The inside of the county castle's dining hall, with its fur-draped wooden chairs and its solid timber.
The walls were decorated with the hides and horns of Snowy Mountain animals, and from the large hearth set in the centre a warm blaze rose and wrapped the interior in a soft glow.
Thick bars, and windows with ice caught in them.
Beyond the windows, the snow-covered Snowy Mountain and the landscape of the snowfield showed clearly.
And with that, the dining hall's own cosiness stood out all the more against the cold landscape of the Snowy Mountain—
"Dung...... no, are you saying you will eat the entrails?"
The head chef's face, blank with bewilderment, was growing more bewildered by the moment.
And no wonder — entrails are the organs responsible for digestion.
Meaning they are not fit to eat.
Of course, with a fair amount of preparation they could be eaten, but—
"The entrails that are left are not an edible part."
A part with secretions mixed through it was in no way fit to be called food.
And if it's a part thrown away even on the northern Snowy Mountain, then it truly cannot be eaten.
"They are what we keep for driving off beasts..."
Put simply, it meant food that even beasts would not eat.
But it made no particular difference to me.
I'm a man who tears into monster hearts; what could I not eat?
Above all, setting taste aside and looking purely at nutrition, there is no finer source of protein than entrails.
"Never mind that, just bring it out."
"......Sir?"
"What are you doing? Go and fetch it."
"D-do you truly mean you will eat the entrails?"
"Would I have told you to bring them out if I wasn't going to eat them?"
"......"
"Bring them raw. Cooking destroys the nutrients."
When I waved my hand, the head chef watched my face for a while and then slipped quietly into the kitchen.
And he came back out in barely a few minutes.
Naturally, since the instruction had been to bring it out uncooked.
"...Here you are."
Entrails, laid neatly on a plate.
Blood was dripping off them.
When I speared one with a fork, the rank smell that came creeping up was spectacular.
They seemed to be packed with secretions.
Even so, I put the entrails in my mouth without hesitation and chewed.
And sure enough.
'Filthy awful.'
Filthy awful, in the most literal sense of the word.
Without a word of exaggeration, I could rate it as 'the taste of chewing a sewer.'
There was a reason the head chef had said it wasn't fit to eat.
But I speared another piece of entrail with the fork and shoved it into my mouth.
"No...! You can't just...!!"
The head chef leapt in the air, horrified.
The maids around us opened their eyes wide as well.
People appalled at the sight of me eating entrails.
Come to think of it, it was only natural — the Count's wastrel, whose palate went past fussy into goddamn unbearable, was eating entrails that tasted of dung.
Some of the maids clamped both hands over their mouths, as if about to retch.
"Ugh...!"
"I can't take any more of— g-guh...!!"
One of the maids couldn't stand it and bolted from the dining hall.
The other maids ran out after her, and in an instant the dining hall was in chaos.
Even so, I paid it no mind.
I kept shoving entrails with secretions crunching in them into my mouth.
'Compared to my task force days, though.'
Because the entrails I'm eating now were no different from the finest cuisine.
During the war with the Empire, conditions on the continent were far too wretched.
The Emperor's merciless slaughter.
It was not limited to the allied forces, or to the species called human.
As though he hated life itself, the Emperor exterminated every living thing that breathed on this continent — animals, plants, insects, vermin and all.
If there was a use, he bred them.
If there was no use, he slaughtered them.
Because of it, the continent then was more wretched than the northern Snowy Mountain is now.
A continent of death where no life could be found.
Never mind one meal a day; going hungry for days was so common it was routine.
Never mind food, there was no water, so we had to drink urine.
When there was not even urine to pass, we wrung out excrement to soothe our thirst.
Later there was nothing left to come out at all, and we suffered under hunger and thirst.
A day we found even a bug in the middle of a mission was a festival.
Because those were a fine source of protein.
That food problem was a very serious one that ran not only through the task force but through the whole of the allied forces.
An upright heart springs from unchanging means, and they say there is no man who has gone three days hungry and not turned thief.
The allied forces went hungry, and slowly fell into ruin.
The food problem was a hard question not even Ian could solve.
Ian could split a mountain and overturn a sea readily enough, but the ecosystem of nature itself was beyond him.
The one who solved that fundamental problem was the 'allied forces' hero, the Spirit Wielder.'
The Spirit Wielder used the power of nature to raise new life on the ruined continent.
Restoring the continent's broken ecosystem.
Breathing vitality and life into a continent that had held nothing but death.
Afterward the Spirit Wielder became commander of Supply Command and set the allied forces entirely free of their food and supply problems.
We spoke of Supply Command and called it [the force that fills the beginning and the end of the battlefield].
Because without the Spirit Wielder, without the allied forces' Supply Command, the allied forces would have starved to death before ever fighting the Emperor.
Though in the final battle with the Emperor we were utterly defeated......
'This time is different.'
A second chance has been placed in my hands.
I have come back to the past, and Ian has come back to the past with me.
I can form the allied forces sooner, bind them together more firmly, and build the strength and forces to oppose the Emperor stronger than before.
There is a fair amount of time, too.
Ten years.
It's a fight that goes past worth attempting into brimming with possibility.
And the beginning of all of it is the Hero, Ian.
From the moment I join up with Ian, everything begins anew.
So I had to finish every preparation before Ian arrives. There is no time to be flat on my back raising Kai's affinity.
"Have you any more entrails left?"
"Y-yes?! Ah, well... we do have some."
"You're going to throw them out anyway, aren't you?"
"Y-yes."
"Then I'll eat them, so make the whole lot into lunch boxes."
"L-lunch boxes...?"
