"First, I need capital," I muttered, my devious eyes gleaming. "The novel said Alaric kept the remains of his mother's jewelry in a secret compartment under the bed."
With strength from who-knows-where, I flipped that rickety bed over. Dammit, the dust was so thick it could cause pneumoconiosis. I searched for a loose tile and found it. Beneath it was a small, dusty chest.
I opened it. Empty.
There was only a scrap of paper with Alaric's chicken-scratch handwriting: "Pawned it for horse racing bets last week. Oops."
A vein throbbed in my forehead. "You bastard! Damn you, Alaric! You're a true menace to society! How could you gamble while your people are eating rocks?!"
I crumpled the paper and threw it at the mold on the ceiling.
Okay. Plan B. No capital.
"If there's no capital, we must create added value with existing resources," I muttered, returning to stubborn engineer mode. "What does Tepez have? Dry clay? Basalt rocks in the river? Starving labor?"
I needed a field survey. I couldn't create a feasibility study design just by looking out the window.
I rushed out of the room, through the Count's castle corridors which felt more like a haunted house—cracked walls from foundation settlement, leaking roofs, slippery floors. This was an architectural crime!
As I reached the cold, dark main hall, the massive castle doors swung open. Blinding sunlight poured in, along with the shadow of a tall, sturdy man.
"Count Alaric," the voice was cold, sharp, and full of disgust.
I squinted.
The man wore silver armor that sparkled—too much sparkle for this dusty region, he clearly spent more time polishing it than training—and a white cloak with the emblem of a holy order. His hair was golden-blonde, his eyes a clear blue, and his face was so handsome it made you want to punch him.
Dammit. It was Sir Kaelen. The Protagonist. The Holy Knight. My future executioner.
He stood there, gripping the hilt of his holy sword, looking at me like I was a pile of filth trying to crawl into his living room. Behind him stood a woman in a hooded cloak that hid her face, but her posture exuded noble elegance.
"I have come," Sir Kaelen said in his nauseating tone of justice, "to ensure that you, trash Count, do not do anything foolish before the arrival of the royal debt collectors. And to protect Princess Isabella from..." He glanced at the woman behind him with deep respect. "...from indignity."
Princess Isabella. My fiancée. The woman Alaric tried to sell in the novel, which became the reason Kaelen chopped off my head.
I stared at Kaelen. His holy, handsome face made my stomach churn. Heroes like him knew nothing of reality. They thought problems could be solved with light magic and speeches about friendship.
"Ah, Sir Kaelen," I said, and without realizing it, my voice sounded far more devious and condescending than the original Alaric could ever manage. I put on my most terrifying 'demon face' smile. "Welcome to my... naturally ventilated castle. You've come at the perfect time."
Kaelen frowned, suspicious of my change in attitude. The original Alaric usually trembled in fear before him. "What are you talking about, trash?"
I stepped forward, approaching him with the arrogant stride of a project owner ready to swindle an investor.
"You see the drought out there, don't you? You see the cracked earth, the receding river, the dying people?" I pointed dramatically toward the door.
"All of that is because of one thing, great Sir Kaelen," I said, my voice rising an octave, full of engineering madness. "It's not because of God's punishment. It's not because of dark magic. It is because of a fatal failure in water resource management and a lack of adequate irrigation infrastructure!"
Kaelen blinked. Princess Isabella behind him seemed to startle slightly.
"What... what are you talking about?" Kaelen asked, confused by the technical terms.
"I'm talking about development, Sir Kaelen! I'm talking about cement! Concrete! Canals! Dams!" I brought my demon face close to his holy face, making him instinctively take a step back.
"I have a plan! A civil engineering master plan that will turn this Tepez territory into the kingdom's granary within six months! I will build a dam on the Seraphim River, create a drip irrigation system across the entire region, and pave these roads so merchant carriages can pass with minimum friction coefficients!"
Kaelen looked at me as if I had gone completely insane. "You... you're delusional. You have no money. Not a single gold coin in your treasury. How can you build all that?"
"Money?" I laughed, a sound like sandpaper on rusted metal. "Money is a later problem. The first rule in construction: Use debt to finance capital, and use project yields to pay off the debt."
I turned, ignoring the bewildered Kaelen, and looked at Princess Isabella. The woman who would be the key to my destruction... or my salvation.
"Princess Isabella," I said, lowering my tone to be more polite, yet my eyes still gleamed with greed. "The novel... I mean, rumors say you have connections with the Dwarf Bank in the Mountain Kingdom. Is that true?"
Isabella was silent for a moment, then slowly lowered her hood.
The sight made me freeze. Not because of her beauty—and she was indeed stunning, with silver hair and eyes as red as blood—but because of the intensity of her gaze.
She didn't look at me with disgust like Kaelen. She looked at me with... curiosity. A dark, sharp curiosity. As if I were a strange specimen that had just jumped out of a test tube.
