The Ice Age Came And I Just Got Married - Chapter 9

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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 9
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His body felt heavy as a water-logged sponge, and fever burned through him in waves.
How had he come to this? Where was he now? How long had it been since he’d felt warmth?
Marcus gave up trying to pry open his leaden eyelids and instead retraced his memories.
A Disaster Event had erupted without warning, and as he’d fled the hotel, he’d encountered his aide Jack.
Everything after that had been a blur of desperate survival.
He’d wandered throughout Rosebrook, scavenging for food, searching for shelter wherever he could find it.
But every refuge he’d thought secure already had an owner—and he’d been driven out again and again.
Ruthland Company maintained a mansion in Rosebrook, an opulent estate that flaunted enormous wealth.
Unfortunately, the northern reaches of the Upper District where the mansion stood had been completely ravaged by an avalanche.
‘Nothing ever works out.’
The city appeared utterly deserted—not a soul to be seen anywhere.
But that was only on the surface. In the shadows below, countless survivors lay hidden.
The reason Marcus had managed to survive this long was his Perfect Memory—the ability to memorize everything he saw once—and the Information Gathering skills it afforded him.
Though he was chairman of Ruthland Company, he was simultaneously an information broker who commanded the back alleys.
Born into poverty, having clawed his way to his current position through countless schemes and strategies and the careful cultivation of information, he had survived.
Fortunately, those same abilities had proven useful in surviving the Disaster Event.
Until those bastards made him their target.
About a week after the Disaster Event, factions began to emerge among Rosebrook’s survivors.
They were ruthless.
They would stop at nothing to survive.
At first, they’d begun raiding food storage facilities.
Next came the heating coal.
And finally, they started capturing people to enslave them.
The problem was that they weren’t mere thugs.
They moved with organization.
They had patrol units and dedicated watchers.
They even planted spies among the survivors to gather intelligence.
‘Absolute madmen.’
They were constructing a new order on top of the old one, all for survival’s sake.
The strong took what they wanted; the weak froze to death. A month into the Ice Age, and they had completely dominated the survivor society of Rosebrook.
Marcus and Jack had stumbled upon those men while searching for food, and suddenly they were running for their lives.
Chased and chasing, hunted and hunting.
In their frantic flight, they’d ventured deep into the Forest, that place called Demon’s Village.
“Sir, if we go any deeper, we’ll reach ‘that place.’ We can’t go further. Even those ruthless men won’t venture there—they say they tremble at the thought.”
“So we die here instead? The sun’s about to set. We need to find somewhere to shelter.”
He couldn’t remember how much deeper they’d pushed into the forest with Jack.
Eventually, they discovered the place called the Forbidden Land—the Demon’s Village itself—and to their astonishment, they noticed that far less snow had accumulated there.
Moreover, smoke was rising from the chimney of an enormous manor house at the village’s far end.
Marcus’s eyes narrowed.
“Sir, there seems to be someone living there!”
“People living in Demon’s Village? That’s impossible. Let’s go and see for ourselves. Human or demon—we’ll find out.”
“I’m… I’m scared, sir.”
Jack began to tremble—not from the cold, but from something else entirely.
“The sun’s setting anyway. You stay here.”
Marcus dragged his exhausted body forward one step at a time, and Jack, though hesitant, dutifully followed.
The moment they crossed the village boundary and stepped onto its frozen ground—
They felt warmth.
It wasn’t the miraculous sensation of their bodies thawing, but they could unmistakably feel heat radiating through the village.
With their frozen bodies barely moving, Marcus and Jack struggled to the grand manor from which smoke poured, and knocked on the door.
Perhaps it was relief washing over him.
But his body, pushed to its absolute limit, finally gave way.
With their last reserves of strength, Marcus and Jack collapsed against the front door after knocking.
.
.
.
Marcus’s eyes fluttered open, his mind still hazy. In his blurred vision, the face of a woman with silver-white hair came into focus.
“……ken. Marcus has opened his eyes…….”
An angel?
How could such a dazzling, pristine, beautiful existence even be possible?
‘She’s just like Eve Lania Everhart.’
Eve Lania Everhart had looked exactly like that.
Eve too…….
‘Wait, Eve?!’
Marcus’s eyes snapped open and he pushed himself upright.
The place he’d opened his eyes to was unfamiliar.
His breath was visible in the air.
The moment he realized that fact, he looked around.
Outside, people froze to death in minutes after sunset, yet this room was suffused with an almost unbelievable warmth.
He lay on an old cherry wood frame bed with a mattress gone flat and lifeless, but the blankets carried the subtle scent of soap and felt soft to the touch.
