Hot Passion Inflicts Second-Degree Burns
The iron gates of the mansion opened with a heavy thud. As I stepped down from the carriage and entered the garden strewn with the remnants of sunset, Silvia, who had been waiting in advance, bowed deeply in polite greeting.
The usual fluffy white bundle that should have come running out with her was nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome back, Master.”
I brushed the dust from my clothes as I descended from the carriage and glanced back at Elina and the combat slaves following behind. Their appearances were a mess of blood and dirt.
“All of you, eat your fill and rest. Equipment inspection comes after that.”
“Yes, Master.”
Elina answered with crisp discipline and led the combat slaves toward the mansion’s annex. Their movements were perfectly synchronized. In the meantime, other slaves began unloading the remaining cargo from the carriage, while the hired large freight wagons and their drivers slipped back into the darkness, their duties complete.
I turned to Silvia, who stood attentively at my side.
“That hunchbacked slave—how far has his training progressed?”
“He learns quickly. Having worked with other slaves before, he already understands the physiology of slave life well. He could be put into practical work immediately without issue.”
“Transfer all financial operations to him. I intend to hand over the ledger management you’ve been handling.”
Silvia’s eyes widened slightly.
“Silvia, from now on you will only receive financial reports. Focus on overseeing slave education and scheduling, and manage my instructions comprehensively.”
She paused for a moment, then bowed deeply as if realizing she was being trusted.
“...I will keep it in mind. Shall I prepare a meal?”
“Do so.”
I left her behind and stepped into the mansion. The far end of the corridor was noisy.
“Woof! Grrrr… woof!”
Behind the wall, I spotted Rua with her fur standing on end. Her tail wagged in greeting, yet her lips were curled back, baring small fangs in a threat.
The moment Rua cautiously poked her head out to check behind the wall—
“Boo!”
“Kyaaang!”
Evelyn burst out like lightning. Caught off guard, Rua let out a short scream and tumbled backward onto the floor. Evelyn clutched her stomach, laughing uproariously as she tickled Rua’s belly.
“Hahaha! This one has real spirit. She’s scared but still charges in till the end—that’s exactly my style.”
Rua seemed to enjoy Evelyn’s touch at first, wagging her tail furiously, but when Evelyn playfully tapped her nose again, she growled, “Grrrr!” and pretended to be fierce once more.
Amused by the adorable back-and-forth between hot and cold, Evelyn scooped Rua into her arms and began rocking her teasingly. As she hugged the beast like a stuffed animal and rocked her, Evelyn suddenly whipped her head around at the sound of my footsteps.
“Oh, Master’s back? This one’s a real gem. For a little furball, she’s got quite the temper.”
The moment Rua, crumpled in her arms, saw my face, she let out a high-pitched “Kyaang!” She flailed her front paws desperately through Evelyn’s arms, struggling to reach me. It was quite the spectacle.
I approached Evelyn, lightly grabbed Rua by the scruff, and pulled her into my own arms. The instant she was held, all traces of her earlier growling vanished. She rubbed her damp nose against my chin, tail wagging like mad.
“You betray me the second Master shows up? How disappointing.”
When Evelyn pouted and gently tugged Rua’s tail, the little beast buried her face in my chest and let out a low warning growl. “Grrrr…”
I tapped her snout with my finger as she sniffed at my clothes, checking for the scent of blood.
“Kiiing…!”
I set Rua down on the floor. She rubbed herself once against my pant leg, then—when Evelyn called “Come here!”—bristled her fur and shot off like an arrow in the opposite direction.
As Evelyn chuckled and prepared to chase after her, I asked in a low voice.
“How do you find living in the mansion?”
Evelyn stopped and tilted her head. A glimpse of white teeth flashed between her crimson lips.
“Compared to where I used to live, it’s rather shabby… but there are plenty of things to enjoy here, Master.”
She turned her body toward me. In the corridor where the sunset glow had faded into darkness, her eyes gleamed with a strange thirst. A decadently provocative gaze licked across my entire body.
“The nasty smell of blood on you is making me hungry. Could I have a little snack tonight?”
She stepped closer and gently ran her right hand down the back of my neck. A cool sensation spread across my skin, raising goosebumps. I seized her wrist roughly, stopping her cold. The touch from her fingertips was as cold as a corpse.
“Don’t forget the terms of our contract, Evelyn.”
Despite the firm warning, she showed no sign of alarm. Instead, the corners of her mouth stretched into a wide, sly smile.
“You’re even colder than my own hands, Master. Really, you are…”
Evelyn smoothly slipped her captured hand free and, as if nothing had happened, leaped toward the direction Rua had fled. Her laughter lingered in the hallway like an afterimage.
I shook off the chill that had settled in my palm and headed for the dining room.
Before going to the workshop, I washed away the ogre blood and flesh that stained my body. Hot water cascaded down my neck, easing the tension throughout my frame. The scalding stream beat against my shoulders, washing away fatigue, yet my senses remained razor-sharp.
The body of Victor reflected in the mirror was eerily perfect. Every fiber of muscle, engraved with combat instinct, meshed seamlessly with memories from my previous life as if they had always been one. The eerie acceleration I felt when severing the neck of that three-headed variant, the movements that twisted muscle in an instant to dance on the threshold of death—it was nothing like awkwardly borrowing another’s power. It was the perfected violence of a veteran slaughterer’s soul, synchronized with my own reason after surviving countless real battles.
Drip. Drip.
