Dawn light seeped through the gaps in the window. Elian stared up at the System Window with bleary, hollow eyes.
[Quest Complete: You Can’t Think on an Empty Stomach]
[BP Acquired: 1,200 BP]
[Breakdown]
― Contact Duration: 16 minutes
― Night Bonus (x1.5)
“…What exactly is going on here?”
Elian grumbled, staring at the empty space beside him. Last night, Calix had used him exactly like a literal heat pack. He’d walked into his room like he owned it, claimed the bed, then wrapped his arms around Elian and stayed completely still for a long while. The moment his ice-cold body had calmed down, he got up without a second thought and walked out.
Thanks to that, I nearly froze to death.
True to his title as Grand Duke of the North, the man’s entire body had been a block of ice. Every point of contact had felt like frost forming on his skin — a brutal, penetrating cold. And he’d endured that for sixteen whole minutes. It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten frostbite.
“Still… at least he paid for his keep.”
Elian smiled to himself, looking at the 1,200 Points stacked up. Every one of those Points was compensation for weathering that lethal chill with his entire body. Sure, he had no idea why the man kept doing this, and it stung his pride a little, and he was still feeling chilled to the bone — but this was more than enough to buy flour and preserved rations with some to spare.
Elian tapped the Shop tab with eager fingers. The hologram window shifted with a flourish, and a long list of items poured out.
[Food & Provisions]
― All-purpose flour, mid-grade (100kg): 50 BP
― Smoked jerky set (10kg): 80 BP
― Fresh butter and cheese: 30 BP
― Famine-resistant crop random box: 10 BP
.
.
.
A list that looked like it had gathered every food in the world stretched on endlessly.
“My god, I can buy all of this?”
Gone was the penniless lord who’d been trembling over every Point. Elian curled the corners of his lips upward and hammered the purchase button. Points drained away with every item added to his cart, but the thrill of it outweighed any sense of loss.
So this is the taste of real money — or rather, the taste of Grand Duke coin.
He hauled himself to his feet, gave his face a cursory splash of water, and headed out. What mattered right now wasn’t sleep — it was filling the stomachs of his starving residents.
* * *
“Please form a line! Orderly, everyone!”
From early morning, the domain’s square was in full commotion. The warm, nutty scent of freshly baked bread and the steam rising from hot soup gently thawed the frigid northern air. The flour and ingredients purchased in a single sweep from the System Shop were bubbling away inside great iron pots.
“Here you are. Take your time eating.”
“My lord… thank you, truly thank you…”
An old woman who had received her bread took Elian’s hands and wiped her tears. They were rough, cracked hands — but the warmth in them was real. His arm was on the verge of falling off from stirring the ladle, yet a strange elation kept the exhaustion at bay.
It was a feeling he had never known in his previous life — the life before the possession, where he had worked like a machine part until he died. The visceral sense of having saved someone’s life. The quiet pride of knowing he was needed here.
So this is why people become lords.
Right as he was savoring that pride to the fullest —
“My lord!”
A grubby-faced little girl tugged at the hem of his trousers. She had a loaf of bread nearly as big as her own face clutched tightly to her chest.
“Hm? What is it? Do you need more bread?”
“No! This is plenty! I just… wanted to tell you you’re the best!”
“Ha, is that so?”
“Yes! Long live my lord! My mom says it’s a miracle. Is our lord a mage?”
At the child’s innocent question, Elian gave her a playful wink.
“That’s right, I’m a mage. A mage who siphons the cold from a very chilly ice prince.”
“Woooow!”
The child cheered without understanding a word of it. A bright smile bloomed on Elian’s face as he ruffled her hair. It looked like a real spring had finally come to the cold, hungry Valeria Domain — for the first time in a very long while.
* * *
At that same hour. The guest chamber of the lord’s manor.
The moment Calix opened his eyes, he reached for the glass of water on the nightstand beside the bed. On any other morning, he would have already seen frost beginning to form on the surface of the glass. But today was different.
The terrible cold that had gnawed to his very marrow had vanished as if it had never existed. The Mana-laced chill that had been rampaging through his veins, threatening to freeze them solid, lay still now — quiet as a calm lake.
…Warm.
It was a sensation he had never felt once in his entire life. It had always been his normal to fall asleep in agony — as though he were standing naked in the middle of a howling snowfield — and to force his rigid, frozen body upright every single morning. But today, his body was as light as a feather. The blood flowing through his veins was warm.
