I hated my father. I loathed the family. I wanted to see the North brought to ruin.
The one who could not understand Father's teachings. The one who could not adapt to the family's strict discipline. The one who hated the cold of the North with all his heart.
All of them were me.
- Our family must be ready to stop the great evil beyond the Wall that will one day appear.
A vague enemy felt like an illusion. I feared Father's teachings, and yet I found them pathetic.
Why I had to drag myself out of bed at dawn every single day. Why I had to strip to the waist and swing a sword in the freezing cold.
Because I lacked my siblings' talent, I thought I alone was made to suffer all the more.
The pressure of my childhood came back as a belated rebellion. Stung by my father's rebukes and my siblings' contempt, feeling I could never measure up, I ran away from the family.
I was angry. Angry that no one would acknowledge me. I did grow strong in the end. I did earn the title of Mercenary King and come back. But by then, my siblings were all dead.
- Have you achieved everything you wanted?
My father's last words, spoken as he looked at the sword lodged in his heart. He knew full well that I was not satisfied.
- If you regret it, then next time, do not do the same.
What had he meant? The North had already fallen. The family had been wiped out.
My siblings were all dead. There were no Baltrans left.
How could there possibly be a next time?
And yet.
A single one remained.
When the giants crossed the Wall and trampled the North.
When I heard the screams of the Northerners.
I knew.
I, too, was a Northerner.
However hard I had run and run, trying to escape.
Rohan Baltran.
I still belonged to the Baltrans.
.
.
.
Rrrumble. Crack!
The thunder snapped his eyes open. Under his head, he could feel a pillow soaked through.
Rohan sat up. Through the window he saw a pitch-black sky and a streak of light branching across the darkness.
"Argh."
His head throbbed, and he rubbed it. In that instant, a small hand caught his eye.
What?
He couldn't feel any mana. Rohan ran a hand over his chest.
'My fire rings are gone.'
Before that.......
Hadn't he already died? He had cut the space around him and been sucked into it.
Was he dreaming right before death?
Rohan looked around. A room that was spacious for one person.
It felt all the larger because a bed and a small shelf on the wall were all it held. Not a single painting hung on its walls, common as paintings were.
Rohan climbed out of bed. He opened the door and stepped out.
It was a place that felt both strange and familiar. A place from so long ago that his memory of it was hazy.
It was the villa where he had spent his childhood.
'I stayed here back when I was a trainee.'
Rohan had lived in this villa from the beginner course through the intermediate course.
'There's no mana built up in my body at all. This is right after I became a trainee.'
Then this body would be ten years old.......
Still puzzling over it, Rohan passed through the living room and went outside the villa.
From the doorstep on, a wind cold enough to cut his skin was blowing. Plip— plip— Fat raindrops struck his head.
The villa stood in one of the rare places in the Baltran family's domain where it rained instead of snowing.
Being a basin ringed by mountains on all sides, it was relatively warm for the North. A small consideration for the young trainees.
Still, it was nasty weather to be out in pajamas. Sweeping back his wet hair, Rohan kept walking through the tall trees.
If he had truly returned to the past. If this absurd phenomenon was reality and not a dream.
'Then that should be in here, too.'
Rohan stopped in front of a massive stone gate. It was a cave the family had made by hand.
In this forest were nine caves sealed by stone gates.
Nine, the number of Gion Baltran's children. Each cave held an heirloom for one of his heirs.
Only the Baltran direct line had the right to open these gates. Whoever opened the gate blocking a cave could claim the treasure inside.
In effect, it was a privilege reserved for pure-blooded Baltrans.
Two of them had already been opened. One by the eldest, Rohas. The other by Roselin, the second child and eldest daughter, who had opened her gate and taken its heirloom.
Seven remained.
In his past life, eight of the nine caves' gates had been opened. The one left over was the share of Rohan, the youngest of the nine, and he had never managed to claim that heirloom.
'Well, to be precise, I did get it right before I died.'
When he came to seize the North, he had opened the last gate out of simple curiosity.