Water droplets ran down my face and fell from my chin. The time I had spent in my previous life—carving out every emotion, living desperately with the sole goal of happily existing with just my little sister—felt as if it were being washed away with those falling drops.
It was the same here. The massive board I was trampling and rising upon was not merely a money-making scheme. For some it would be disaster, for others a miracle. At the end of this business, the peace I desired would surely await. It would. It had to.
After finishing my shower and quickly eating the prepared meal, I headed straight for Theo’s workshop.
Creak—.
The door screamed as it opened, and the acrid smell of sulfur mixed with the fishy odor of unknown medicinal herbs assaulted my nose. The workshop was already steeped in madness. Theo stood amid piles of basilisk and ogre parts, tearing at his disheveled hair and muttering.
“This can’t be… This cut surface, this state of preservation… This is beyond art—it’s sacrilege. There’s zero magical decay. On the contrary, the mana is even more concentrated than when it was alive…”
Sensing my presence, Theo whipped his head around. Heat flared in his hollow eyes, and he hurriedly bowed along with Celine, who had been tending to a heavy cauldron nearby.
“You’ve arrived, Master! Look at this astonishing yield!”
Barely finished with his greeting, Theo carefully lifted a bottle containing ruby-colored serum and held it up to the light. His touch was like that of a fanatic handling a holy relic.
“Even the first-class dismantlers who groveled under me at the Alchemist Guild could never produce a yield like this! Not a single crystal of mana dissolved in the blood has been shattered. Just who did you entrust this work to?”
Then Theo’s gaze landed on the long glass tube beside him, where the variant’s nerve strand emitted a white phosphorescence. His eyes rolled back instantly as he gasped for breath.
“Th-this… This isn’t from a regular ogre! The conductivity of the myelin sheath has broken through the critical threshold! What exactly did you hunt? With this level of mana reaction, it couldn’t possibly be a two-headed specimen!”
“It was a variant. One with three heads.”
“As I thought…!”
Theo let out an exclamation and dragged over a blackboard. The hand holding the chalk trembled with excitement.
“My academic hypothesis was correct! The mana amplification phenomenon that occurs when three brains resonate instead of two has been perfectly preserved in this strand…!”
“Theo, save the academic presentation for later. So when will the tonic be ready?”
When I cut him off quickly, Theo froze, then pointed at the glass bottles with a hand still shaking from uncontainable excitement.
“If we pull an all-nighter, I can definitely produce twenty bottles by tomorrow! And this nerve strand… it will become a strengthening agent that pushes physical reaction speed to its limit. Shall we refine this as well?”
I pointed at the materials on the workbench one by one and gave orders.
“Classify the product line into four categories. Those made from the blood and serum of regular twin-headed ogres, and those made from the variant’s blood and serum. Preserve the nerve strand for later use.”
“Understood! Hehe, Master… This isn’t just medicine. It will be a revolutionary invention that goes down in the history of alchemy!”
Theo picked up a flask, letting out a strange laugh as if he were a creator bringing something nonexistent into the world. Then he suddenly turned to Celine and shouted.
“Celine, right now! No, no. Let’s get some sleep and meet again. We need to be in peak condition tomorrow!”
“Yes, Master.”
Celine answered politely without the slightest flinch, as if she had completely adapted to Theo’s erratic madness, and began tidying the workbench. Their mutual trust seemed to have thickened considerably in a short time.
Just as I was about to leave the workshop, Theo smacked his own head as if he had forgotten something and urgently called me back.
“Ah! My lord. There is one thing I must request!”
I stopped and turned. Theo pointed to the storage room attached beside the workshop.
“That room over there. It’s currently just piled with junk, but I would like to engrave ‘Cold Preservation Magic’ across roughly half of that space. To store sensitive materials like the serums you brought without spoilage, such a facility is essential.”
The workshop alone was roughly sixty pyeong. Half of that would be a thirty-pyeong space permanently maintained with cold magic.
“How much will it cost?”
“...To cover a space of that size without mana leakage, it will probably require around five hundred gold coins.”
The amount that came from Theo’s mouth was by no means small. He carefully added an explanation while watching my expression.
“It’s not simply freezing ice. To fix the mana purity, we must coat the walls with northern glacial stone powder, embed at least three top-grade mana stones as the core of the magic circle, and perform sealing work to block external heat. Labor and material costs easily reach that figure.”
Listening to Theo’s detailed explanation, I suddenly recalled the scene where the manager of the Golden Scales had said that preserving a basilisk carcass would require a great deal of money. I scanned the storage area for a moment before speaking indifferently.
“Forget half of it.”
“...Pardon? Is it too expensive after all? Then we could reduce it to ten pyeong…”
“Turn the entire sixty-pyeong storage room next door into a cold preservation zone.”
Theo’s mouth fell open. He waved his hands, doubting his own ears.
“S-sixty pyeong? My lord, that’s enough to freeze an entire decent apothecary shop in the empire! With our current volume, it will be completely empty!”
“The volume that will be stored here in the future will far exceed your imagination. I don’t want to hear you complaining about lack of space later, so let’s set it up properly from the start.”
I drove the point home to the stunned Theo.
“Bill the cost to Silvia.”
Theo stood dazed for a moment, then clenched his fist with manic delight.
“...Even better! Sixty pyeong! I really made the right choice becoming Master’s slave!”
It was a satisfying answer. Leaving behind Theo’s joyful muttering and Celine watching him, I exited the basement.