Morning inside the castle keep of Border Town did not arrive with the gentle chirping of sparrows or the warm glow of dawn; it began with the mournful, relentless howl of a northern blizzard battering the stone walls like a pack of starving wolves.
The Months of the Demons had descended upon the valley in full, unforgiving fury.
Down on the second floor of the eastern guest wing, the heavy oak door of William's quarters swung inward with a dull creak, and the Commander of the First Army stepped barefoot onto the freezing flagstones of the corridor.
He was dressed in nothing more than a pair of thick gray wool trousers and a loose, completely unbuttoned linen shirt that hung open down to his waist—either defying the sub-zero draft out of sheer stubbornness, or simply too lazy to lace his tunic before hunting down breakfast.
Planting his feet in the middle of the dimly lit hallway, William threw his head back, let out a long, shameless yawn that echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling, and locked his fingers together above his crown. He stretched his broad back with such tremendous physical force that his spine, shoulders, and elbows popped in a rapid, gunshot-like sequence loud enough to startle the kitchen maids one floor below.
Lowering his arms and rubbing the sleep from the corners of his dark eyes, William squinted down the torch-lit passage.
Twenty paces away, standing near the tall lancet window at the end of the gallery, was a familiar silhouette.
It was Arthur.
Unlike William, who looked as though he had just crawled out of a bear's den, the strategist was already impeccably dressed for the day. Wearing his tailored dark-gray wool tunic and a heavy, high-collared winter overcoat with both hands tucked neatly into the side pockets, Arthur stood in relaxed, motionless silence, his dark eyes fixed on the swirling white void beyond the frosted glass.
A slow, mischievous grin tugged at the corner of William's mouth.
Over the past forty-eight hours, ever since the [BIOMETRIC STATUS INSPECTION] sub-function had unlocked on his interface, scanning everyone who crossed his path had become an irresistible reflex. He had already checked the miners, the masons, and the castle guards—yet because Arthur had spent the previous day locked up in Roland's study and the North Slope workshops, William hadn't actually turned the scanner on his best friend since the upgrade.
Just out of habit and idle curiosity, William blinked twice, focusing his gaze on the back of Arthur's head as he mentally triggered the shared System.
A crisp, translucent blue window materialized in the cold air right beside Arthur's shoulder, projecting the strategist's current parameters:
[Target: Arthur]
Strength: 6
Speed: 7
Endurance: 8
Agility: 8
Intelligence: 14
Magic Power: 8 [Telekinesis]
William's eyes skimmed past the physical numbers and locked dead onto the bottom line.
For two seconds, he simply stared at the number 8 glowing beside Telekinesis.
Then, a sharp nasal snort escaped his nose, instantly erupting into a booming, full-throated laugh that shattered the somber morning quiet of the third-floor gallery.
— "Oh, you massive, shameless hypocrite!" — William barked, marching down the cold stone corridor with heavy, echoing strides as he pointed an accusing finger straight at his friend's back. — "I honestly cannot believe what my System-blessed eyes are looking at right now!"
By the window, Arthur didn't flinch at the sudden racket. Slowly, the twenty-four-year-old strategist tore his gaze away from the blizzard outside and turned his head, fixing William with a look of lethal, glacial calm as one dark eyebrow rose by a fraction of an inch.
— "Good morning to you too, William. And do try to keep your voice below a tavern roar; half the staff in this castle worked until four in the morning securing the coal sheds," — Arthur replied, his voice mild, smooth, and thoroughly unbothered. — "Now, what specific hypocrisy are you screaming about before breakfast?"
— "Hahahaha! Don't play innocent with me using that slick corporate face of yours, Art!" — William grinned, stopping two feet away and jabbing his index finger toward the empty air beside Arthur's ear where the blue box was floating. — "I just ran my new status scanner on you! Magic Power 8?! Eight, Arthur?! Less than forty-eight hours ago, you stood in this exact hallway tearing your hair out, lecturing me about cost-benefit ratios, calling me a brainless gorilla, and telling me we had to hoard every single credit for chemistry textbooks! And what does Mr. Rationality do in the dead of night while nobody's looking?! You blow your entire three-hundred-credit reserve straight into your own Telekinesis!"
Arthur didn't back down an inch, nor did a single trace of guilt cross his pale features.
Calmly withdrawing his right hand from the pocket of his overcoat, the strategist brushed a nonexistent speck of dust off his silver-embroidered lapel.
