Prologue.
At the highest point in the North, atop the Northern Mountains, lay a massive crater.
It was a place the people of the North called the Warrior’s Gate.
It was a gateway where ancient warriors tempered their souls and bodies to become even stronger warriors.
At the center of the crater, where a towering altar stood surrounded by flames and lava, the Great Warrior Succession Ceremony was well underway.
The Great Warrior was the one who protected the North from external threats and monster raids. It was an honored position reserved for the greatest warrior among all the countless tribes of the North.
“Today is the day we inherit the mantle of the illustrious Great Warrior! Alun of the Thunderfall Tribe shall succeed Rodos of the Frostwind Tribe and become the new Great Warrior!”
The Northern shaman, wearing a necklace adorned with wolf fangs, shouted at the top of his lungs.
The people answered him with a roar.
““For the North!””
A knife-edged wind blew. A blizzard raged so fiercely that it was impossible to see ahead.
The wind was strong enough that no one could remain standing without driving a weapon into the ground for support.
“The wind is too fierce…….”
The shaman frowned.
At this rate, not only would the ceremony be impossible to conduct, but the people themselves would be in danger.
At that moment, the Great Warrior, ‘Rodos,’ approached with an axe in each hand.
He swung the axes toward the sky.
Only two swings.
WHOOSH- SWOOSH-
Powerful force erupted from Rodos’s axes and shot toward the heavens, scattering the clouds apart.
Rodos cut through the newly cleared sky and landed with ease before shaking the snow from his axes.
“We will proceed with the ceremony as planned.”
At Rodos’s brief declaration, the shaman hurriedly resumed his preparations for the ceremony.
He patted Alun on the shoulder and asked.
“Are you not nervous, Alun?”
“I am fine, but Lord Rodos, why are you relinquishing the position of Great Warrior….”
“I wanted to focus on training. In the Warrior’s Canyon.”
Alun did not believe him, but Rodos was sincere.
With a serene expression, he sat down in the center of the altar.
Rodos felt remarkably relieved.
He wanted to cast aside the position of Great Warrior, with all the crushing responsibility it demanded, and devote himself solely to honing his strength.
“We will now begin the ceremony.”
Rodos sat before the altar and closed his eyes.
It was part of the ceremonial process.
He had to draw out a portion of his aura and place it upon the altar.
The succession ceremony would then proceed as his successor absorbed it.
As Rodos focused his mind, aura began flowing from his powerful body.
The aura placed upon the altar reacted with the altar’s power and gathered at a single point.
“…!!”
Something was wrong.
If the ceremony were proceeding normally, the aura should have formed a circular ring and begun rotating.
Instead, the aura began swirling into a vortex, absorbing all the surrounding power.
Rodos did not move a muscle.
He could not yield, no matter what happened.
That was the rule of the Warrior’s Altar, where warriors tempered their souls and bodies.
“Lord Rodos!”
Sensing danger, Alun shouted urgently, but an unknown light had already swallowed Rodos whole.
That was the last memory of the Great Warrior of the North.
***
Chapter 1. The Great Warrior Awakens in a Prestigious Magic Family (1)
Rodos regained consciousness when a gentle warmth tickled his face.
It was a warmth unlike anything he had ever felt before.
It was incomparably softer than the blazing flames of a furnace.
When Rodos opened his eyes, he was greeted by sunlight streaming through the window.
Sunlight that was difficult even to glimpse in the North poured into the room, bathing everything in brightness.
As Rodos pushed himself upright, he realized that he had been sprawled beside the bed.
‘Soft?’
Rodos sensed that something was strange.
What warrior in the North would ever sleep in a soft bed?
He leaned toward the window and looked outside.
Beneath a clear, cloudless sky stretched a lush garden filled with vivid colors.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not make sense of the scene before him.
He had undoubtedly been in the middle of the ceremony at the Warrior’s Altar to pass on the position of Great Warrior.
