Chapter 11. A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (2)
The dining hall of the Count’s Castle was furnished with fur-covered wooden chairs and built from sturdy timber.
The walls were decorated with the hides and horns of animals from the snowy mountains, while warm flames rose from the large brazier in the center, gently enveloping the room.
The windows were fitted with thick bars and covered in frost.
Beyond them, the snow-covered mountains and snowy plains were clearly visible.
The dining hall’s coziness stood out all the more against the frigid landscape outside.
“Do you mean to say that you intend to eat the entrails?”
The Head Chef’s face, already frozen in bewilderment, grew increasingly flustered.
It was understandable.
Entrails were organs responsible for digestion. In other words, they were not fit for consumption.
Of course, some of them could be eaten if properly prepared, but—
“The remaining entrails aren’t edible.”
The parts filled with bodily secretions could hardly be called food.
If they were discarded even in the Northern Snowy Mountains, they truly were inedible.
“We kept them only for driving away wild beasts....”
Simply put, not even wild animals would eat them.
But that didn’t particularly matter to me.
I had torn into monster hearts and eaten them before, so what couldn’t I eat?
More importantly, if taste was disregarded and only nutritional value was considered, there was hardly a better source of protein than entrails.
“I don’t care. Just bring them out.”
“....Pardon?”
“What are you doing? Go and bring them.”
“Do you truly intend to eat the entrails?”
“Would I have told you to bring them if I wasn’t going to eat them?”
“.......”
“Bring them out raw. Cooking them destroys the nutrients.”
When I waved my hand dismissively, the Head Chef watched me cautiously for a while before quietly returning to the kitchen.
He came back only a few minutes later.
That was only natural, considering I had instructed him not to cook them.
“....Here they are.”
The entrails were neatly arranged on a plate.
Blood dripped from them.
When I speared a piece with my fork, the foul odor slowly rising from it was something else.
It seemed to be filled with bodily secretions.
Even so, I brought the entrails to my mouth without hesitation and chewed.
And, as expected.
“This tastes fucking awful.”
It was, quite literally, disgustingly bad.
Without the slightest exaggeration, I could describe it as “chewing on a sewer”.
The Head Chef hadn’t said that it was unfit for consumption for nothing.
Nevertheless, I speared another piece with my fork and shoved it into my mouth.
“No...! How can you eat that so casually...?!”
The Head Chef shrieked and jumped in horror. The maids around us also stared with their eyes wide open. They were horrified by the sight of me eating the entrails.
Come to think of it, their reaction was understandable.
The notoriously picky and downright insufferable delinquent of the Count’s family was eating entrails that tasted like shit.
Several maids covered their mouths with both hands, looking as though they were about to vomit.
“Ugh...!”
“I can’t take this any—Ugh, urp...!!”
One of the maids finally reached her limit and ran out of the dining hall.
The other maids followed her, hurriedly fleeing somewhere while covering their mouths, and the dining hall descended into chaos in an instant.
Even so, I paid them no attention.
I continued shoving the entrails filled with bodily secretions into my mouth.
‘This is nothing compared to my days in the Special Task Force.’
The entrails I was eating now were practically the finest cuisine by comparison.
During the war against the Empire, conditions across the continent had been unimaginably harsh.
The merciless Emperor’s slaughter.
It had not been limited to the Coalition or even to the human race.
As if he hated life itself, the Emperor exterminated every living creature on the continent, including animals, plants, insects, and vermin.
If something was useful, he raised it. If it was useless, he slaughtered it.
As a result, the continent back then was even more desolate than the Northern Snowy Mountains were now.
It had become a continent of death where no trace of life could be found.
Forget eating one meal a day—going without food for several days was so common that it had become routine.
There was no food, and there wasn’t even enough water, forcing us to drink our own urine.
When we could no longer urinate, we squeezed moisture from our feces to quench our thirst.
Eventually, there was nothing left to come out, and we suffered from both starvation and dehydration.
