The Thermodynamic Debt
The Penthouse should have been warm.
The thermostat panel on the wall showed 26°C. The magical fireplace—Mana-Fire—in the corner burned brightly with smokeless orange dancing flames.
Yet, I sat curled up on the black leather sofa, shivering as if naked in the middle of a snowstorm.
My hands clutched an old iron lighter—a Zippo I found in Weaver's safe. I lit it. A small flame appeared, blue at the base, yellow at the tip.
I brought my index finger close to the flame. Not to burn myself, but because I was hungry.
As soon as my skin touched the fire, the laws of nature distorted.
I didn't feel heat. No burning pain. Instead, I felt a sensation of voracious suction. The flame tongue didn't extinguish from a gust of wind; it died from running out of energy. Its heat was sucked into my pores, swallowed by the void inside my body, leaving a stiff, frozen wick in seconds.
"Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Only transferred," my brain whispered, trying to rationalize this horror with basic physics logic.
I looked at the diagnostic data on my Smart-ID. A triangular diagram blinked on the screen.
[AFFINITY DETECTED: TRIAD][COMPOSITION: AQUA - GALE - FLAME]
I stared at those three words. Triad. Three elements.
My brain began assembling the puzzle pieces. Why was I so cold?
"Aqua absorbs," I thought, feeling the moisture in the air being drawn to my skin. "Gale channels away." Wind carries heat away through convection.
"And Flame?"
I tried to summon heat. Nothing. Empty. The fire element within me was like a furnace out of firewood. It existed, but it was dead asleep.
"So is this why? My body is a broken cooling machine. Aqua absorbs ambient temperature, Gale expels it, and Flame produces nothing to replace it. I'm stuck in an eternal cooling cycle."
I wasn't a great ice wizard. I was just a sick person freezing from the inside.
"If I don't find an external heat source to consume," I realized with dread, "my internal organs will start freezing one by one. My heart will become a lump of frozen meat in less than two hours."
I needed heat. I needed energy.
And as if the universe heard my desperation, the room lights suddenly blinked red.
BZZZT.
A harsh electronic hissing sound came from the main door. Not a polite knock. Not a doorbell. It was the sound of a hacking algorithm dissecting my door's digital lock.
The biometric security system made by Valdor—supposedly impenetrable—screamed briefly, then died completely. The thick metal door hissed open forcefully, its hinges smoking.
And in walked the Queen of Invoices.
She didn't walk.
Her boots—knee-high pearl white models—hovered steadily five centimeters above the parquet floor. Miniature Mag-Lev levitation technology. Expensive. Very expensive.
Director Vianna, Suzerain of the Gilded Spire, glided into my living room.
She didn't look like a fighter. She didn't have muscles like Titus or a mysterious aura like Silas.
She looked like... a product.
Her skin was too smooth, reflecting the light with a synthetic sheen as if she'd just been peeled from plastic wrapping. Her silver hair fell with geometric precision impossible to achieve by natural wind. She smelled like a new car interior, static ozone, and synthetic lily perfume that probably cost enough to feed an Aethelgard village for a year.
To her left and right, the air distorted. Two Stealth Drone units hovered silently, only visible from faint heat waves around their ion exhausts.
I stared at her from the sofa.
"Look at her," I thought, my fear slowly replaced by cold contempt. "She's not a Queen. She's a panicked store manager because a fragile item fell. She didn't come here to kill me for honor. She came because she's afraid of losses. She's not a ruler; she's just a frightened calculator."
"Valdor's security system," she said. Her voice was clear, perfectly modulated. "Crude, thick, and stupid. Its encryption broke in forty seconds."
I stood up, trying to hide the trembling in my hands behind my robe.
"And you entered without knocking," I retorted, my voice hoarse. "In etiquette books, that's rude. In property law, it's illegal."
Vianna tapped the air, turning off the holographic interface in front of her.
"In Aurum, we call it 'Forced Audit'. You are in massive deficit, Ash. And I've come to collect."
She snapped her fingers.
A giant holographic screen appeared in the middle of the room, displaying a sharply diving red line graph—the same graph Elara showed, but this time with nominal figures that made my stomach churn.
[-40,000,000 CREDIT]
"Your 'Golden Chains' speech was very poetic," Vianna said flatly. "But that poetry just erased forty million Credit from my personal portfolio in fifteen minutes. Student insurance premiums soared. The betting market panicked. Investors withdrew funds."
I frowned. My momentary fear was diverted by the illogicality of her statement.
"That's market risk, Director," I said, meeting her gaze. "The stock market rises and falls. People invest, people lose. Why are you charging me for investor panic? That's not a debt. That's bad weather."
Vianna glided closer, her eyes glinting coldly, offended that I dared to teach her economics.
"In the outside world, perhaps. But here, I am the Market. And you, Grand Praetor, are a public asset acting negligently. Your negligence harms the major shareholders. I could sue you for economic sabotage."
She pointed at my chest.
"My shareholders want to liquidate your assets to cover the losses. And the only asset you have left is your life."
The threat was real.
The two air distortions beside her solidified. The drone cloaking deactivated. Two golden Viper-type combat drones revealed themselves. Laser barrels underneath rotated, aiming precisely at the center of my forehead. The sound of the drones' cooling fans whirred high, whirrrr, indicating their laser capacitors were charging.
I had no shield. I had no sword.
But I had ears. And I heard that whir.
Whirrrr...
It was the sound of a fan. A cooling fan. The machine was working hard. That machine was... hot.
The Heat Sink instinct in my body roared. Hungry. I wasn't thinking about spells, circuits, or complicated magic theory I didn't understand yet.
I just felt empty. And that thing was full.
I opened my palm and... pulled.
I ignored Vianna. I directed my hand at the drone on the left.
