“I need to loosen something else.”
Calix’s hand slid beneath Elian’s shirt. As those rough, thick fingers traced up along the smooth curve of his waist, a shiver ran down Elian’s spine.
“W-Your Grace? Wait. What do you mean, loosen—”
“My curiosity.”
Calix pressed his lips close to Elian’s ear and murmured low.
“After last night, I understand now. The effect is better when mucous membranes make contact. When you took me into your mouth… I felt the mana that had been tangled inside me dissolving far faster than usual.”
Isn’t that just in his head? Maybe the pleasure of release? Or maybe not? With this insane System, it might actually be true…. Either way, what does that have to do with what’s happening right now?!
The moment Elian opened his mouth to talk his way out of the situation, Calix’s lips found the gap and pressed in.
“Mmph—!”
His rebuttal was swallowed whole by a burning tongue. Between lips that now parted naturally, Calix swept across the roof of Elian’s mouth, wound his tongue all the way to its root, and mixed their saliva together. Whether it was the heat of the Ondol room or Calix’s body temperature, Elian found it harder and harder to breathe.
“Hah, ngh…”
A wet, slick sound of friction reverberated through the small earthen chamber. Calix sucked him in as though he intended to swallow Elian whole. There were moments when he pulled back to let him breathe, but their lips sealed together again before the thread of saliva between them could even break. By the time Elian’s eyes had grown hazy and unfocused, the hand that had been roaming beneath his shirt came to a stop at his chest.
“Hngh, not there…”
“It’s hard. Can you feel it?”
Calix’s thumb pressed down firmly on the stiffened nipple and began to grind against it. Every time those rough, calloused fingers crushed the sensitive peak, Elian’s spine jolted and tensed involuntarily.
“Ah, hng! Your Grace, wait— ngh!”
The stimulation was too intense. He had no choice but to press his thighs together and push against Calix’s shoulder. But he didn’t stop. He yanked Elian’s shirt buttons open as though tearing them off and exposed his chest bare.
The moment the flushed, reddened nipples met the open air, a dangerous light gleamed in Calix’s eyes. He ran his tongue once across his own lips, then bowed his head and took one into his mouth whole.
“Hngah!”
He felt the graze of sharp teeth in a light bite, and then a hot, wet tongue enveloped the entire areola.
“Hah, ngh, ah, something’s wrong, something’s wrong with me…!”
Elian’s waist trembled and arched. Calix was relentless. He flicked the nipple with the tip of his tongue, then sucked hard with his lips and left a mark. The other nipple was being tormented between his fingers — twisted and teased by his fingernails.
“Hn, ah, ah! Stop, too much, too much, ngh!”
Elian couldn’t believe the sounds coming out of his own mouth. His toes curled, and a deep, heavy heat surged from somewhere low in his abdomen. Had his nipples always been this sensitive an erogenous zone?
I’ve never felt anything like this in my past life!
Unbelievable pleasure shot up his spine and slammed into his brain. Calix’s caresses grew denser, more consuming. He dragged his tongue up Elian’s neck as though he meant to devour it, mercilessly driving him further as if savoring every ragged breath.
“Your… hah… Your Grace…?”
Elian called out to Calix with unfocused eyes. His voice was blurred — somewhere between a plea and a protest.
In that instant, Calix’s shoulders went rigid. He lifted his head and drew his wet lips away. In front of him was Elian — shirt hanging open, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes. The corners of his mouth glistened with saliva, and his chest was a mess of marks left behind by Calix.
What… have I been doing.
His grip on reason snapped back. He had been using mana stabilization as a pretext to violate someone who couldn’t resist him, by sheer force. Elian was only devoting himself to the North — to Calix. Even this act might be nothing more than an extension of duty to him. A wave of self-loathing crashed over him.
“…I’m sorry.”
Calix carefully pushed Elian back and rose abruptly to his feet.
“The mana… seems stable now. I overcorrected with the cold.”
“Your Grace?”
“Rest. I’ll head out first.”
Calix fled the Ondol room as though running away. The reed curtain flapped behind him and a gust of cold air swept in. Left alone, Elian stared blankly at the spot where Calix had gone. His heart was still pounding as though it might burst.
“Hah… hah…”
Elian looked down at his own chest with trembling eyes. His nipples, swollen and slick with saliva, still tingled even without any stimulation.
Then his gaze dropped lower. Between his legs. The front of his trousers was straining as though about to push through the fabric entirely.
“…I must be losing my mind.”
Elian drew his legs together and curled into himself. His face burned so badly he couldn’t stand it. Calix had said the mana was stable and left, but for Elian, it was anything but. If anything, he’d been set on fire.
“I’ve never been sensitive here before… why is this happening?”
