The Ice Age Came And I Just Got Married - Chapter 20

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 20
“……Do you know my name?”
This is the same question I asked Logan once.
I really haven’t been seeing anything properly except for Logan.
“Would you like some tea?”
“What?”
Charlotte stopped, her face flushed with surprise at the unexpected offer.
I’d brewed an extra cup and set it out for her.
“Drink the tea.”
“Is it poisoned?”
Charlotte asked me with a bewildered expression.
I shrugged and took a sip of my own.
“I’m drinking it too. See?”
She sat across from me with an awkward face, glancing around the room.
To be fair, the Greenhouse was striking.
She covered her mouth with a wool-gloved hand, then asked me in a trembling voice.
“Aren’t you curious how I got here, or why? You’re not even surprised?”
“Well. Charlotte, are you going to kidnap me?”
“How did you know?”
“I know everything.”
I put on a mysterious air and laughed.
Charlotte fidgeted in her seat, then finally broke.
“The truth is, I didn’t want to. Kidnap you, I mean. Especially not you.”
Charlotte’s answer was unexpected.
I thought she hated me, but apparently not.
“I was jealous of you, not hating you.”
I’d been thinking only of winning Charlotte over to our side, but her honest confession moved something in me.
“What if you stayed here with us?”
Charlotte was the daughter of the Rosebrook Navy commander, so she knew a great deal about the naval base.
Which meant she was someone who might know the location of the Ice Age Research Institute.
“Here in this village, we’re all equal. Everyone has their own role.”
“I really did hate you.”
“I understand. Nobody likes their rival.”
“You saw me as a rival?!”
Charlotte asked in surprise. For some reason, I was beginning to feel terrible about how little attention I’d paid her.
I extended my hand to her.
“Want me to show you around the village?”
Charlotte nodded awkwardly and toured the village with me.
I showed her Marcus and Jack’s house, then told her to pick one of the remaining empty houses to stay in.
Jack, who was carefully arranging medicinal herbs to dry inside his house, greeted us with some awkwardness. He seemed to be preparing herbs in advance for emergencies.
Charlotte exchanged greetings just as awkwardly, then finished looking around the house.
After that, I led Charlotte up to the rooftop of Eve House and introduced her to Marcus.
“Ah. Another junior’s shown up.”
“My goodness. It really is Rutland. I thought you’d become such a big shot we’d never see you again.”
Charlotte’s amazement seemed to lift Marcus’s spirits a little.
“That bastard duke’s on a rampage.”
Marcus pointed toward the village entrance as he spoke. True to his word, Logan was blocking bullets with nothing but a Greatsword, moving like he was flying.
He was holding his own against dozens of armed men, but it was the other side that was struggling. They couldn’t seem to handle his monstrous strength.
I’d known Logan was formidable, but seeing it again was still stunning.
And just then, I noticed a group hovering near the village’s side entrance. Among those being held by them was a man whose face looked distinctly familiar.
“It’s Nathan.”
Nathan Holt. Logan’s adjutant.
“Ah, that person.”
And Charlotte chimed in from beside me, as if she recognized him too.
“He’s a good man. He kept me company on the way here…….”
At that moment, Marcus stood up from his seat and spoke.
“I’ll go.”
Then he handed me the Sniper Rifle he’d been holding.
“You know how to use this, right? Let’s switch.”
At his words, I nodded reluctantly and asked.
“Are you sure about this, Marcus?”
At my question, Marcus loosened up with some stretching and laughed.
“I want to take revenge myself, too.”
“What kind of revenge?”
An expression I’d never seen before crossed his face.
“They killed our company employees.”
His voice grew heavier.
“I’ve never forgiven them. Not once.”
He was speaking of the terror attack.
His usual slick, playful manner made it hard to read him most days.
But in this moment, I understood.
How much rage he held toward Charles and Harry.
Marcus then picked up a spare rifle that lay on the ground.
“I told you before, didn’t I? I did my military service. I can handle a gun better than those bastards, at least.”
Marcus pointed down at the gang of scoundrels beneath the wall.
“I’m coming too.”
That was when Charlotte drew two blades from the scabbard at her hip, one in each hand.
That’s right. Raised in a military family, she wielded both gun and sword with practiced ease, but the Dual Sword Technique was where she excelled most.
Like Logan, her primary weapon was the blade.
“Wow… I really feel reassured having you two as my juniors.”
At Marcus’s dazed exclamation, Charlotte offered a faint smile, though it didn’t linger long.
She gazed down at the blades in her hands for a moment, then slowly lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“I want to settle my karmic debts.”
Her voice carried its usual confidence, yet something long-buried stirred beneath it.
“I was too afraid to resist them. All I did was fawn and call them ‘brother.'”
She gripped the sword hilt tighter.
“Seeing you makes my past weakness feel even more shameful.”
Charlotte bit her lip for a moment, then smiled bitterly.
“So I want to end this myself.”
Her eyes held no more hesitation.
Brief as the words were, they sounded less like revenge against someone than a declaration to break with her past self.
Charlotte flashed me a smile.
“That way I can finally face you as your equal.”
“Our junior Eve’s rival is Logan, though?”
No, really. Senior, please pick up on this.
I picked up my sniper rifle and sighed.
“Understood. I’ll provide cover from here. If things get tight, I can use my Winterstone power.”
At the mention of Winterstone power, Charlotte tilted her head in confusion, but Marcus understood at once and thumped his chest.
“That’s what I call reassuring, our junior.”
“Do well and come back. If you get hurt, I’m not letting it slide.”
“Right, right. We can’t get hurt for our junior’s sake.”
As Charlotte listened to our exchange, her expression became subtly strange. She looked at Marcus with an inscrutable gaze, then shook her head.
“I’ll be back.”
“We’re counting on you, junior.”
They waved to me and headed down.
Somehow, each of them seemed to be battling something within themselves. I was no different.
In this cursed world, what had to be preserved until the end was that kind of conviction.
The struggle not to lose oneself. The effort to regret one’s choices and become better.
That was something only humans could do.
And so I rooted for Marcus and Charlotte.
I took a moment to breathe deeply and raised my sniper rifle.
* * *
“You’re telling me who’s in Rosebrook?”
Aiden looked up, a puzzled expression crossing his face as he received the report from the guard knight Vincent.
“Duke and Duchess Chestwind?”
“Yes. It appears they purchased property in a village called the ‘Land of Demons.’ There’s been a report of armed conflict with a gang controlling the Rosebrook area.”
“Ah, now that I think about it… Logan suddenly demanded clarification when he said he was marrying some disgraced noblewoman.”
Aiden paused to consider.
It was too much to leave everything and go to Rosebrook himself.
As the crown prince, he bore the duty to protect the crumbling Granden Kingdom.
Logan is a person of concern.
His movements had always been suspicious enough that Aiden kept a close eye on him. Then, suddenly, the Ice Age arrived.
It struck Aiden only later: that man must have known the Ice Age was coming.
“For now, keep watching him.”
After a moment’s thought, Aiden added something to Vincent.
“Find out if he’s been with that woman too.”
“That woman being……?”
“Duchess Chestwind.”
Was it because of her beauty, which earned her the epithet of peerless? Or because she was the woman whose name had been circulated as Logan’s rival?
From that moment on, she had become a woman whose face lingered oddly in his thoughts.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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