He had lost consciousness when the aura and the power of the altar mixed together and produced a beam of light.
That was his final memory.
He had no idea what that light had been, but there was no question that something had gone wrong with the ceremony.
Rodos looked around the room.
Eventually, he found a mirror and looked at himself. His eyes widened.
“!!!”
The enormous, powerful body of the Northern Great Warrior was gone.
Instead, a gaunt young man with red hair stared back at him from the mirror.
Rodos felt over his body.
The soft flesh told him that this was a body that had seemingly never exercised once in its life.
His skin was so pale that it was nearly bloodless, smooth and unmarred by so much as a single scar.
Even among the robust warriors of the North, Rodos had been exceptional.
There had been no one he needed to look up at.
Yet the young man before him barely reached above the halfway point of the full-length mirror.
When he lowered his head, all he saw were two delicate hands.
They looked incapable of properly gripping even a small knife, much less an axe.
‘I have become a young man.’
Those few words summed up the situation.
This was not a dream. The toe he had struck against the leg of the bed hurt far too much for that.
The sharp, tingling pain that traveled from his leg all the way to his head could not possibly be a dream.
Limping slightly, Rodos began looking around.
There was a large window offering a clear view outside, a soft bed, and countless bottles of unknown medicine scattered throughout what appeared to be someone’s room.
The first feeling that came over Rodos was relief.
He had completely escaped the weighty position of protector.
If he looked at it through the Northern mindset that youngsters these days liked to espouse, the situation was not necessarily bad.
He had already intended to quietly withdraw from the world and devote himself to training once he stepped down as protector.
If anything, this was a favorable situation.
‘This is troublesome.’
Then came the difficulty.
He was fortunate to have survived whatever had gone wrong during the ceremony, but he had awakened as a young man.
He did not even know where he was.
He closed his eyes and focused inward.
A considerable amount of pain immediately struck him.
It felt as though something had ravaged the inside of his body, leaving scarcely a single place unharmed.
His internal injuries were far too severe for the body of an otherwise healthy young man.
What in the world had happened to leave this body so badly damaged?
“Young Master, I heard that you were awake.”
At that moment, someone knocked on the door and called out to Rodos.
Apparently, whoever it was had come looking for him.
“May I come in?”
The voice came again, polite in phrasing but utterly dry in tone.
It was Imperial Common.
“An enemy?”
Without even realizing it, Rodos answered in Imperial Common.
It came to him as naturally as though he had known the language from the very beginning.
Rodos wondered how he should respond, but there was no need.
CLACK!
The door simply opened.
The man who entered abruptly checked that Rodos was unharmed, then bowed his head with proper courtesy.
“You did not answer, so I grew concerned and took the liberty of entering. My apologies.”
Yet neither his words nor his actions felt sincere.
“!”
At that moment, Rodos clutched his forehead.
A violent headache struck him, severe enough to make his vision go dark.
At the same time, an enormous amount of information flooded into his mind.
Who he was, what kind of life he had lived until now, and everything this body had experienced in the past.
His name was Rodos de Augustus.
He was twenty-two years old.
He was the thirteenth child and youngest son of House Augustus.
House Augustus was a prestigious family of mages that wielded tremendous influence not only over the magical world but over the world at large.
It would hardly have been an exaggeration to say that all magic flowed through House Augustus.
Every high-ranking mage whose name Rodos knew belonged to House Augustus.
People called them madmen obsessed with magic.
They were the sort of people who would willingly offer up their very souls for the sake of magic.
Their sole objective was to reach ever greater heights in magic.
Rodos frowned.
The mages of House Augustus he had encountered throughout his life had truly been far from sane.
Those magic-obsessed lunatics had challenged him again and again, even to the brink of their own deaths.
All because they claimed it was an honor to fight someone strong.
And now he had become the youngest son of that very family.
“You still appear to be suffering from the aftereffects.”
