The throne room of Ard Carraigh was thick with the smell of roasted meat and the stench of King Henselt's disdain.
Michael stood before the dais, his back straight, refusing to flinch under the gaze of the court. He was eighteen, a prodigy of strategy and craft, but in the eyes of the King, he was a stain. Despite being more talented than any of Henselt's "true" sons—boys who spent their days in drunken stupors or torturing hounds—Michael was never acknowledged. He was the "Pointy-Eared Error," a half-elf bastard born of a mother who had no place in a human's bed.
"The North is a vast territory," Henselt announced, his voice booming with a false, oily magnanimity. "A King must be just. Therefore, I am granting my... guest... Michael, the lordship of Northern Kaedwen."
A ripple of cruel laughter echoed through the hall. Everyone knew the "gift" was a death sentence. The North was a frozen wasteland, a strip of permafrost between the Buina River and the Dragon Mountains. It produced nothing but ice and monsters.
"To ensure your 'kingdom' thrives," Henselt continued, his eyes glinting with malice, "I have ordered every human soul in the North to migrate south. In exchange, I am sending every non-human in my lands—every elf, dwarf, and gnome—to join you. Since you love your mother's kin so much, you can starve together."
It was a masterstroke of cruelty. Henselt was "cleansing" his kingdom of non-humans, using them as scapegoats for Kaedwen's recent failures, and exiling his most talented son to a place where he would surely perish from cold and hunger.
"I accept the land, Your Majesty," Michael said, his voice like flint.
Ten days later, Michael stood at the edge of the tundra. Behind him stood a mile-long caravan of misery: thousands of elves, dwarves, and gnomes, stripped of their homes and tools, shivering in the biting wind. His mother, Aine, stood beside him, her face pale but her eyes fierce.
"They think we are walking into a grave, Michael," she whispered, looking at the barren, grey horizon.
"Henselt thinks he's a genius," Michael replied. "He thinks without human farmers and southern grain, we'll be dead by winter. He's stuck in the Bronze Age."
Michael looked out over the "useless" land. Where others saw a wasteland, his mind—the mind of a qualified engineer from Earth—saw something else entirely. He saw the iron-rich sediment in the riverbeds. He saw the potential for wind-shear power on the plateaus.
He had waited eighteen years for this moment. For eighteen years, he had been a silent observer in a superstitious world. Now, far from the prying eyes of the Eternal Fire's priests and Henselt's spies, he could finally speak.
'System,' Michael thought, a cold focus settling over him. 'Initialize.'
A sharp, digital chime sounded in his mind, and a translucent blue window materialized in the air, visible only to him.
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[TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM: ARCHITECT OF THE NEW AGE]
[USER: MICHAEL OF KAEDWEN (TRANS-DIMENSIONAL)]
[CURRENT STATUS: LORD OF THE NORTHERN WASTES]
[MISSION: FOUNDATION OF AN EMPIRE]
[OBJECTIVE: Establish the first infrastructure in Northern Kaedwen.]
[REWARD: 1,000 Invention Points per successful infrastructure project.]
[CURRENT BALANCE: 5,000 pts (ACCUMULATED FROM 18 YEARS OF OBSERVATION)]
------
Michael's eyes scanned the shop. [Advanced Metallurgy], [Steam Engine Blueprints], [Modern Agriculture & Hydroponics], [Reinforced Concrete Synthesis].
The "foolish king" had handed him a workforce of the best smiths and craftsmen in the world and a land rich in untapped minerals, thinking he was doing Michael a disservice.
Michael looked at the freezing, desperate people behind him, then back at the South. A slow, predatory smirk spread across his face.
"Listen up!" he shouted to the crowd of outcasts. "Henselt sent you here to die. But I'm going to give you a choice. You can sit here and freeze, or you can help me build a superpower that will make the North the envy of every king on the Continent."
He tapped the system interface, exchanging his first 500 points for [Deep-Vein Geothermal Surveying].
"Let's get to work," he whispered. "We have a world to reinvent."
******
The first morning in the North didn't bring a sunrise; it brought a grey, oppressive haze that clung to the frost-dusted pines of the Craiden Forest. Michael stood on a ridge overlooking his new "kingdom," watching the wind whip through the ancient trees. At least they had wood for fuel and construction—Henselt hadn't been able to strip the forests.
Michael closed his eyes and summoned the Technological System's interface, overlaying the world with a deep-crust topographical scan. As the data streamed into his mind, his jaw didn't just drop—it hung slack in sheer disbelief.
A holographic map unfolded in his vision, color-coding the "useless" tundra. Beneath the feet of his shivering followers lay vast, thick veins of Magnetite and Anthracite coal. But as the scan went deeper, the pulses turned gold, then a shimmering violet. He saw massive deposits of Noble Metals—gold, silver, and platinum—so rich they looked like the roots of the mountains. Then came the industrial jackpot: Wolfram, Titanium, and even pockets of Uranium ores. Finally, near the volcanic vents of the Fiery Mountains, the system flagged clusters of Raw Diamonds, Rubies, and Emeralds.
Michael literally facepalmed, his hand slapping his forehead with a resounding thud that echoed in the quiet morning.
"He's a moron," Michael groaned into his palm. "A complete, utter tactical vacuum."
He understood how a medieval king could miss radioactive materials or fossil fuels—they didn't have the science to name them. But Gold? Rubies? These deposits were so shallow in some areas that a determined badger could have struck a vein. Henselt's hatred for non-humans and his arrogance toward the "frozen north" had blinded him so completely that he hadn't even bothered to send a competent royal surveyor. He had looked at a mountain of literal treasure and seen only a pile of cold rocks.
"His loss," Michael muttered, a dark thrill of excitement replacing his frustration. "My venture capital."
He turned his attention to the "cursed" soil. He knelt, scooped up a handful of the grey, sandy dirt, and ran a quick System Analysis.
------
[SOIL ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[COMPOSITION: HIGH MINERAL CONTENT / VOLCANIC ASH BASE]
[DEFICIENCY: NITROGEN-LEVELS CRITICAL]
[VERDICT: FERTILE BUT STARVED]
------
Michael let out a dry laugh. The legendary "Curse of the North" wasn't a magical blight or a god's wrath; it was a simple Nitrogen deficiency. In his past life as a lead engineer, this was a basic fix. This land didn't need prayers; it needed organic manure and eventually chemical fertilizers.
"Highness?" Varick, the lead dwarf, trudged up the ridge, his beard encrusted with frost. "The people are asking... we have the woods for fire, but the ground is too hard to till. If we can't grow food, we'll be eating pine needles by winter."
Michael stood up, dusting the "worthless" soil—soil that was actually a mineral goldmine—from his trousers. He looked at Varick, his eyes burning with a terrifyingly modern ambition.
"We aren't moving an inch south, Varick," Michael said. "In fact, by next year, the South will be begging for permission to move here."
He turned back to the camp, his mind already calculating the points needed for the Haber-Bosch process and Industrial Mining.
"Tell the gnomes to stop huddling and start sharpening their tools," Michael commanded. "The land isn't dead. It's just waiting for someone with a brain to wake it up."