The last thing Marcus Holt remembered was the rain.
Not the impact. Not the screaming of tyres on wet asphalt. Just the rain on the windshield, the headlights of the other car blooming white through the water, and then a gap in his memory where the rest of his life used to be.
Then he woke up somewhere else entirely.
[System Initialising.]
[Host Detected.]
[Scanning…]
[Scan Complete.]
[Welcome, Host. Your new life begins now. Try not to waste it.]
Kai Voss — because that was apparently his name now — stared at the translucent blue text floating in front of his face and said nothing for a long moment.
He was lying in a bed. Stone ceiling above him, grey morning light coming through a narrow window, and the distant smell of something burning that was probably breakfast. His body felt wrong — too young, too light, the hands that he raised to his face were smooth and unblemished in a way his hands hadn't been since his twenties.
He dismissed the screen. Another one replaced it immediately.
[Name: Kai Voss][Age: 19][Mana Capacity: 0][Class: GENERAL][COMMAND: 12][TACTICS: 8][LOGISTICS: 6][INTELLIGENCE: 7][PRESENCE: 9][COMBAT: 1]
He stared at that last number for a while.
Combat: 1.
In his previous life, Marcus Holt had spent fifteen years as a military historian. He had written four books on pre-modern warfare, consulted on two documentaries, and been called the foremost living expert on medieval European and East Asian military campaigns by people whose opinion he respected. He had never, in any of that time, actually been in a fight.
The system, it seemed, had noticed.
[Quest Available: Assess Your Territory][Objective: Survey Ashfield Province before nightfall][Reward: +8 Logistics, Skill — Terrain Reading Lv.1][Note: You have 7 days before Lord Harken moves. Suggested pace: quickly.]
Seven days.
Kai sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and looked around the room. Stone walls, a writing desk with three months of unread correspondence piled on it, a sword hanging on the wall that had never been drawn, and a cracked mirror in the corner that showed him a face he didn't recognise — young, dark-eyed, with the kind of bone structure that promised he'd grow into something decent-looking if he survived long enough.
He pulled on the clothes laid out at the foot of the bed, walked to the window, and looked out at his inheritance.
Ashfield Province was, by any reasonable measure, a disaster.
Three villages visible from here, clustered along a river that had clearly flooded recently — the waterline stains on the lower buildings were still fresh. Fields that should have been planted by now sat empty and brown. The fortress he was standing in had walls that a determined man with a good ladder could probably climb without much trouble. And somewhere beyond the eastern tree line, Lord Harken had five hundred soldiers who'd been moving toward this border for three weeks.
[Territory Status: Ashfield Province][Population: 1,840][Military: 43 (average age: 54)][Economy: Failing][Fortifications: Critical][Active Threats: 3 neighbouring lords considering annexation][Immediate Threat: Lord Harken, eastern border, ETA 7 days]
Kai read through the notification twice.
In 1241, Batu Khan had swept through Poland with roughly twenty thousand men and comprehensively destroyed every European force sent against him, not because his soldiers were individually superior, but because his supply lines, his intelligence network, and his understanding of operational tempo were several centuries ahead of anyone he fought. The Europeans had more resources, better fortifications, and home terrain advantage. They lost anyway.
The lesson, as Kai had written in chapter four of his second book, was that war was not a contest of strength. It was a contest of systems.
He had a system.
He had seven days.
He cracked his knuckles, pulled on his boots, and went to find someone to talk to.
Sir Aldric was in the courtyard, watching forty-three men attempt what appeared to be a training exercise with the energy of people who had long since stopped believing it mattered. The old knight had the look of a man who'd spent decades being disappointed by his employers and had made a sort of grim peace with it — posture still military-straight, expression permanently set to mild contempt.
He turned when Kai came down the steps and looked at him with the measured assessment of someone deciding how much effort this new problem was going to require.
"My lord," he said. Not warmly.
"Aldric." Kai stopped beside him and looked out at the men. Most of them were older than his father would have been, moving through their drills with the practiced resignation of people going through motions. One man near the back — heavyset, scarred across the chin, built like someone had stacked large rocks and taught them to walk — was actually doing it properly. "Assemble them. Half an hour."
Aldric didn't move immediately. "Your father also called assemblies."
"I know."
"Usually before announcing something that made things considerably worse."
Kai glanced at him. "Did it work? The assemblies?"
"No."
"Then we'll try something different." He nodded toward the heavy man in the back. "Who's that?"
"Brennan. Thirty years in the Greyveil army before he retired here. Only man in the garrison who's actually been in a siege."
"Get him too."
He went back inside before Aldric could object.
The men assembled in the main courtyard and looked at him the way soldiers always looked at young noblemen who'd just inherited something — with the particular combination of pity and wariness that comes from knowing you're going to be the one dealing with the consequences of whatever stupid idea this person had while studying at the capital.
Kai stood on the top step and looked back at them.
