The following morning, the autumn sun pierced the thick clouds, bringing a renewed, almost aggressive vigor to the muddy, forgotten Border Town. The crisp, biting air carried a fundamentally different sound than had been heard a few short weeks ago; the rhythmic, dull thud of wooden shovels digging into the earth had been swiftly replaced by the sharp, frantic, metallic clink of hammers against iron and the heavy grinding of dragging stones.
The public speech Roland had delivered in the central square the previous day — a chaotic event that Arthur had quietly observed from the periphery, gauging the crowd's reactions — had served as a much-needed injection of adrenaline and hope for the malnourished population. The Prince's firm promise of protection against the beasts, the guarantee of warm food, and absolute resistance against the commercial tyranny of Longsong Stronghold had begun to materialize not just in words, but in actions. Like the revolutionary cement foundations now drying and hardening along the North Slope, the people's once non-existent trust in royalty was finally becoming a solid, structural, and palpable reality.
Arthur, however, maintained a cold, calculated distance from the public festivities and the infectious optimism of the streets. He was not, and never would be, a man partial to sweaty crowds or heroic speeches. Instead, he sought the relative and strategic refuge of the castle's private library — a cold, rectangular room with an incredibly high vaulted ceiling and the omnipresent smell of accumulated dust, ancient goatskin scrolls, and damp stone. Sitting in a shadowed corner, far from the narrow windows, he closed his eyes and summoned the translucent blue interface that had become his constant, silent companion and his greatest trump card in that backward world.
His eyes immediately locked onto a specific icon in the corner of the spectral screen, an icon that had taunted him with its opaque, grayish "locked" state since the exact second he had transmigrated into that castle. Now, however, the situation had changed. The [SHOP] button pulsed with a soft, rhythmic, and intensely inviting golden glow.
As Arthur focused his consciousness on the glowing icon, an extensive and complex list of items materialized in his peripheral vision, categorized with the impeccable efficiency of a modern survival RPG. He felt his pulse quicken beneath the collar of his tunic as he examined the miraculous inventory.
[ DIMENSIONAL SHOP - UNLOCKED ]
Available Balance: 300 Credits
[ CATEGORY: OBJECTS & TOOLS ]
Reinforced wooden bucket (4 credits)
Tempered steel hammer (7 credits)
Heavy-duty industrial sewing kit (11 credits)
Thick thermal wool blanket (9 credits)
...
[ CATEGORY: KNOWLEDGE - INSTANT ABSORPTION FOR HOST ]
Survival Culinary Arts (50 credits)
Basic European Fencing (100 credits)
Applied Basic Chemistry (120 credits)
Principles of Construction and Engineering (150 credits)
...
[ CATEGORY: FOOD & SUPPLIES ]
Fortified fresh bread (1 credit)
Hearty canned vegetable soup (3 credits)
Homemade meat stew (5 credits)
High-calorie cured and dried meat ration (4 credits)
...
Arthur analyzed the list with surgical, impassive precision. The initial amount of 300 credits was generous for an early game, but he knew, better than anyone, how precious, finite resources could vanish in the blink of an eye during an urban-scale crisis. He didn't view the list with the eyes of a starving man; he saw tactical utility. He didn't see "food"; he saw "Morale Boosters" and "Mutiny Mitigators." He didn't see "steel hammers"; he saw "Critical Construction Multipliers" to accelerate the wall. After weighing dozens of future scenarios in his brilliant mind, he closed the interface with a blink, his mind already formulating a rigorous spending plan that strictly prioritized long-term infrastructure over any immediate, personal comfort.
.
.
.
Leaving the silence of the library, Arthur walked down the corridors to the castle's inner training ground. The open space was a brutal cacophony of pained grunts, the sound of boots stomping in the mud, and heavy breathing forming white clouds in the cold air.
In the center of the muddy courtyard, William was the incarnation of the war god himself. He was in the midst of an exhausting display of physical endurance, leading an exhausted group of twenty carefully selected recruits. These were the rugged men destined to form the hard core of Roland's new armed militia.
