Inside the Bedchamber, although the charcoal fire had mostly burned out, the heat inside the blankets was still astonishing.
"Your Majesty, it is time to rise."
Willow pushed open the door, walking with extremely light steps to the bedside.
When she lifted the heavy velvet bed curtains, the scene before her eyes caused this steady Chief Maid to be surprised for a moment, before the corners of her mouth rose slightly.
Pink twin-tails were entangled with silver hair strands; Irene was hugging Sophia's waist tightly like an octopus. Her small face was flushed red, and she was still mumbling dream-talk about food.
Sophia was first startled awake by the slightly cool air; she rubbed her sleepy eyes.
Looking at this troublesome spirit in her arms who hadn't fully woken up yet, she sighed helplessly.
"Irene, get up."
"Mmm, sleep for five more minutes, just five minutes..."
Irene unconsciously nuzzled into the hollow of Sophia's neck. Her warm breath swept across the skin, stirring up a wave of subtle itchiness.
A quarter of an hour later, the two young girls were finally sitting before the vanity mirror, half-pulled and half-dragged by Willow.
"Miss Irene really is something. Your Majesty just returned, yet you don't know to let Your Majesty rest properly for two days."
Willow said with a smile, though her tone carried no blame whatsoever.
"We were tasting the first fruits with Your Majesty, I couldn't wait."
Irene recalled those two small potatoes from last night, feeling they were ten thousand times more delicious than dry bread.
Now recalling that she actually had the guts to drill into the Tyrant's blankets, she felt a bit nervous too.
Fortunately, Sophia did not propose dragging her out and finishing her off with a single shot.
Willow used a warm, damp towel to gently wipe Sophia's cheeks, then changed both of them into soft winter dresses that were saturated with the scent of lavender.
Breakfast was enjoyed at the small round table in the Bedchamber.
There was fresh hot milk sent by Hailey early in the morning, paired with roasted oatcakes with honey and nuts that Irene had specially instructed the kitchen to make, as well as two peeled, round, and cute boiled eggs.
These were brought by the Leighton caravan. Since some time had passed on the road, they couldn't be used directly for hatching, so they were simply put into storage as an occasional extra meal.
Irene had evidently recovered from last night's impudence; at this moment, she sat upright and still, only those azure eyes occasionally stole glances at Sophia's shoulder.
Sophia looked at the motionless Irene and suddenly realized she should say something.
So she pushed the milk in front of Irene and said, "Eat more, you've consumed a lot of mental energy recently."
"Many thanks, Your Majesty!" Irene lowered her head and took a sip of milk, narrowing her eyes in happiness.
Every time she ate food that tasted good, she would remember the time half a year ago.
She had thought that after coming here, she would only be able to afford dry bread for her entire life and then freeze to death when the snowy days arrived.
After finishing breakfast, Irene suddenly raised her hand and patted her own head.
"That's right, I also made a small gift I wanted to give to Your Majesty," Irene said.
Thus, under Sophia's tacit gaze, Irene ran quickly back to the West Tower, and in just a few minutes, ran da-da-da back to Sophia's Bedchamber.
"Your Majesty, this is for you."
Irene took out a palm-sized, hand warmer cast from raw iron from behind her back.
The pattern on the hand warmer was Mason's Black Rose, exquisite and introverted.
Inside was placed specially made charcoal. Since there were no coal mines yet, it was just charcoal burned from wood, currently emitting an even and lasting heat.
"This is a gift." Irene grinned.
The two sat opposite each other on the soft couch in front of the window.
Irene brought out a simple set of Five-in-a-row (Gomoku), which she had polished from scrap materials during her spare time.
Outside the window, heavy snow fluttered, and the wind howled.
Inside the window, the stove fire flickered, and the aroma of tea filled the air.
"Your Majesty, this thing is called Five-in-a-row."
Irene said with a smile, "It's something I specially took time to make to relieve Your Majesty's boredom. I'll explain the rules to you."
Sophia naturally understood, but she still listened to Irene explain the rules in detail twice with a look of not understanding.
The rules of Five-in-a-row were simple, but for a soul like Sophia who had been immersed in various logic games in her past life, it was obviously a dimensional strike.
Irene curled her hair with her finger, looking at the black pieces that were being intercepted and surrounded on the chessboard, scratching her ears and cheeks in anxiety.
