A week.
Sigh. It's been a week since I arrived in this godforsaken world.
Yeah, you read that right. I, Victor Vance, was a senior mechanical engineer working at a top-tier tech conglomerate. I was hailed as a genius in my department, the guy who could optimize any system and fix any mechanical flaw. A week ago, I was in the lab overseeing the prototype test of a next-generation high-pressure turbine. But, as fate would have it, my foolish junior made a critical error in calculating the thermal load limits.
The pressure built up. An explosion happened. And naturally, I died.
A forty-year-old, unmarried engineering geek, wiped out in a millisecond.
Did I have regrets in life? Well, plenty. I spent all my time in labs and workshops. But was I afraid of death? No. Why would I be afraid of something I knew absolutely nothing about? For me, death was just the final shutdown sequence. I was simply going to rest.
But in no way did I ever think that after death, I would be transmigrated to another world.
Heck, I didn't even know other worlds existed. Those NASA scientists would have their minds blown if they learned about this.
Of course, I was no stranger to the concept of transmigration. For a geek like me who only had a working relationship with machinery, webnovels and anime were my only real friends. I knew the rules of the Isekai genre inside and out.
But to think it would actually happen to me.
◇
"Good afternoon, Eleanor."
In the drafty, poorly insulated courtyard of the Valerius estate, Eleanor, my wife, sat like a beautiful, frozen statue. On a heavy iron table sat a crude clay teapot and a plate of dry, unappetizing biscuits. She was silently reading a leather-bound book, her eyes dull and lifeless.
Her hair was a brilliant, shimmering silver, cascading down her back like liquid moonlight. She is twenty-nine years old, a year older than my current body, but her large amethyst eyes made her look much younger—though right now, they were clouded with a deep, quiet despair. Her skin was paler than the porcelain she should have been drinking from, and her lips, though naturally full, were pressed into a tight, miserable line.
Any man from my previous world would have killed to even sit across from a woman this stunning. And yet, the original owner of this body had treated her like a piece of unwanted furniture.
She let out a soft sigh, her breath turning to white mist in the chilly autumn air, and glanced at me.
Oh, the trash Baron is bored and talking to me. I'm sure the rusted armor in the hall would provide better conversation.
She didn't say it out loud, but her eyes screamed it.
—But that was fine by me.
Just looking at her, analyzing the perfect geometry of her curves hidden beneath layers of thick, stiff, impractical noble dresses, my blood began to pump.
"I'll be coming to your chambers tonight," I said, keeping my voice even.
"..."
Her amethyst eyes widened slightly, a flicker of dread passing through them, but she quickly masked it with her usual bored resignation.
"Beatrice?" she called out softly.
"Yes, Madam."
Stepping out from the shadow of a stone pillar was her personal maid. Beatrice was twenty-six, sharp-eyed, and moved with a terrifyingly efficient grace that suggested she knew how to use the dagger hidden under her apron.
With a look of pure disgust directed at me, the maid pulled a heavy brass key from her pocket and handed it over. As she did, she leaned in, her voice dropping to a freezing whisper that only I could hear.
"If you handle the Madam roughly, my Lord... I will ensure your morning tea is your last."
Gulp.
A shiver ran down my spine. The cold breath of the fiercely loyal, beautiful maid sinking into my ear didn't scare me—it just made my stupid new body react, the blood rushing straight southward.
(Victor obtained the key to his wife's bedroom!)
Hell yes!
I had to use every ounce of my willpower to suppress the urge to pump my fist in the air. If I acted like a madman, I'd be thrown into my own dungeon. And yes, this medieval shithole actually has a dungeon.
Let's do a quick system diagnostic of my current situation: I am twenty-eight years old, the newly minted Baron Victor of the Valerius territory. However, "territory" is a generous word. It's a rural, underdeveloped strip of land the size of a postage stamp.
The original Victor was the useless third son of a Viscount, shipped off to this borderland to keep him out of the way. He wasn't particularly evil, just profoundly incompetent and lazy.
So why does a trash Baron have a wife as breathtaking as Eleanor, the second daughter of the immensely powerful Duke of Sterling?
Simple. She's considered "defective hardware" by the nobility.
Eleanor was previously married to a Marquis, but after three years, she failed to produce an heir. In this world, where magical lineage is everything, medical science is practically non-existent. Instead of diagnosing the issue, society simply labeled her "barren" and tossed her aside.
The Duke of Sterling, not wanting his disgraced daughter rotting in his pristine capital mansion, married her off to me. It was a perfect political dump: the Sterling family got rid of their "shame," and my family got to brag that they were technically related to a Duke, even if it was through a discarded daughter.
It was an arrangement of pure convenience. The original Victor never cared for her, and she had completely given up on life, viewing herself as nothing more than a broken tool.
But what truly offended my sensibilities—what genuinely pissed off my engineering soul—was the way this world treated the "mechanics" of intimacy.
In this rigid, heavily religious society, sexual intercourse is strictly for reproduction. The concept of eroticism, foreplay, or pleasure simply does not exist. It is viewed as a crude, mechanical duty. Husband and wife lie in the pitch dark. The woman wears a thick linen "modesty gown" with a single hole cut in the center. The man, using no preparation whatsoever, simply forces himself in, pumps a few times until he finishes, and leaves.
It is painful, devoid of passion, and entirely focused on efficiency.
Friction without lubrication. Action without thermal buildup.
What a colossal waste!
The original Victor was a prime example of this failure. He had visited Eleanor's room a handful of times, strictly out of a vague sense of noble duty, performing the act so clumsily and quickly that he was basically a two-minute pump-and-dump machine. No wonder she looked at me with dread. To her, tonight just meant a few minutes of dry, uncomfortable pain.
But not anymore.
As an engineer, I specialize in analyzing systems, reducing unwanted friction, applying the exact right amount of pressure, and raising the temperature until the material reaches its melting point.
I was a forty-year-old virgin in my past life. My knowledge of women came entirely from a screen. But I know anatomy. I know biology. I know exactly how nerve endings, blood flow, and sensory overload work.
Eleanor thinks she is a broken, useless tool. She thinks her body is incapable of functioning.
Tonight, I am going to completely overhaul her operating system. I am going to dismantle this world's puritanical nonsense, one piece of heavy noble clothing at a time. I am going to teach my beautiful, neglected wife exactly what her body was engineered to do.
I clutched the brass key in my pocket, my mind already calculating the perfect sequence of events.
Project: Calibration is a go.