SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 98: Aria POV Part 1
The sunlight through the tall windows of the ducal study was pale, the kind of light that looked bright but carried no warmth. It spilled across the surface of an enormous desk made of dark, polished oak, illuminating the stacks of parchment that had been Aria’s world for the last several hours.
She sat perfectly still, her back straight, her hands resting lightly on the edge of the wood.
In her previous life, she would have found this level of administrative work beneath her, or at the very least, a distraction from the pursuit of power. Now, it was her primary occupation.
She picked up a report regarding land management in the southern district of the Castein duchy. It was a tedious document detailing crop yields, irrigation repairs, and tax disputes between local lords.
To anyone else, it would be mind-numbing. To the original Eleanor, this was a Tuesday.
Eleanor, the woman whose body Aria now occupied, had been a meticulous ruler. She hadn’t just sat on a throne; she had personally reviewed every single report that crossed her desk, ensuring that the gears of her duchy turned with mechanical precision.
Aria found herself doing the same, not because she cared about the work, but because the duchy of Castein was a machine, and she was currently the operator.
If the machine broke, her position would become unstable. And in this world, instability was a death sentence.
She felt the weight of the name as she signed the bottom of a document. Eleanor Castein, Duchess of Castein.
The name carried a gravity that resonated through the halls of the Aldran Kingdom.
The House of Castein was one of the pillars of the human empire, a family with a history as long and cold as the stone walls surrounding her.
Aria was still getting used to the way people looked at her, with a mixture of profound respect and genuine fear.
The room around her was a testament to that power. The walls were made of thick, cold stone, but they were softened by tapestries that cost more than a commoner would earn in three lifetimes.
A fireplace, large enough for a grown man to stand inside, roared with a controlled flame, yet the room still felt chilly.
The staff moved through the corridors outside like ghosts, their footsteps muffled by thick rugs, their voices never rising above a whisper. They were afraid to disturb the air around her.
Aria liked the silence. It allowed her to think. Her internal voice was not like the voices of others she had encountered.
She didn’t wander through her thoughts or get lost in emotion. She processed information clinically, filing it away into neat categories. Everything was a data point. Everything was a variable to be managed.
She paused, catching her reflection in the dark glass of the window as the sun dipped lower.
The woman looking back was striking.
Eleanor was beautiful in that specific way that only ancient noble bloodlines seemed to produce.
Her features were sharp and aristocratic, her skin as pale as fine porcelain. Her hair was the most striking feature, a shimmering silver-white that looked like spun moonlight.
It was a color that usually denoted age, yet Eleanor was only in her late thirties. It gave her an ethereal, almost frozen appearance.
Aria reached up and touched a strand of that silver hair. She had all of Eleanor’s memories. She knew the names of the servants, the intricacies of the kingdom’s laws, and the exact taste of the bitter herbal tea Eleanor preferred in the morning.
She had full access to the woman’s life, her social standing, and her political enemies. It was a perfect integration.
However, there was a problem she hadn’t anticipated: the emotional residue.
Even though Aria was the one in control, the body had its own habits. Eleanor had been a woman who performed coldness as a political necessity, but underneath, she had been private and surprisingly soft-hearted toward her people.
Aria, who was truly cold by nature, found herself occasionally fighting the body’s physical impulses.
She would go to speak a harsh truth, and her vocal cords would soften the delivery. She would see a servant stumble, and a pang of unearned concern would flutter in her chest.
It was annoying. It was like driving a carriage where the horses occasionally tried to turn toward a familiar stable.
She had to constantly recalibrate her expressions and her tone to ensure she remained in character while maintaining her own internal discipline.
Yet, she had to admit, having a body that naturally projected "noble grace" made her job much easier.
To ground herself, Aria did what she always did when the world felt a bit too loud. She summoned her Status Window.
She didn’t need to check her stats; she knew them by heart. But the glowing blue interface was the only thing in this world that felt objective. It didn’t care about "emotional residue" or "noble bearing." It only cared about facts.
The window shimmered into existence before her eyes, visible only to her.
[NAME: Aria / Eleanor Castein]
[RACE: Human]
[TITLE: Duchess of Castein / The Frost Sovereign]
[LEVEL: 224]
[CLASS: Unregistered — External Classification: Grand Duchess]
[MANA: 14,400 / 14,400]
[PRIMARY SKILL: Crimson Cascade — Tier 6]
[SECONDARY SKILLS: Ember Lock — Tier 5 / Flashpoint — Tier 4 / Ashen Veil — Tier 3]
[PASSIVE: Mana Density / Cold Resistance / Noble Bearing]
[MAIN QUEST: ■■■■■■■■■■]
[STATUS: Active]
Aria’s gaze lingered on her primary skill: Crimson Cascade.
In the world outside, before the dungeon had snatched her away and dropped her into this political minefield, she had been a ice magician. She had spent a lot time of perfecting the art of the freeze, understanding the way molecules slowed down until they stopped.
And yet, the dungeon had given her fire.
At first, she had found it insulting. Fire was chaotic. Fire was messy. But as she practiced in the secret basement of the estate, she realized something fascinating.
Fire and ice were not opposites; they were simply two different ways of manipulating energy. Fire was about the threshold of change. It was about the point where a solid became a gas, where a room became a furnace.
She understood fire fluently. She didn’t love it the way she had loved the ice, but she respected its efficiency. In a way, it was the perfect metaphor for her current life.
She was a woman known for her "Frost" title, holding a duchy with a cold iron grip, while possessing a core of pure, burning heat that no one else could see.
She stared at the blacked-out text of the Main Quest. It had been like that since she arrived.
A long string of rectangular blocks that refused to reveal their meaning. In the beginning, she had tried everything to unlock it, mana infusion, meditation, completing minor local tasks. Nothing worked.
She had eventually developed a theory.
The black bars weren’t a glitch; they were a wall. It was as if the dungeon, the system that had brought her here, didn’t think she was ready to see the path ahead.
Most people in her position would feel lost without a set of instructions, but Aria found the mystery almost exciting.
It was a strange kind of censorship that suggested her current actions, running a duchy and consolidating a kingdom’s food supply, were just the prologue to something much larger and more dangerous.
The system was treating her like an actress who hadn’t been given her script yet, standing on a stage with the lights on and the audience waiting in total silence.
It was a test of her patience and her ego. If the dungeon wouldn’t tell her why she was here, she would simply make herself so powerful that the reason eventually became irrelevant.
