"Tea hits different when you drink it alone versus with other people," Luke said with a smile. "I prefer sharing it with company, so don't overthink it. Drink up."
"Then I owe you a favor," Fiora said, still stubborn about it.
Strength was her top priority. If she hadn't happened to come to Luke's house today, this bottleneck probably wouldn't have loosened so much. Even if Luke acted like it was nothing, she couldn't treat it lightly.
As for Lux, she didn't understand a single word of what they were talking about.
Right now, she only cared about when the ice cream she'd been dreaming about would finally be ready.
At last, twenty minutes passed.
Luke got up, went down to the basement, and brought the chilled ice cream back upstairs.
He'd made a huge amount—more than enough to eat.
The moment the container holding the ice cream was set on the table, it immediately drew the attention of the three girls in the room.
The freshly set ice cream looked like a pastry. A thin veil like powdered sugar covered the top, and it was divided into several colors in neat rows. A sweet fragrance filled the air.
Four plates were set out. Then Luke skillfully dragged a large scoop across the surface—instantly rolling the ice cream into perfect spheres.
Each person got three scoops to start, three different flavors.
Fiora wasn't especially interested in desserts, but this was her first time trying ice cream. Curious, she used her spoon to dig out a small bite.
As it cut through, there was a faint sandy, whispery scrape. Then her red lips parted slightly as she placed the bite into her mouth.
A rush of icy cool spread through her mouth, followed by an unusually bright fruit sweetness. The texture was soft and creamy, melting on contact—sweet but not cloying.
It was unexpectedly delicious.
Even though she didn't particularly love sweets, she suddenly felt like she could eat a lot of it.
"Is it good?" Luke took a couple bites himself. He was confident in his cooking, but he still wanted the customer's verdict first.
"It's very good." Fiora nodded, giving it high praise.
"It's insanely good!" Lux, on the other hand, looked blissfully satisfied and gave it the highest possible rating.
The moment the ice cream hit her tongue, she knew every second of waiting—and every bit she'd spent—had been worth it.
Lux had already added ice cream to the list of her lifelong favorites.
"My evaluation is the same as Miss Crownguard's," Yurna said, still expressionless as she spoke.
Luke, who'd been watching her on purpose, felt a little disappointed.
But judging by how fast she was eating, she clearly liked it quite a lot.
So he focused on eating as well.
Across from him, Fiora lifted her eyes and studied Luke again.
In her mind, this man had gained another layer of mystery.
At first, she'd thought he was just a man with a good face and a distinctive sword style—nothing particularly remarkable beyond that.
But the longer she knew him, the more she realized he was far more than that.
"Is there something on my face?" Luke noticed Fiora's gaze and looked up, asking oddly.
If it were an ordinary girl, she'd probably have looked away after getting caught.
But Fiora kept her eyes on his face and smiled. "Nothing. I just think Your Highness is… somewhat special."
"Special?" Luke rubbed his face and said narcissistically, "Specially handsome?"
"Cough, cough…" Lux, who was shoveling ice cream in big mouthfuls at the side, choked immediately. She coughed several times before finally recovering.
Then she shot Luke an annoyed glare. "Stop talking!"
Luke: "…"
So you choke while eating and that's my fault too?
He couldn't be bothered to argue with this blonde brat.
Luke quietly went back to eating his ice cream.
After it got dark, Fiora stood up and took her leave.
Lux was about to leave too, but before she went, she carried off a portion of ice cream with her.
"You'd better eat less," Luke advised her kindly.
Sitting in the Crownguard carriage, Lux brushed him off. "I know."
Seeing her like that, Luke felt like he could already predict tomorrow's situation.
He turned around and went back inside.
Glancing at Yurna, Luke asked, "Did you memorize all the steps?"
Yurna nodded.
"You've got the ingredients down too. From now on, you make it yourself." Luke naturally intended to do it once and only once—otherwise, what would he even keep a maid for? Then he added, "Starting tomorrow, take the ice cream and go specifically to the high-end restaurants. See if they want to cooperate. Handle the details yourself."
"Yes," Yurna replied with a nod.
Luke didn't think too hard about the rest.
Ice cream was destined to sweep through all of Demacia this summer.
He didn't need to worry about sales at all.
It appealed to all ages, came in many flavors, and didn't get old easily. On top of that, Luke had specially adjusted it so it tasted even better than the usual kind—and there were two routes to take.
