The air in the great hall of Storm House was thick with the smell of incense, iron, and cold disappointment. Rylen Storm, third son of Lord Arcturus Storm, knelt on the stone floor, his sixteen-year-old frame held rigid not by pride, but by five years of learned resignation.
Five years.
That's how long his mind,the consciousness of a man from a mordern world where everything is advanced, had been trapped in this brutal world of medieval times. Five years of trying to fit the square peg of modern thinking into the round hole of knightly cultivation. Five years of watching his two elder brothers, Daeron and Beron, awaken their Life Seeds with brilliant, tangible auras, while his own efforts yielded only a faint, pathetic warmth in his chest that sputtered and died.
"The findings of the Grand Examiner are final," Lord Arcturus's voice boomed, devoid of warmth. He sat on the dais, a Formal Knight in his prime, his gaze a physical weight. "Rylen Storm possesses a Life Seed so dormant, its awakening is not just improbable, but a waste of our house's resources. He has no talent for the path of knighthood."
Rylen kept his head bowed.Who would believe a graduating student of modern times would fail to make any wave in this new world, he thought bitterly. He'd tried to apply scientific method to breathing techniques, to deconstruct knightly forms with physics. It had only earned him whispers of "overthinking" and "weak spirit."
His second brother, Beron, stepped forward, a smirk etched onto his handsome face. "Such a shame," he said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "To have a son of Storm House be… ordinary. It wounds our prestige. Father, the Kingdom of Lastwall still demands its annual tribute from their northern fiefs. The posting of Lord-Mayor in the mining town of Frosthold is vacant. It is a position for an administrator, not a warrior."
The suggestion hung in the air, cruel and clever. Frosthold was in Lastwall, a small buffer kingdom crushed between the great powers of Northgard and Solaria. It was a freezing, impoverished backwater, its famous mine long collapsed. For a noble house like the Storms, vassals to Northgard, sending a son there was tantamount to throwing him away. It was exile with a bureaucratic title.
Lord Arcturus's eyes, the color of a winter sky, settled on Rylen. There was no fatherly regret there, only cold political calculus. A talentless son was a liability. He could be used to fulfill a tributary obligation, to remove a slight embarrassment from sight.
"So be it," Arcturus declared. "Rylen Storm, you are hereby appointed Lord-Mayor of Frosthold, under the authority of the King of Lastwall. You will depart at dawn. You may take a personal guard of two men from the household reserves and a stipend of one hundred and fifty gold crowns. Serve competently, and you may retain some honor for our name."
The verdict was delivered. No fanfare, no blessing. Just a transaction. Rylen felt a hollow ache, not for the loss of home—this had never felt like home—but for the sheer, wasteful brutality of it all.
The journey north was a silent, week-long ordeal through passes where the wind screamed like the ghosts of fallen knights. His two "guards" were veterans, men with faded scars and emptier eyes, who saw this assignment as a retirement sentence. They called him "milord" with a tone that implied "dead man."
On the seventh evening, as they made camp beneath the skeletal branches of ancient pines, the first true snow of the season began to fall. Rylen sat apart, staring into the fire, the accumulated frustration and existential dread of five years finally cresting like a black wave.
I'm sixteen, in a world of monsters and were human could cross the boundaries, with the body of a mediocre noble and no power. I'm being sent to a failing town to be forgotten. This is it. This is where my second life ends, not with a bang, but in a frozen, insignificant whisper.
As the despair threatened to consume him, a sharp, painless pressure blossomed behind his eyes. It wasn't a sound, but a concept, clean and digital in a world of stone and magic.
[System Initializing…]
[Parameters set to host: RYLEN STORM]
[Primary Function: Life Path Simulation]
[Processing…]
Rylen's breath hitched. The firelight seemed to pixelate for a second. Text, crisp and impossible, scrolled in the periphery of his vision.
[System Online. Welcome, User.]
[Core Directive: Simulate potential life paths based on how the users life would progress and how he thinks at the moment
. (1)A free simulation may be run, once per day. Additional Simulations may be purchased with applicable currency.]
[Current Host Power Tier: Mortal (Unawakened). Currency Tier: Gold Crowns.]
[Cost for Additional Simulation: 1 Gold Crown.]
He blinked fiercely. The text remained. A hysterical laugh bubbled in his throat. A system? Now? After five years of nothing? Was this a final cruel joke, a madness born of exile?
But the interface was persistent, a calm, logical pane in his mind's eye. It felt real. It felt like the first piece of his world he'd encountered since the transmigration.
A desperate, wild hope ignited in his chest, burning away the despair. He had nothing left to lose. He focused on the system.
> Run free Simulation.
The system hummed silently.
[Simulation Commencing]
Time seemed to stutter. In the span of three heartbeats, a narrative compressed into pure information flooded his mind.
[SIMULATION SUMMARY]
[Week 1-2:You head straight to frosthold, You Arrive safely in Frosthold.The Town is impoverished. Mayor Krell, incumbent administrator, views you as a threat to his illicit trade deals with Northgard scouts.
Week 3: You Attempt to assert authority, you are Meet with resistance from town guard captain (who is loyal to Krell).
Week 5:A 'welcoming feast' held by Mayor Krell and you are invited. You consume wine.
Week 6:You develop a chronic fatigue, headaches. Health declines rapidly.
Week 8: You are bedridden. Town healer who is a subordinate of krell diagnoses wasting fever .
Week 10:You die in your sleep. Cause of death: Cumulative organ failure induced by chronic low-grade poisoning named grim reapers gift. Mayor Krell consolidates control, reports your death as 'natural causes' to Lastwall.]
[SIMULATION END.]
[Select Reward:
1) Life Experience
,2) Power Level
3) Item
The clinical summary hit Rylen like a physical blow. The cold wasn't just from the snow anymore. It was the chill of a grave already dug. Poisoned. In weeks. By a petty official in a backwater town.
The fury that rose was clean, sharp, and focused. This wasn't just fate. This was a variables.
His eyes, reflecting fire, lost was the despair he wanted felt.
He selected Life Experience.
A torrent of memories slammed into him—the sour taste of the poisoned wine, the false concern on Mayor Krell's piggish face, the gnawing pain in his gut, the helplessness of fading in a cold, foreign bed. It lasted only a second, but the impression was seared into his soul: a memory of a future that must never be.He experience it all as if he was there.
He opened his eyes. The snow fell. The guards snores. The system interface glowed steadily in his mind.
He had no knightly talent. But he had a weapon now. A weapon of foresight.
"Change of plan," Rylen whispered to the night, his voice steady for the first time in years. He wasn't going to Frosthold to die. He was going there to survive and rule.