How much time passed after that?
In the end, Rupel, unable to do anything beneath the weight of Walter’s presence, fled the North as though running for his life.
The reception room of the now-empty Gray Castle.
—STEP.
Lenin, the bodyguard knight who had remained there throughout, approached Walter’s side.
Then she asked him a question.
“......What in the world are you thinking?”
“As you can see. In the North, I am the law to begin with, am I not?”
“I will not deny that. However......”
Her face remained perfectly still, but her voice trembled faintly.
It was such a subtle difference that anyone else would have failed to notice.
But before his regression, Walter had spent decades sharing battlefields, hardships, and joys with her.
There was no chance he would miss it.
“Is there perhaps some other intention behind this that I am unaware of?”
“No. It is exactly as it appears.”
But Walter merely answered firmly without offering any further explanation.
Lenin bit down hard on her lip.
“......I believe you went too far this time.”
Of course, Lenin trusted her lord, Walter.
But this time, he had gone far beyond reason.
The enormous debt currently hanging over the North.
And because the North had no ability whatsoever to repay it—
She knew better than anyone how her lord had worked through countless nights.
How he had even bowed his head to a mere merchant.
No.
That was precisely why she could not understand the present situation.
The right of review based on Kingdom Law?
“You know better than I do that it only buys us time, do you not?”
“......”
There was no chance Walter did not know something Lenin herself understood.
The right of review would lose all meaning the instant Crepin arrived in the North.
And that would take two months at most.
No.
Considering the North’s treacherous terrain, perhaps they could expect as much as three months.
That meant they had to gather enough money to clear the debt within three months.
But the North as it was now—
Had no means to repay it.
Lenin forced her lips apart.
Or rather, she was about to.
“Do you truly believe we have no means of repaying the debt?”
Walter, who had remained silent, spoke first.
Lenin gripped the hem of her clothes and answered him.
“Is that not obvious......?”
But why?
The moment she looked at her lord’s face, she could not finish the sentence.
His unwavering golden eyes—
And the faint smile hanging from his lips—
Were certain of one thing.
Walter raised a finger.
“One month. We will start turning a profit within a month at the latest.”
Walter answered without the slightest tremor in his voice.
As stated before, the North had three months of grace remaining at most.
Yet he claimed they would begin making money within one month.
From where?
And through what?
One question after another spiraled through Lenin’s mind.
At that moment—
“So, Lenin. Prepare Kolheim leaves and roots, along with Berkus and Vita.”
“......Pardon?”
Kolheim, Berkus, and Vita.
They were all plants native to the North, useful for little more than brewing tea.
Naturally, their commercial value was nothing impressive.
What did he intend to do with them?
But her doubts only lasted a moment.
Lenin exhaled, steadied herself, and looked at Walter.
“How much should I prepare?”
In the end, she made the same choice she had made at the summit of the Ashfall Mountain Range.
She would simply trust her lord, the man who had inherited the Heart of Winter.
Walter stroked his chin for a moment.
—CLACK.
He set down his empty teacup and grinned.
“All of it. Everything we have.”
***
About fifteen days later—
Lenin paced anxiously in front of Walter’s office.
The reason was none other than—
—Do not let anyone into my office until I give the order.
Walter’s command from fifteen days earlier.
More importantly, when he had said it, enough burlap sacks to fill the entire office had been piled behind him.
They were all packed with Kolheim, Berkus, and Vita leaves.
In any case, the door had slammed shut, and Walter had not shown so much as a strand of hair for the next fifteen days.
The only clues that he was still alive were—
—THUD, THUD, THUD, clatter, clink... Hiss...!
The unidentified noises and the deeply suspicious green smoke seeping through the crack beneath the door.
There was also the occasional hee-hee, hee-hee-hee of laughter and chanting reminiscent of a voodoo ritual.
—Please come out, come on out, come out noooow.
Thanks to that, strange rumors began spreading through Gray Castle.
Some said the Grand Duke had finally gone mad from overwork.
Others insisted he had clearly turned to black magic.
As a result, Lenin waited for him in growing anxiety day after day.
Then, without warning—
—BOOM... CRASH!
A violent explosion and the sound of something shattering rang out from inside the office.
Lenin flinched and hurriedly turned her head toward the door.
But that was as far as she went.
“......”
Lenin clenched her fist and held her position.
Because that was her lord’s command.
More than anything, she possessed unwavering faith.
‘He will surely emerge with a solution capable of breaking through the North’s crisis.’
Besides, Walter was not the sort of man who would die from an explosion of that magnitude.
Had he not survived being stabbed on the battlefield?
Had he not returned after working through the night and slaughtering a horde of monsters?
She was certain.
At least within the North, no danger could kill him except overtime.
And as though to prove it—
“It wooorked! This fucking thing!”
—BANG!
With his thunderous shout, Walter kicked open the door and burst outside.
Dense smoke poured out with him.
Flasks littered the office floor.
Deep dark circles framed his eyes, and his hair was a tangled mess.
He truly looked as though he had become absorbed in some bizarre form of black magic, just as the rumors claimed.
But only for a moment.
Walter drew in a deep breath.
Then he immediately spoke to Lenin.
“Let’s go.”
The words came without warning.
Lenin tilted her head.
“......Where do you mean?”
Walter pointed through the office window toward the sharp tower rising in the distance and grinned.
“The Magic Tower.”
At the same time, Walter was holding an unidentified wooden case in both hands.
***
The Magic Tower.
A nest of supreme mages and a sacred place known as a treasury of knowledge.
It was said that scholars who pursued magic spent their entire lives there, endlessly seeking knowledge and uncovering its principles.
