Chapter 123: Azyeth’s Hand
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 123: Azyeth’s Hand
“Wake up. How long are you going to laze around in bed?”
It was Azyeth’s first morning in Doomheim. The dim, indigo glow of the luminous stones shone like warm sunlight.
The city was noisy from the crack of dawn, filled with the boisterous shouts and hammering of hot-blooded dwarves.
“Nnngh…”
Tossing and turning with a sleepy grumble, Azyeth slowly pushed herself up. Her half-closed eyelids were still swimming in dreamland.
Her head drooped, bobbing as she dozed off again. Then, she stretched with a long yawn.
“Haaah…”
A chill brushed against her cheek.
Her breath plumed in a white cloud.
One might wonder why her breath was visible in Doomheim, a city kept warm by geothermal heat and the Heart of Magmora, but winter had come to the room where Azyeth stayed.
The fluffy bed was frozen solid, as hard as ice.
The ceiling was coated in a hazy layer of ice crystals, and countless frost flowers bloomed on the walls. Snow falling from the ceiling covered the floor in a blanket of white.
The glass of water on the table had turned into a block of ice. The view outside was hidden behind a faint layer of frost.
It had taken only one night.
One night for Azyeth to create her own winter kingdom.
“Wow, it’s so pretty.”
Perka, who had followed them in, made a thoughtless remark as she looked around the room. Thorvar covered his forehead with his palm.
“…?”
The one responsible, however, had no idea she had done it.
“You can’t take it back now. If you kick her out, I’ll spread rumors all over town that a Meister cruelly threw out a princess.”
The quick-witted Karami beat Thorvar to the punch before he could say a word. In just a single day, Azyeth had become the dwarves’ princess, and a fan club had even formed somewhere.
If a rumor got out that he had kicked her out, Meister Thorvar’s dishonorable retirement was as clear as day.
“…I’ll look for a way.”
All he could do was try to devise a countermeasure for the cold that radiated from Azyeth.
Karami crunched across the snow-covered floor and sat next to Azyeth. Her fine hair had become a bird’s nest overnight.
“Here, turn to the side.”
Taking a comb from his pocket, Karami began to tidy Azyeth’s hair.
“A man carrying a comb….”
“The slaves I used to raise would never groom themselves unless I did it for them. So it became a habit.”
“But a master combing his slave’s hair? I’ve never heard of or seen such a thing.”
“As a slave trader, maintaining the quality of my merchandise is the most basic of basics. It seems you’ve only met strange masters.”
…Is that so?
It was a valid argument.
Indeed, Karami had treated Perka like a noble lady as well. He acted in the complete opposite manner of those who abused their slaves for fun.
He was completely different from his reputation. Of course, he had also used Perka as a hostage, so he couldn’t be called a purely good person.
All in all, he was a strange man.
“That should do it.”
Azyeth’s hair was finally neat. The group went down to the first floor to prepare breakfast.
Perka, now freed from slavery, sat in what was originally her designated chair. That meant they needed two more chairs for the humans.
Crack.
Ice froze over, forming a magnificent throne. Azyeth sat on the ice chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“What about mine?”
“…?”
“Please make one for me, too.”
Azyeth created another ice chair. Karami excitedly sat down. The feeling of sitting on an ice chair for the first time in his life was…
“…It’s cold.”
Ridiculously cold.
“Of course it is, it’s made of ice. Did you think it would be warm?”
“Well, no, but…”
He had thought it would at least be refreshingly cool to sit on, but he was sorely mistaken. It was so cold that if he sat any longer, he’d get frostbite and have to have his buttocks amputated.
Karami reluctantly stood up. Frost clung to his pants.
“Old man, how about you make me a chair?”
“Hmph.”
Thorvar, who snorted and took an ambiguous stance, grabbed a piece of bread and began to tear into it. Azyeth, who had been watching him blankly, also picked up a piece of bread from the basket.
What is this thing?
She examined the bread from all angles as if it were some bizarre creature. As time passed, frost particles clung to it, turning it into an ice-bread. It was no longer edible.