— "There is a fundamental, mathematical gulf between what you did and what I did, William," — Arthur explained, his voice taking on the patient, didactic cadence of a university professor lecturing a slow student. — "Dumping two hundred and eighty credits into raw muscular Strength is a strictly linear investment. You punch things harder, and you lift heavier pieces of iron. Period. Investing that exact same capital into Telekinesis, however, yields an exponential return across multiple vectors."
Arthur raised three fingers in the chilly air.
— "I did not upgrade my capability out of gym vanity or a desire to wrestle monsters in the mud," — Arthur continued smoothly. — "At Level 8, I can project invisible kinetic barriers to deflect stray projectiles, manipulate battlefield terrain from fifty paces away, lift heavy artillery components that would otherwise require a ten-man pulley crew, and eliminate high-value targets without ever exposing my physical body to a blade. Mine is an investment in supreme tactical utility. Yours was an impulse purchase."
William rolled his eyes so hard he nearly saw the back of his own skull, leaning his bare shoulder casually against the freezing stone wall beside the window.
— "Man, you really have a polished corporate excuse locked and loaded for everything, don't you?" — William chuckled, shaking his head before folding his thick arms across his bare chest, a sudden gleam of boyish excitement replacing his morning grogginess. — "You know what, though? I don't even care. Because while you were hiding in your room playing with your brain-magic, my 'impulse purchase' went down into that granary tunnel, kept four good men breathing, and paid dividends! The System handed me a 150-credit bonus for saving Greyhound's squad, which means with my twenty leftover points, I am sitting on 170 Credits right now. And I am about to spend every last drop of them!"
Arthur let out a quiet, preemptive sigh, already feeling a familiar headache forming behind his temples.
— "Dare I ask what the self-appointed protagonist intends to spend this windfall on?" — Arthur asked dryly. — "Perhaps a few points into Intelligence so you actually remember to put on a warm shirt during a sub-zero blizzard?"
— "Hell no! Intelligence is what I keep you around for!" — William waved a hand dismissively, his eyes shining with pure otaku enthusiasm as he stared up at the ceiling. — "I was lying in bed thinking about it ten minutes ago. Option one: I dump all four points straight on top of my Strength and push it to twenty! At Strength 20, I wouldn't even need Karl's catapults—I could just pick up boulders off the ground and pitch them at the hybrid beasts like baseballs!"
— "This is a medieval siege for human survival, William, not an action shonen where the laws of physics bend to your fighting spirit," — Arthur interjected flatly.
— "Or—wait, listen to option two!" — William forged ahead, completely ignoring the interruption as he pantomimed a rapid sword slash in the air. — "What if I dump all 160 credits straight into Agility and Speed?! My current Speed is 11 and Agility is 9. If I push my reflexes and coordination into the mid-teens, my nervous system will practically break the sound barrier! I'll be fast enough to catch enemy broadswords between two fingers, or sidestep a flintlock musket ball at point-blank range! Think about it, Art—once Anna figures out how to smelt high-carbon spring steel, I'll have her forge me three katanas, dye my hair green, and become the Roronoa Zoro of Graycastle!"
For three full seconds, the only sound in the corridor was the wind rattling the frozen glass panes.
Arthur stared at his best friend with the deadpan, clinical expression of a biologist observing a particularly baffling laboratory specimen. Then, with surgical ruthlessness, he dismantled William's daydream using basic high school physics.
— "Your visual imagination is truly cinematic, William. I will give you credit for that," — Arthur said, his tone dropping back into a cool lecture. — "Unfortunately, your grasp of human biomechanics is atrocious. Remind me: your current Strength sits at 16, while your Endurance is still sitting at its initial synchronization baseline of 10. Correct?"
— "Yeah. Sixteen Strength, ten Endurance," — William nodded proudly, flexing his right bicep. — "Hits like a freight train."
— "Indeed. A freight train mounted onto the wooden chassis of a bicycle," — Arthur pointed a gloved finger directly at the faded linen wrap still tied around William's bruised right knuckles from the tunnel fight two nights ago. — "Did you already forget why your knuckles split open when you punched that traitor's iron buckler? Tell me, Mr. Zoro: what do you think happens later today when a man with Strength 16 throws a full-power punch straight into the calcified skull of a three-hundred-kilogram demonic boar, or the obsidian carapace of a Hybrid Beast, while possessing the bone structure of an Endurance 10 body?"
William's grin froze slightly. — "The beast's skull caves in?"
