Inside one of the bedchambers in the manor of House Artos, a young silver-haired man sprawled atop an extravagant bed.
He stared blankly up at the intricate wooden carvings of the canopy, a heavy, irritated sigh escaping his lips.
Edric had been diligent. Every single morning for the past week, he had dragged his heavy, unconditioned body out to the frozen courtyard to let Serah beat him half to death with a wooden sword. He had pushed through the agony, vomited empty air into the frost, and swallowed down the absolute humiliation of moving like a wet piece of parchment.
But as he glanced down at his stomach, he couldn't help but pinch a visible roll of fat through his tunic.
‘It doesn’t feel like it’s making a single bit of difference,’ he thought, thoroughly annoyed.
When he had grumbled about it earlier, Serah had simply stared at him through her visor and flatly told him that forging a warrior's core took months, if not years, of unyielding discipline. But Edric was a modern person.
He was used to instant gratification, rapid progress bars, and visible results. This slow, agonizing crawl of natural biology was testing his patience.
He stared at his plump hands, a cynical smirk touching his lips. ‘God I should have written about a fat-loss spell.’ he mused humorously, ‘just a quick wave of a hand or incantation to burn away calories.'
Shaking his head, he pushed the absurd thought to the back of his mind and sat up slightly, propping himself up against a pile of plush pillows. It was time to focus on the actual, urgent pieces moving on the board.
Lira had been at the estate for a few days now, buried deep in the secondary archives alongside Matthus. The two of them were working at a terrifyingly efficient pace.
Edric knew it was only a matter of time before they finished their audits and handed him the final records. And when they did, he knew for a fact they would find a list of corrupt clerks and scribes who had been systematically bleeding the house's finances and grain stores dry.
The real question was: what should he do with them once he had their names?
The old Edric would have had them publicly executed or thrown into the deepest dungeon to starve, but this wasn't a game, and mindless brutality would only breed deeper resentment among the staff. He needed to handle it carefully, turning their exposure into a calculated display of absolute control. He couldn't afford a single loose thread inside his own walls.
Edric leaned his head back, his golden eyes narrowing as his mind drifted back to the most glaring problem of all. His original draft.
He tried to look ahead, to think about the major plot points that were supposed to happen next in the world he had created. But as he racked his brain, a cold, unsettling realization settled deep in his chest.
‘My original draft never even reached this far.’
He ran a hand through his messy silver hair, a grim scowl forming on his face.
The absolute last thing he could remember writing before he stopped working on the project was the scene at the Royal Academy. The story's protagonist, the destined hero, had utterly embarrassed the arrogant, villainous Edric in a public duel. To make matters worse, that same protagonist was already growing closer to Edric's fiancé the female main character of the novel.
Edric stared at the ceiling, his jaw tightening. In his notes, the old Edric was just a stepping stone, a wealthy, fat, unlikable antagonist designed to make the hero look good and steal his girl then die in the background.
But now, he was Edric. And the realization that he was flying completely blind into an unwritten future, with a protagonist out there destined to ruin him, made the phantom bruises from Serah's training ache all over again.
'Still can't believe it though'
Just as his mind was wandering, a knock came from the other side of his oak door.
"Come in," he answered as he fixed himself up and sat by the bedside.
Gareth entered with the same sharp and dignified aura Edric had grown accustomed to, behind him followed Celia carrying a tray of food.
"You didn't eat breakfast, young master" the old man remarked as he gave way to the young girl, "as such I've brought breakfast to you."
Edric rubbed his face with both hands, letting out a heavy, slightly muffled sigh. "Lay off me a bit, Gareth. This is the first time in weeks that I've actually slept in. My body feels like it was dragged behind a carriage."
"A result of your sudden, rather intense dedication to the blade, my lord," Gareth countered smoothly, his tone carrying that perfectly balanced blend of aristocratic respect and unyielding stubbornness. "The muscles must be fed if they are to recover."
Celia stepped forward with hesitant, trembling steps, her gaze firmly anchored to the floor boards. She carefully lowered the silver tray onto the bedside table. On it sat a bowl of steaming porridge, thick slices of toasted bread, and a cup of freshly brewed herbal tea. The rich, savory aroma immediately made Edric’s stomach growl, but as his eyes drifted from the food up to Celia’s pale, anxious face, his posture instantly stiffened.
A cold spike of caution shot through his mind.
Celia. She was the exact maid who had been accused of poisoning his wine. Though he had spared her life, the survival-driven part of his brain screamed at him to be careful. In a world this cutthroat, you didn't survive by eating unverified meals.
Edric didn't touch the spoon. Instead, he slowly looked up, his sharp golden eyes meeting Gareth’s steady gaze. He didn't say a word, but the silent, heavy question hanging in the air was unmistakable.