The memory of last night flickered through his mind. Unable to endure the cold any longer, he had barged into the lord’s room. And the moment he touched that soft, warm body, the ice that had seized him melted away like snow in sunlight.
The instant he judged that his body had thawed enough, he got up and walked out without looking back. His business was done.
The lord had looked shaken, frozen stiff — but that was no concern of Calix’s. After all, the man had approached him wanting something too, that much was obvious. He’d either needed Calix’s connections, or had some matter requiring the Grand Duke’s military force. That much was predictable.
He’ll probably bring his request up at breakfast.
Thinking of it as a mutually transactional arrangement — each using the other — put his mind at ease.
“Sir, are you awake?”
Cedric entered and drew back the curtains.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Let’s go.”
Calix walked to the dining room with a light step. His condition was at its peak, thanks to last night’s relief. His appetite had even returned. Watching that brazen little lord hover nervously and try to get on his good side didn’t sound too bad either. However —
“…”
Calix’s brow furrowed as he stepped into the dining room. Freshly baked bread and warm soup were laid out neatly on the table. But the seat across from him was empty.
“Where is the lord?”
The maidservant attending the room startled at Calix’s low, flat voice and answered quickly.
“Ah, the lord went out to the square before dawn, sir.”
“The square?”
“Yes. He said food had appeared in the warehouse and went to distribute it to the residents himself. He hasn’t eaten anything either.”
“…Hm.”
Calix’s fingertips tapped lightly against the table. Out since before dawn? After barely sleeping last night — what with the Grand Duke invading his room?
It was a lord’s natural duty to look after his residents. A lord who physically ran himself ragged in harsh land just to keep his people fed was admirable, no question. He was clearly nothing like the incompetent, greedy nobles Calix despised.
Rationally, he understood it perfectly. But emotionally, he was in a foul mood.
I personally came all the way to the breakfast table, and he can’t even show his face — let alone come out to greet me?
Last night he’d let him come and go from his room as he pleased — and now, in the morning, he was being treated like he didn’t exist? An odd irritation settled over him.
“Kills my appetite.”
Calix set down the fork he’d just picked up and pushed back from the table.
“Sir? Your meal—”
“I’ll take a walk. Help with digestion.”
* * *
Calix left the lord’s manor and turned his feet toward the square. The scene in the streets was unlike anything he’d seen the day before. People who had been collapsing from exhaustion and hunger were moving about with energy.
“Oh — it’s the Grand Duke—!”
“Don’t make eye contact. You might freeze to death.”
As Calix passed through, the residents parted like the Red Sea, bowing their heads low. Reverence and fear. A familiar sight to Calix. He accepted their dread as a matter of course and walked on without interest.
Before long, a lively clamor reached him from ahead. Amid the crowd, Calix found a head of unusually bright beige-blond hair.
“Ha, slow down. You’ll get a stomachache.”
Elian was beaming as he flicked a crumb from the corner of a child’s mouth. Eyes that sparkled in the sunlight. A clear, unguarded smile without a single shadow in it.
Calix stopped walking. In front of him, that man was always cowering and trembling — or else rolling his eyes in calculation, or stiffened up with nerves.
Yet in front of ordinary people — in front of these residents — he smiled like that, so completely open and undefended?
Something felt strange. Calix’s world had always been winter. A winter full of nothing but silence and empty space, born from people flinching away from him. But the place where Elian stood was spring. The warmth of people, the laughter of children, and at the center of it all — a man shining like the sun.
Mixed in among them like that, he looked so utterly ordinary. So warm. So happy. As though there wasn’t the slightest gap for something like Calix to slip into.
Just last night, he’d clung to him in tears saying he just wanted to hold him once — and now he stood there wearing a perfect smile, as if he had no use for the likes of Calix at all. A sense of deprivation surged through him, sharp and unbelievable. It was a feeling he had never experienced in his life before.
“…Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped the corner of Calix’s mouth. An inexplicable spark ignited somewhere inside his chest. It was nothing like the cold of his Mana running out of control. This was a hot, twisting unease that coiled deep in his gut.
He’s smiling?
He disappeared without so much as a good morning — and now he’s over there smiling?
“That lord could use a lesson in manners.”
Calix’s eyes narrowed to a predator’s slit, locking onto its prey. He strode forward, straight toward where Elian was standing. It was the Grand Duke’s arrival — thoroughly out of place on a peaceful morning of bread distribution.