— "Oh, the beast's skull will certainly cave in," — Arthur agreed mercilessly. — "And at the exact same millisecond, courtesy of Newton's third law of motion, that three-hundred-kilogram skull will exert an equal and opposite kinetic reaction straight back into your fist. Because your muscular output currently exceeds your structural durability by sixty percent, the metacarpal bones inside your hand will pulverize like dry chalk. The shockwave will snap your radius and ulna in half, rip your rotator cuff off the shoulder socket, and leave your right arm hanging like a bag of gravel. You will kill the very first monster of the winter in one glorious punch—and spend the remaining four months of the siege sitting in Nana's infirmary with your arm in a sling."
William blinked twice in the dim light.
Suddenly, the vivid mental image of his own forearm exploding from the inside out under the recoil of his own punch sent a phantom jolt of pain straight up his wrist, making him swallow hard and unconsciously tuck his right hand against his ribs.
— "If you are dead set on standing at the front of the parapet as the First Army's shock absorber," — Arthur concluded, his dark eyes serious, — "then there is only one rational place to put those 170 credits right now: Endurance. Bring the tensile strength of your tendons, the mineral density of your bones, and the thickness of your dermis into equilibrium with your muscles. Before you try to hit harder, make sure your body doesn't shatter under the power you already generate."
As if nature itself had been waiting for Arthur's cue to drive the point home, a fierce gust of sub-zero wind found a hairline crack in the mortar around the window frame, whistling straight across William's bare, exposed chest.
Instantly, a violent full-body shiver ran down William's spine, covering his arms in goosebumps.
Wrapping both arms tightly around his own torso and rubbing his palms briskly up and down his freezing biceps, William's teeth gave an audible clack-clack.
— "Y-you know what? You make a hell of a point, Art. Endurance it is," — William muttered through chattering teeth, glaring out at the whiteout blizzard beyond the glass. — "Especially because my body is still zero percent adapted to this medieval Ice Age! Look at this—my nipples are hard enough to cut glass right now! If I don't buy some cold resistance before I step out onto that wall, I'm going to freeze into a popsicle before the wolves even show up! How the hell are you standing next to this window without shivering?!"
— "Because I had the revolutionary foresight to button my shirt and wear a heavy wool coat," — Arthur replied dryly. — "And because a little autumn frost is hardly an emergency."
— "Oh, shut up, you shameless Argentine!" — William shot back indignantly, pointing a shivering finger at Arthur's nose. — "Your family came up from Buenos Aires! You guys are genetically programmed from birth to sit outside drinking mate in the middle of Patagonia while buried knee-deep in glacier ice! I'm a pure-blooded Brazilian, bro! My cardiovascular system requires a minimum ambient temperature of twenty-five degrees Celsius and a beach within driving distance just to circulate blood properly!"
Before Arthur could deliver a scathing retort to the geopolitical slander from their previous world, the freezing air three paces away suddenly warped.
Like a desert mirage solidifying in the dim torchlight, the monochrome veil of the Mist World parted with a silent ripple, and a slender, hooded figure materialized casually against the opposite stone wall.
It was Nightingale.
Dressed in her signature white-and-gold trimmed cloak Beneath a dark outer mantle, the assassin leaned one shoulder comfortably against the masonry, idly twirling a thin, silver-plated throwing dagger between her gloved fingers with effortless dexterity.
Judging by the relaxed tilt of her head, she had been standing invisible in the corridor listening to their absurd bickering for at least five minutes.
Ever since William had bled for the castle guards in the granary culvert—and especially after their private, world-shaking conversation in his bedroom the morning before—the razor-sharp hostility Nightingale had initially harbored toward the loudmouthed foreigner had completely thawed. While Arthur's terrifyingly cold pragmatism during the Baron Pine incident still made her skin crawl, she now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that these two bizarre men stood firmly on Roland and the witches' side.
The exact millisecond William's eyes landed on the blonde witch and the faint, enigmatic smile curving beneath her hood, his shivering, indignant warrior posture evaporated into thin air.
Straightening his bare shoulders as if the freezing draft no longer existed, William clapped his right hand dramatically over his left pec like a man suffering a sudden cardiac arrest, his voice dropping into a shamelessly smooth, honeyed purr:
— "Nightingale, my queen! You appeared just in time to save my life!"
Nightingale rolled her striking blue eyes toward the ceiling, though she couldn't quite stop the corners of her lips from twitching upward into an amused smirk. Reaching into a small leather pouch hidden inside her cloak, she pulled out a strip of salted, dried river fish and took a calm, unhurried bite.
