Was it the shock of that sudden realization?
Calix bolted upright.
“Ah!”
Caught off guard by the unexpected movement, Elian was flung backward and toppled into the water. The bath sloshed violently, spilling over onto the bathroom floor.
“Your Grace?”
Elian turned around with a bewildered look. Calix was standing outside the tub, still dripping wet. His crimson eyes were trembling intensely. His face was flushed red as he exhaled in ragged breaths. And above all else — his cock was obscenely erect, stiff enough to brush against his navel.
Why — why is he like that…?
Elian couldn’t make sense of the situation at all. Not that he could ask Calix about it directly. What would he even say?
“Your Grace, have you been pent up lately?”
Ask that and his head would be rolling off his shoulders for sure. The moment Calix’s eyes met Elian’s, he snapped his gaze away — as if the shame of being caught like this was more than he could bear.
“…Wash up alone.”
“Pardon?”
“When you’re done, go back to your room. Don’t let me see your face.”
Calix hastily pulled on only his bottoms and walked toward the bathroom door like a man being chased. Every trace of his usual arrogance and composure had vanished without a trace. Bang! The bathroom door slammed shut with a resounding crack.
“…What in the world.”
Elian stared blankly at the closed door. Just moments ago he’d been making a whole scene about bathing him, and now he storms off in a rage? What an utterly unpredictable man.
Elian let out a sigh and sank his body deep into the water. His nape was still throbbing. When he reached up to touch it, he could feel the bite mark pressed clearly into his skin.
“Honestly… the ways he finds to torment me. Is he an animal?”
Elian muttered under his breath and pulled up his System Window. Feelings were feelings — rewards were rewards.
[Settlement Complete]
― Serving a Bath (High Difficulty): 3,000 BP
― Deep Close Contact: 2,000 BP
― Grand Duke’s Arousal Bonus: 500 BP
[Total Earned: 5,500 BP]
“…Holy crap.”
Elian’s jaw dropped. Five thousand five hundred points. An all-time record. With this much, he felt like he could build a whole cement factory.
“So what if he’s a lunatic. He’s a lunatic who pays.”
His mood lifted instantly and he started humming to himself. He rinsed the remaining soap suds off his body. His heart was already racing at the thought of rushing out and splurging on construction materials with these points.
Just you wait, concrete. I’m about to drench you in top-grade curing agent.
Elian climbed out of the tub and was toweling himself off when —
Wuuung — Wuuung —!
A deafening alarm suddenly blared through his mind. It was a dissonant, skin-crawling sound — nothing like the pleasant chime of earning points.
“What? What is it now?”
Elian frantically swiped at the air. A blood-red warning window materialized before his eyes.
[EMERGENCY ALERT!]
[A precursor to a Monster Wave has been detected.]
[Grade: A]
[Estimated Arrival: 48 hours]
“…What?”
The color drained from Elian’s face. 48 hours? Two days from now? That was impossible. Monster Waves usually gave at least a week’s warning after the first signs appeared. But two days?
Elian sprinted to the window and yanked the curtain aside. The night sky beyond the bathroom window. Where the silver moon usually hung — a moon drenched in bloodred crimson floated in its place.
“What the…”
Elian cursed without thinking.
“48 hours isn’t even enough time for concrete to finish curing!”
The defense wall was barely past the skeletal frame. If a horde of ogres or trolls came charging in at this rate? Even with a Grade S Blueprint, uncured concrete would crumble like tofu.
Elian clenched his fist. He had to get back to the construction site immediately. If the memories he’d inherited were correct, a scouting party would definitely come before the Monster Wave hit.
* * *
Calix stripped off his wet clothes carelessly and sat on the edge of the bed. His heart was still beating erratically. He looked down at his lower half. What had swelled so hideously was still half-hard. The heat left across his entire body was still vividly present.
“…Ha.”
He scrubbed his face roughly with his dry hands. It was pathetic. He’d barely known the man for any length of time — a Lord who smelled of soil, no less — and he’d bitten into his nape and gotten aroused. No better than a beast. But beneath all that shame, buried at the very bottom, was a flutter he simply couldn’t deny.
He looked down at his own palm. The hand that had held Elian’s back, his waist, and his hips. Fingertips that had been ice-cold his entire life — tingling, impossibly warm.
Warm…
That simple sensation was a forbidden thing to Calix — something never permitted in all his life.
Calix Drac.
A child born of imperial blood, yet cursed instead of blessed. His excessive Mana froze his veins and chilled everything he touched.