Commoners were the majority, so they'd go with a standard version at a price everyone could accept.
As for upscale restaurants, they'd naturally go the high-end route, targeting nobles and the wealthy.
Prices would start at a gold coin. Of course, the craftsmanship would be more refined—tastier than the standard version.
The fact that both Lux and Fiora praised it was already proof enough that the ice cream wouldn't be bad.
The next day.
He went to the academy as usual.
After dropping Luke off at the academy gates, Yurna drove the carriage away.
Inside the carriage was freshly made ice cream from that morning. Following Luke's instructions, she was heading to the high-end restaurants to see what she could arrange.
Luke entered the classroom. Lux still hadn't arrived.
Sitting in his chair with nothing to do, he silently thought: "Check-in."
[Congratulations to the host for obtaining an Advanced Archery Skill: Godspeed Tracking Arrow (automatically mastered to LV3)]
[Congratulations to the host for obtaining an item — Godspeed Tracking Token *5]
[Detected a learnable skill — Godspeed Tracking Arrow. Learn?]
"Learn."
With another silent thought, information about Godspeed Tracking Arrow flooded into Luke's mind.
Godspeed Tracking Arrow also carried the "Advanced" prefix, meaning it wasn't weaker than Wind-Riding Swordsmanship.
And after digesting the information, Luke could feel just how powerful this archery technique was.
As the name implied—godspeed tracking. Train it to mastery, and it could lock onto targets and track them. Once the arrow left the bow, it became an unfailing arrow that would hit without missing.
At only LV3, it had already greatly improved Luke's archery, reaching an impressively solid level.
After that, he checked the item he'd received from the check-in.
Godspeed Tracking Token—Luke read the system's description.
It was a tracking-type item that could reveal a target's current location.
But it required a prerequisite. To obtain the target's location, he had to submit a personal item that the target carried on them.
In other words, if Luke currently had a strand of the Dragon King's hair, as long as he submitted it to the Godspeed Tracking Token, he could learn where the Dragon King was at that very moment.
It was quite a good item.
If it was paired with a fully mastered Godspeed Tracking Arrow… could he hunt a target from a thousand miles away?
A hint of curiosity rose in Luke's mind.
Just then, he heard footsteps behind him—weak and listless.
Luke turned to look. Lux was walking in, her little face pale and her whole aura exhausted.
The moment she reached her seat and sat down, she flopped onto the desk like a dead weight, cheek pressed to the tabletop, turning her head to stare at Luke with lifeless eyes.
Seeing her like this, Luke already knew why. He said helplessly, "I warned you yesterday."
"If heaven gave me one more chance, I would definitely not sneak-eat it…" Lux shut her eyes in misery, drowned in regret.
After taking the ice cream home, she'd been worried her mother might scold her, so she stored it in the household ice room. But in the middle of the night she couldn't resist—she got up and secretly ate all of it.
At the time she'd felt completely satisfied, but she hadn't expected the nightmare to start so quickly.
The stomachache tortured her so badly that she hadn't slept well at all up to now.
Looking at her like this, Luke couldn't help finding it funny. "Actually, I brought a little ice cream this morning too."
The moment she heard that, Lux opened her eyes and snapped upright, suddenly energized. "Really?!"
"Of course it's fake."
Luke knew it—this girl would forget the pain the second she saw dessert again.
Realizing she'd been tricked, Lux didn't even have the strength to get angry. She flopped back down, looking pitiful.
"Is there any way to make it feel better?" she asked.
"Drink more hot water."
"…"
Lux turned her head away, deciding she wasn't going to talk to him. She just lay there quietly for a while.
In truth, her stomach didn't hurt anymore. She was just weak, with no energy in her whole body.
By noon, she'd already recovered.
The healthy glow returned to her face, and she looked refreshed and full of spirit again.
Outdoor class was, as always, held outside in the sun.
After school, Lux very naturally climbed into the carriage Yurna brought to pick Luke up.
"Did you get in the wrong carriage?" Luke glanced at her strangely.
Lux looked left and right and answered, "No."
Her intentions were obvious.
She was probably thinking about the ice cream at Luke's house again.
After they got home, Lux was even more familiar with the place than Luke was, as if it were her own house—she ran straight for the basement.