[Reading Morale: Low][Primary Concern: New lord will get us killed proving something][Secondary Concern: New lord will do nothing and we'll starve][Recommended: Address both directly]
He'd always thought military historians made good strategists, in theory, because they'd seen every mistake that could be made and read the autopsy. The problem was that most military historians never had to stand in front of forty-three sceptical men and convince them to care.
He decided to just be honest.
"You're all thinking the same thing," he said. His voice carried well — he'd given enough lectures to know how to project without shouting. "You're wondering whether I'm going to be an idiot about this."
Silence. A few exchanged glances.
"My father was an idiot about this. His father before him." He let that land. "Ashfield has been run badly for a long time. The walls need three months of work we don't have three months for. The treasury is essentially empty. And Lord Harken has been moving soldiers to our eastern border for three weeks." He paused. "None of that is news to any of you."
Brennan, the scarred one, had his arms crossed and was watching with the attentive neutrality of a man who'd heard many speeches and remembered very few of them.
"What I can tell you," Kai continued, "is that I've spent the last seven years studying why defences like ours fail. Not the heroic version — the actual version. Supply failures. Poor positioning. Reacting to the enemy instead of forcing the enemy to react to you." He looked across their faces. "I know exactly why every engagement in this province's history went wrong. And I know why Harken thinks this is going to be easy."
"Because it is," Brennan said from the back. Not hostile. Just factual.
Several men looked at him. He didn't seem embarrassed.
"He has five hundred men," Brennan continued. "We have forty-three. He has mages. We have none. He's been fighting border skirmishes for ten years and winning them." He looked at Kai with the steady eyes of someone who'd survived long enough to respect reality over morale. "With respect, my lord, knowing why we'll lose doesn't stop us from losing."
"No," Kai agreed. "But knowing that his cavalry can't use the eastern bridge at speed, that his second-in-command drinks heavily before engagements, and that his supply lines come through a single ford that's currently two feet deeper than his maps show — that might."
Brennan said nothing.
The courtyard was very quiet.
[Skill Activated: Inspire Lv.1][Morale: Improving]
"I need one week," Kai said. "That's all I'm asking. Give me one week before you decide what kind of lord I am."
Afterwards, Aldric fell into step beside him without being asked.
They walked in silence for a moment. The old knight had the manner of someone composing something he wasn't sure he wanted to say.
"The ford," he said finally. "You're right about the depth. Flash flooding three weeks ago. I didn't think anyone had noticed."
"I read the rainfall reports in the correspondence pile."
Aldric glanced at him sideways. "You read the correspondence."
"First thing this morning."
Another silence.
"Harken's second-in-command," Aldric said carefully. "Commander Veth. How did you know about the drinking?"
"I didn't, specifically. But he's forty-six, been in Harken's service for twelve years without promotion, and was passed over for the senior command position twice. Statistically, men in that situation tend toward one of three responses." Kai paused. "I guessed the most common one."
Aldric stopped walking.
Kai stopped too and looked at him.
The old knight's expression had shifted slightly — the permanent contempt hadn't gone anywhere, but something underneath it had changed. Something cautious and careful, like a man checking whether the ground he was about to step on would hold.
"Your father," Aldric said slowly, "never read the correspondence."
"I know."
"He never asked about the ford."
"I know."
Aldric looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked out at the province — the empty fields, the crumbling walls, the smoke from the village cookfires going sideways in the morning wind.
"What do you need?" he said.
[Quest Complete: Assess Your Territory — partial][+5 Logistics][New Quest: Scout the Eastern Approach][Objective: Survey the bridge and ford before Harken's advance scouts arrive][Reward: +10 Tactics, Skill — Terrain Reading Lv.1][Time Sensitive: 48 hours]
Kai dismissed the notification.
"I need to see the bridge before Harken does. Can you ride?"
"I'm fifty-eight."
"That's not what I asked."
Aldric straightened slightly, which Kai was starting to understand was as close as the man got to being caught off guard. "Yes. I can ride."
"Good. We leave at first light." Kai turned back toward the fortress. "And bring Brennan. I want someone who's actually been in a siege to tell me what I'm missing."
He was halfway up the steps when Aldric spoke again behind him.
"My lord."
Kai stopped.
"The men this morning." A pause. "It's been a long time since someone spoke to them like that."
Kai glanced back. Aldric was looking at the courtyard, not at him.
"Like what?"
"Like the outcome wasn't already decided."
Kai said nothing to that. He went inside, sat down at the writing desk, and pulled the correspondence pile toward him.
Seven days.
He had forty-three old soldiers, one crumbling fortress, a river ford that Harken's maps showed as crossable, and five hundred years of military history that nobody in this world had ever read.
[New Quest: Prepare Ashfield's Defence][Objective: Establish a viable defensive position before Harken's forces arrive][Reward: +20 Command, Skill — Formation Lv.1][Bonus Objective: Win without losing a single man][Bonus Reward: ???]
He looked at that bonus objective for a moment.
Then he started reading.