<Episode 6>
What Has Changed, What Is Changing, and What Will Never Change
One month later.
“What are you people, children of the darkness or something?”
“There she goes, talking nonsense again.”
It was an earnest question on my part, yet the ever-adorable, sharp-tongued Nishe brushed it off as the usual drivel.
I refused to back down.
“How can you all live for a hundred years like this?”
“Are you picking a fight?”
“It’s admiration. You’re like vampires—kind of cool, honestly.”
It was a thoughtless comment that bypassed my brain, but this castle truly did feel like a vampire’s den. A flattering one, if anything.
The Bellmeier Ducal Castle, also called the Winter Castle.
It had been left unattended for over a century. Even for a ruin, this was a ruin on an unimaginable scale.
Only a handful of places—the duke’s bedchamber among them—were in decent shape. Most doors, once opened, unleashed dust storms so thick even ghosts would flee.
The dining hall was, mercifully, one of the rare exceptions.
“It doesn’t even have windows, so it’s dark as night during the day, and I half expect spiders or rats to pop out—but all things considered, it’s clean.”
Saying so, I stared at the table.
A long, antique table—upon which sat nothing but a basket of bread and a single glass of water.
This was the Winter Castle’s daily fare.
Their staple. Three meals a day of potato bread—made by mashing together potatoes and wheat, the north’s specialty—and water.
More horrifying still was the fact that the not-quite-human residents of this castle had lived on nothing else for nearly a century.
“Prisoners of the Empire probably eat better than this…”
“Quit mumbling. If you’re not eating yours, give it to me.”
I looked at Nishe, crumbs clinging to the corner of his mouth, then slowly bit into my own bread. His sleek eyebrow shot up.
I was far too hungry to stage a hunger strike over food complaints.
‘At this rate… I might actually die of malnutrition.’
Things I’d learned while living in the Winter Castle:
Aside from me, only six people lived here— the duke and his retainers: a butler, a witch, a maid, and two knights.
And every one of them was over a hundred years old.
Meaning that long ago, due to some incident, their bodies’ time simply… stopped, together with their duke’s.
In the process, they awakened a strange ability—neither mage’s mana nor knight’s aura—but a third power altogether: an “anomalous ability,” or simply, an Esper trait.
Thus, I…
‘So the “demon duke” is actually a superpowered esper? Seriously?’
After the reflexive reincarnator-talk came the reasonable reaction—
‘Isn’t this extremely confidential? And they’re just telling me?’
—which led to my final conclusion—
‘This country is… doomed. The national strength is… wow.’
To summarize Bellmeier’s situation:
Perpetual, barren winter (expected of the North)
Poor living conditions (still understandable)
The duke’s own castle is the poorest place in Bellmeier (…excuse me?)
The national leadership consists of six people total (how is this a country?)
‘How did they even stand off against the Empire?’
The more I dug, the more this place screamed, “Is this even a country? Even a territory shouldn’t be this bad.”
Yet somehow Bellmeier was considered a formidable northern power that even the Hilbarcia Empire kept in check.
Hilbarcia— the sole Empire on this continent.
Bellmeier was nominally a duchy, but functionally an independent nation.
‘Something about the duke’s bloodline being a branch of the imperial family.’
Who knew how deep the politics went. Maybe the anomalous abilities were absurdly strong, or maybe the duke himself was a walking deus ex machina.
In the original story, Bellmeier was never truly defeated by the Empire.
But seeing the real thing now, hollowed out like this, I couldn’t help worrying.
Bellmeier’s safety was my safety now!
“This won’t do.”
“What won’t?”
Zephy, who appeared like a gust of wind, asked in his usual bland tone.
I barely flinched; I’d long grown desensitized to his sudden appearances.
“She’s sick. Leave her be.” Nishe muttered.
“Nishe, are you really planning to live as a knight who eats only potato bread?”
“Oh, for—see? She’s crazy.”
“Lady Irenne has been spaced out lately,” Ellie added softly.
The only maid in the castle, Ellie, with her neat, milk-brown bob, had been attending to me ever since my arrival.
Attending, mind you…
Bathing me as though doing laundry, wrapping me in blankets up to my head because I “looked cold”…
This peculiar maid held out a piece of her bread to me.
“Are you hungry? Would you like mine too?”
“Bread.”
“Lady Irenne?”
“We need to fix this damned bread first.”
