“Your Grace! Please — just once… just drive it in once!”
Crash—. Amid the roar of heavy rain lashing the water’s surface, Elian’s desperate cry rang out loud and clear. Calix’s eyes went wide.
“…What?”
Right now? The dam is on the verge of bursting?
Before him, Elian’s posture was strange. He was flat on his stomach with his back to the cracked section of the dam, hips raised high, looking back over his shoulder with a desperate expression. With no idea what was running through the Grand Duke’s mind, Elian — frantic and beside himself — screamed again.
“Hurry and drive this stake in! At this rate the dam is going to collapse! Into the hole — drive it in!”
“….”
I was the insane one.
Only then understanding, Calix looked at the black iron stake Elian was clutching to his chest. And at the crack below it, where water was seeping through. He couldn’t believe what he had been imagining. His ears had gone red — but thankfully, the pouring rain hid his shame.
“…Get back! You’ll get hurt!”
“No! I need to hold it in place physically — I have to stay and grip it! Just strike it from above while I’m like this!”
Without someone holding it in position, the angle simply wouldn’t work. In the end there was only one choice.
Calix pressed himself tightly against Elian’s back. With one arm he wrapped firmly around Elian’s waist where he gripped the stake, and with the other he gathered a concentrated burst of blue aura into his fist. The situation was undeniably serious — but the position was… exactly the kind that would invite misunderstanding from anyone watching.
“Here goes! There’ll be an impact — hold on!”
CRACK—!
The moment Calix’s Mana-charged fist slammed into the head of the stake, a tremendous shockwave tore through it and reverberated through every inch of Elian’s body.
“Hngh—!”
Elian’s head snapped back and a moan tore out of him. Beyond the simple force of the impact, his abdomen and thighs pressed against the stake, along with his entire lower body where the vibrations ran through, buzzed and jolted with an electric sensation. But there was no time to stop.
“More! Drive it in deeper!”
Elian gasped out the words. The stake was only halfway in.
“Hold on!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Calix drove his fist down without pause. Each time, Elian’s body shook helplessly within Calix’s hold.
“Ah, hngh! Your Grace—!”
Their rain-soaked bodies created friction against each other. Calix’s firm thighs were bracing Elian’s hips, so with every impact came an unexpected and rather compromising grinding that neither of them had planned for.
“Hnn, Your Grace… just a little more, deeper—!”
Elian let out sounds that were some desperate mixture of pain, bewildering pleasure, and sheer terror that the dam might collapse around them.
“Ha, Elian…. Still not enough?”
Calix rasped breathlessly against Elian’s ear. He was so focused on sealing the breach that he hadn’t even noticed his own front pressing against Elian’s backside.
“This is the last one! All the way… drive it all the way in!”
“If that’s what you want!”
CRACK—! BOOM—!
With Calix’s final strike, the stake drove deep into the bedrock. At the same moment, the crack in the dam sealed itself completely with a pulse of Mana energy.
Ding!
[Emergency repair successful!]
And then — as if it had all been a lie, the rain stopped.
The dark clouds parted, and sunlight poured down over the completed dam.
“Ha… hah….”
Elian’s legs gave out and he sagged. Calix held him firmly from behind, keeping him upright. The two of them were a mess — soaked through with mud and rainwater, leaning into each other’s warmth and breathing ragged.
“We did it… we held it.”
Elian murmured blankly. As the adrenaline drained away, his rational mind began to come back online. And the words he had screamed moments ago began replaying themselves in his head on automatic.
More! Drive it in deeper!
Hnn, Your Grace… just a little more, deeper—!
All the way… drive it all the way in!
“….”
Elian’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato. You absolute idiot. You raving idiot! No matter how urgent the situation, telling the Grand Duke to drive it in — and while pressed back against him with your hips in the air, no less?
There’s… no recovering from this.
Elian considered throwing himself straight off that dam and becoming one with the concrete. He carefully turned his head to look back — and Calix, too, appeared to have no idea where to look, staring fixedly at the distant mountains. Sure enough, the tips of his ears were on fire.
“Waaaah—!”
“Long live the Lord! Long live the Grand Duke!”
At that moment, the laborers who had evacuated to higher ground came charging back down with a roar of cheers. They caught sight of the Lord and the Grand Duke pressed together and let out a round of rowdy whistles.
“That’s what we expect from you two! Love in the rain — scorching!”
“Did we come back down too soon? Were we interrupting?”
“Shh-shut up and — everyone get back to work! Check the site! Look for leaks, I said!”
Elian’s voice cracked as he shouted, scrambling out of Calix’s hold as fast as he could. Calix cleared his throat and pushed his wet hair back from his face. Neither of them could bring themselves to look at the other — they both spun away in opposite directions.