Sweat poured profusely down William's face, soaking his black linen shirt beneath the light leather armor, but he sported the broad, sadistic, predatory smile of a man born for combat and leadership. He moved among the clumsy recruits with the lethal grace of a panther; his System-granted +11 Speed allowing him to cross short distances almost as a blur. He aggressively corrected their imaginary firing stances and alignments with hard slaps on the back before the poor farmers even realized they were out of formation.
Arthur slowly approached the edge of the courtyard, feigning the posture of a bored lord adjusting the embroidered cuffs of his noble tunic. He waited patiently under the eaves of the roof until William finally took pity and signaled with a sharp whistle for a two-minute water break.
As the twenty recruits collapsed into the cold mud, panting, coughing, and thanking the heavens for the rest, William walked to the edge of the courtyard, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Arthur positioned himself beside him, but instead of looking at him, he kept his eyes fixed on the distant gray line of the castle wall, a posture designed to avoid drawing the slightest attention from any guard or gossip watching the two outsiders from afar.
William leaned against the stone pillar, taking a generous swig from a leather canteen, and tilted his head slightly toward his friend.
— "Man, you were absurdly right," William whispered, his voice vibrating with contained excitement, his eyes sparking with adrenaline from the physical training. — "That witch with the invisibility power... this Nightingale. She really appeared in the Prince's room last night. Exactly as you predicted in the plot schedule."
Arthur didn't move a single muscle in his face. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, but his jaw clenched slightly.
— "I know she appeared," Arthur muttered, his voice so low it was almost inaudible over the wind. — "My System's Shop unlocked automatically early this morning, confirming that the trigger for her contact event with Roland occurred. But listen closely, William: avoid talking to me about her. In fact, from now on, avoid talking to me about anything sensitive."
William paused with his canteen mid-air, frowning, confused by the strategist's sudden paranoia.
— "Why all the drama? Relax, bro. I have sharp perception. She's not even here in the courtyard, we're out in the open."
— "Don't be so arrogant," Arthur hissed, his eyes finally narrowing in a dark warning expression. — "I hate this damn feeling. I hate having to measure every breath. Nightingale does not walk on the same plane as we do, William. She can remain completely invisible, undetectable to any normal physical sense. For all we know, she could be breathing down your neck right now, leaning against this very pillar, listening to everything, and we would never, ever notice."
William instinctively glanced over his shoulder, a slight shiver running down the back of his neck, even knowing rationally that Arthur was just overdoing the caution. At that exact moment, Nightingale wasn't there — she was sleeping in her own hideout in the forest — but the rules of the game demanded absolute caution.
— "You need to understand the gravity of the board," continued Arthur, his voice sharp and pragmatic. — "Our only defense in this castle is the facade that we are foreign nobles and 'scholars' who possess vast intelligence and exact sciences from the 'ancient books.' If Nightingale, who is initially loyal only to witches and her own instincts, hears even a single lie from us about 'systems,' 'magic,' or that we knew about her before she appeared... our usefulness ends and she might see us as a threat. So do not use your teleportation even for a second, and do not speak aloud about future plots. Understood?"
William nodded stiffly, his sadistic training smile disappearing completely, replaced by a focused and lethal gleam of concentration. He wasn't stupid. He knew the situation had just silently shifted from a mere "Survival on Easy Mode" to "Hide the Truth on Hard Mode."
As Arthur stepped away from the courtyard to join Roland and Anna at the furnaces, William turned and returned to his recruits. The necessary paranoia Arthur had just instilled in him turned into fuel. He barked a terrifying order, raising the men from the mud with a terrifying new energy, pushing them even harder, forcing their physical limits. He desperately needed these men to be prepared and indestructible for the bloody iron age that was about to be born from Anna's fire. If shadows could kill them, they needed to be harder than stone.
.
.
.
At the other end of the inner courtyard, Roland's laboratory was a suffocating furnace of pure revolutionary ambition. The air inside was incredibly dense, heavy with the ochre smell of hot iron, gray clouds of coal smoke, and the strong, pungent odor of sulfur. Roland and young Anna were bent intensely over a heavy stone table covered with dozens of raw cast iron components, technical engineering drawings, and newly forged, rudimentary brass valves.