More importantly, its origins lay in the footsteps of the five sages known as Archmages.
Their legacy later divided into five schools according to their fields of study, and five Magic Towers now stood across the continent.
And among them was the Blue Magic Tower of the North.
Just as its epithet suggested, the Blue Magic Tower was a sanctuary for mages, standing lofty and proud like the North’s unmelted ice.
But that was nothing more than an old story.
These days, it was the Blue Magic Tower in name alone.
Because of the North’s brutal environment, it had become little more than a prison, cut off from the secular world and its inhabitants half-forced to remain trapped inside.
Its facilities were outdated, and it received virtually no support.
Among mages, it had become widely known as either a place of demotion or a den where eccentrics gathered.
As a result, young mages avoided the Blue Magic Tower more and more with each passing day.
And so—
With no new mages, there was no fresh talent.
Even the research achievements it had once produced had recently fallen to the very bottom.
It had earned the nickname the Blue Ruin Tower.
Raphael Mashaldor was the dean and de facto master of that Blue Magic Tower.
At the remarkably young age of thirty, he had broken through the wall of the Third Circle.
Now, he was a capable mage standing on the verge of the Fifth Circle.
But all of that was merely past glory.
He had still failed to cross the wall of the Fifth Circle.
Combined with the pitiful state of the Blue Magic Tower, his sighs had become endless.
“Good grief......”
He let out a troubled sigh inside his study.
—Rustle.
White hairs fell from his head and gathered in a soft pile on the floor.
He was only forty-six years old.
Yet excessive stress had not merely turned all his hair white.
Now, he could no longer stop it from falling out.
“......How did I ever end up like this?”
Raphael muttered as he rubbed his smooth scalp and recalled the past.
His brilliant twenties.
Back then, he had been a promising talent who drew attention with both his handsome appearance and outstanding magical ability.
Unlike now, he had possessed a full head of hair as well.
Everyone around him, Raphael included, had believed his success was assured.
Indeed, by the age of thirty, he had not only reached the Third Circle, but a paper he had written became the talk of the magical world and placed him in line to become the next master of a Magic Tower.
But he had not known at the time.
That it would be the 'fucking' starting point of his misfortune.
His assignment to the Blue Magic Tower had ultimately been no different from a demotion after falling into the old men’s scheme.
Requests for support were repeatedly rejected under the excuse of the North’s treacherous environment.
“And then there is the one and only star pupil I have......”
Enough.
He would rather not speak of it.
Merely thinking about his disciple made emotion surge through him until his skull throbbed.
There had never been another talent like this one—
A human disaster in every sense of the word.
In any case, amid all that, a letter had suddenly arrived from the Grand Duke of the North.
It simply said he would stop by the Magic Tower for a while, so Raphael was to make time for him.
Raphael groaned and rubbed his brow.
“No doubt he will ask to borrow money again.”
Walter Levior, the Grand Duke of the North.
He was another pitiable man.
Given the martial talent he had been born with, he would surely have achieved greatness had he been born anywhere but the North.
But from the very moment he was born in the North, he had been left drowning beneath an enormous debt while fighting back the barbarians.
His circumstances were strikingly similar to Raphael’s own.
Moreover, Raphael had ties to the previous head of the house, so he had helped Walter several times at first.
But it had not been enough.
The debt left behind by the previous head continued to grow.
More importantly, given the Blue Magic Tower’s own circumstances—
Even if Raphael wished to help now, he could not.
“Dean. Was His Grace not supposed to visit today?”
One of the mages of the tower asked him.
Raphael waved a hand dismissively.
“Tell him I am not here.”
“Pardon? But this time......”
“Enough. I do not want to hear it. Tell him I am not here.”
But the man continued to press him.
“N-No, the thing is......”
Raphael finally lost his patience.
He snatched up a book from the desk and hurled it.
“I said tell him I am not here, bastard!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
Only after Raphael had unleashed his temper—
—Click.
The man left the study.
Peace returned.
Raphael stood alone and looked out the window.
—WHOOOOOSH!
Cold snow whipped through the air outside.
Still, as he watched the white snow scatter through the sky—
It brought him a strange sense of peace and carried a charm all its own.
It was the same even now.
The fire crackled.
Snow tapped against the window.
And then came a clack and a long creeeak, like a wire being pulled taut.
“......Wait. What?”
At that very moment—
—CRASH!
A black-clad figure smashed through the window and plunged into his study.
It was an entrance reminiscent of a paratrooper making a combat drop.
“Fucking hell! Wh-What the hell is that?!”
Raphael, who had been enjoying the scenery, spat out a rich stream of curses and jumped in shock.
But only for a moment.
Glittering shards of glass scattered in every direction.
—LAND.
A man stood directly before Raphael.
His name was none other than Walter Levior.
The Grand Duke of the North.
—Click.
Walter pushed up the sunglasses he was wearing and spoke.
“What did I tell you? I said he’d be holed up in here, didn’t I?”
“Magnificent. As expected, my lord’s insight never ceases to amaze me.”
Lenin clapped twice and answered without a trace of expression.
“Then did you foresee what comes next as well?”
—WHOOOOOSH.
A flesh-cutting gust of cold wind wrapped around Raphael’s body.
Walter put away his sunglasses and answered without concern.
“He’ll start some bullshit. What else?”
At the same time, Raphael snatched up a book and hurled it.
“Y-You son of a bitch...!”
“See?”
Just as Walter had predicted, Raphael flew into a rage.
Walter deftly caught the book flying toward him.
Then he greeted the man.
“It has been a while, Master Raphael. The son of a bitch is here.”
Yes.
The son of a bitch of the North.
That’s me.