"Not playing anymore, not playing anymore! Your Majesty, you definitely cheated!"
How could the Tyrant, playing for the first time, win every time!
Is it because of the newbie protection period?!
Irene reached out to grab Sophia's hand like a sore loser, attempting to mess up the chessboard.
However, when her fingertips touched Sophia, she suddenly shrank back.
"Your Majesty, why are your hands still so cold?"
"It is my constitution."
Sophia responded faintly, about to withdraw her hand.
Unexpectedly, Irene grabbed both of Sophia's hands, looked left and right, and then stuffed Sophia's hands into her own cuffs.
The distance between the two instantly closed.
Sophia was forced to lean forward slightly, her nose tip almost touching the pink broken hair on Irene's forehead.
"My fire energy is high, I'll warm you up."
Irene's voice dropped a few decibels; her azure eyes lacked their usual playfulness and were full of seriousness.
"Your Majesty needs to wear that small hand warmer all the time. We haven't found a coal mine yet, so we can only make do with charcoal burned from ordinary wood.
After we find a coal mine, we will have better coal, and the hand warmer can be used for even longer."
Sophia was stunned for a moment.
Those hands hiding inside Irene's sleeves were wrapped in a mass of soft and scalding heat; that was the warmth belonging solely to another life.
This kind of intimacy without impurities seemed so luxurious within the cold game of royal power.
However, she believed her constitution had already improved much under Daphne's conditioning; at least she hadn't felt physically unwell recently.
Chancellor Victor, who happened to pass by the corridor, saw this scene through the crack of the unlatched door.
He stopped abruptly, his old eyes flashing with shocked light.
Your Majesty and Miss Irene are conducting a simulation deduction of the Empire through a chess game!
Those clasped hands were clearly a deep alliance between Royal Power and Truth!
Your Majesty is using her own body temperature to influence those cold steels; this is not just doting, this is casting an immortal future for Mason!
Victor secretly made a resolve: he must do more for Mason before his old bones completely fell apart!
Outside the palace hall doors, Delilah stood holding her sword, like a perfect sculpture.
The wind and snow outside the window swept past her long fiery red hair; her gaze remained locked on the distant horizon.
From time to time, Irene's crisp laughter and Your Majesty's occasional light and shallow speech came from within the hall. Those warm, soft auras belonging to young girls circled her ears, yet could never enter her world.
Delilah looked expressionlessly at the sky full of flying snow. Deep in her pale red pupils, a touch of faint loneliness she hadn't even noticed herself was hidden.
"Your Majesty looks very happy."
She gripped the cold sword hilt tighter.
"As long as she can be happy like this, these killing hands of mine are worth it, even if I stand in this snow until I become dry bones."
Not long after, a young girl's cry of alarm came from within the palace again.
"Aiy! It's bad!"
Irene, who had been immersed in playing chess with Sophia, suddenly jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
She slapped her forehead fiercely, her pink twin-tails flinging out a panicked arc in the air.
"What? Did you lose so badly you can't bear to look at the board again?"
Sophia leisurely withdrew her hands, her fingertips still retaining the scalding heat from Irene's palms.
"No! It's the soap! And the shampoo!"
While frantically tidying her messy skirt, Irene shouted anxiously as she ran out the door.
"The orders for the Leighton caravan and the Kingdom of Qubi are still piled up in the West Tower!
If I don't stare at that bunch of apprentices pouring the molds, my research funding for next month is going to shrink!"
Walking to the doorway, she doubled back again. She swiftly grabbed a white piece from that pile of unfinished chess pieces and shook it triumphantly:
"Your Majesty, this round counts as a draw!
Wait until I earn enough money, then I'll come back to play chess with you!"
Watching Irene's bustling back disappear at the end of the long corridor, Sophia smiled and shook her head.
"That fellow, as soon as money and experiments are mentioned, she runs faster than a musket bullet."
"Your Majesty, you've sat for the whole morning. Drink the wild berry juice sent by the Saint, then go to the rear garden to relax your mind."
Willow stepped forward, skillfully draping that re-groomed black fox fur over Sophia.
"Alright, let's go for a walk."
Sophia accepted the warm wild berry juice.
Originally, she had Willow, this old mother figure, by her side; now there was also Daphne.
Now, these two people stared at Sophia's physical health every day.
Stepping into the rear garden, what came into view was an extremely tidy and tough aesthetic.