Karami, who was forced to eat standing since he had no chair, took the bread from Azyeth’s hand, set it down, and tore a new piece into small bits. Because of her trait of freezing everything her breath or touch came into contact with, he planned to feed her himself.
“Say ‘ah.’”
“Ah…”
Azyeth opened her mouth slightly. While most of her body was white and blue, the pinkish-red of her oral mucosa was oddly suggestive.
Forcing his gaze away, Karami placed a piece of bread in her mouth.
“You know how to chew without me telling you, right?”
Thankfully, she wasn't that helpless. She knew how to perform the basic biological functions required of a living being. She moved her cheeks, chewing, and then swallowed the bread.
“How is it?”
Azyeth didn’t answer his question. The sense of taste was also new to her, so she just tilted her head from side to side.
“How is it? Is it edible?”
Azyeth nodded.
Karami smiled warmly.
“That’s a relief, then. Keep saying ‘ah.’ I’ll feed you for the time being.”
Perka and Thorvar couldn’t hide their astonishment.
Is that really a master-slave relationship?
No way.
They were just a special case.
A normal master would surely treat such a beautiful slave harshly. Azyeth’s childlike behavior would make her easy to train to one’s own liking.
Even Perka, a fellow woman, felt a dark impulse to tease Azyeth welling up inside her.
Like the urge to bother a cute little animal. Like the desire to step on and dirty a pure white field of untouched snow.
It was the brain’s self-regulating mechanism when faced with something too beautiful.
But Karami’s behavior was just like…
“He’s just like a mother bird.”
He was simply a mother.
A mother taking care of her naive daughter.
No better description existed in the world.
“He seems to take better care of her than my own father does of me.”
“If my daughter were like that, I’d have done the same,” Thorvar said.
“Among all the daughters you could have had, I’m the best you could’ve gotten.”
“What nonsense is that? You take after your mother completely. My share of the blame is barely one percent.”
The merciless father and daughter exchanged verbal one-two punches. By the time the meal was over, only two bruised losers remained.
Karami glanced at them with a look of pity as he wiped Azyeth’s mouth.
“Tsk, tsk, I don’t know why they’re like that. There’s nothing better than a master-slave relationship in this world. Right?”
“Mmm… is that so…?”
“That’s how it is.”
If he said so, it must be true.
Azyeth didn’t think too deeply about it.
*
After eating, Karami and Azyeth went out for a walk to aid their digestion.
They kept a distance of about one arm’s length between them.
The reason was that after wandering the city the day before, he had come home to find ice particles clinging to the parts of his clothes that had been close to Azyeth.
Even now, a trail of ice marked the path Azyeth had walked. Wherever she went, winter followed.
As she walked, looking around the city, Azyeth would occasionally stop. Once, it was in front of a cloud-dog being walked by a passerby.
It was named so because its white fur looked like a cumulus cloud.
When Azyeth showed interest in the dog, the passerby readily showed it to her. His ulterior motive for walking the cloud-dog in the first place was to attract women’s attention.
“Isn’t he incredibly cute? His pure white fur resembles you, Princess. He’s super fluffy. His name is Fluffy, too. Go on, give him a pet.”
Azyeth reached out her hand.
The cloud-dog waited, panting. Azyeth’s beauty could even win the favor of animals.
And the moment Azyeth’s hand touched the dog’s fur…
Crack.
The dog’s cloud-like fur froze solid.
The texture was no different from the familiar feel of ice.
“No, my Fluffy!!!”
The man snatched up the frozen dog that was once Fluffy and rushed off somewhere. Azyeth watched him go with a wistful look in her eyes.
“Stiffy…”
Fluffy had become Stiffy.
The next place Azyeth stopped was a flower shop.
Being an underground city, flowers were a rare decoration.
“Oh my, Princess, you shouldn’t come into our shop. With you here, all the flowers look plain in comparison~”
The flower shop owner displayed a high level of salesmanship. Azyeth, who still found figurative language difficult to understand, simply tilted her head.
Azyeth crouched in front of a flowerpot.
It was a pot with a fresh, green rose planted in it.
“Oh my, Princess. Are you interested in roses?”
Azyeth stared blankly at the rose.