I had made up my mind.
‘Damn it. I really meant to keep my head down.’
I didn’t want to take on trouble no one asked of me. But—
“You can’t fight well if you don’t eat well.”
I said farewell to this miserable diet.
Was this truly a noble mission for the sake of Bellmeier’s welfare? And not simply because I felt nauseous at the sight of potato bread now?
…Probably.
During the past month—
I had actually done nothing.
Which is hilarious, considering how confidently I talked to the duke. But I had a valid reason.
The duke never gave me a single task.
Moreover, no one in the castle asked anything of me—not even something trivial. They didn’t restrict my movements, didn’t treat me poorly, didn’t even look at me with suspicion.
The reason became clear after some time.
“You didn’t know? The reason the master is still awake is because of Lady Irenne.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“We all think so. Your existence itself is… well, a sort of blessing to us.”
It was true.
The duke, who had been nearly perpetually asleep because of his terrifying miasma, had not fallen asleep once since I arrived.
He was setting a new record.
And with the witch’s future-sight prophecy supporting the idea, everyone assumed it was my doing.
Meanwhile, I was just sitting there like, “Huh?”
I could only guess that perhaps my reincarnator luck buff had manifested as some sort of passive lucky charm.
Whatever it was, it was proving extremely effective.
If the prophecy came true, the duke’s miasma would never run wild, and the world wouldn’t meet its apocalypse.
Naturally, my nerves had loosened.
‘…I got too relaxed.’
I had already derailed the original story. The butterfly effect could easily drag me into new events that never existed before.
And I had already seen that butterfly effect firsthand.
“Lissie is still treating Chesire, the Crown Prince?”
“Yes. He remains unconscious.”
“That’s impossible. The holy power can make even severed limbs grow anew… It’s a miracle granted by the divine.”
“Perhaps her power has withered. Or perhaps she chose not to fully heal him.”
“…Ha.”
“Isn’t it good for you? Thanks to that, the identity of the person who stabbed the Crown Prince remains unknown.”
Giselle claimed it was news I would appreciate, but it only unsettled me.
It meant Lissie hadn’t named me as the culprit, yet she had neither saved him nor let him die.
She had chosen nothing at all—
‘And it’s my disruption that forced her into that position.’
The villainess who should have died early had escaped execution, and now the story itself was unraveling.
Realizing this made a chill crawl down my spine.
‘…Could the truce really break?’
Everything about this country was a structural disaster.
Surely it wouldn’t come to that… but “surely” was a dangerous assumption. If Bellmeier really did end up facing the Empire—
…No.
Nothing would change unless I changed first!
“Your Grace, may I trouble you for a moment?”
And so—here I was.
I had come to the highest authority of Bellmeier.
I didn’t know the duke well, but he was easy to find. All I had to do was follow the overwhelming miasma.
Atop the ramparts encircling the Winter Castle—
In a place where the white expanse of the duchy spread endlessly below—
A pale man sat, blending into the scenery like a figure in a painting.
“Your Grace?”
“……”
Perched on the edge of the battlement, the duke glanced back, then silently turned his gaze again toward the distant snow-covered mountains.
His fine silver hair, white as snow, fluttered in the wind. My long black hair whipped around like a banner beside him.
‘Why is a northern duke this white?’
His eyes were fixed somewhere far away—not on the mountains, but on some distant memory only he could see.
“Ahem. Anyway, the reason I came is—”
“……”
“I want to improve the meals here. You’ll get malnutrition eating like this, you know? Well, maybe not you or the others in the castle, who’ve survived a century on nothing but potato bread, or you, Your Grace, who seems fine eating nothing at all.”
Perhaps because I had just forced down another piece of that bread, the words poured out like the grievances of a haunted soul.
“People need a balanced diet—protein, fat, carbs. Even if everyone here looks fine without proper meals, you still need real food. At this rate, that bread will kill me.”
“……”
“I mean, at least eat an average diet. Even if they call you a demon, you’ll still die if you don’t eat—just like any human.”
From what I had observed, they were essentially long-lived espers. If this world’s “demons” were like this, then demons were extremely underwhelming.
Besides—
I’d heard through the grapevine that unlike the castle residents, the people of the duchy were ordinary humans and actually ate better than the duke’s household.
Honestly. What kind of ducal castle lives worse than its own citizens?
What kind of demon lets that happen?