Whenever we discovered even a bug during a mission, it was cause for celebration.
After all, insects were excellent sources of protein.
This food shortage wasn’t a problem limited to the Special Task Force.
It was an extremely serious issue that plagued the entire Coalition.
A steadfast heart is born from a stable livelihood, and they say no one can starve for three days without becoming a thief.
The Coalition starved and gradually collapsed.
The food shortage was a difficult problem that even Ian couldn’t solve.
Ian could split mountains and overturn seas, but even he could do nothing about the natural world’s ecosystem.
The person who resolved that fundamental problem was the “Hero of the Coalition, the Spirit Wielder”.
Using the power of nature, the Spirit Wielder brought new life to the devastated continent.
The Spirit Wielder restored the continent’s ruined ecosystem.
They breathed life and vitality into a continent that had once been filled with nothing but death.
Afterward, the Spirit Wielder became the Commander of Supply Command and completely freed the Coalition from its food and supply problems.
We referred to Supply Command as [The Power That Fills the Beginning and End of the Battlefield].
If it hadn’t been for the Spirit Wielder—if the Coalition hadn’t had Supply Command—the Coalition would have starved to death before it ever had the chance to fight the Emperor.
Although we suffered a crushing defeat in the final battle against the Emperor—
‘This time will be different.’
I had been given a second chance.
I had returned to the past, and Ian had returned to the past with me.
We could establish the Coalition sooner, unite it more firmly, and develop a far stronger force and power capable of confronting the Emperor.
We also had a fair amount of time.
Ten years.
This wasn’t merely a fight worth attempting. It was a fight overflowing with possibilities.
And everything would begin with the Hero, Ian.
Everything would begin anew from the moment I joined forces with Ian.
Therefore, I had to finish every necessary preparation before Ian arrived. I didn’t have time to lie around merely raising Kai’s Affinity.
“Are there any more entrails left?”
“Y-Yes?! Ah, well….there are some remaining.”
“You were going to throw them away anyway, weren’t you?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Then I’ll eat them, so pack all of them into lunch boxes.”
“L-Lunch boxes….?”
“That’s right.”
Munch, munch.
“What are you doing? Hurry back to the kitchen.”
“No, it’s just…. Yes, sir! I’m going right now!”
The Head Chef dashed away in a fluster.
The maids followed him….or, more precisely, they hurriedly ran somewhere while covering their mouths.
I watched them leave before shoving another piece of entrails into my mouth.
A soft, squishy texture filled my mouth, accompanied by the pungent flavor of a sewer.
‘Not bad.’
....After eating it for a while, it wasn’t so bad.
* * *
A day had passed since Adrian returned to the County.
Adrian had not left the Frost Trial Grounds since then. He even ate his meals inside the trial grounds.
Apart from the time he spent sleeping, he trained his body in the Frost Trial Grounds all day long.
Today was no different.
Adrian stood in the Frost Trial Grounds, breathing heavily. He lifted heavy barbells and dumbbells.
It was ordinary physical training.
However, the amount of weight was anything but ordinary.
Dozens of weight plates hung from both ends of the barbell, bending the metal bar almost into the shape of a C.
“W-What….am I looking at right now?”
“Is that even humanly possible….?”
“Could Lord Adrian be using Aura—?”
“Do you really think so?”
“R-Right? There’s no way Lord Adrian could use aura, is there?”
Adrian had stripped off his shirt, revealing a body that had become considerably more solid than it had been yesterday.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
Whenever Adrian lifted the barbell while maintaining a steady rhythm of breathing, his dense, compact muscles rippled violently.
“Is he….really human?”
“I’m starting to think he might be an Ogre....”
Adrian had become the most popular topic among the soldiers of the Count’s Castle.
And it wasn’t only the soldiers of the Count’s Castle.
Adrian had also become the hottest subject of gossip among the maids of the Lord’s Castle.
“Hey, hey, you know Lord Adrian? Don’t you think he seems a little different?”
“Completely! Actually, I cleaned Lord Adrian’s room yesterday.”
