The northern reaches of the continent.
The summit of the Ashfall Mountain Range, an extreme land battered year-round by blizzards sharp enough to flay the flesh.
From that place, where the whole North lay spread out beneath me, I spoke.
“Lenin.”
“......Yes.”
“The North is cold.”
I murmured softly, steeped in melancholy.
Lenin narrowed her eyes and stared at me.
“......?”
Has this man truly gone mad from overwork?
Thinking that, Lenin spoke politely.
“Lord Walter. If you are seriously ill, please tell me in advance. As you know, the North is treacherous, and it takes a long time to reach a hospital in a major city.”
“......”
I stared at her.
I was realizing this all over again now that I had regressed, but she was not normal either.
I nodded and spoke.
“Indeed. Your concern for your lord is truly commendable.”
“I am aware. In that spirit, allow me to say once more......”
“That is enough.”
Lenin bowed and stepped back.
At least she knew how to follow orders.
Leaving Lenin behind me, I looked around.
Until just moments ago, it honestly had not felt real.
But this knife-sharp wind that seemed ready to freeze my entire body at any moment, and this fucking view—
Now it finally hit me.
I really did regress.
Standing at the summit of the Ashfall Mountain Range, I spread my arms wide.
It was a pose straight out of that iconic scene in TitaXic.
—WHOOOOOOOSH...!
A violent blizzard engulfed my entire body.
Even wrapped in thick fur, I felt cold enough to die.
Ah, this chill, weighty sensation.
That was the North.
I guarantee it.
In cold like this, even Leonardo DiCaprio would have thrown Kate to the dogs and gone straight back inside the cabin.
I savored the cold of the North for quite some time.
After a while, I slowly lowered my arms and pulled something from inside my coat.
—SWISH.
It was none other than a pair of sunglasses.
They had originally been invented to shield the eyes from the sun, but in the North, I had commissioned(?) a master craftsman to custom-make them so they could block the sunlight reflected off the snow.
Even while drowning in work, I had gone through every kind of stupid bullshit imaginable just to get this one thing made.
—How the hell am I supposed to make something I have never seen before?!
—Then your hard-labor sentence gets extended by five years if you cannot.
—Bullshit! Why should me?!
—Shut your trap! A bastard doing hard labor on the Northern Front sure has a lot to say!
That old man.
I wondered if he was stuck somewhere down there by now.
As those memories of the past returned one after another, I put on the black sunglasses.
“Nothing beats a luxury product.”
They were so fucking dark I could not see a thing.
I looked down at the northern territories spread out beneath me.
And once again—
“......Lord Walter, are you truly all right?”
—SWISH.
Lenin, who had been standing beside me, took out another pair of sunglasses from inside her coat and put them on as she approached.
I turned my head and looked at her.
She spoke with a grave expression.
“As I said, if there is anything wrong with your health, please tell me at any time.”
“What are you talking about?”
But Lenin all but ignored my words and cautiously asked with a worried expression.
“Is it not possible that the constant overwork has brought on a bout of madness?”
“......Madness? You think I am insane?”
Lenin gave a small nod.
Above all, her expression remained utterly serious.
Lenin Calhart.
She meant every word.
Then again, from her perspective, it was understandable.
Her workaholic superior had burned a mountain of paperwork overnight, then calmly suggested going out for a walk.
“......”
I looked toward Gray Castle in the distance and spoke.
“Mad, you say. Perhaps I am.”
“......Pardon?”
My past self, before I died.
Walter Levior had been insane.
Yes.
He had been insane in his struggle to survive.
An outsider dropped without warning into another world.
His sole objective had been survival.
To survive, he had worked himself to the bone with desperate resolve.
To repay his house’s enormous debt.
To stop the barbarians at the border.
To hold back the hordes of monsters in the snowy mountains.
He had never wasted a single day.
Every day had been an ordeal.
Every day had been suffering.
But for it all to end with death from overwork at the young age of thirty-eight—
It was nothing but hollow.
More than anything, in the final moment of his life, surrounded by piles of documents he had failed to finish, his last words had been—
‘Ah, I can finally sleep.’
Considering that, he had clearly been completely insane at the time.
The road he had chosen to survive had ended in death from overwork.
It was laughable.
That was why, when I first opened my eyes in the office—
When the first thing I saw was the exact same pile of paperwork I had seen just before my death—
I made another vow.
‘I will find healing in this life, no matter what.’