The man spoke in a dry voice as he looked down at Rodos, who had sunk to the floor.
His expression suggested that the Young Master’s pain was none of his concern.
Rodos looked at the man standing before him.
His head was shaved so cleanly that not a single strand of hair remained, and round spectacles sat before a pair of inscrutable gray eyes.
He wore a perfectly fitted steward’s uniform and gave an overall impression of meticulous neatness.
“Kshar.”
The Chief Steward of House Augustus.
He oversaw all internal affairs of the family and was a man who could be considered closer to Rodos’s father than even the other members of the family.
“I am glad that you recognize me.”
Kshar smiled faintly.
He put on a pair of white gloves and began tidying the medicine bottles that had been left scattered around.
“I heard that you had awakened after two months, so I stopped by while passing through to see whether you were well.”
‘I woke up after two months?’
Rodos could not understand what Kshar was talking about.
“!”
At that moment, another headache struck, and another memory surged into his mind.
‘There was an accident.’
The original owner of this body had recklessly attempted a magical experiment.
It was an experiment that his frail body and inadequate magical ability could never have endured.
The reason was simple.
He had wanted his family and his father to acknowledge him.
Predictably, the experiment had failed, and the magic had run wild, swallowing its caster.
Fortunately, he had survived.
However, the shock had rendered him unconscious, leaving him with severe internal injuries and completely destroying his magic circuits.
He had remained unconscious for a long time after that and had finally awakened today.
“What year is it?”
“It is Year 220 of the Imperial Calendar. You still appear to be in pain, however. I will summon a healer.”
“No need.”
Rodos waved a hand dismissively.
The headache was not what mattered.
He had awakened in a world ten years in the future.
And, by sheer coincidence, he had awakened as the scion of a prestigious magic family who shared his name.
Rodos.
It was an ancient word meaning martial might.
The Head of House must have given that name to his youngest son in hopes that he would grow into someone worthy of it.
It had been a name that did not suit the original Rodos at all.
Then another memory surfaced, and Rodos noticed something strange.
“You merely stopped by while passing through? That cannot be right.”
Rodos asked the question.
The memories flooding into his mind told him otherwise.
There were separate servants specifically assigned to attend him.
Moreover, Kshar was not the sort of person who worried about others.
He simply carried out whatever task he had been assigned with mechanical precision.
And such a man had merely stopped by out of concern?
It made no sense.
“The Head of the House personally instructed me to check your condition and find out what you intend to do from now on.”
If he meant the Head of the House, then it could only be that man.
‘Marcos de Augustus.’
A legendary Archmage who had surpassed the 10th Circle and entered the Transcendent Realm at the remarkably young age of thirty.
A man said to have killed his emotions in order to reach transcendence, leaving behind nothing but cold reason.
He was the Head of House Augustus, and he revered strength above all else.
He cared nothing for the suffering of his own blood relatives.
There was only one criterion by which he judged a person.
Ability.
Rodos said nothing and perched on the edge of the desk.
The sunlight was warm.
Kshar regarded Rodos somewhat strangely before continuing.
“I heard that your magic circuits have been completely destroyed.”
Rodos nodded.
He could tell that it would require a tremendous amount of effort before this body could use magic again.
“Now, Young Master, you have nothing left.”
Kshar spoke frankly.
He did not appear to care whether his words hurt Rodos.
“That is true.”
Rodos’s expression remained perfectly calm.
Was that not something he already knew?
There was no reason to concern himself greatly over it.
Kshar’s eyes widened slightly as he watched him.
“Are you not surprised?”
“Should I be?”
Rodos could not understand Kshar’s reaction.
Was he supposed to break down in tears from shock?
A warrior’s pride would never permit such a thing.
“It seems that being unconscious for such a long time has left you somewhat disoriented.”
Kshar thought that Rodos was behaving differently from usual.
After all, the youngest son had once been the sort to endlessly ask where his father was whenever the Head of the House was mentioned.