“Come here, my dear.”
A memory from when he was five. His mother had been a beautiful, gentle woman. Like any other child, Calix had come running, wanting to be held in her arms. But the moment his small, fern-soft hand touched her cheek —
“Ah!”
His mother screamed and pushed Calix away. A vivid red frostbite mark was left clearly on her cheek.
“Oh… Calix, I’m sorry. Mother didn’t mean to…”
His mother wept and apologized, but Calix never approached her again. Little Calix understood in that moment. That he could never embrace the people he loved. That his touch was nothing but pain to others.
From then on, he was utterly alone. As adolescence passed and he grew into adulthood, many people drew near, drawn by his striking looks and power. Some were brazenly forward about wanting to share his bed. But the result was always the same.
“Hmm, ngh… You’re too cold, Your Grace. My bones are aching… I can’t do this.”
The women in his bed trembled with blue-tinged lips and pushed him away. Mouths that had whispered of love let out screams instead, and the bedroom that should have blazed with heat turned ice cold. They fled. And soon enough, rumors spread.
“The Grand Duke is a monster without blood or tears. He has no body heat.”
“I heard he’s hopeless in bed. Apparently he handles a woman like she’s a corpse.”
“Maybe he’s actually impotent? Or he has some kind of twisted fetish.”
All manner of scandal trailed after him like a shadow. Calix never explained himself. He never made excuses. He simply closed his mouth and quietly endured it all.
Better to be called a monster. If he drew near, someone got hurt. That was a truth he couldn’t bear to keep confirming — so it was less wretched to pretend he was above it all, to keep his distance as though he needed no one.
And so he isolated himself. A life spent walking alone across a snowfield that would never thaw. He had believed that to be the fate of Calix Drac. But then.
“Please, just let me hold you once!”
Some lunatic appeared. A man who came rushing at him babbling nonsense, when everyone else recoiled at the mere touch of him. A man who trembled with cold while cradled in his arms — and still refused to let go until the very end.
“I like it. It’s warm.”
The words Calix had let slip in the bathroom earlier — they had been the truth. Elian didn’t pull away. Even while receiving the full brunt of Calix’s cold, he burned all the hotter for it.
The pain disappeared when someone touched his body. The hollow in his chest was filled when he breathed in that scent.
…Was that it.
Calix gripped the bed sheets tight. What he had felt wasn’t simple lust — it was longing, something far deeper.
An obsession close to the survival instinct of a man stranded in the cold, trembling and isolated, who has finally found a fire. The possessive desire to claim, as his own, the first warmth that had never pushed him away.
“Ha…”
Calix covered his face with one hand. He had no choice but to admit it. That he had fallen for that soil-scented Lord. And fallen hard, at that.
“This is dangerous.”
The reason this feeling was dangerous wasn’t because Elian was a man. It was the fear that if he became addicted to this warmth, he would never be able to return to the solitary life he’d known before.
Just then —
Wuuung — Wuuung —!
A sharp sensation tore through the stillness of the quiet night. A dangerous signal that made every hair on his body stand on end. A warning triggered by the Grand Duke’s razor-sharp senses detecting the fluctuations of Mana drifting through the air.
“…?”
The look in Calix’s eyes shifted in an instant. The fragile inner self steeped in sentiment vanished without a trace, and the instincts of the cold-blooded ruler who protected the North came roaring awake. He shot to his feet and moved to the window. When he pulled back the curtain, a bloodred moon hung in the northern sky.
“The red moon…”
A precursor to a Monster Wave. When that moon rose, the blood of the monsters boiled — and roughly two days later, a massive invasion would begin. In other words, there were still 48 hours before the main force arrived.
But Calix’s brow didn’t ease. His sharp senses had picked up something else entirely.
It’s already started.
A rancid, putrid stench was already drifting in on the night air. Presences — quick and stealthy.
It’s coming from the walls.
The advance scouting party — sent ahead of the main force to neutralize the defensive structures. Cunning, intelligent creatures.
“Werewolves.”
They had already infiltrated the outer perimeter of the domain. His mind flashed to the Lord’s wall construction site he’d seen during the day. Mortar not yet set. Workers with no means of defense. And by now, his Lord — who would surely be horrified and already sprinting toward that very place.
That guy.
Calix swept his damp hair back. The self-loathing he’d felt just moments ago was gone. In its place was a single, clear objective.
I can’t let my furnace get destroyed.
Calix reached for his sword without hesitation. The cold king of winter began to move — to protect his one and only spring.