Back when he was Kim Jaehyeon in the modern world, he had been out as gay and had been with quite a few men. But sex had always been a disappointment. Everyone else seemed to lose their minds over it, yet he had never once truly felt anything. He could finish, but it was nothing more than the release of physical tension — the kind of full-body, lightning-strike orgasm people talked about had always been someone else’s story.
So his expectations for sex had been low. Most of it had just been obligatory effort to satisfy his partners.
But just now was different. He’d only had his nipples touched, and yet his vision had flashed white — the way people described getting hit in the prostate for the first time.
“Is it because… my body has changed?”
He couldn’t tell whether the body he now inhabited as Elian was just exceptionally sensitive, or whether it was because the one touching him was Calix. Elian pressed his hand down over the strain in his trousers and muttered to himself.
“If it’s like this… will I even be able to go all the way?”
Being this sensitive, he’d probably finish too fast — could he even hold on long enough to fully take Calix in? It was a worry that slipped out before he could stop it. He’d seen with his own eyes last time, when it had been his mouth, just how long Calix took.
Rustle.
Just then, the faintest sound of presence came from beyond the door. But Elian, lost in his thoughts, didn’t hear it.
Outside the door, Calix stood with a hardened expression. He hadn’t actually run away. He had been overwhelmed by desire without warning and felt terrible for it — he had stepped out to cool down in the cold air and intended to go back in and apologize properly. But just as he moved to enter, Elian’s quiet murmur reached his ears.
If it’s like this… will I even be able to go all the way?
Calix’s hand stopped mid-air. The warmth that had flooded his body and heart went cold in an instant. To Calix, those words sounded like a despondent sigh — I don’t think I’ll feel anything with you even if we go that far.
So he really was just forcing himself to go along with it.
The moans Elian had let out when Calix was sucking on him. The trembling. All of it had been either performance, or nothing more than a physiological reflex. Unrelated to Elian’s true feelings or real pleasure.
To him, I’m nothing but a partner kept close because of mana.
Calix bit his lip, tasting bitterness. When he had lunged at Elian driven by desire, how conflicted must Elian have been inside. How frightened must he have been — this enormous man suddenly pressing against him, groping him, panting over him.
A surge of self-loathing and wretchedness. Calix slowly unclenched the fist he’d been holding tight.
“…”
Instead of going in to apologize, he quietly turned away. He couldn’t face Elian right now. He couldn’t even tell whether what he felt was love, or nothing more than presumptuous, overreaching greed.
Step. Step.
Calix’s heavy footsteps receded across the snow-covered courtyard. Inside the Ondol room, Elian was still struggling to cool his body down — but Calix, who knew none of that, had never looked lonelier than he did walking away.
By the time Calix stepped back inside the castle, his eyes had gone cold and still again. It was the effort of concealing the tender ache left behind in the depths of his heart.
Don’t hope for it, Calix. He is your Savior. Not your lover.
The misunderstanding was snowballing in the silence, growing larger with every passing moment.
* * *
The morning after the previous day’s commotion.
The moment Elian opened his eyes, he looked at the quest window and clenched his fist.
The goal: complete independence for the North.
The quest the System had given was clear. To achieve that, the first step was to make the Valeria Domain a successful pilot case. He’d heard that last night, Conrad and the other retainers had visited the Ondol room. The result? Needless to say — complete and utter satisfaction.
Thanks to that, he had secured a baseline of support. But to push the Valeria Domain development to 100% completion and expand those results across the entire North, he needed overwhelming, visible results.
“It has to be a dam.”
The ‘mana dam’ he had boldly promised Conrad yesterday. He couldn’t rely on the Grand Duke’s mana forever. And to supply energy to the entire North, a massive power station was needed. But turning the whole North into a construction site all at once was impossible.
Let me use my own domain — Valeria — as the model.
The Valeria Domain wasn’t far from Drachenberg, and running alongside it was the ‘Ys River,’ rich with water volume. It was frozen solid right now, but beneath that ice lay enormous water pressure lying dormant.
If he built a dam there to produce mana and turned the Valeria Domain into a warm, blazing ‘city that never goes dark’ — 24 hours a day? The nobles from other freezing domains would see it, lose their minds, and come crawling with money in hand. That much was certain.
The problem was resources. Conrad had offered to open up the storehouses, but the specialized materials needed for dam construction — waterproof cement, high-tensile rebar — were simply unavailable with this world’s current level of technology.
Which means I’ll have to buy them from the System Shop.
[Current BP: 20,540]
“Not even close.”
Building even a single dam would require at minimum tens of thousands of points. Elian stared at the point window and clicked his tongue. But he didn’t despair. Because he had, right here in the North, the most handsome and capable walking treasure of all.
