When Elian opened his eyes, the first thing he felt was heaviness.
He thought he might be suffering from sleep paralysis and tried to roll over — but he couldn’t move at all. Something firm and cool was pressing against his back, pinning him down like a slab of iron.
“…Mmph.”
Elian groaned and forced his eyelids open. An unfamiliar ceiling. His own bedroom ceiling was spotted with dark patches of mold — but this one was finished in white silk wallpaper so pristine it almost hurt to look at.
Where am I?
Before he could even get his bearings, a low voice came from behind him.
“You’re awake.”
At the same moment, the heavy arm wrapped around his waist slowly uncoiled. Elian startled and twisted around. Calix was leaning against the headboard in a black silk robe, looking down at him.
“Y— Your Grace? Why am I in here….”
“Your room is a disaster. Dirty, freezing. Hardly suitable for a patient.”
Calix replied without any particular expression and rolled his shoulder as if working out a stiff ache.
“Now that you’re up, make yourself useful. My arm’s gone numb from holding you all night.”
Elian stared blankly down at himself. The memory came back — he’d been on the verge of collapsing from Mana Exhaustion. He hadn’t been able to move a single finger. But now his body felt light as a lie. If anything, he had more energy than usual.
Ding —!
[Notification: Mana Exhaustion fully recovered!]
[Cause: 10 hours of close contact with a high-density Mana entity.]
[BP Earned: 3,000 BP]
Good lord, 3,000 points?
The corners of Elian’s mouth curved up on their own. He’d been wiped clean after using the Emergency Curing skill yesterday — and he’d woken up rich again. The Grand Duke was truly a walking treasure chest.
“Thank you, Your Grace. You saved my life.”
Elian smiled brightly and tried to climb off the bed. But the moment his legs touched the floor, he swayed and his balance gave out completely. His Mana was restored — but his physical stamina was still completely shot.
“Whoa—?”
Just as he was about to topple over, Calix’s hand shot out and caught him by the back of the neck.
“You have no sense of caution whatsoever.”
Calix clicked his tongue and sat Elian back down on the bed. Then he pulled the silver tray resting on the nightstand toward them. A warm vegetable soup, steam curling gently from the bowl, and soft bread sat on top of it.
“A— are you going to eat that?”
Elian asked, and Calix’s brow furrowed.
“Do I look like I eat invalid food? Open your mouth.”
“What? No, I have perfectly working hands—”
“If you spill it I’ll have to change the sheets. Stop making trouble and open up.”
Calix brought a spoonful of soup to Elian’s lips. His tone brooked no argument — but the soup on the spoon had been cooled to just the right temperature, carefully enough that it wouldn’t burn the roof of his mouth. Elian hesitantly opened up.
Of all the things to happen in this life — being spoon-fed soup that the ruler of the North blew cool himself.
The taste that flooded his mouth was extraordinary. The rich flavor of fresh cream and mushrooms — nearly impossible to come by in the harsh North — wrapped around his tongue. It didn’t feel like simply filling his stomach. It felt like drinking a top-grade recovery potion.
But the bigger problem was the man sitting right in front of him. The Grand Duke — the one they said had no blood and no tears — lightly pressing his lips to the tip of the spoon to test the temperature, just in case it might burn someone’s mouth. This unfamiliar tenderness made his chest flutter before his stomach even had a chance to.
“…Why are you being so kind to me?”
Elian asked, chewing slowly. No matter how he thought about it, it didn’t add up. The great Grand Duke of the North, giving a mere slip of a Baron his arm as a pillow and hand-feeding him on top of that. Calix’s hand paused for just a moment. He fixed Elian with those red eyes.
“I thought you were dying.”
“…Pardon?”
“Yesterday, when you collapsed. I thought my heart had stopped.”
Calix’s voice was composed — but the emotion beneath it was anything but light. A life spent being rejected by his mother, treated like a monster by those he’d tried to love. He had finally found the first warmth he could actually touch — and then watched it go cold right in front of him. That terror had been more than enough to stir the trauma he’d buried and forgotten.
“So don’t die. Not without my permission.”
Calix returned to his impassive expression and pushed a piece of bread into Elian’s mouth. Elian chewed it and found himself gripped by a strange feeling. This wasn’t simply being treated like a furnace. This man — right now — was genuinely worried about him.
What… why is my heart racing.
His chest was pounding in a way he couldn’t explain — but this was no time to be wallowing in sentiment.
“…The time!”
Elian snapped to attention and checked the clock. Ten hours had passed since he’d lost consciousness. The main force was coming 48 hours after the red moon rose — which meant there were barely 30 hours left.
“Your Grace, we can’t afford to sit here like this!”
Elian threw off the blanket and got to his feet.
“We’ve only finished the foundation — the wall hasn’t even gone up a single meter yet! If we leave it like this, everyone in this domain is going to die!”