In this life, I would find a way to laze around and live easy.
Healing.
That was my sole objective in this life.
Walter turned to Lenin and spoke.
“From now on, there will be no overtime in my life.”
Lenin flinched and looked at Walter.
At the time, her greatest concern had been none other than his health.
No matter how often she told me to rest, the old me had not listened worth a damn, so it was only natural.
“......Do you truly mean that?”
Lenin asked in a voice that held joy on one hand and suspicion on the other.
Of course, this time truly was different.
Who could have imagined that the workaholic would burn his paperwork and be the first to suggest a walk?
But he had claimed he would rest, only to secretly stay up all night working, far too many times before.
What if this was another smokescreen?
Unable to cast off her suspicion, she kept watching him through narrowed eyes.
“Are you only saying that now because you plan to go back inside and plow through another round of overtime?”
“Enough. From now on, I will rest even if you tell me not to, so do not say a word against it.”
I answered shamelessly.
Honestly, I understood why Lenin was acting this way.
My past conduct was reason enough, but considering the North’s current situation, it made even more sense.
There was the management of the northern territories, along with the barbarians and monster hordes that invaded whenever they found an opening.
And the greatest problem of all was the enormous debt my father had left behind when he died.
Of course, it was not particularly my father’s fault.
If anything was to blame, it was the North’s barren environment.
In any case, because of it, the North was currently begging every surrounding territory for help.
As proof, half the documents piled in the office had been related to that problem.
But things were different now.
Walter looked over the northern territories and spoke.
“Lenin. What do you think of the North?”
“The North... you ask?”
Lenin turned her head and looked down at the North beneath her feet.
The North, where vicious blizzards raged throughout all four seasons.
Gray Castle, standing firm halfway up the mountain range.
It was not warm like the southern lands bathed in sunlight.
Its streets were not crowded with people like those of the royal capital.
Not a single patch of fertile farmland could be found, no matter how hard one looked.
Every person there lived from day to day with nothing but the worry of how they would survive, clinging to life only because they had not yet died.
The knights of Gray Castle remained on edge, watching for the barbarians and monster hordes that could invade at any moment.
It had been this way since her childhood.
No, even before that.
It was a landscape that never changed.
“The land is barren, and the population is small. Even those who remain are preoccupied with how they will survive each day, while the knights must risk their lives fighting barbarians and monster hordes that attack without warning.”
“......”
“It is even said that every serious criminal in the kingdom ends up in the North. They either freeze to death here or labor until they die. The world calls our North the Last Land.”
The Last Land.
It was a nickname that suited the North perfectly.
But Lenin clenched her fist and spoke.
“Even so, I love this North. I love the North where I was born and raised. And I love the one who never gives up, who protects the North to the very end......”
I love my lord.
Lenin swallowed those final words and looked at her lord, Walter.
Walter Levior, the Grand Duke of the North who had inherited the Heart of Winter.
Lenin loved the North where he lived.
Even if no one else understood, that feeling would never change.
I spoke.
“To me, the North is a precious treasure.”
That was why, in my previous life, I had worked myself to the bone to protect the North—to protect my home.
At the same time, it was not merely a figure of speech.
The North was truly filled with hidden treasures.
‘......It took me far too long to realize that in my previous life.’
But things were different now.
This time, I was confident I could find every last one of those hidden treasures.
And if I used them—
“Did you call it the Last Land?”
“......Pardon?”
“I mean our North’s nickname.”
Lenin lowered her head and answered.
“My apologies, but yes.”
“Then listen carefully from this moment onward. From now on, the world will call our North something else.”
Walter grinned and pushed his sunglasses up.
“The Best Land.”
I could transform the North into the Best Land.
And I could do it so thoroughly that no one would be able to deny it.
Even if everyone in the world laughed and called it impossible—
I, the undisputed master of the North, would make it so.
That was my declaration.
“......”
Lenin stared at me blankly.
That was right.
Hair black without a single blemish.
Golden eyes burning with ambition.
His name was Walter Levior.
A workaholic who clung to paperwork all day long.
A man who occasionally uttered things no one could understand, yet always stood proudly at his post.
The master of the North who had inherited the Heart of Winter.
At the sight, Lenin gave a faint smile.
Then, before long—
She dropped to one knee and bowed her head.
“I, Lenin Calhart, shall carry out my lord’s command.”
At that very moment—
In the distance, a carriage was entering the territory.