“…I need to dry off. Let’s go to the barracks.”
Somehow, Calix’s voice was lower and rougher than usual.
***
Inside a temporary tent set up near the construction site.
A brazier was burning, but Elian — still in his soaking clothes — was shivering uncontrollably. Having been drenched in this weather, the cold had worked all the way into his bones.
“Come here.”
Calix, who had already removed his upper layers and stood bare-chested, approached with a dry towel.
“I can do it m— ngh, ngh.”
Elian reached out, but his fingers were so stiff he couldn’t straighten them properly. Calix said nothing and sat Elian down in a chair, then began peeling off his upper garments. He quickly draped a dry towel over his shoulders and wrapped another around his wet hair.
It was a rough touch, but a careful one. He worked the moisture out of Elian’s hair with the towel, then pressed it firmly against his cold cheeks and the nape of his neck. Every time his fingertips grazed skin, Elian flinched.
“Earlier… you were quite intense.”
Calix remarked casually as he dried around Elian’s ear. Elian’s eyes wavered.
“Th-that was… the situation was so urgent. If the dam burst it would have been catastrophic, so I just put all my strength in without thinking—”
“Is that so. Your body was trembling nonstop against mine. The vibrations were rather… vivid.”
Calix’s hand swept down Elian’s back over his damp shirt.
“Next time… I’d like to confirm it properly. In a bed, not this muddy mess.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m curious whether you’d cling to me in a bed too, begging me to drive it all the way in.”
Elian’s mouth fell open.
W-wait, is he misunderstanding me? Does he think I’ve been seducing him because I want to farm points off him?
He needed to explain. To say it was a misunderstanding. That he’d just been trying to save the dam. But Calix’s red eyes were fixed on him from above, carrying a strange heat. If he said “No, that’s not it” right now, it felt like the mood would turn ice-cold in an instant.
Right — better just to let him misunderstand. I don’t… dislike it either.
Elian forced himself to rationalize it and looked away.
“…That’s something to think about later. Let’s finish up with the dam first.”
Calix let out a quiet laugh and dropped the towel over Elian’s face. To his thoroughly smitten eyes, Elian’s flustered reaction was unbearably endearing.
***
That evening.
In the village square of the Valeria Domain, a large structure had already been erected. The Mana storage tank — construction of which had begun alongside the dam. It was connected via underground pipes to the dam for the purpose of storing the Mana energy it generated.
“Residents! You no longer need to go up the mountain gathering firewood!”
Elian stood on the platform and called out. Beside him stood the village elder, chosen as the community’s representative, holding an empty mana stone canister. It was a portable container Elian had designed based on the modern butane gas canisters, modified to work with mana stones.
“Allow me to demonstrate.”
Elian pulled the lever on the tank.
Shhhh—.
With a satisfying hiss, highly concentrated Mana flowed through the pipe and filled the empty mana stone canister the elder held. The grey stone visibly flushed to a deep, glowing red in seconds.
“Oh. Is this…?”
“Yes. Take it home and slot it into your boiler. It will last more than a week even with heavy use. When it runs out, bring the empty canister back. We’ll exchange it for a new one.”
The elder received the filled canister with trembling hands. It was warm. Almost hot. With just this one canister, a full night could be spent without fear of freezing to death.
“Heavens….”
The elder clutched the canister to his chest and burst into tears. That was all the signal the gathered domain residents needed — the square erupted in cheers.
“Long live the Lord! Long live the Grand Duke!”
“We’re going to make it! We’ll survive this winter!”
Warm smoke began rising from chimneys all across the village. It was a historic moment — the energy produced by the dam was flowing out to every household through the charging station system Elian had devised.
The nights in the North had always been cold and dark. But tonight, the Valeria Domain shone brighter than the Grand Ducal castle itself.
“What do you think, Your Grace?”
Elian asked Calix, watching from the corner of the square.
“This is the beginning of the ‘civilization’ I wanted to show you.”
Calix said nothing, simply looking out at the lit-up village. The North had always been ruled through fear and obedience. But Elian had made people smile — through ingenuity and plenty. A sight that Calix had never been able to create in a lifetime of swinging his sword against monsters.
“…It’s beautiful.”
Calix’s gaze drifted from the lights of the village to the side of Elian’s face.
“The lights. And you.”
A quiet voice — but unmistakable. The domain residents who had been straining their ears toward the two of them broke into knowing smiles. Elian made a deliberate effort to pretend he hadn’t heard — but there was nothing he could do about the way his heart lurched and sank.
What on earth is this man saying? You can’t just say things like that with that face to anyone who’s listening. Anyone would get the wrong idea.
In that square, Elian was the only one getting the wrong idea.