Elian staggered as he pulled on his outer clothes. The look in his eyes had shifted again — back to that of a veteran civil engineer.
“We need to build a wall ten meters high and one kilometer long within 30 hours. With conventional methods, it’s impossible.”
“Those units… they’re not from this world. Are they terms used by mages?”
The Grand Duke’s sharp question made Elian flinch, but that wasn’t what mattered right now.
“I— I developed a new unit of measurement myself. It’s called the metric system. I’ll explain it properly later. A— anyway. Formwork, pour, cure, strip… repeat that cycle and it’d take a week minimum.”
At Elian’s utterly implausible excuse, the Grand Duke thought for a brief moment before asking — turning back with a faint smile on his face. As if he already knew Elian wouldn’t be giving up.
“So? Are you going to quit?”
“No.”
Elian met his gaze and grinned right back.
“I have a way. If you’ll help me — in place of the machinery.”
* * *
Shortly after, at the construction site.
The workers couldn’t believe their eyes. The blueprint the Lord had brought out was nothing short of bizarre. Instead of stacking the formwork upward, there was only a single unit installed flat on the ground.
“My Lord, how are we supposed to finish building with just this?”
“Simple — we don’t stop. We’re going to work without rest for the next 30 hours straight.”
Elian grabbed the magical amplifier and shouted.
“This is the slip form method! Instead of stripping the formwork, we keep pouring — and as the concrete sets, we pull the formwork itself upward continuously!”
The pinnacle of modern civil engineering. A high-speed construction technique used for skyscrapers and bridge pylons. The problem was the absence of hydraulic jacks to lift the formwork — and the fact that if the concrete cured too slowly, it would collapse under its own weight. But Elian had the most powerful cheat code available to him.
“Your Grace, are you ready?”
Elian turned to Calix standing beside him. Calix had his arms crossed and wore an expression of deep dissatisfaction. Using the Grand Duke of the North as a construction crane — it was the kind of idea that would make even the Emperor blanch.
“You will be the first and last person to ever put me to work as a laborer.”
“Ahaha, but I’m compensating you generously, aren’t I? With my body.”
At Elian’s brazen reply, the corner of Calix’s mouth twitched upward.
“Let’s begin!”
At Elian’s signal, construction started. The workers shouted in unison as they poured the concrete mix into the formwork.
“Raising it!”
Calix raised his hand. Wuuung —! An enormous surge of Mana came to bear, and the wooden formwork — tens of tons of it — began to rise slowly, imperceptibly, as if levitating.
At the same time, a blue chill poured from Calix’s fingertips. That cold air cooled the concrete inside the formwork to exactly the right temperature. Forced curing by magic. Pour. Cure. Lift. These three beats fell into perfect rhythm.
“Faster! Your Grace, you’re falling behind! At this rate we’ll get aggregate separation!”
“You over there, rebar crew! Stop daydreaming and push them in one after another!”
Elian sprinted across the site, hollering at the top of his lungs. Covered in grime and drenched in sweat — he looked nothing like the quiet patient who’d been sitting in bed obediently eating his soup.
Calix regulated his Mana output and watched. The grey slurry filled the formwork — and the moment his blue chill touched it, it hardened into solid stone. Elian stood at the center of that strange, dynamic scene.
Utterly unlike the dolls he’d seen at aristocratic social gatherings — painted in perfume and fake smiles. Hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, a rough voice straining at his throat as he barked orders, cheeks smeared with grit. Raw, thrashing vitality.
That ferocity — the look in his eyes as he hurtled like a madman toward his goal — scraped against Calix’s dried-up emotions in a way he couldn’t quite name. A man audacious enough to yell “you’re falling behind” at him. And yet that very sight was… strangely captivating.
Consumed by his work, eyes blazing, leading people with complete authority. Elian wasn’t simply a fragile thing that needed protecting. He was a partner worthy of standing at his side.
Not bad at all.
Calix raised his Mana output. The formwork began climbing faster.
* * *
It was a race against time. The sun set, and the red moon rose again. The construction site, lit with torches, blazed as bright as midday. Workers took turns catching brief snatches of sleep without ever setting down their shovels, and Elian gave orders until his voice gave out.
“This is the last stretch! Put everything we’ve got left into it!”
Before anyone had realized it, the wall had risen to ten meters. A vast, smooth expanse of grey-white. A solid concrete fortress without a single seam.
“Pour it! Pour and finish with the trowel!”
The last of the concrete filled the top of the formwork. Calix made one final adjustment of his cold to drive off the remaining moisture and seal it solid.
Thud —! The formwork came to a stop at last. At the same moment, Elian dropped to the ground.
“We… we did it.”
Thirty hours of grueling battle. A miracle. The workers burst into cheers and threw their arms around each other. A solid wall now wrapped around the domain. No monster — whatever came — would breach it easily now.
But there was no time to savor the victory. The Monster Wave had begun.