Arthur entered the room, the immediate heat making him sweat. He stopped and watched, fascinated, as Anna used her arcane ability. Her hands were extended with precision, creating a focused beam of bright orange flames and devastating incandescent heat to directly weld a heavy steel piston rod. The absence of impurities and the absurd temperature she generated out of nowhere was the true industrial miracle. No necromancy spells or cursed green flames; it was pure thermodynamics channeled through the body of a girl who was once seen as the scum of the world.
What they were assembling on the table was not a weapon. It was the first prototype of the colossal project that would irrevocably change the military and commercial trajectory of that world: Graycastle's first high-pressure steam engine. It was a rudimentary construction, dangerously heavy, crude, but undeniably beautiful in its mathematical essence.
Roland didn't look up with his soot-filled eyes when the sound of Arthur's boots echoed across the stone floor. His face was grimy with coal, his hair matted with sweat, and his eyes deeply red and swollen from absolute lack of sleep.
— "If we can't seal the pressure of this cylinder properly, Arthur," grumbled Roland, his voice hoarse from the smoke, tapping an iron wrench against the edge of the metal, — "all of this is nothing but a glorified, very expensive kettle. The pressure will escape through the sides. We need a sealing gasket material that won't melt or crack under the extreme stress of the steam pressure."
— "Try forcing a very thick mixture of linen and pressed animal tallow for now, Your Highness," Arthur suggested, pulling a three-legged stool close to the glowing table, analyzing the valves Anna had just cast. — "The tallow will partially melt, but the linen will swell and should create a temporary seal on the rim. But in the long run, once the west wall is secure and we open river trade with the wild south, we will need to consider exploring for rubber trees or try developing basic high-density polymers in your chemical lab. For now, the focus is just proving that the vacuum stroke works cyclically."
The grueling work dragged on for the rest of the afternoon.
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.
.
That same night, while the castle finally plunged into a heavy, freezing, and restless sleep, Roland returned alone to his private quarters. He was absolutely exhausted, every muscle in his back and arms aching from the heavy manual labor he had never done before in the lab. His noble body demanded immediate rest. But as he walked to the desk and lit the candle on the mahogany desk with a strike of flint, the amber light suddenly revealed that he was not alone in the locked room.
His heart skipped a beat.
Nightingale was sitting casually in his personal chair behind the desk, her cloak hood down, fully revealing her beautiful silvery-blonde hair that shimmered under the soft firelight. To Roland's utter despair, she was casually, almost boredly, leafing through a stack of his secret personal scrolls and documents, treating them as if they were a light summer novel.
— "It seems that court gossip rumors are indeed the least reliable and most useless currency in all of Graycastle," she said without looking up from the paper, her melodious, soft, and deliciously teasing voice echoing off the stone walls. — "They say in the capital's taverns that the infamous Fourth Prince is an ignorant, lazy, and amoral drunkard, with the intelligence and planning of a blind goat. And yet... this exquisite technical drawing you hide here. You title it a 'steam engine', don't you?"
Roland felt a flash of deep, hot irritation rise up his neck, fatigue making him less tolerant of home invasions than he was the day before.
For the love of God! Roland thought, silently cursing her and all the deities of that world for creating invisibility powers. Do you Association witches simply not believe in the civilized concept of privacy? Sneaking in and out through the walls of my locked room as you please... does she think my royal quarters are a damn public tavern with an open door?! Despite cursing her internally in three different languages from his original world, he blinked slowly and forced himself to keep his face perfectly impassive, sporting an expression of pragmatic calm and calculated patience. He wasn't crazy. He knew he couldn't afford the stupid luxury of offending or shouting at a lethal female assassin, equipped with silver knives, who was capable of disappearing into the shadows of the very furniture in a millisecond.
— "Yes, those are the incipient blueprints for a new power engine," Roland replied, crossing his arms, assuming a professorial pose. — "But don't be alarmed by the paper. Without the skill and direct inspiration of Anna's temperature magic to melt the molds and shape the perfect containment cylinders, they would be nothing more than spilled ink and impossible dreams shelved forever."
— "And what can this pile of iron and tubes really do that is so special for you to invest what little gold you have in it?" Nightingale asked, genuine curiosity taking over her face as she used a slender finger to trace the complex outline of a continuous-motion piston on the charcoal drawing.
