Chapter 17 - {The Grand Duchy's Treasure Warehouse} 2
{The Grand Duchy's Treasure Warehouse} 2
Translator : Elizabeth
Frederica came closer, looked at it, and raised her eyebrows as if surprised.
"You chose that?"
"How is it? It's exactly my style."
"Unexpected. I thought you were a pragmatist, but to think you'd choose such an ornamental item."
Frederica crossed her arms and scanned the coat.
"That's an item whose name isn't even particularly known. It's just said to have been here since a very long time ago."
"It's old, but its condition looks good, no?"
"The problem is the performance."
Frederica shrugged her shoulders.
"As you can see, it's just flashy. Wizards appraised it several times, but no special magical functions were discovered. Just… it's incredibly durable, doesn't get dirty, and the fur doesn't fall out even as time passes? They say its defense is also about the level of physical leather."
It was as she explained.
This coat was just a top-grade luxury coat in appearance, and no special abilities like a hero's armor were known.
That was why it was left in the corner of the treasure warehouse only for display.
"Besides, it stands out too much. Going to a battlefield wearing something like that is like advertising 'I am here, shoot me!'."
It seemed Frederica expected Kang Jin-ho to choose another practical artifact.
But Kang Jin-ho picked up the coat without hesitation.
The touch against his hand was soft and cool.
'As expected, she doesn't know.'
Kang Jin-ho cheered inwardly.
The true value of this coat is not revealed right now.
It was a growth-type artifact whose seal is released only when the owner injects mana satisfying specific conditions in the latter half of the original story.
'The Frost Wolf's Coat.'
The true name of this coat.
Once the seal is released, it was an artifact that grants not only cold resistance to the wearer but also intense cold attributes to the user's energy.
If he used it, freezing an entire territory would become simple.
He could create a real-life Ice Age.
'Above all, it has style.'
Kang Jin-ho put on the coat.
It wrapped around his body perfectly like custom-made clothes.
Looking into a nearby mirror, the beast-like man with black hair and the pure white flashy coat created a strange contrast, giving off an intense impression.
"How is it?"
Kang Jin-ho asked while arranging the collar.
Frederica was at a loss for words for a moment.
Her eyes narrowed.
It was definitely clothes she thought were for display, but when Kang Jin-ho wore it, it gave off a completely different atmosphere.
His wild energy and the coat's splendor harmonized, exploding with a dangerous yet alluring masculinity.
"…Not bad."
Frederica pretended to be calm, but a minute tremble was mixed in her voice.
She slowly approached Kang Jin-ho.
The sound of her shoes broke the silence of the treasure warehouse.
"No, I'll be honest. It suits you very well."
Frederica fingered Kang Jin-ho's coat collar.
Her fingers slid down the collar and grazed Kang Jin-ho's firm chest.
It wasn't a simple compliment.
Explicit emotion was carried in that touch.
"Satisfied?"
"Very satisfied. Earned money, and secured clothes too."
Kang Jin-ho smirked and did not reject her touch.
Frederica took another step closer.
Now the distance between the two became close enough to hear each other's breathing.
Her blue eyes looked up at Kang Jin-ho.
Inside those eyes, desire hotter than the gold in the treasure warehouse was burning.
"That's a relief. That you're satisfied."
Frederica's red lips drew an arc.
She pretended to look around and spoke suggestively.
"By the way, do you know? The door of this treasure warehouse… cannot be opened from the outside once closed from the inside."
Clank.
The sound of her reaching behind her back, emitting Aura, and manipulating something was heard.
The massive steel door that was open in the distance began to close with a heavy sound.
Boom—.
The door closed completely, and noise from the outside was cut off.
A space where only silence lingered.
Under the light emitted by countless treasures, only the two remained.
"Just perfect."
Frederica leaned her back against the closed door and smiled enchantingly.
Her eyes were like those of a lioness who had starved for a long time and finally monopolized appetizing prey.
"There's only the two of us here. No one can disturb us."
She slowly began to unbutton her jacket.
"So now… shall we talk about another reward? Fist Emperor-nim?"
Kang Jin-ho looked down at her with his hands in his coat pockets.
An interesting smile spread across his lips.
He expected it, but she was more aggressive than he thought.
'Looks like I won't be leaving with just clothes.'
The sealed air of the treasure warehouse was heating up, mixing with the cold smell of metal and the woman's thick scent.
As the heavy door of the treasure warehouse closed, a space for just the two of them, perfectly isolated from the outside, was completed.
In the cold and dry air, only the heat Frederica emitted rose heterogeneously.
"Another reward, huh."
Kang Jin-ho raised his chin as if interested.
"Fufut, you will definitely like it very much."
Frederica's fingers unbuttoned one more button of her shirt.
Her collarbone line was revealed, and the white flesh hidden beneath it shone dazzlingly under the lighting of the treasure warehouse.
It wasn't intended simply to expose skin.
It was a gesture like a kind of appeal, as if trying to prove her value.
"If the rumors are true, it should be a condition you can't resist."
Frederica took a step closer and whispered.
Her blue eyes were shining persistently as if gauging Kang Jin-ho's reaction.
"Married Woman Hunter."
She mentioned that word and smiled strangely.
Not scorn or mockery, but rather shrewdness trying to utilize that title was glimpsed.
"The women you touched in the capital… you said they were all noble wives fallen into ennui, right? Those not loved by their husbands, or unsatisfied because their husbands were lackluster."
"Well, roughly so."
Kang Jin-ho shrugged his shoulders.
At his nonchalant reaction, Frederica's smile deepened.
"Then my qualifications should be sufficient too."
She showed her left hand.
On her ring finger, a ring engraved with the family crest was worn.
It was a wedding ring.
"As you can see, I am also undeniably a married woman."