"Yes," Isabella's voice was soft, but there was a strange coldness in it. "I have connections. Why, Count?"
I smiled, a smile so wide my cheeks hurt. The smile of a man who had just seen an infinite source of funding.
"Excellent!" I clapped once. "Princess, I have a business proposal for you. A proposal you cannot refuse. An opportunity to invest in the greatest project of the century: 'The Great Tepez Infrastructure Overhaul'."
Kaelen tried to interrupt, "Isabella, don't listen to him! He's just trying to trick you!"
"Shut up, you useless shiny knight!" I snapped at him with my full demon face. "You know nothing of civil engineering! You only know how to swing a sword and preach! While your people die of thirst, you're busy polishing your armor! Go find a lost cat or something!"
Kaelen was stunned. No one had ever dared to snap at him like that.
I looked back at Isabella, ignoring the shocked Kaelen.
"Princess, imagine this: this territory, filled with green fields, water gushing through aesthetic concrete canals, bustling trade, and in the center, a new Count's castle, built with sturdy reinforced concrete and modern architectural design... which, of course, I will name 'Castle Isabella'."
I leaned in closer, lowering my voice to a seductive whisper—the seduction of a devious contractor.
"All of that could be yours. Power, wealth, and the respect of thousands of people you saved. All I need is a small initial loan... let's say, 100,000 Noir Gold Coins. At the standard Dwarf Bank interest rate, of course."
I held out my hand, staring into Isabella's red eyes with the full confidence of a man who knew how to calculate a Budget Plan (RAB) by heart.
"What do you say, Princess? Do you want to be part of history... or do you want to keep letting this territory die under the leadership of this stupid Holy Knight?"
The room went silent. Kaelen held his breath, ready to draw his sword if I touched Isabella.
Isabella stared at my outstretched hand. Her gaze was cold, unreadable. But then, something strange happened.
The corners of her lips curled up slightly. Not a friendly smile, but a smile that was dark, mysterious, and... a bit terrifying. Her red eyes flashed with a strange light—a light that didn't come from kindness or justice.
She reached out her small, pale hand and placed it in my rough one.
"A fascinating proposal, Count Alaric," she said, her voice soft but with a strange tone of possession. "I accept. 100,000 Noir Gold Coins will be transferred to your account immediately... on one condition."
I smiled satisfactorily. "Anything, Princess. Anything for infrastructural progress."
Isabella leaned in, her face only inches from mine. Her breath felt cold on my skin. She looked straight into my eyes, and for the first time, I felt a true chill down my spine. Not the cold of mold or drought, but the cold of a predator.
"This project," she whispered, her voice audible only to me. "This dam, these roads, this castle... all of it must be built only for me. And you, Count..." She gripped my hand tighter, her sharp nails digging slightly into my skin. "...you shall also build only for me. From this day on, you are my Architect of the Obsidian Cage. Don't even think about building something for anyone else... or running away."
She released my hand and smiled again, a smile that looked sweet but in her eyes... was a bottomless darkness. A darkness far scarier than debt or Kaelen.
"I look forward to the results of your work, Count," she said, her voice returning to normal. "Sir Kaelen, let us go. Count Alaric has much work to do."
Kaelen glared at me with pure hatred, then followed Isabella out of the castle.
The castle doors shut. I stood alone in the cold main hall.
I looked at my hand, where the marks of Isabella's grip were still visible. A little blood trickled out.
"Dammit," I muttered, but not in fear. The vein in my forehead throbbed, and my demon face returned, more terrifying than before.
I didn't know what she meant by 'Obsidian Cage' or 'building only for her.' I didn't care about Dark Romance or yandere nonsense.
All I heard was one thing: 100,000 Noir Gold Coins.
"ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND GOLD COINS!" I screamed in joy, jumping around the rickety castle hall. "I'm rich! I can buy cement! I can hire labor! I can build that damn dam!"
I rushed toward the old wooden desk in the corner of the hall, looking for paper and a pen. I found them—a scrap of fragile parchment and a blunt quill. I didn't care.
"Field survey!" I muttered rapidly. "I need topographical data, water flow data for the Seraphim River, soil sample analysis, and availability of coarse aggregate nearby. No time to think about those yanderes! Concrete is waiting for me!"
I began drawing a rough sketch of a gravity-type dam on the parchment, Bernoulli's principle and Darcy's law swirling in my head. My face was devious, workaholic, and full of ambition to swindle fate with cement and steel.
'Wait,' I thought for a moment, my hand stopping. 'If she's a yandere, she might kill the construction workers who take too long.'
I shrugged. "Ah, whatever. That's a later problem. The second rule of a contractor: Occupational Health and Safety is a suggestion, not an obligation, as long as the project is finished on time."
I laughed loudly—a demonic laugh that shook the old castle as I began planning the construction of a dam that would change this territory forever... and perhaps, trap me in an obsidian cage I never could have imagined.
But hey, at least I'll have lots of money! Ahahahaha.