ambiance is unique. There is a difference." Naomi sighed and walked faster, putting distance between herself and the terrible hummer. But the corner of her mouth twitched, just barely. It was not a smile. It was definitely not a smile. It was just a twitch. Nothing more. A small, satisfied smile played on his lips. It was hidden quickly whenever anyone looked his way, but it was there. The stolen book had done exactly what he needed it to do. And nobody had asked the most important question.

Nobody had asked how he had known exactly which book to steal. Nobody had asked why he had targeted that specific journal out of hundreds in Hephaestus's private library. Nobody had asked how a lazy, sleepy commoner had slipped past a Vice-Captain's security undetected. That was fine. Ken Eliot did not need people to ask questions. He just needed them to follow the map. And somewhere behind them, in a quiet bedroom in the capital, Luna's blue veins pulsed steadily under the golden light of Dr.

Chiha's fading suppression spell. The clock was ticking. Seven days. Not one more.

Deep in the heart of the Silverleaf Jungle, far from where the 13th Unit trudged through mud and vines, there was a place where the trees did not grow. A clearing had been carved out of the ancient forest, not by the slow work of nature, but by the violent hand of dark magic. The ground was scorched black. The tree stumps around the edges were still smoking, their sap hissing as it boiled away into nothing.