The reception room of Gray Castle.
—CRACKLE, CRACKLE.
The sound of firewood burning in the fireplace reached Rubia’s ears.
And when she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was—
“You’ve been kidnapped.”
“......?”
The Grand Duke of the North sat in the chair opposite her, with his bodyguard knight standing beside him.
Rubia flinched and tried to rise.
No—
She tried to.
But—
—RATTLE...!
For some reason, she could not move her body.
It did not take long for her to realize that she had been firmly bound to the chair.
But only for a moment.
Once she grasped the situation, she gave an incredulous snort.
“Hmph. You’re planning to have your way with me anyway, aren’t you? Just like in an erotic novel!”
“......”
Silence settled over the reception room.
Walter furrowed his brow, pointed at Rubia bound to the chair, and asked Lenin—
“What is this bastard talking about?”
“Who knows? Her head should not have been injured. How unfortunate.”
Walter scratched his head and quietly clicked his tongue.
It would be troublesome if her head were already damaged.
He still had plenty of uses for her.
He muttered to himself and rose from his seat.
—STEP.
Walter cracked his neck and gazed down at her.
“......”
The difference in their size, already considerable, became even more pronounced.
Rubia flinched again beneath the pressure he exuded.
Walter tilted his head.
“Hey.”
“......Yes?”
“Say that again.”
Rubia’s eyes shook violently.
There was no one to help her, and she could not move so much as a finger.
She cautiously opened her mouth.
“N-No, that was... that wasn’t what I meant....”
“It wasn’t?”
“D-Did my master put you up to this?”
Her tone had become polite before she knew it.
Walter gave a faint laugh.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because......”
That was the only explanation she could imagine.
Her voice trailed off as she answered.
After all, all she ever did was hole herself up in a corner of the Magic Tower and waste food day after day.
Perhaps her master had arranged this opportunity to force some sense into her.
But only for a moment.
—CLENCH...!
“E-Even so, I have no intention of changing my research topic.”
She clenched her fist and forced the words out.
Her thesis had already been rejected eight times.
Her master had repeatedly begged her to change that damned research topic, but her resolve remained firm.
‘I may yield on other matters, but never this.’
Even if they beat her, they would never break that resolve.
At that moment, Walter slowly extended his hand.
—SWISH....
Rubia squeezed her eyes shut.
So he truly intended to settle this through force.
But then—
A warm hand came to rest atop her head.
—PAT.
Walter stroked Rubia’s red hair and grinned.
Good.
If she was going to work with him, she needed at least this much backbone.
“Pass.”
“......Pardon?”
“I said you pass.”
And so, within the reception room of Gray Castle—
Beside the crackling light of the fireplace—
Rubia stared blankly at Walter and blinked.
***
Rubia Pale.
Born into House Pale, a minor noble family on the outskirts of the South, she was a genius among geniuses who awakened her talent for magic at an early age.
She sensed mana at only five years old and cast her first spell at six.
Her talent did not fall short even when compared with the great mage families of the royal capital.
Thanks to that talent, she became the youngest student ever admitted to the academy.
Her life afterward, however, was far from smooth.
The problem was her background.
No one could deny her talent for magic, but her origins as a mere provincial noble held her back.
At the time, the academy and the wider world of magic were dominated by a faction commonly known as the Royal Capital Faction.
The discrimination that began at the academy clung to her like a label throughout every semester.
Then, shortly before graduation, she defeated the leader of the Royal Capital Faction in a magical duel, and all the discrimination against her vanished without a trace.
‘......As if.’
After that day, the discrimination did not disappear.
It only grew worse.
After all, the leader of the Royal Capital Faction had been humiliated by some insignificant noble from an obscure province.
From that moment onward, Rubia’s path to advancement was sealed shut.
Her principal fields had originally been fire magic and magical engineering.
Accordingly, she had applied to the Red Magic Tower and had even received confirmation of a provisional appointment.
Then the appointment was abruptly canceled.
Rubia demanded an explanation, but the only answer she received was that it was due to internal circumstances.
As a result, she was assigned to the Blue Magic Tower in the North, whose field was the complete opposite of her own specialty.
Raphael knew the circumstances and pitied the situation she faced despite her talent, so he accepted her as his direct disciple.
But even with the help of a Master of the Magic Tower—
Her circumstances remained poor.
Since ancient times, the North had been a place of exile for mages who had fallen from favor and the final destination of losers cast aside in political struggles.
It might have been different at the Red Magic Tower, where fire magic was the primary discipline.
At the Blue Magic Tower, conducting research that made use of her specialty was nearly impossible.
Even so, she never abandoned her dream.
The result was eight rejected theses.
She repeatedly clashed with her master throughout the process and gradually shut herself inside her room, refusing to emerge.
That was the origin story of the ghost of the Blue Magic Tower.
And now, a man calling himself the Grand Duke of the North had suddenly kidnapped her(?) and declared that she had passed.
From Rubia’s perspective, the situation was utterly incomprehensible.
“......You truly did not come because my master asked you to?”
“That is right.”
“And you do not intend to make me change my research topic?”
“That is right. It is your research, not mine. Handle it yourself.”
“......”
My answer could not have sounded more indifferent.
Rubia stared at me in confusion.
“Then why......?”
Why had I dragged her all the way here?
I gave a faint laugh, my eyes gleaming as I looked at Rubia bound in the chair opposite me.
“You. Work on something with me.”
“......Work?”
“Yes. Bring it.”
At my command, Lenin, who had been waiting beside us, brought over a document.
I tilted my head toward it.
“Open it.”
“......”
“What are you doing? I said open it.”
Rubia looked back and forth between the document before her and me before cautiously speaking.
“Could you at least untie my hands first......?”