From within her frozen memories, the shape of a rose faintly emerged.
A castle.
And a garden.
A garden harmoniously decorated not only with roses but with flowers of all colors came to mind. The most vivid memory was of a bright red rose.
“The language of roses is love, passion, and beauty,” Karami explained.
Dwarves, passionate in all things, also loved with a burning fire. The bright red rose was a flower beloved by dwarves.
They would pursue love without hesitation, even if thorns were hidden within its beauty. That was the dwarven way.
Gazing at the rose, Azyeth unconsciously reached out her hand. For a moment, the rose petals trembled at her fingertips.
Crack.
“Hk…!”
Azyeth flinched and pulled her hand back.
The rose, from its petals to its roots, had frozen in an instant. What was once red had turned blue.
“Oh my, the flower…!”
Azyeth’s pupils darted back and forth. She fidgeted, glancing nervously at the owner who was inspecting the flower, then looked up at Karami.
It was an unconscious reaction.
She didn’t know Karami well, nor had she ever thought about who he was, but he was the person who had been by her side all day.
Karami smiled bitterly. He patted Azyeth’s head and stepped forward.
“Ah…”
The same unidentifiable sensation as yesterday.
Azyeth’s hand rose to her head.
“How much is this? I’ll buy it.”
“F-Fifty copper coins, sir. Flowers are rare in Doomheim, so…”
Karami took a gold coin from his pocket.
“I’m a rich man, so I don’t carry coppers. Let’s just call it even with this.”
“What?! But this is too much…”
“Consider it compensation for the mental distress my slave caused you.”
Forcibly handing the gold coin to the shop owner, Karami picked up the flowerpot.
“Shall we go back?”
Azyeth slowly nodded.
Her steps on the way back home were heavier than usual.
*
“You’re back? You’re earlier than I thought.”
Perka, who had been hammering in the forge, came out wiping her face with a towel. Freed from slavery and able to dress as she pleased, Perka was now wearing overalls.
The work clothes gave her a distinct dwarven feel. Of course, all eyes were drawn to the suspender straps that squeezed her watermelon-sized chest from both sides.
“But why does the princess have that look on her face?”
Perka noticed that Azyeth was looking unusually downcast. The corners of Azyeth’s eyes, which were usually expressionless and looked as if she might fall asleep at any moment, drooped even more than usual.
“It’s nothing. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Is that so? But what’s that?”
“As you can see, it’s a flowerpot. It has an ice rose planted in it, no less.”
Karami held the pot out to Perka.
“Miss Perka, what do you think when you see this flowerpot?”
“Hmm…”
Perka glanced back and forth between the ice rose and Azyeth, who was fidgeting nervously a step behind.
Although she hadn’t known Azyeth for long, Perka could tell from her state that something had happened.
She looked exactly like a child who had done something wrong.
‘She must have frozen the flower.’
It was too vivid to be an ice sculpture. Such intricacy couldn’t be achieved unless a living thing had been frozen.
It was the keen eye of a seasoned dwarf.
In that case, there was only one thing to say.
“It’s incredibly beautiful.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. We dwarves, who handle fire, could never create such a beautiful ice sculpture. I’m curious what kind of artisan made it.”
“Prepare to be amazed. It was made by none other than Miss Azyeth herself.”
“What? Is that for real?”
Perka is very socially adept, Karami thought, letting out a satisfied chuckle.
“It’s true. It’s the only ice rose of its kind in the world. A true treasure.”
“To think such a treasure has come to our home. We must display it in the most prominent place.”
Playing along with her, Karami looked at Azyeth.
“Did you hear that? That’s what she said. If we put it in the most prominent place…”
Looking around the house for a suitable spot, Karami placed the flowerpot in the very center of the dining table.
“This must be the place. It really brightens up the gloomy atmosphere of the house. We can enjoy looking at it every time we eat.”
Karami met Azyeth’s wavering gaze and smiled.
“What do you think, Miss Azyeth? Don’t you agree this is the best place for it?”
Azyeth paused.
The trembling in her pupils slowly subsided.
She clasped her hands tightly together.
Nod, nod.
Finally, she slowly moved her head up and down.