More importantly, a golden scales emblem was engraved upon it.
It was none other than the mark of the Grand Merchant Guild.
And there was only one reason the Grand Merchant Guild would come to the North.
The scheduled enforcement of a debt agreement.
In other words, they had clearly come to collect the North’s debt.
So they are finally here.
I smirked and lowered my sunglasses.
“Then it is about time we welcomed our guests.”
Receiving the guest from the Grand Merchant Guild—
That would be the first obstacle on the North’s path to becoming the Best Land.
***
The reception room of Gray Castle.
A fire crackled in the hearth, and an unusual guest sat before it.
He was a potbellied man with an elaborately groomed beard, dressed in ornate clothing that did not suit the North.
Every time I come here, I feel like I am going to freeze to death.
Rupel, the man known as the Grand Merchant Guild’s loan shark, grumbled as he stroked his beard.
After some time—
—Creak.
The reception-room door opened, revealing a black-haired man draped in black fur.
His hair was as perfectly black as ever, and deep dark circles framed his golden eyes.
He was none other than Walter Levior, the Grand Duke of the North.
He brushed the white snow from his fur coat.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Haha, not at all.”
As though he had never been grumbling at all, Rupel immediately wiped the sour expression from his face.
He greeted Walter.
“Rupel of the Grand Merchant Guild greets the master of the North.”
“You must have had a difficult journey.”
Walter accepted the greeting.
—Clink.
Lenin, who had remained at his side, placed a teacup before them as though she had been waiting for that moment.
The cup held a drink with a color reminiscent of black tea.
Kolheim Tea.
Brewed from the leaves of the Kolheim plant native to the North, it was renowned for clearing the eyes and sharpening one’s vision.
Its flavor, however, was so intensely bitter that people tended either to love it or hate it.
Walter, for his part, often drank it because it was effective at driving away sleep.
Walter took a sip of Kolheim Tea and asked him a question.
“So, what brings you all the way to this distant North this time?”
As if you do not already know.
Rupel muttered inwardly and pushed the tea aside.
“Your Grace surely knows the reason already, so I will dispense with the preliminaries and get straight to the point.”
—THUD.
Rupel pulled a letter from inside his coat and placed it on the reception-room table.
More importantly, the letter bore both the emblem of the Grand Merchant Guild and a red griffin crest.
It was the crest of House Selbirot, a ducal house from the royal capital.
The letter was none other than a demand for immediate repayment under the debt agreement Walter had entered into with Crepin Selbirot, the current heir of House Selbirot.
Rupel addressed Walter.
“Our Grand Merchant Guild tried to wait as long as possible, but House Selbirot seems no longer willing to stand by.”
In the debt agreement between the two houses, the Grand Merchant Guild served as a kind of intermediary.
But it was an intermediary in name only.
Rupel worked beneath House Selbirot.
In the end, the claim that this demand came solely from House Selbirot was nothing but a facade.
Everyone knew the Grand Merchant Guild and House Selbirot were in league.
Walter knew it as well.
Until now, however, the North—or rather, Walter—had been unable to respond in any way despite knowing the truth.
He might have been called a grand duke, but compared to House Selbirot, he was merely the master of a North that possessed neither money nor anything else of value.
Until now, all he had been able to do was cast aside his dignity and bow his head.
‘What should I strip from him this time using this as leverage?’
Rupel stroked his beard as he surveyed the reception room.
Once again, all Walter could do was beg him to extend the deadline.
Perhaps he would take a few statues today.
Every time Rupel visited the North, he used the debt as leverage to take whatever caught his eye.
By now, it had become an expected monthly ritual.
Walter knew that perfectly well.
Rupel stroked his beard with practiced nonchalance and spoke.
“Still, it is not as though I am unaware of Your Grace’s circumstances, so I will see whether I can pull a few strings. In exchange, this time, perhaps only a few statues from Gray Castle......”
But then—
“Rupel.”
Walter, who had remained silent until then, abruptly cut him off.
Rupel raised his head blankly.
Walter rose from his seat, walked over to him, and—
—SMACK!
Slapped Rupel across the cheek.
A crisp sound rang throughout the reception room.
Walter clicked his tongue and spoke.
“You are noisy.”
“......Pardon?”
Rupel rubbed his cheek, utterly dumbfounded.
Walter tilted his head.
“Was that too difficult to understand? To put it crudely—”
Walter jerked his chin at him and grinned.
“I said shut your trap.”