Gareth, reading the young lord's skepticism instantly, merely offered a small nod.
Celia’s shoulders squeezed tight, her hands gripping her apron in a white-knuckled clutch.
Edric held Gareth’s gaze for a second longer before relaxing his shoulders. He reached out, picked up the spoon, and took a cautious bite of the porridge.
As he ate, Edric decided to use the quiet moment to check on the estate's progress. "Gareth," he muttered between bites, keeping his voice casual but alert.
"What’s the status on the trade missives we circulated? Have any merchant companies offered their services to the house yet? Or at least began trading within our borders?"
Gareth's posture remained impeccably rigid, but a brief, grim shadow crossed his face. He lowered his head slightly. "Regrettably... no, young master. There have been no responses to our letters, and no independent caravans have crossed our southern checkpoints. The borders remain entirely quiet."
Edric paused, his spoon hovering over the bowl.
‘Figures,’ he thought to himself, a wave of cynical validation washing over him.
He didn't need a ledger to understand why. Between the old Edric’s horrific reputation as a volatile, corrupt tyrant and the frontier’s general instability, no established merchant guild was going to risk their gold or their lives on a territory they believed was a sinking ship.
Edric quietly set the spoon back down, leaning his head against the pillows. "Keep looking, Gareth. Send word out further if you have to. Someone out there has to be hungry enough to take the gamble."
"As you command, young master," Gareth replied, bowing deeply.
Meanwhile, miles away from the quiet, tense atmosphere of the Artos estate, the air was thick with the deafening roar of a completely different world.
Inside the Heartwood Tavern, a massive rowdy establishment nestled deep within Viscount Vance's territory south of Edric's border, was a chaotic symphony of clinking ale tankards, booming laughter, and the rich scent of roasted meats and cheap tobacco.
Down on the main floor, completely removed from the merry-making of old established merchants, a young man sat alone at a corner table, staring absentmindedly into a half-empty mug of bitter ale.
Wearing a traveling coat that had seen better days, and a leather satchel stuffed with rejected ledgers and trade proposals, Javier scratched his head.
"Idiots," he muttered to himself, taking a harsh swig of the ale. "Short-sighted, bureaucratic old fossils."
He slammed the mug down on the wooden table, a low rant escaping his lips. Javier was a junior merchant for one of the mid-tier trading companies operating out of Vance's territory.
He had spent the last three years running logistics, calculating supply margins, and presenting brilliant expansion ideas to his seniors, only to be patted on the head, told to know his place, and sent back to counting crates of common wool.
They didn't want innovation; they wanted safe, boring, predictable routines.
As Javier grumbled into his drink, the loud voices of a group of older merchants at the adjacent long table drifted over the ambient noise, catching his attention.
"Did you hear the news from the north?" a fat, heavily jeweled merchant barked, wiping foam from his mustache. "Word is the young Lord Artos has opened his borders to all tradings."
"Lord Artos?" One of his colleagues remarked, "doesn't the Golden Hands Trading Company hold monopoly in those lands?"
"That's the thing, it seems they had a falling out, Lord Artos rejected renewing their contract."
Javier's ears perked up. His analytical mind immediately started calculating.
A massive frontier territory, completely wiped clean of a Golden Hands monopoly? That was an untouched goldmine.
Leaning over his table, Javier looked at the older men. "Are any of your houses thinking of sending a caravan up there? With the borders completely open, the first one to establish a trade route could name their own price."
The fat merchant stared at him for a second before bursting into a loud, mocking laugh. The other merchants at the table joined in, shaking their heads in amusement.
"Go to Galehelm? Boy, you must have a death wish or a severe lack of business sense," the older merchant sneered. "There is absolutely no profit to be made in that frozen wasteland. The territory is a logistics nightmare, the winter is coming, and the young lord is a notoriously corrupt and volatile tyrant. He'd probably seize your wagons on a whim just to fund his next feast."
Another merchant leaned forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Besides, it’s not just about the terrain. The Golden Hands will not take that rejection lightly."
"No sane company is going to risk ruining their relationship with the Golden Hands for a few scraps of frontier grain."
"Aye," the fat merchant agreed, raising his cup. "House Artos is a sinking ship."
The men laughed and turned back to their drinks, completely dismissing the topic.
But Javier didn't laugh.
He sat back in his chair, a slow, brilliant smile spreading across his face as he looked down at his reflection in the amber booze. To the old, comfortable merchants, Galehelm was a dangerous trap. But to a junior merchant with absolutely nothing to lose, suffocated by bureaucracy and itching for a breakout, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
If the prominent guilds were terrified of the Golden Hands, it meant Edric Artos was completely isolated. He would be desperate. And a desperate lord would listen to an ambitious man with a plan.
Javier drained the rest of his ale in one large gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and stood up, grabbing his satchel. It was time to buy a wagon.