The sword inside had not been of much use. At the time, Rohan was carrying a better sword than the cave's heirloom.
'But the heirloom in this one is a different story.'
The Spirit Beast egg that his third brother had owned in his past life. It had the drawback of taking a long time to hatch and grow, but that didn't matter.
Rohan had the memories of his past life, after all. There was no greater weapon than that. He didn't need a weapon that would boost his strength right away.
The immediate problem was how to open the stone gate that sealed the entrance so firmly. In his past life he had split it in half with a light swing of his sword, but Rohan's body now had neither the strength nor the magic power of those days.
Should he go back, build up his skills, and return later? Rohan considered it for a moment, but soon shook his head.
'There's no telling when Tiok will come here.'
His third brother had opened this gate around the time Rohan was just starting his training. He might come here and smash it as soon as tomorrow.
'Right, something like this I can manage somehow.'
Rohan put a hand to his chest. He closed his eyes and felt the energy inside his body.
The Baltran family's mana cultivation method was called the White Ice Ring. Just as the name said, it worked by linking rings of ice together.
In the past, Rohan had reached the 3rd Stage of the White Ice Ring.
'Considering I ran away from the family at eighteen, that's pretty hopeless.'
By that age, all his siblings had reached the 5th Stage or higher.
The mana training method he had mastered in his past life belonged to the Andelian family, who were as desperate to kill the Baltrans as the Baltrans were to kill them.
The head of the Andelian family had doted on Rohan for the sole reason that he had betrayed the Baltrans and left.
Thanks to that, Rohan had received the Andelian mana cultivation method and swordsmanship from the man himself.
The Andelian family had two mana cultivation methods.
The Blue Flame Pillar and the Red Flame Ring.
Drawn as a diagram, you erected pillars of blue flame and slotted rings of red flame in between them.
Rohan had his own view of the two families at their very peaks.
In swordsmanship the Baltrans were a cut above, while in mana handling the Andelian family was a cut above, he suspected.
Rubbing his chest, Rohan turned over a hypothesis.
'Could I build fire and ice together?'
The mana he had built up in his last life was gone, every bit of it. But the knowledge had not gone with it.
In his previous life, the White Ice Ring he had built was so pitiful that the fire energy he stacked up with the Blue Flame Pillar and Red Flame Ring had melted it all away.
In his past life, Rohan had handled mana entirely the Andelian way. But things were different now.
He had been handed the chance to fully master his own family's secret arts as well.
The Blue Flame Pillar and Red Flame Ring, regarded as the finest mana cultivation methods on the continent. And the White Ice Ring, essential for executing the Snowflower Sword, the finest swordsmanship.
Neither was a secret art he could easily give up.
'This is tough.'
True to their symbols, the two families were like fire and ice. The north and the south of the continent. Just as the two snarled at each other across all that distance, the mana the two families built up refused to mix.
'It's not something I can pull off right now anyway.'
For now, enough to open the stone gate would do.
Fwoooosh.
Rohan felt his chest grow hot.
A flame blazed up. He coaxed the fire, which surged as if it would burst out of his body, and brought its two ends together as one.
A fire ring took shape. A fire ring his past self would have thought trivial felt wild enough to burst inside a child's body.
'One more.'
He contracted the existing ring and snatched the flame that sprang out with the recoil. He dropped the flame into the space beside the ring. Fire flared up.
Rohan coaxed that fire and wove it into the existing ring.
Two rings. In an instant, he had reached the 2nd Stage of the Red Flame Ring.
Opening the stone gate required the 5th Stage of the White Ice Ring. The 2nd-Stage magic power Rohan had just produced wasn't even close.
But Rohan had a trump card. He moved the hand resting on his chest over his heart.
Ba-dump! Ba-dump!
Strictly speaking it didn't have to be the heart, but Rohan liked that beat. You could call it the thrill of knowing one slip could burst his heart and kill him.
The corners of his mouth rose. For this moment alone, he was showing the madness of Rohan, the Mercenary King of his past life.
"Burn."
The human body was terribly inefficient at converting the mana refined within it into magic power.
