"...!"
Rotsard didn't run off to his dormitory, instead returning to the cold room and slamming the door in his maid's face before she could even open her mouth.
Despite the storm of emotions rampaging within his heart, he still changed out of his oversized uniform, leaving only the bare minimum of clothing as the training he was subjecting himself to required.
Even though he wanted to hide in some dark corner and cry, he didn't. Instead he started moving around in the extreme cold created by a multitude of magic circles.
The cold room was a simple area.
It was a space for meditation and the most basic strengthening training in conditions imitating the far north where the Grand White Wolf Fae, the legendary ancestor of Vallhall family had its home.
Allegedly being related to a fae was making Rotsard's blood boil, but the advantages that kind of training had on members of his bloodline could not be denied, and Rotsard wasn't stupid enough to forgo it. Not in the situation he was in.
At first, Rotsard's tears were turning into the buildup of ice in the corners of his eyes, but soon enough they stopped completely as the horribly skinny, bleached-blond-haired boy was going through the motions of exercises meant to strengthen his physique.
He had to keep moving.
If he even tried to meditate, he would immediately succumb to dark thoughts and horrible memories, so he had to keep moving.
"Young master…! I… I've learned what happened…! Did.. did you really use berserker potion…?!"
Rotsard's maid didn't enter the room, as even the temperature by the door was pushing the limits of what she could handle, so she called out from the hallway.
Her voice was brimming with worry.
"So what if I did? The cold room has almost no effect on me! Something had to be done!"
Rotsard scoffed while forcing his body off the ground repeatedly. His perspiration was turning into a thin layer of ice that formed only to shatter and then form again in an endless cycle.
From the moment he came up with a plan to use an empty vial from the dark green concoction that Mira was bringing him for a week straight as a prop, Rotsard knew he would have to stick to the lie no matter what.
If he revealed the truth to the maid, she might have attempted to clear his name, which would be pointless…
…not to mention harmful to mankind as a whole…
In the deofol's story, Rotsard was someone irredeemable, and since following that story as closely as possible was the only way to prevent the destruction of the world, everyone had to keep thinking that way.
"Young master…! Think about your health…!"
"..."
The maid cried out, but Rotsard didn't answer, continuing the exercise with such viciousness as if he wasn't trying to get stronger but trying to punish himself instead.
"...young master, I was going to stay quiet, but I can't do that anymore…! Please…! Staying in the cold room is causing the opposite effect than it is supposed to! You're getting weaker and weaker…! I… I can't watch you waste away! Please…! End this madness…!"
The maid cried out from behind the door as her devotion to her young master caused an outburst of honesty.
"If my fate is to die in the cold room, so be it!"
Rotsard scoffed, gritting his teeth as the conversation was making him slow down, and as he was moving slower, the dark thoughts and horrible memories in the back of his head were threatening to overtake him.
"...! Y-young master, you can't be serious…!"
"I am. Go and send a letter to my family. Or contact them with magic… hurgh…! Ptfu! My stance will not change, and you will realize that my family will tell you the same thing as I just did!"
The maid gasped in terror, but Rotsard, with icy beads of tears forming once again in the corners of his eyes, raised his voice and started exercising with such viciousness that he threw up blood, but he actually just spat it out to the side and continued.
"...understood…"
It was impossible to tell the maid's expression through the closed door, but judging by her voice alone, she must have been quite heartbroken over her young master's decision as she walked away.
From that point, Rotsard had no idea how much time passed as he completely lost track of it.
The windows to the cold room were blocked, the light illuminating the room was an artificial one, created by magic crystals embedded in the walls and dispersed by the massive pillar of ice in the very center. The frozen food that he would eat as is had been prepared there since the cold room's completion and resupplied after his last stay, so it didn't require delivery, and therefore he was left without a proper contact with the outside world.
In the actual northern wilds, he would have to kill and feed on the prey he hunted himself, but with the streamlined workings of the cold room, the trainee simply had to chomp on the frozen food that didn't differ from raw plain much.
*knock* *knock* *knock*
Members of the Vallhall bloodline were the only people who were willingly submitting themselves to such practice.
*knock* *knock* *knock*
Usually, the training in the cold room would stop after the trainee achieved their desired physique, but if one wanted to go with the traditional completion, they would have to shatter a massive pillar of ice that was a focal point of the entire structure and break it down with their own body.
Without using any tools or weapons.
*knock* *knock*
Indeed, despite the talent in swordsmanship magic system and the technique of Vallhall family being praised as the strongest in all of Nordenthele kingdom, it couldn't, or at least wasn't supposed to, be used by the trainee in the cold room.
*knock*
Cold room training was solely for building up their physique.
*...knock...*
…at some point someone began to knock on the door to the cold room, but Rotsard, sure that it was his maid's attempt to change his mind, ignored it, going through all the exercises again and again.
*...kn-shhht*
*thump*
"...?"
While Rotsard was wildly hitting the pillar of ice in the middle of the room in a peculiar way, curling his fingers but not clenching his fists, the weakest knock changed into grinding against the door, followed by the sound of something falling against the floor, making him stop and stare at the door with suspicion.