1: Exiled Lord — Chapter 1 – Volume 1: The Wolf, the Sword, and the Land Where the Wind Rises 1: Exiled Lord — Chapter 1 – Volume 1:
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Book One: Of Wolves, Blades, and Rising Winds Chapter 1: Exiled!
Cross Into Another World and Get Shipped Off to a Cursed Land Field kept a brilliant smile plastered on his face as he waited for his father, Count Kurt, to deliver the verdict.
His original name was Qin Hao, from Hua Country on Blue Star.
He had only been in this world for three days.
The good news: he was the son of a count.
The bad news: nobody wanted him here.
“Field, you have come of age.” The lavishly dressed middle-aged man laced his words with rousing vocabulary, but the old Count’s voice was thin and listless, his expression hollow.
The speech landed like a joke.
“Like a mature lion, it is time for you to carve out your own career.” Every person in the room watched with undisguised mockery.
The Count trailed off, his attention drifting.
By the time he surfaced again, he had genuinely forgotten where he left off.
The original host had been a genuinely kind person.
He’d handed his younger brother the potion for awakening Battle Aura.
He’d given up his own seat at the Mage Academy for his younger sister.
He treated every servant in the castle with warmth.
By any reasonable measure, a person like that deserved to be respected.
Unfortunately, he was a noble.
By noble standards, the original host was a cowardly, useless waste.
The woman seated beside the old Count was Field’s stepmother.
Full-figured and strikingly beautiful, she occupied the secondary lord’s seat with practiced ease.
She lifted her teacup, took a measured sip, then set it down.
Her mesmerizing phoenix eyes slid toward Field.
Sunlight carved ochre shadows across her face, throwing the high bridge of her nose into sharp relief.
She raised her chin, almost pointing it at him.
“The Nightfall Territory, deep in the Northlands, will be your Barony.” Her voice was smooth and dismissive.
“Plenty of room there for you to make something of yourself.” As expected.
Try your hardest to please everyone, and you still end up exiled.
A wave of dizziness rolled through him.
The original host had been bullied into a sickbed and died, leaving this disaster for him to inherit.
Field bit down hard on his lip and steadied himself.
Then he let out a cold laugh.
The original host really had been that naive, thinking kindness could keep you alive among nobles.
The stepmother’s eyes drifted down to him, lazy and contemptuous.
“Any objections?” Field exhaled slowly, pushing the frustration down.
“As you wish, Father,” he said, his tone flat.
His cheap old man had been thoroughly drained by his stepmother.
Whatever she said went.
“Pfft — what an idiot!” Someone in the family laughed.
A sharp, mean-spirited insult followed right behind it.
The Northlands.
Home to both humans and Orcs, soaked in blood and barbarism for generations.
Ten years ago, the Holy Griffin Empire had unleashed the Corrosive Haze on the northern front and slaughtered 300,000 Orc troops.
The place was probably crawling with filthy Goblins and Trolls by now.
And that was the optimistic version.
In reality, those 300,000 Orcs, plus every human, animal, and living thing in the Northlands, had transformed into Corrupted Beings.
They lurked year-round inside the Death Haze.
The imperial family had organized three Reconquista Campaigns to take it back.
All three ended in total annihilation.
The noble territories scattered across the Northlands existed in name only.
Even dogs wouldn’t go there.
Most of the time, nobody even bothered to mention them.
It was a cursed land, plain and simple.
Runaway serfs and convicted criminals chose any direction but north.
Nobody fled toward the Nightfall Territory.
It’s fine.
I’ve got my cheat.
Field quietly reassured himself.
He let his mind drift, and a transparent map blinked into existence, with a single green dot moving slowly across it.
“Go prepare yourself,” the Count said.
He looked exhausted, his face the color of ash.
The stepmother took the Count’s arm, her nearly translucent silk robe pressing soft against him, and somehow that seemed to be enough to get the old man moving again.
Field pressed his lips together.
His siblings had all walked away with fertile, prosperous fiefs.
This old man had offered two hollow sentences and expected him to accept it quietly.
Field wasn’t about to let it go.
“Father,” he said, “I’ll need your support.
Opening up the Nightfall Territory is no small undertaking.” The stepmother’s soft curves pressed closer against the Count’s arm.
She narrowed her eyes at Field, slow and dangerous.
“Greed is not a virtue of the nobility, Field,” the Count said, without a moment’s hesitation.
“You’ve already received more than enough.” The family members around the room sent him contemptuous looks without bothering to hide it.
“Parading around with black hair and black eyes.
An embarrassment to the Ross Family.” “Mongrel.” Black hair and black eyes had once carried a different weight, in the age before the eastern nomads swept through and the ancient kingdoms of the Inner Sea crumbled.
Now they were not the mark of old nobility.
They were the mark of something lesser.
Field felt anger flare behind his eyes.
The original host’s birth was the Count’s own doing.
Why should he be the one to suffer for it?
His mother had been a castle maid, sold to the estate by nomadic merchants as a rare slave from the distant East.
The Count had spent one drunken night with her, and the original host was the result.
Low birth, no maternal family to speak of, and a face that carried too much of his mother in it.
That was the other reason he’d never been wanted here.
“Five hundred gold coins.
You may take your personal servants with you.” The Count’s voice was final.
“I treat every child the same.” Then the stepmother steered him toward the bedroom, and he was gone.
Field stood there, thoroughly annoyed.
Five hundred gold coins sounded like a lot until you tried to build a territory with it, at which point it was like trying to stir a barrel with a toothpick.
Barely a splash.
But it was better than nothing.
“Hey, Field!” His half-brother materialized at his elbow, grinning from ear to ear.
“Nightfall Territory is actually a great place.
Never sees sunlight.
Dark, rotting, smells like death year-round.” He spread his hands with exaggerated sympathy.
“Honestly?
Suits those demon eyes of yours perfectly.
My fief is much worse, of course — poor Fulan City, famous for nothing but beer and goats.” A surge of fury ignited in Field’s chest, hot enough to make his ribs ache.
A terrible fief he could work with.
He was a transmigrator.
He’d find a way.
But this little bastard was standing there mocking his face, and Field wanted to dig up every ancestor the kid had, back eighteen generations.
(ノ=Д=)ノ┻━┻ The infuriating part was that this little bastard only had Battle Aura because of the original host’s generosity.
Back when his talent tested poorly and he was sobbing in a corner while the others laughed at him, it was the original Field who had stepped in and helped.
“Get lost,” Field said flatly.
“Remember the girl?
The one with flax-colored hair?” The younger brother’s grin shifted into something else.
He leaned in close, his voice dropping near Field’s ear.
Field’s eyes narrowed.
A face surfaced in his memory, a smiling girl the original host had cared for.
Later, her naked body had been found in the back alley behind a tavern.
The original host had been consumed by grief and rage, fell ill, and died.
That was how Field had ended up here.
“It was me.” His half-brother licked the corner of his mouth.
“Her struggling — you really can’t imagine how good that felt.” Field’s pupils shrank.
Something cold closed around his heart.
This person standing in front of him, who had just come of age same as him, had done that.
As a transmigrator, that girl was a stranger, Field had never known her.
But watching a life get treated as something to be used up and discarded for a moment’s thrill made his stomach turn in a way he hadn’t felt before.
An ugly, bone-deep disgust, unlike anything else.
➤ Next: Beatdown!
The Younger Brother Has a Chosen One