— "It can do, uninterruptedly, the brute labor of a hundred grown men and twenty draft horses," Roland answered. The fatigue seemed to evaporate momentarily, his voice becoming passionate and feverish, the visionary taking over the prince. — "It does not tire. It does not bleed. It can pump and drain water from flooded mines, turn immense hammers to forge tons of steel a day, transport fleets of ore in iron wagons, and power massive grinding mills. That block of metal you see there is the pumping heart of a whole new world, a world where the people don't have to sweat to death or starve working in the mud."
The assassin was silent for a long moment, absorbing the surreal magnitude of the promise embedded in the passionate words of that strange man.
— "Then I shall take this 'future' paper with me," Nightingale declared, with a tone that suddenly abandoned the banter and became deadly serious. She methodically folded the parchment and tucked it deep into the hidden, inner folds of her dark tunic. — "The Witch Cooperation Association also has sisters who possess the natural and destructive gift of fire and heating. When we find the Holy Mountain, they and our new society could use the promise of a 'tireless heart' to build and heat our own sanctuary away from humanity."
— "Hey... hold on, that's a military project under..." Roland started, taking a step forward, reaching out to try to prevent the obvious theft of his revolutionary intellectual property, but Nightingale simply raised her pale hand in an elegant gesture, forcing him to silence and stop immediately.
— "Do not agitate yourself, Your Highness. I am not a cheap street thief, Roland Wimbledon. My sisters taught me honor," she gently reprimanded. — "I never take absolutely anything without willingly offering something of weight and invaluable worth in exchange. Look at this on your desk before complaining about what you lost."
She reached her fingers into her belt pouch and carefully placed a small, fragile parchment tube, tightly rolled and sealed, onto the polished mahogany top of the desk. It was tiny, made of thin, waterproof paper, barely the size of the phalanx of a human index finger.
Roland blinked, frustration giving way to sharp suspicion. He approached, picked up the delicately rolled piece of paper with two fingers, and broke the small, generic pale wax seal, unfolding the note. As he examined the cramped, coded, and visibly frantically written handwriting under the candlelight, all the blood drained from his face and he grew pale. A deadly chill ran down his spine, far worse than any Demonic Beast Iron Axe had described.
— "This is..." Roland muttered, his voice trailing off mid-sentence.
— "That, Your Highness, is a dirty little secret letter," Nightingale explained, her voice light and cheerful, but with a predatory and piercing gaze that analyzed every micro-expression of terror on Roland's face. — "A letter that was to be dispatched from your tower by a carrier pigeon from the south later this afternoon. The original recipient of this affectionate missive and its author was your beautiful, demure, and quiet personal maid, Tyre. It seems that, after all, your famous and lustful castle 'harem' is not as lovingly loyal as you thought."
Roland frowned, his hands trembling slightly as he held the piece of paper as if it were poisoned. His mind raced. He remembered Tyre perfectly well — a frail, skittish-looking girl who had been in the service of the royal household and in direct service to him since his early teens. The memories of the "original" Roland showed that the despicable former prince had actively harassed and pursued her for years on end in the palace corridors, driven by a pathetic, unrequited teenage lust that terrified the servant. There, in the isolated Border Town, she had been assigned to occupy the exact room next to his, for royal convenience. Since transmigrating, the "new" Roland had been so obsessed and drowning up to his neck in the technological revolution, in forges and walls, that he had foolishly assumed Tyre was just another obedient, invisible, and insignificant piece of furniture in the castle. He hadn't expected her to actually be a poisoned dagger pointed straight at his back.
The written letter was not formally signed with any name, but the explicit content was chilling. In short sentences, it spoke openly of the "unwanted failure of the initial plan," of frustration with the survival of the one who should be in the grave, and of the intense, dangerous, and angry dissatisfaction of the unknown author in King's City over the bizarre fact that Roland was still alive and issuing decrees.
The assassination on the first day, Roland thought, his stomach churning and a wave of nausea hitting him. Of course... the poison in my wine goblet worked perfectly. The real, useless original Roland was truly poisoned and died that instant. Cheng Yan, my modern consciousness, is only occupying this cold chair today because the original host suffered lethal heart failure and passed away, leaving the body free. This damn letter is the undenia