"Eat."
The Laws of Thermodynamics took over.
I forcibly sucked the heat from the drone's processor circuits. The heat from that machine flowed torrentially into my body, feeling like gulping warm water when thirsty in the desert. Blissful. Intoxicating.
Meanwhile, on the drone's side:
THERMAL SHOCK.
The core temperature of the drone's processor plummeted drastically in a tenth of a second. The metal casing couldn't withstand contraction that fast.
CRACK!
The sound of cracking metal rang out clearly. The alloy of gold and steel shattered like glass splashed with liquid nitrogen. The circuits inside died not from fire, but from cold.
Both drones died instantly, falling from the air like stones.
CLANG. CLANG.
Silence filled the room.
Vianna stepped back, her levitating shoes wobbling. Her "perfect" face paled. She stared at the wreckage of her expensive drones, then stared at me.
"You..." her voice lost its calm modulation. "You didn't attack it physically. You... you disabled its semiconductors?"
I stood upright. My body no longer shivered. The heat from the drone gave me fuel.
"Machines need heat to work, Director," I said calmly. "Just like bankers need money. Without it, you're just scrap."
Vianna stared at me with a new gaze. Not as a broken asset. But as a high-level threat.
"You monster," she whispered.
"I'm a risk manager," I corrected. "Now, let's talk business."
I walked towards the bar, pouring a glass of water. The water didn't freeze this time. I had control.
"I don't have forty million Credit," I said, turning my back to her. "But I have something far more valuable in the futures market."
"Nonsense," Vianna spat, though her eyes still glanced at the destroyed drones. "What does a poor soldier like you have?"
"Logistics Information," I answered. I turned, facing her. "Elara Voss just gave me full access to food distribution schedules, garbage truck routes, and planned power outage schedules for the next three months."
Vianna's eyes widened slightly. Her pupils—which turned out to be digital implants—dilated, as if calculating potential profit.
"Insider Trading," she murmured. "You're offering Insider Trading."
"You could know when Aethelgard's wheat supply will be late before the market knows. You could manipulate food commodity prices. You could recover your four percent loss within a week," I offered.
Vianna fell silent. Her calculator brain worked fast. Greed battled caution. Greed won.
"That... could work," she said softly. "But I need real-time access to Elara's server."
"No," I cut sharply. "Listen carefully to the Terms and Conditions, Vianna."
I took a breath, aware of my position. I was no longer a poor student to be extorted.
"I'm the Grand Praetor. My position gives me limited 'Diplomatic Immunity' in this city. If Vianna brings me down now, who would guarantee she gets that data? And more importantly, if we commit this crime together... she can't report me without dragging herself down. This isn't slavery. This is mutual hostage-taking."
I raised three fingers confidently.
"One. The Cap. I'll give you data until you reach 44 Million Credit profit—principal debt plus ten percent interest. Once that number is reached, the information tap closes. We're even. No extensions."
Vianna snorted, but didn't object.
"Two. The Filter. Only waste and raw food data. No military data, no Senate security data. Don't try to ask for Valdor's ammunition routes."
"Three. The Kill Switch. I'll deliver this data via a one-way encrypted physical drive. No server connection. If this data leaks to the public, the digital trail on that drive will lead directly to your Private Ledger. If I fall for state data theft, you get dragged down too."
Vianna stared at me for a long time, a thin smile slowly appearing on her red lips. A predator's smile finding a hunting partner.
"Forty-four million," she said. "With Elara's logistics data... I could reach that in nineteen days on the derivatives market."
She extended her silk-gloved hand.
"Deal, Grand Praetor."
I didn't shake her hand—afraid I'd unconsciously suck the heat from her body. I just nodded.
Vianna lowered her hand, slightly offended, then turned towards the door. She left her broken drones lying on the floor.
"Wait," I called as she was about to leave.
Vianna turned. "What else?"
I pointed at the thick metal door now bent and its lock system fried from Vianna's hacking earlier.
"You broke my door," I said coldly.
"Send the bill to my assistant," she replied indifferently.
"No," I refused. "This Valdor system is garbage, you said so yourself. I want Aurum technicians here tomorrow morning at eight. Fix this door. And I want an upgrade to Aurum Level 5 encryption system. Free."
Vianna gaped slightly. She looked like she wanted to be angry—a Director ordered to fix a door?—but then she let out a small laugh. A laugh that sounded like the clinking of coins.
"You really are a leech, Ash," she said, a note of reluctant respect in her voice. "The technician will come at eight. Don't be asleep."
She glided out. The broken door closed halfway with a pitiful creak.
I was alone again.
The heat I absorbed from the drone was starting to fade. The cold crept back, slowly but surely, like rising tide water.
I slumped down on the floor, leaning against the sofa. My foot kicked the wreckage of the million-Credit drones.
"Forty million..." I whispered to the empty room. "I just closed a forty million Credit deal."
Curiosity tickled me. I raised my left hand, activating my Smart-ID. I opened the personal banking menu to see the reality of my own finances.
A blue holographic screen appeared.
[STUDENT ACCOUNT: WYNTER ASH][STATUS: GRAND PRAETOR (MONTHLY ALLOWANCE)][CURRENT CASH BALANCE: 45 LUX][OVERDUE CAFETERIA BILL: 120 LUX]
I stared at the number '45'.
Forty-five Lux. That was equivalent to the price of three Behemoth eggs I ate this morning.
I just negotiated with the richest woman in the Eastern sector, destroyed advanced military drones, and held the city's logistics secrets... but I couldn't even afford my own lunch tomorrow without going into debt.
A dry laugh escaped my throat. A cold laugh.
"Welcome to real life, Grand Praetor," I whispered, closing my eyes, letting the last remaining heat in my body warm me before this long, frozen night began.