The room was neither particularly large nor small. Through the window above the bed, he could see verdant green trees swaying.
The bedroom was two stories high.
‘What? Green trees?’
Click. Creak—
The door opened.
The person entering was a man. A man in a black military uniform, no less.
Black hair, crimson eyes. That peculiar, expressionless face carved from stone revealed nothing of what lay beneath.
“Chesswind?”
Logan Arthur Chesswind. Two years his junior at the Academy. What was he doing here?
“Why did you come here?”
Not “how did you get here,” not “is your body alright,” not “how have you been.” Not any of that.
His first words: “Why did you come here?”
Marcus let out a hollow laugh.
Still as tactless as ever.
But he didn’t voice that thought aloud.
After all, this man had saved his life.
‘I’m certain I saw Eve.’
And then, in that moment, Marcus became convinced: if Logan was here, Eve couldn’t possibly be absent.
Marcus sighed and answered with a somewhat weary expression.
“I came to stay alive. Why else?”
At his answer, Logan fell silent. An awkward quiet settled between them.
“I’m grateful you saved me. I didn’t know this was your Shelter.”
“If you had known, prepare to leave.”
Logan said this with only a tilt of his head.
Marcus felt irritation surge through him, but he restrained it. Logan was his savior, after all.
When Marcus didn’t push back further, Logan’s eyebrows twitched with apparent surprise.
Marcus forced himself to patience and changed the subject.
“Eve’s here too, right?”
“You call her by her first name so casually?”
“And you speak so curtly to your senior?”
“Ah, I received a ducal title in the meantime.”
Damn hierarchical society. As Marcus looked away with an expression of defeat, Eve entered the room.
“Ruthland senior, it’s been so long. How are you feeling?”
Just as expected—wherever Logan went, Eve followed. Damn it.
“Wait, Logan. The senior just woke up. Why are you acting like this? Didn’t you check his condition?”
“That guy’s fine. He talks plenty.”
Then, with childish pettiness, Logan held up his index and middle fingers to his own eyes, mimicking binoculars, and pointed them at Marcus, all while staying out of Eve’s line of sight.
It seemed to mean he was keeping watch.
‘This bastard still has no manners whatsoever.’
If Eve and Logan were rivals of the century, then Marcus and Logan were famous enemies.
Despite being in different years, the two of them clashed constantly.
Generally Marcus had been the one to pick a fight first, with Logan accepting the challenge—but Logan never yielded either.
The reason was simple enough.
Marcus wanted to flirt with Eve, but Logan had her locked down like an impregnable fortress.
Marcus flashed a smile toward Eve.
“Eve, couldn’t you be the one to check my condition?”
“Pardon? Why?”
“Huh?”
“You’re a man too, so it would be more comfortable for you to have him check instead of me.”
Eve declined with a cheerful smile.
She looked utterly oblivious to whatever intention lay behind Marcus’s words.
Logan let out a soft, mocking laugh.
Standing beside her with his arms crossed, he’d been tapping his fingers with obvious impatience—but now his movements eased into something far more relaxed.
Whether Eve noticed or not, she turned to bid Marcus goodbye.
“Then please do rest. Oh, and just so you know, my senior assistant is also resting in the next room, so don’t worry too much. We’ll talk about the details a bit later.”
“Wait, just a moment, Eve!”
Before Marcus could so much as grab her sleeve, Eve swept from the room like a gust of wind.
Logan watched Marcus standing there, arm still frozen in mid-reach, and broke into another soft laugh.
It was unmistakably the laughter of victory.
* * *
‘I know why Marcus is being so kind to me. It’s because I’m a Count’s daughter.’
He wanted to climb deeper into aristocratic society.
The title of the Count’s adopted son was respectable enough, certainly, but it seemed he harbored ambitions beyond that—he wanted the added prestige of being the Count’s daughter’s husband.
Apart from all that, Marcus wasn’t someone who truly entangled with either the protagonist or the villain Logan.
More precisely, he was a strategist and advisor of considerable skill in the Survival Camp, which stood opposed to the protagonist Aiden.
‘But then again…….’
Living alone with Logan here in Demon’s Village had become quite cozy and comfortable; I didn’t particularly need another mouth to feed.
‘I should send him away.’
Having made that decision, I headed toward the greenhouse.
The transparent glass greenhouse lay fully exposed to view, and at its entrance I spotted a small creature pacing back and forth anxiously, clasping its tiny paws together.
“Chipi?”
The squirrel must have heard my call, for its ears pricked up and it bounded forward eagerly, trying to capture my attention.
Oh, how adorable.
It hurled the acorn it had been holding straight at the glass door with a thud.
What’s gotten into him. That contrary little squirrel.

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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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