— "Your Majesty has a real name, Commander William, and it certainly isn't 'Nightingale,'" — she replied in her husky, velvety voice after swallowing. — "Furthermore, judging by the utter nonsense I just heard you babbling about 'green hair,' 'bicycles,' and slicing musket balls in half with a sword... I am afraid the northern frost has already frozen whatever small fraction of your brain was still working."
— "Guilty as charged, gorgeous," — William winked without missing a single beat, leaning an elbow back against the stone wall and flashing his best rogue's grin. — "That's why I need you standing close to me on the ramparts today—to thaw out my frozen heart with that warm smile of yours."
Beside the window, Arthur slowly raised both hands to cover his face, dragging his palms down his cheeks as he muttered a quiet string of words in native Rioplatense Spanish under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer for divine patience.
Across the hall, Nightingale let out a soft, genuine laugh that chimed like silver bells against the cold stone. In a grim, superstitious world where every man who discovered her identity either screamed for a priest or looked at her with creeping terror, William's relentless, completely unfiltered audacity was a breath of fresh air that cut right through the crushing tension of the siege.
Before William could fire off a second pickup line, the heavy, hurried thud of leather boots echoed up the main stone stairwell at the end of the gallery.
Two seconds later, Prince Roland rounded the corner, flanked by two castle guards who remained at the stairs.
The young prince carried a thick roll of charcoal-stained defensive maps tucked under one arm. Despite the early hour, dark shadows of sleep deprivation hung beneath his gray eyes, and the heavy wool cloak draped over his shoulders was already dusted with fresh white snow from the inner courtyard.
Spotting his two top advisors and his invisible bodyguard loitering in the hallway—with his Commander-in-Chief standing half-naked in the freezing draft—Roland stopped dead in his tracks.
At that exact instant, a spark of pure, mischievous curiosity went off inside William's head.
Wait a second... I've scanned the recruits, I've scanned Carter and Iron Axe, and I just scanned Art, William realized, blinking his eyes twice to reactivate [BIOMETRIC STATUS INSPECTION] as he locked his gaze straight onto the Fourth Prince of Graycastle. I haven't checked the boss's stats yet!
To William's retinas, a glowing blue status frame instantly popped open above Roland's windswept gray hair:
[Target: Roland Wimbledon]
Strength: 5 Speed: 6 Endurance: 6 Agility: 8 Intelligence: 20
William swallowed hard, his smile freezing for half a second as he read the numbers.
Holy crap... Strength 5 and Endurance 6?! William stared at the Prince's slender, pampered royal frame in internal shock, comparing those pitiful figures to his own Strength: 16, or even an ordinary North Slope miner's baseline of 7. Man, the original Prince Roland really never lifted anything heavier than a wine goblet in his entire life! With Cheng Yan's office-worker habits on top of that, our supreme commander is physically weaker than a starving peasant! If I accidentally sneeze too hard next to him at full strength, I might dislocate his spine!
Yet as William's eyes dropped to the bottom line of the floating window, his shock gave way to a deep, whistling admiration.
Intelligence: 20.
Twenty! William marveled silently. Even Art, who thinks ten steps ahead like a human supercomputer, is sitting at 14! No wonder Cheng Yan could design steam engines, blast furnaces, and corned gunpowder from memory without a single textbook—the guy's brain is literally operating at the biological apex of the human species!
Completely unaware that his abysmal physical conditioning had just been audited, Roland cleared his throat and frowned at William's bare chest.
— "William?" — the Prince asked, genuine bewilderment written across his tired face. — "What on earth are you still doing standing in the corridor in your nightclothes? I just walked up from the southern gate. The snow is already half a foot deep in the clearing, and our northern lookouts report movement in the treeline. Shouldn't you be on the parapet with Iron Axe and Van'er organizing the firing lines?"
William didn't flinch, and he certainly didn't break character.
Snapping his heels together on the freezing flagstones, he threw his bare chest out, snapped a crisp military salute, and beamed with the shameless confidence of a man who had never done anything wrong in his life.
— "Fear not, Your Highness! I was not slacking off!" — William declared with a straight face. — "At this very moment, I was conducting an intensive, high-altitude acclimatization exercise to condition my body against the sub-zero hostility of the frontier!"
While his mouth was delivering that blatant lie to the Prince, William's mind was already inside his [SHOP] submenu.
Following Arthur's advice to the letter, William grabbed 160 Credits out of his 170-credit balance and slammed all four attribute points straight into Endurance—leaving a tiny 10-credit tip in his pocket.
[TRANSACTION CONFIRMED: -160 CREDITS][ENDURANCE: 10 -> 14]
Thump-THUMP!