Thanks to Irene leading the craftsmen to patch things up frantically before, the originally muddy gaps in the garden paths had been filled with smooth grey Cement.
Although the snow was heavy at this time, the accumulated snow had been cleared exceptionally clean, piled neatly under the tree roots on both sides of the road, revealing the road surface that was blue-grey and full of industrial texture.
The greenhouses not far away revealed moist heat, and the calves in the livestock shed occasionally let out a low call; all of this appeared exceptionally vibrant in the silent winter day.
"It seems this Cement is indeed easy to use."
Sophia stepped on the solid road surface; that non-slippery touch made her mood pleasant.
However, when the two walked under an old withered willow tree in a corner of the rear garden, Sophia stopped in her tracks.
She saw that the tree branches, which should have been hung with residual snow, were actually shattered all over the ground.
No, that wasn't a natural break, but rather, they had been instantly strangled and shattered by some kind of extremely clean, extremely angry energy.
Countless wood chips the size of fingernails were scattered on the ground like snowflakes. Several low shrubs nearby had been trimmed bald, the cuts smooth as a mirror.
"What is going on here?"
Sophia frowned slightly, pointing at that pile of wood chips that was too horrible to look at.
"Who was practicing swordsmanship here?
Or did Irene create some experiment that exploded again?"
Behind her, Willow stared at that pile of wood chips for a few seconds. Her gaze quietly swept over that red back not far away, standing upright with hand on sword and spine straight as a pen, and suddenly she let out a light laugh she couldn't suppress.
"Pfft..."
Willow pressed her fingertips against her lips, her brows and eyes curving as she blinked.
"Your Majesty, I think... perhaps the wind and snow last night were too heavy and crushed someone's 'mood', right?"
"Mood?" Sophia was completely confused. "Whose mood?"
"Your Majesty need not mind. It's probably that in someone's heart, a few untimely sour fruits bloomed in this winter, so they could only take it out on these innocent tree branches."
Willow smiled profoundly but didn't point it out explicitly.
Not far away, Delilah stood in the cold wind like a javelin.
She heard the conversation behind her. Her fingers gripping the sword hilt tightened slightly, her knuckles turning white from the force.
No fluctuation could be seen on that face cold as frost; only her slightly trembling eyelashes betrayed the unrest in her heart.
I was just testing the sharpness of the new sword.
Delilah said coldly to herself in her heart.
But when the image she had seen through the door crack earlier—of Sophia and Irene with their hands overlapped inside the cuffs—surfaced in her mind again, an inexplicable anxiety that even made her feel ashamed surged into her heart once more.
Sophia didn't think much of it.
In her view, for a martial arts fanatic like Delilah, it was perfectly normal to occasionally vent excess physical strength in the garden.
Should I have Irene make some sandbags or something for Delilah to hit to vent her energy?
"Willow, tell the kitchen to add a dish at noon. Send a portion of meat soup to Delilah as well. Seeing her face frozen so white, she's probably exhausted."
Sophia ordered casually, her gaze casting toward the outside of the courtyard walls.
"Yes.
By the way, Your Majesty, regarding the willow twigs you've used these past few days—do you feel they are too hard?"
Willow followed behind. Seeing Sophia subconsciously purse her slightly rosy lips, she understood and asked in a low voice.
"In the deep winter season, the fibers of willow twigs are indeed coarser than usual. Coupled with the cold weather, chewing them is not only bitter and astringent but also always prone to hurting the gums.
I saw when you woke up early, your brows were almost knotted together.
Otherwise, shall I send someone to a warmer place to look for some fresh and tender willow twigs?"
Sophia's steps paused slightly, and she sighed lightly.
It was more than bitter and astringent; it was simply self-torture.
In this era without toothbrushes and toothpaste, nobles mostly used tender willow twigs dipped in salt or herbal powder to rub and scrub their teeth.
For Sophia, who had memories of a past life, this was simply a nightmare every morning.
Especially in this Mason where the temperature dropped below zero; the willow twigs were frozen like small wooden sticks. Every time she brushed her teeth, it was like performing surgery on her gums.
"Indeed, I don't like it."
Sophia's pale golden pupils looked toward the West Tower in the distance, which was emitting light grey smoke; that was Irene's workshop.
Always feel that we shouldn't have to endure torture on such small matters after enjoying wheat waves and cement roads.