"That's right."
Chomp, chomp.
"What are you doing? Aren't you off to the kitchen?"
"No, well... y-yes! Going now!"
The head chef went running off in a fluster.
And the maids following after him... more precisely, the ones clamping their mouths shut and hurrying off somewhere.
I watched their backs and shoved more entrails into my mouth.
At which the soft texture came with the taste of a sewer spreading sharp through my mouth.
'Not bad.'
...Once you get used to it, it was decent enough.
***
A day had passed since Adrian returned to the county.
And Adrian did not leave the Frost Proving Ground. He even took his meals inside the proving ground.
Excluding the hours he slept, he was conditioning his body at the Frost Proving Ground all day long.
Today too Adrian was breathing hard at the Frost Proving Ground.
Exercise lifting heavy barbells and dumbbells.
Ordinary physical conditioning.
Only, the weight was extraordinary.
The dozens of weight plates hung on both ends of the barbell's iron bar were bending the bar into very nearly a C.
"Wh-what... am I even looking at."
"Is that something a person can do...?"
"Could Lord Adrian be using Aura—"
"—as if?"
"R-right? There's no way Lord Adrian can use Aura, is there?"
"Then what in the world is this we're looking at?"
Adrian's body, with his shirt cast off, had grown far harder than the day before.
HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!
Every time Adrian breathed out in rhythm and lifted the barbell, his hard, densely packed muscles writhed without mercy.
"Is he... even a person?"
"I'd almost say he's an Ogre..."
To the soldiers of the county castle, Adrian was the greatest topic there was.
And it was not only the soldiers of the county castle.
Among the maids of the Lord's castle too, Adrian was the greatest piece of gossip.
"Listen, listen, about Lord Adrian. Doesn't he seem different somehow?"
"Completely! Actually, I cleaned Lord Adrian's room yesterday, you know?"
"Mm-hm."
"I finished cleaning everything and came out of the room, and then I thought about it and realised I hadn't lined up the hangers properly when I tidied the wardrobe."
"What?! Lord Adrian absolutely never lets that kind of thing go!"
"Exactly!"
The maid's shoulders shook as she recalled it.
"So I was panicking about what to do, and I thought, better to take the beating first. I confessed the whole truth."
"And then?"
"He said it was fine!"
"Whaaat...?"
"And he even told me I'd been working hard cleaning the room every time!"
"Whaaaat?! Not a slap in the face?!"
"No! I was honestly completely moved!"
Once the chatter had started, it kept going.
"Then isn't that rumour true as well?"
"What rumour?"
"About Lord Adrian's meals. They say these days he only eats entrails? And only the inedible ones."
"What? Lord Adrian, who's a clean freak? Why on earth?"
"From what I heard from the head chef, it's to save on ingredients? He said there aren't even enough ingredients for the territory's residents."
"Whaaat...?"
"Honestly, even I find this one a bit hard to believe."
"No, it's true."
Another voice cut in suddenly.
"Huh? Lena...?"
"When did you get here?"
"Just now."
"But what do you mean, true? Did you see it yourself?"
"Mm. I was right there when Lord Adrian was in the dining hall. He really did say he'd eat the entrails because there were no ingredients."
"Really?"
"Mm. And then he put those entrails in his mouth like it was nothing..."
"Oh my, oh my!"
"Ugh, let's stop talking about it. Thinking about it is making my stomach... blurgh!"
And so it went.
The soldiers of the county castle and the maids of the Lord's castle alike, all of them, made Adrian the flower of their talk.
But it did not last long.
"When do you think he'll go back to how he was?"
"Won't he find it too hard and quit by tomorrow?"
"I say today."
"Still, I'll bet 1 gold that this time he lasts three days."
Not one of them thought Adrian would change completely.
Right now he was only 'pretending' to make an effort for a little while, because of the shock the late Count's will had given him.
Only 'pretending' to try to change.
People never change.
And what's more, this was Adrian, who had never once in his life done a thing called effort.
A wastrel of over ten years' standing.
That is not something that can change from one bout of running away and one day of effort.
The Count's wastrel would go on being the Count's wastrel.
The soldiers of the county castle and the maids of the Lord's castle all reached the same conclusion.
"He'll give it up soon enough."
But whether they did or not.
Adrian silently went on lifting barbells and dumbbells at the Frost Proving Ground.
HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!
Adrian's rough breath and the burning heat of his body.
No more frost came down on the Frost Proving Ground.
And so.
Time passed quickly.
***
The early dawn, before the sun had yet risen.
Over the sky where the dark had not lifted and the snow-covered landscape of the county, cold moonlight carried a soft silver.
Ice crystals glittering like the Milky Way in the moonlight.
The ridge of the Snowy Mountain visible far off.
Amid a stillness as though the world had frozen and was holding its breath—
Kai moved his steps briskly and ran through his training plan.
Beginning with sword practice, then live sparring, drill instruction for the soldiers, tactical training, archery, formation-breaking and defensive drills, night ambush training, tracking, survival training and physical conditioning.
A gruelling day that ran from the small hours of the morning to late at night.
It was a process that tested his limits every single day, but—
It was Kai's ordinary routine.
With every step he took, the cold frost-laden air slapped his cheeks.
Every time he drew breath, his lungs froze.
Chimney smoke rising here and there.
It was as though they were catching at Kai, telling him to stop and warm himself a while.
But Kai hurried his steps.
To finish the whole of today's training schedule there was no time to dawdle.
And when he had hurried to the Frost Proving Ground.
Inside the Frost Proving Ground.
HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!
......someone had come out and was training before Kai.