“Uh-huh.”
“After I finished cleaning and left the room, I thought about it and realized that I hadn’t arranged all the hangers to face the same direction.”
“What?! Lord Adrian would never let something like that go!”
“Exactly!”
The maid shuddered as she recalled what had happened.
“So I kept wondering what I should do, but then I decided it would be better to get the beating over with. I confessed everything honestly.”
“And then?”
“He said it was fine!”
“What….?”
“And he even thanked me for always working so hard to clean his room!”
“Whaaat?! He didn’t slap you?!”
“No! I was seriously so touched!”
Once their chatter began, it continued without end.
“Then could that rumor be true too?”
“What rumor?”
“The one about Lord Adrian’s meals. They say he only eats entrails these days. And only the inedible parts.”
“What? Lord Adrian, the clean freak? Why in the world would he do that?”
“I heard from the Head Chef that he’s doing it to conserve ingredients. Apparently, there isn’t even enough food to distribute to the people of the County.”
“What….?”
“Honestly, even I find that difficult to believe.”
“No, it’s true.”
Another voice suddenly cut into their conversation.
“Huh? Rena….?”
“When did you get here?”
“Just now.”
“But what do you mean it’s true? Did you see it yourself?”
“Yes. I was beside Lord Adrian while he was in the dining hall. He really said he was eating the entrails because there weren’t enough ingredients.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And then he put those entrails into his mouth as if it were nothing....”
“Oh my!”
“Ugh, let’s stop talking about that. Remembering it is making my stomach—Urp!”
Just like that.
Both the soldiers of the Count’s Castle and the maids of the Lord’s Castle filled the air with stories about Adrian.
However, it didn’t last long.
“When do you think he’ll return to his old ways?”
“Won’t he give up tomorrow because it’s too difficult?”
“I think he’ll quit today.”
“I’ll bet one gold that he lasts three days this time.”
Not a single person believed that Adrian would change completely.
He was merely “pretending” to make an effort because of the shock caused by the will left behind by the former Count.
He was only “pretending” to change. People never truly changed.
Adrian, of all people, had never made a genuine effort at anything in his entire life.
He had been a delinquent for more than ten years.
That wasn’t something that could change after one brief disappearance from home and a single day of effort.
The delinquent of the Count’s family would remain the delinquent of the Count’s family.
Both the soldiers of the Count’s Castle and the maids of the Lord’s Castle reached the same conclusion.
“....He’ll stop eventually.”
But regardless of what they thought—
Adrian silently continued lifting barbells and dumbbells in the Frost Trial Grounds.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
Adrian’s ragged breathing and the intense heat radiating from his body filled the air.
Frost no longer formed inside the Frost Trial Grounds.
And so—
Time passed swiftly.
It was early dawn, before the sun had risen.
The darkness had yet to retreat, and the cold moonlight cast a faint silver glow across the sky and the County’s snow-covered landscape.
Ice crystals sparkled like the Milky Way beneath the moonlight.
The ridges of the snowy mountains could be seen in the distance.
Silence hung over the world, as though everything had frozen and was holding its breath—
Kai walked briskly as he reviewed his training schedule.
Swordsmanship practice, live sparring, supervising the soldiers’ training, tactical exercises, archery, formation-breaking and defensive exercises, nighttime ambush exercises, tracking, survival training, and physical conditioning.
It was a grueling routine that began before dawn and continued until late at night.
It tested his limits every single day, but—
It was Kai’s usual daily routine.
With every step, the cold, frosty air struck his cheeks. With every breath, his lungs seemed to freeze.
Smoke rose from chimneys everywhere. It almost seemed to beckon him to stop and warm himself for a while.
But Kai quickened his pace.
If he wanted to complete his entire training schedule today, he had no time to dawdle.
Then, when he hurriedly arrived at the Frost Trial Grounds—
From deeper within the Frost Trial Grounds—
Huff! Huff! Huff!
Someone was already there, training before Kai.
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