She opened the basement ice-room door. Seeing the inside piled full of ice cream, Lux froze in shock.
"Th-this-this…"
There was way too much.
A whole lifetime, and you still couldn't finish it all.
Her sparkling eyes were filled with nothing but ice cream.
Luke was also a bit surprised. He hadn't expected that in the span of a single day, Yurna had made this much.
So he asked, "How did the talks go?"
"At present, several high-end restaurants in the capital have expressed willingness to cooperate. Two of them are willing to purchase ice cream directly for sale. If we supply about fifty jin (roughly 25 kilograms) per day, we can earn eighty gold coins in net profit."
Eighty gold coins a day—over a month, that was 2,400 gold coins.
It could only be described as obscene profit.
But that was normal. At the few places Luke used to go, even one ordinary meal cost ten or twenty gold coins.
Those restaurants were all making money hand over fist.
After thinking a bit, Luke asked, "What about the others?"
"The other restaurants hope to use a flat-price model. They want to obtain the recipe outright. They'll provide both labor and ingredients themselves. At present, one restaurant has offered 3,000 gold coins."
After reporting, Yurna asked, "Which option does Your Highness think is better?"
"The second one. The flat price—see if you can push it higher."
Luke didn't think too long before choosing the buyout option.
First, he wasn't particularly short on money. If 3,000 gold coins landed in his hands at once, he could live on it for a long time.
Second, the ice cream recipe wasn't some secret that couldn't be reverse-engineered. If someone was willing to invest time, effort, and money, it wouldn't take long before other places selling ice cream appeared.
Even the special seasonings Luke added weren't hard to taste and figure out.
Maybe one day those restaurants wouldn't even need Luke's supply anymore. When that happened, the money he'd make might not even beat a one-time buyout.
Luke couldn't be bothered to run a complicated operation, so a buyout was also the easiest and most hassle-free.
"Yes," Yurna said, nodding.
After making the rounds of the capital, she'd seen that ice cream really could stir up major hype—just look at the merchants' shining eyes.
She was simply curious where His Highness had learned all of this.
At this point Lux was nowhere to be seen. She didn't care about any of that—she was happily holding a serving of ice cream in the living-room sofa, eating with pure delight.
When Luke went upstairs, he found Fiora was here too—somehow she'd arrived without him noticing.
She and Lux were eating ice cream together.
"Good afternoon," Luke greeted.
"Good afternoon," Fiora replied.
Luke answered and sat down on the sofa.
Honestly, a little liveliness wasn't bad.
After finishing the ice cream, Lux and Fiora didn't leave right away.
The three of them sat in the living room. Fiora now had a book in her hands, quietly reading.
And Luke, after Yurna reminded him, remembered that Mors had assigned homework today.
So he planned to knock it out together with Lux while they were here.
The homework requirement was to write an essay themed around "Twilight." No word limit, but no cutting corners.
Writing an essay was obviously not hard for Luke. Twilight—he could make up a few hundred words without even trying.
Lux, meanwhile, had her mind completely blank. Sitting on the sofa, she scratched her head for a while, then stared into space for a while.
She rested her chin on her hand in boredom, while the other hand held a pen that kept poking at her lower lip. Her thoughts had long since flown who-knows-where.
Luke glanced at her notebook—there wasn't a single word on it.
He wasn't sure whether she'd be able to finish this homework tonight. As for him, his pen moved like it was possessed—scratch scratch scratch, writing nonstop.
Seeing him write so smoothly, Lux immediately prodded Luke's waist with her pen and begged, "Your Highness, help me think of an opening."
Luke stopped and looked at the blonde girl staring at him with pleading eyes.
"Fine."
Since it was an essay on twilight, he thought for two seconds and recited:
"The sun sinks into the bright starfields—night falls suddenly on the human world, and the rivers and mountains have turned to autumn…"
A strange, impressed awe rose in Lux's heart.
Even Fiora, who was reading, lifted her eyes for a glance.
This "autumn" didn't necessarily mean the season—what she heard more was a sense of bleakness.
As an opening line, it really was quite good.
"Inspiration struck!" Lux suddenly felt ideas gushing like a spring. She immediately wrote the line into her notebook as the opening.
Then Luke looked down at what she wrote:
"The sun sinks into the bright starfields—night falls suddenly on the human world, and the rivers and mountains have turned to autumn. I remember one day…"
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