In that instant, a certain design from the strange materials Irene had sorted out earlier surfaced in Sophia's mind.
That's right, there was a toothbrush in the materials Irene gave her; it wouldn't be strange to bring it up now.
How could she have forgotten it!
Sophia almost slapped her thigh rotten in her heart.
Inside the West Tower, it was currently a scene of bustling activity.
The air was filled with the rich fragrance of oils and a faint scent of flowers; that was Irene supervising the apprentices in filling the molds for a new batch of soap.
Because Cement had reinforced the laboratory floor, the originally messy workshop now unexpectedly had the embryonic form of a modern factory.
"Your Majesty?! Why have you come!"
Irene was sitting on a high stool, holding a pen and calculating accounts.
Seeing Sophia enter the door, her eyes lit up fiercely, and she pounced over like a big pink butterfly.
"Aiyaya, how long has it been since we separated from playing chess just now?
Is Your Majesty so inseparable from me that you must personally make a trip to see me?"
Irene tilted her head, leaning close to Sophia with a grin. Her azure eyes flashed with undisguised mischief and intimacy.
The apprentices who were originally busy saw this and lowered their heads one after another, pretending to work desperately.
Your Majesty actually ran to the West Tower personally for Lord Irene... this kind of doting is really not as simple as just for a Chief Inventor!
The apprentices thought frantically in their hearts, wishing they could dance the stirring rods in their hands into afterimages.
Sophia reached out to press against the forehead Irene was leaning in with, pushing her away a little, looking cool and solemn.
"This Queen has an important task concerning the future image and dignity of the Kingdom of Mason to hand over to you."
Seeing Sophia's expression was so serious, Irene also put away her playful smile and straightened her spine:
"Your Majesty, please speak! As long as you don't ask me to go stab the King of Orr's old nest, I can do anything else!"
Actually, Irene wanted to do that too, it was just that currently, making money was the first priority.
"I want you to make this." Sophia took out a simple sketch she had drawn casually from her bosom.
Irene took the blueprint. Looking at that small object with a long handle and bristles, she was stunned for a moment, then immediately let out a low cry of pleasant surprise.
"Toothbrush?!"
Irene looked at Sophia in surprise; she hadn't expected Sophia would be so concerned about such personal hygiene details.
"Your Majesty, why did you suddenly think of this?
I thought you would let me research how to build that kind of cannon that can blast down city walls first!"
"Cannons can defend against enemies, but toothaches can make This Queen lose reason."
Sophia swept a glance at her calmly.
"Willow twigs are too hard; This Queen does not wish to endure that crude cleaning method anymore.
I remember you mentioned unintentionally before that this thing called a toothbrush is very useful for brushing teeth.
Can you handle this thing?"
Did I mention it?
Irene recalled for a moment, but there were simply too many things she had brought up, so she didn't remember if she had mentioned the toothbrush to Your Majesty in detail.
"Leave it to me!"
Irene patted her chest in guarantee, the spark of a scientific research maniac igniting in her eyes.
"It just so happens the Leighton caravan delivered some horse supplies yesterday. I can go to the stable to pick some horse tail hair with the best resilience.
As for the handle, we can first use high-quality beast bone to polish one. If you don't mind, I can even use this batch of freshly produced Cement to make a base to try...
No, Cement is too heavy. Better use polished wood with sealing wax!"
Just as Irene was muttering to herself in excitement, Chancellor Victor and several guards standing to the side revealed extremely shocked expressions.
Your Majesty is actually paying attention to the oral health of the subjects?
Chancellor Victor's old fingers trembled slightly.
In his logic, if the King of a country began to pay attention to such extremely tiny hygiene details, that meant the country's basic survival problems—grain, city walls, arms—had been completely resolved.
Your Majesty is implementing a National Strengthening Plan!
If teeth are bad, one cannot eat hard bread, and cannot gnaw on dry rations on the battlefield.
Your Majesty wants to fundamentally improve the physique of the Mason people through this grey, bristly small object.
This kind of behavior of reshaping national civilization from the details is the true cornerstone of the Royal Way!
And Delilah stood outside the door. Listening to the discussion inside, that anxiety in her heart inexplicably dissipated a bit.
"So Your Majesty was doing it for major national affairs."
Delilah secretly noted this matter down, calculating in her heart whether she should go to the back mountain early tomorrow morning to see if there were any fresher and more tender grasses and trees...
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