“Ah. Right.”
That was when I realized it.
Come to think of it, she was still tied up.
I gestured for Lenin to release her hands.
—SLIP....
Once the bindings came loose, Rubia watched us warily and slowly unfolded the document.
It was a blueprint for ‘something.’
The farther she read, the wider her pupils grew.
“You... truly intend to build this?”
Rubia looked up at me and asked.
More than anything, her voice contained an excitement she could not fully conceal.
The reason was simple.
The machine depicted in the blueprint resembled an enormous anti-aircraft cannon.
In simpler terms, it was an automatic turret powered by magic.
And it perfectly combined her two principal fields: fire magic and magical engineering.
After coming to the North, no one had shown the slightest interest in that field.
Even her own master had opposed it.
I shrugged.
“Why? Is there some reason it cannot be done?”
“N-No, but... before that, why choose me of all people......?”
Rubia’s voice trailed off as she fidgeted with both hands.
Her field of research was utterly useless in the North, where both resources and manpower were scarce.
But at that moment—
I grinned and answered with complete confidence.
“Because you are the only one.”
Rubia Pale.
The genius mage of magical engineering who would one day be known as the Iron-Blooded Empress.
That was why I had sought her out.
As everyone knew, the North was permanently on a war footing.
Even if Northmedi secured our capital, one enormous problem would remain.
The monsters and barbarians that swarmed in every spring like pollen.
‘Damn flowers—no, those fucking bastards.’
Before spring arrived—
We needed a countermeasure.
That was precisely what the anti-aircraft cannon blueprint before her was for, along with the engineer capable of building it.
“So, can you build it?”
The anti-aircraft cannon blueprint I had given her was only an imitation recreated from my memories of the past.
For Rubia, its original creator, determining its purpose and construction method should have been simple.
She hummed thoughtfully and rubbed her chin before nodding.
“......In theory, there should be no problem.”
If anything, she was astonished.
It might have been only a sketch, but it aligned so perfectly with her specialty and field of research.
She smiled brightly.
“This is wonderful. I never imagined my fields could be combined in this way.”
I smiled faintly at the sight.
‘To think the Iron-Blooded Empress once possessed such pure scholarly passion. How unexpected.’
As mentioned before, the title she had been known by during my first life before the regression was the Iron-Blooded Empress.
At that time, she had been a warmonger fanatically obsessed with weapons.
It was probably around the time the North had been completely fucked and wars began erupting throughout the kingdom.
That was when the mad ghost of the Blue Magic Tower, steeped in years of discrimination and neglect, finally entered the spotlight.
Driven by spite, she eventually approached the kingdom on her own and presented the blueprints from all her years of research.
With support from the royal capital, she then threw herself into weapon production like a madwoman.
As a result, she became one of the central figures of the war and a deranged weaponsmith obsessed with firepower.
<Firepower! Only greater firepower!>
In the past, she had repeated those words like a habit while sweeping across battlefields.
With a single click, magical shells capable of shaking the earth were fired.
Each time, she became intoxicated by the smoke pouring from the enormous gun barrel and fell into ecstasy.
Psychologists in the royal capital had even assessed that her madness was the product of violence born from the discrimination and persecution she had endured since childhood—from the academy all the way to the Blue Magic Tower.
In any case, returning to the matter at hand—
“But there is one problem.”
Rubia spoke while continuing to examine the blueprint.
“Even if we somehow solve the manpower and technical issues, the greatest problem is the materials. We do not have enough material to build a machine of this size.”
I slowly nodded.
The automatic turret’s main materials were mana ore and iron ore.
Importing that much ore, however, would require an enormous amount of capital.
Even the substantial funding received through Northmedi was nowhere near enough.
Moreover, Northmedi had only just entered production.
It would take time for it to become a stable source of revenue.
But then—
I spoke firmly to Rubia.
“You need not worry about that. It can be resolved easily enough.”
“Pardon? But the North is......”
Poor.
The word rose to the very edge of her lips.
Everyone in the world knew the North was poor.
Even a passing child would know if asked.
The Magic Tower had recently been in an uproar over the development of some strange medicine, but to the outside world, the North remained a poor and barren land.
How could I possibly resolve it?
At that moment—
I looked at Rubia without the slightest hesitation.
“That is why I intend to develop it thoroughly from the very beginning.”
“Y-Yes?!”
Rubia flinched and wrapped her arms around herself.
Why was the Grand Duke suddenly saying something like that?
A certain novel she had recently devoured while shut inside her room surfaced in her mind.
Fifty Shades of the Grand Duke of the North.
It was a novel about the secret fetishes and relationship between the Grand Duke of the North and its protagonist.
Rubia’s cheeks rapidly flushed red.
‘So the blueprint was only an excuse after all!’
Of course.
The blueprint was merely an excuse, and his true objective was her body!
Convinced, Rubia stared at the Grand Duke of the North opposite her.
Broad shoulders and deep black hair.
Beneath them, his golden eyes looked greedy yet strangely mysterious.
What an utterly lecherous Grand Duke of the North.
So he had used the blueprint as an excuse because he wanted that sort of relationship with her!
Just as her delusions accelerated—
I decisively rose from my seat.
“Then we should naturally begin with......”
“A-Are we starting from the top? Or the bottom?”
“Do not ask the obvious. Naturally, we begin from the bottom.”
“Hmm, you are more perverse than I expected......”
I pointed toward the distant snowy mountains.
“If we are going to develop a mine, naturally we must begin by digging downward.”
“......Pardon?”
“A mine. I said we are developing a mine.”
I glanced toward the snow-covered mountain range stretching beyond Gray Castle.
Its name was—
Another hidden treasure of the North.
The Ashfall Mountain Range.