The instant the transaction cleared, a silent, volcanic wave of internal heat erupted from the marrow of William's bones and flooded through every vein, capillary, and muscle fiber in his torso.
He didn't arch his back or groan like Arthur had the night before; instead, he felt an immediate, profound structural solidification. Within two heartbeats, his skeletal frame grew noticeably denser and heavier, his tendons thickened into unbreakable cables around his joints, and his skin tightened like cured armor hide.
More remarkably, the biting sub-zero draft leaking through the window—which had been making his teeth chatter ten seconds ago—suddenly felt no colder than a mild spring breeze on a sunny afternoon. The goosebumps vanished from his forearms as his newly upgraded Endurance: 14 metabolism began pumping furnace-like heat right up to his skin.
— "...And as of this exact second, my thermal conditioning is one hundred percent complete!" — William finished, grinning from ear to ear as he dropped his salute. — "I'm ready to hold the wall all winter long, Boss!"
Roland stared at the shirtless young man for three seconds, then slowly turned his head toward Arthur, silently begging his chief strategist for a sane explanation.
Keeping both hands tucked warmly inside his overcoat pockets, Arthur simply gave a slight, fatalistic shrug.
— "He is a complete clinical mystery, Your Highness, though an undeniably efficient one when pointed in the right direction," — Arthur said peacefully.
Letting out a long sigh and deciding he didn't have enough brain cells left to question the habits of twenty-first-century Brazilians, Roland unrolled the top parchment map in his hands.
— "So be it. Just go put a doublet and a breastplate on before the recruits think their commander has lost his mind to frostbite," — Roland ordered, his tone turning brisk and businesslike as he tapped the charcoal sketch of the southern wall. — "Iron Axe's forward scouts returned from the Concealing Forest five minutes ago. The first wave of the miasma has already pushed the outermost forest packs into a frenzy. We have roughly two dozen mutated wolves and boars moving toward the clearing, along with a smaller reconnaissance pack of red foxes heading toward the eastern sector to test our flanks. I want the common beasts drawn into the central trench funnels and eliminated using minimal gunpowder reserves. Save the ceramic grenades unless a heavy cluster forms."
Feeling the titanic, unyielding stability of Endurance: 14 backing up his Strength: 16, William raised his right fist and slammed his newly healed knuckles squarely into the open palm of his left hand.
CRACK!
The impact didn't sound like flesh hitting flesh; it echoed down the stone corridor like a blacksmith's iron sledgehammer striking an anvil—and this time, not even a single twinge of pain registered in William's wrist bones.
— "Mutated wolves and boars mixed together for the opening act?" — William's grin sharpened, the playful humor vanishing from his dark eyes to reveal the cold, hungry gleam of an apex predator. — "Perfect. I was just looking for a live target to test whether my new bones can snap a monster's spine without cracking. Tell the kitchen to heat up the cauldrons, Roland—Border Town is having grilled beast ribs for breakfast!"
— "Demonic beast flesh is saturated with toxic miasma and completely inedible, as you already know," — Arthur pointed out dryly, stepping away from the window and falling into step beside Prince Roland as they headed back toward the war room stairs. — "Just try not to die of overconfidence out there in the snow, anime hero. Karl and I still need a strong pair of shoulders to haul the iron cannon barrels up the ramp next week."
— "Hahahaha! Keep dreaming, you slave-driving bureaucrat! The Commander-in-Chief doesn't haul freight!" — William laughed over his shoulder, already pivoting on his heel and sprinting back down the hallway toward his room to grab his navy-blue doublet, his boots, and his heavy broadsword.
As he reached his open doorway, William glanced back down the corridor just in time to see Nightingale give him a faint, lingering look from beneath her hood before her silhouette dissolved smoothly back into the invisible ripples of the Mist World, following closely behind Roland's shadow.
Grabbing his heavy wool coat off the bedpost and throwing it over his shoulders, William let out a quiet, fiercely determined breath as he looked out his bedroom window at the driving snowstorm.
— "Just watch from the tower, you two," — William muttered to himself, buckling his sword belt tight around his waist before striding out to the stairs. — "By the time this winter is over, I'm going to crush every beast and demon that steps out of those mountains—and rub the scoreboard straight into those high-Intelligence faces of yours."
[DIMENSIONAL SYSTEM — UPDATED HOST PARAMETERS]
User: [William]
Location: Border Town, Kingdom of Graycastle
[Attributes]
Strength: 16
Speed: 11
Endurance: 14
Agility: 9
Intelligence: 8
Magic Power: 3 [Teleportation]
[CURRENT BALANCE: 10 Credits]