But in his past life, while hunting countless monsters, Rohan had found a way to draw mana out of his body efficiently.
The trouble was that his model had been a dragon, a creature vastly different from a human.
Because of that, whenever Rohan used this technique, he felt pain as if his body were burning. If he truly overused it, the pain could melt his brain and kill him.
Right now it was only two fire rings, but the problem was that the body, too, belonged not to the Mercenary King but to the child Rohan.
"Gaaaaargh!"
Searing agony swept over his entire body. At the horrific pain, Rohan let out a monstrous howl.
Red flames spread over the hand on his chest.
For an instant, Rohan felt something foreign near his heart. It nagged at him, but he didn't have the strength to hold on for long.
He had to act right away. Rohan clenched his fist and drove it straight forward.
BOOM—!
The flame-wreathed fist struck the stone gate. Next to the gate it was a pitifully small fist. Yet cracks ran out from where it hit.
CRUMBLE-CRUMBLE!
Stone dust poured down. The fist dug into the gate, and red flames spread along the lines of the cracks.
CRACK! CRACK-CRACK!
Chunks of stone split along the cracks and fell away. Riddled with gaps, the stone gate collapsed like a sandcastle.
Hah. Hah.
Rohan gasped for breath. His fist was a bloody mess, and his legs were shaking too hard to hold still.
Thump. He slumped to the ground. On all fours, Rohan crawled into the darkness.
'Father must know by now that the gate's been opened.'
Inside the cave was a barrier that sent a signal to the family head whenever someone entered.
Would he come running even in the middle of the night?
He let idle thoughts drift through his mind, straining to push through the pain.
After a while, Rohan reached a round stone pedestal. On it sat a jade-green egg that gave off a soft glow even in the darkness.
Rohan took hold of the egg with both hands. It was too big for his hands to wrap around.
But it didn't matter. It was already in his grasp.
'This egg is mine now.'
With a smile, Rohan lost consciousness and collapsed.
***
Ron, Gion's Guardian Knight, had been patrolling the perimeter of the outer castle when he heard a scream and rushed into the forest. He stopped in front of one of the caves. Its stone gate already stood open.
Tap. Tap.
Ron nudged a piece of the broken gate with his foot. What could anyone have done to smash such a solid stone gate into pieces like this?
Curious, he stepped into the cave. At the same time, he moved one hand to the hilt of the sword at his waist.
Whoever had opened the gate was a warrior with at least 5th-Stage magic power. Ron was a knight who had built his mana up to the 9th Stage, but he did not let his guard down.
Advancing slowly, he saw the jade-green egg resting safely on the pedestal and let out a sigh of relief. In the same moment, he saw who owned the small hands holding it, and his eyes went wide.
'The youngest young master?'
He was the last person Ron had expected. If it wasn't an intruder, he had assumed it was Tiok, the second son, unable to wait for daybreak.
A few days ago, Ron had seen Tiok at the training grounds. He was on the verge of the 5th Stage.
'Does this even make sense?'
The youngest young master surely couldn't handle mana at all, let alone reach the 5th Stage. When Rohan became a trainee, his talent had been judged to be that of a dullard.
He was still young, but at this rate he was fated to become a discarded child before long.
"A miracle has happened."
Rrrumble. Crack!
Lightning flashed—briefly lighting up the inside of the cave.
The corners of Ron's mouth had lifted.
'How will the family head react?'
Ron could feel it.
A 9th-Stage warrior, one who was nearing the 10th Stage at that, was approaching.
It was an aura that seemed able to halt the lightning of the heavens and drive back even this darkness.
Gion Baltran.
The Northern Grand Duke would not come here in person. Checking the scene was the Guardian Knight's job.
He would be staying at the villa, waiting for his Guardian Knight's report. Secretly wondering who had won the heirloom.
'What face will he make when he learns it's his youngest son?'
Gion was stingy about showing what was in his heart. Even Ron, who had served at his side for over twenty years, found it hard to read his mind from his face.
But could he keep that up once he knew about this?
Ron found himself looking forward to it.