"I know. On paper."
Kang Jin-ho answered indifferently.
Since he read the original novel, he knew the fact that she was married.
The partner was a man who was a loyal retainer of the Winter family and the Knight Commander.
But details beyond that didn't come to mind.
Because he was just a character passing by as background setting.
"Right, on paper."
Frederica let out a self-deprecating laugh.
"But there is one thing different from any women you have met."
She placed her hand on Kang Jin-ho's chest.
Her fingertips were trembling minutely.
It was due to tension, and also a precursor just before the desire suppressed for a long time burst out.
"I haven't accepted anyone yet."
Kang Jin-ho's eyebrow twitched.
"Are you saying you're a virgin?"
"Don't believe it?"
Frederica smacked her lips bitterly.
"The guy called my husband… although I refused him for 4 years, he collapsed before we could even have our first night of marriage. It's already the 3rd year. He just lies in bed like a corpse as a vegetable."
Vegetable (Persistent Vegetative State).
The weight that word gave was never light.
But in Frederica's voice, there was no pity or sadness toward her husband.
Only dryness and cynicism as if mentioning a tiresome burden filled it.
"Thanks to that, I'm a married woman in name only, but I've kept my virginity."
Her hand climbed up Kang Jin-ho's coat collar and wrapped around his neck.
"How is it? A married woman yet a virgin."
Her red lips came close enough to touch Kang Jin-ho's ear.
Hot breath tickled his earlobe.
"Isn't this the rarest case even among the prey you've been searching for so much?"
It was certainly so.
Kang Jin-ho had met countless noble wives over the past 5 years, but this case was the first.
Legally someone else's wife, but physically in a pure white state.
Conditions that could satisfy immorality and conquest simultaneously, enough to make a man drool.
But instead of pouncing immediately, Kang Jin-ho smirked and asked.
"You must have had a bad relationship with your husband?"
"Relationship?"
Frederica snorted.
Her expression hardened coldly in an instant.
Chilly malice dwelled in the eyes that were seductive just moments ago.
"What is there to be good or bad. It wasn't a marriage I wanted in the first place."
She fingered her ring neurotically.
As if she wanted to rip off the shackle tightening her finger.
"7 years ago, when I was 20, my father decided it arbitrarily. The previous Grand Duke… right, my father didn't acknowledge me as a successor just because I was a woman."
Suppressed anger seeped out of Frederica's voice.
She was born as the eldest daughter of the Winter family.
Martial power, strategy, administrative ability—all were outstanding.
But she was excluded from the successor structure solely because she was a woman.
"Kalian was always lacking compared to me due to the age gap, and I, the first child, had great ambition. That bothered Father. Fearful that I would threaten my brother's position, he tried to shove me onto a suitable guy and clear me away."
Her eyes blazed.
"And that partner was just a scumbag knight who acted as the family's loyal dog."
"Hmm."
Kang Jin-ho looked at her as if interested.
Usually in Romance Fantasy novels, female leads in arranged marriages are depicted as tragic heroines.
'I married inevitably but tried to respect my husband,' or 'I was sad about a loveless marriage.'
But Frederica was different.
She thoroughly accepted this marriage as an insult.
"I swear, I have never once seen that person as a man. No, I haven't even felt him as the opposite sex for several years after marriage."
She poked Kang Jin-ho's chest.
"Because he was weak."
"Weak, huh. Didn't you say he was a Knight Commander? Isn't a Knight Commander in the North on the quite strong side?"
"By my standards, he falls far short."
Frederica was firm.
"A woman of the North wants a strong male. To bow my head to a guy weaker than me and bear his child. That was a humiliation worse than death to me."
By her standards, her husband was merely a 'loyal dog' obeying her father's orders.
A man with neither the power nor the ambition to win her.
To have to live tied to such a man for life was no different from putting a leash on a proud beast and locking it in a doghouse.
"But after coveting me presumptuously for 4 years, he became a vegetable. Serves him right."
She spoke mocking her husband's tragedy.
But mixed in the background was lamentation for her twisted fate.
"People look at me and pity me as an unfortunate woman. They praise me as an excellent wife keeping chastity while nursing her husband. Isn't it funny? I feel nauseous just seeing that human breathe."
Frederica pulled Kang Jin-ho as if grabbing his collar.
Her pupils approached right in front of Kang Jin-ho's pupils.
"So I waited."
Her breathing became rough.
"A man stronger than me. A real male who will trample on my arrogance and awaken my suppressed instincts."
She saw the overwhelming martial power Kang Jin-ho showed.
That absolute power leaping over city walls and playing with the ancient demonic beast Mammoth Prime like a toy.
It was the crystallization of strength she had longed for her whole life.
"That monster even Kalian struggled with, you brought it like luggage. I knew then. That you are the man I was looking for."
Frederica's hand dug inside Kang Jin-ho's coat.
As the texture of hard muscles was transmitted to her palm, she swallowed a moan as if she couldn't endure it.
"This coat… it really suits you when you wear it. Like the King of the North."
She unbuttoned her shirt completely without hesitation.
Voluptuous curves revealed above white underwear entered Kang Jin-ho's view explicitly.
She made Kang Jin-ho's hand wrap around her waist.
"Take me."
It was a command tone, but at the same time close to begging.
"I'll give you something more valuable than anything in this treasure warehouse."
She is the legitimate daughter of the Winter family and one of the practical rulers of the North.
And a married woman possessing a chaste body untouched by anyone's hands.
"My virginity, and my suppressed desires… I'll give them all to you."
Frederica stood on tiptoes and brought her lips near Kang Jin-ho's lips.
Her eyes were provocative and dangerous.
"How about it? Aren't you interested, Mr. Married Woman Hunter?"