It was probably the result of the shock from the accident.
Given time, he would return to normal.
It did not matter.
Kshar only needed to carry out the task the Head of the House had assigned him.
“So, what do you intend to do?”
Rodos was taken aback.
It was not a question he could answer immediately.
“I do not think that is something I can decide on the spot.”
“It is an order from the Head of the House. We do not have time, so please give me your answer quickly.”
Kshar did not back down.
The Head of the House’s orders were absolute.
“It seems even five minutes are too precious to waste on me.”
It was true.
There was not much time worth devoting to the thirteenth young master, who possessed no notable talent.
Rodos sighed and looked out the window.
A distinct white cloud drifted slowly across the sky.
‘Then what am I supposed to do now?’
It was an obvious question.
What could someone who had once been the Great Warrior of the North possibly do in a prestigious family of mages?
Rodos found the situation somewhat troublesome.
He was not a mage.
It was not that he knew nothing about magic. Throughout his long life as a warrior, he had fought mages countless times.
And thanks to the magical knowledge now flooding into his mind, he understood it even better than before.
Nevertheless, at his core, he was a warrior.
From the moment he had learned to walk, he had wielded an axe in each hand.
And now, overnight, he had become a mage.
It was as absurd as hearing that the Northern Mountains had collapsed.
Advancing to the realm he had long yearned for?
In his current body, he could not even dream of it.
He was worried about the North as well.
Ten years had passed since his disappearance.
Was Alun doing well?
But Rodos was in no position to worry about the North.
With this frail body, he might not even survive in this merciless place.
First, he had to live.
This was a trial.
It was a process that every warrior who sought to temper his strength had to endure.
He could not run from it.
In that case, there was only one thing to do.
“I will swing an axe.”
Rodos decided to try what he knew best.
A warrior did not collapse of his own accord.
He knelt only when he had been defeated.
“Understood.”
Kshar nodded.
It was an answer he had never expected, but he showed no sign of surprise.
He merely followed the Head of the House’s orders.
The judgment itself belonged to the Head of the House.
“Then I will take my leave. A servant will bring your medicine once a day. Please make sure to take it.”
Carrying the empty medicine bottles, Kshar left the room.
“I have gone and done it.”
An axe in a family of mages….
Rodos had no idea what kind of future awaited him.
He simply intended to continue moving forward.
If he survived and became stronger, an opportunity would inevitably come.
Rodos sat down on the floor.
The first thing he needed to do was determine the exact condition of his body.
***
At that same moment, in the office of House Augustus.
There was only one chair in the vast room.
No, it would have been more accurate to call it a throne.
A man sat upon the throne, which was fashioned from gold and platinum in perfect harmony.
He had the same red hair as Rodos, contrasted by a pair of sky-blue eyes.
Sharp eyes, a refined nose, and an elegant jawline.
He was a man of flawless appearance.
With his cheek resting against one hand and his legs crossed, he gazed at the man before him.
Kshar, the Chief Steward, had come to make his report.
“Young Master Rodos has awakened. As you expected, all of his magic circuits have burned out, but there does not appear to be any serious problem with his body.”
Marcos did not answer.
It was impossible to tell whether he was listening or simply ignoring him.
Kshar, however, appeared accustomed to this and continued speaking.
“However, perhaps because he was unconscious for such a long period, it seems that his mind has suffered some trauma. When I asked what he intended to do from now on, he said that he would swing an axe.”
Marcos gave a quiet snort of amusement.
It was an answer he had never expected.
Kshar said nothing more and waited for Marcos to speak.
Only after some time did Marcos finally open his mouth.
“Does he mean to take up swordsmanship?”
Kshar had clearly said axe, but to Marcos, there was little difference between one and the other.
Whatever a useless boy who could no longer use magic chose to do was none of his concern.
“What will you do?”
“Tell the Order of Knights. Have them deal with it.”