They say the world is vast. Unknowable. They're not wrong. I've studied every scrap of information I could find since the day I could read, which, in my case, was by age two. And still, the world eludes even the most learned men. The number of continents? Unknown. Just last year, a new landmass was discovered. The cartographers are still arguing whether it's one large continent or several connected micro-realms. No one's sure.
But I don't need to know the world to conquer it. Not yet. I only need to understand my piece of it. We call it the South Plains, one of the known continents, home to eight sentient species, though only three are recognized as global powers. The rest are either too peaceful, too scattered, or too weak to matter. The three major species are called the Three Empires.
I belong to the Human Empire, an empire ruled not by merit, but by power, politics, and blood. Our society is built like a pyramid. Commoners at the base, scraping to survive. Nobles above them, weighed by their pride and lineage. At the top sits the Emperor, robed in sanctity and surrounded by swords. And beneath him, the Dukes.
My father, Duke Westermont von Javier, rules the western territory, the second-largest land in the Empire. Only the eastern region surpasses us in size, but unlike them, we're bordered by nearly every neighboring territory. We're the Empire's first line of defense. It's the first pillar. It's the first battlefield. And as his son, I was born into that legacy, whether I wanted it or not.
My name is Alexander von Javier. Third son of House Javier. Born fourth in order, and yet technically third in line because the fifth-born is male, and the rest. Well, women aren't permitted to inherit the dukedom unless all male members are killed. Outdated laws, yes. But the Empire values tradition over sense. At least for now. You'd think being the youngest would mean I was ignored.
Instead, I became the most hated. It all started the moment I was born. I had spent my time in the womb not writhing or flailing like the rest, but gathering mana. Not because I needed it, but because there was simply nothing else to do. I understood early that mana flowed around all things. And in the womb, it flowed directly into me. By the time I was born, my mana pool was dense. Saturated. Volatile. When I exited my mother's body at exactly 00:00, I released everything at once, not on purpose, just instinctively.
The effect? Aurora lights. Bright, dancing colors shimmered across the sky above the Javier estate, no, beyond that. The village below saw them. The mountains glowed. The rivers trembled. The skies opened with color. And for a brief moment, it looked like a god had descended.
You'd think a miracle like that would bring joy. But when my father looked down at me, he didn't see a son. He saw a scandal. My hair was gray with unnatural gold and purple streaks. My eyes were alien, glowing with a seven-bladed sunburst. Even my bone structure seemed different. Sharper. Not entirely foreign, but not quite Javier either. The first words he spoke weren't "Is he healthy?" or "Is he mine?"
No. They were:
"Who was it?"
"What servant did you lie with?"
My mother cried. The servants whispered. The nobles sharpened their smiles. A scandal had arrived. It took weeks to clean up the mess. The Church was summoned to test for honesty of my mother. Their rituals confirmed that I was, in fact, his child, though the priests were more fascinated by my "divine birth" than the parents involved. Then came the Magician's Tower, the institution responsible for studying rare magical anomalies.
They examined me. Tested me. Scanned me. And finally gave my condition a name: "Magic Eyes." A type of bloodline trait, not like the common ones that give elemental affinity, but a much rarer, ancient kind. Born not from family, but from sheer magical mutation. They told my father that I was the progenitor of a new bloodline. A once-in-history phenomenon.
The color of my hair, they explained, was a result of magic over-saturation in the womb. My body had changed before I was even born. My eyes weren't a mark of otherness, but a gift, something priceless. That changed everything.
My father went from shame to worship in less than a day. He saw it not as a stain on his house, but a weapon. A legacy. The Javier family would not just be known for their military might or their noble roots. They would now carry a bloodline of their own, my bloodline. And so, he loved me. Openly. Publicly. Excessively.
He gave me the best tutors. The finest resources. He even commissioned a custom wand crafted from the bones of a divine beast before I could even walk. But love from a father doesn't erase tension from a family. My mother never looked at me the same again. She never struck me. Never insulted me. Never showed malice.
But I saw it in her eyes, the fear. The shame because she, as a mother, fears me. The almost imperceptible distance. And I understood why. In this empire, if a noble couple divorced, the one with the lesser status and at fault would be executed by fire. In most cases, it was the woman. Unless the woman's bloodline was higher before marriage and the current inheritor (brother/father/uncle/sister) chose to protect her, the punishment was hers to bear.
My mother barely escaped the flames, and she knew it. So she played the role, the loyal wife, the relieved mother, all while keeping her emotions buried behind glass. But my eyes, they saw through the glass.
As for my siblings, they fared worse. Seven were born on the same day. And yet from the start, I left them behind. When they were learning to crawl, I was already walking. When they were babbling, I was fluent in three languages: Human, Draconidine, and Elven.
Two of which were empire languages. The third? The closest ally to the Human Empire. Strategic. While they struggled with fairy tales, I was reading treatises on ancient spell theory. I debated with professors on mana compression before I could cast my first spell. Their envy wasn't subtle, but I didn't care. Because my eyes weren't on them. They were on the throne.
Magic in this world operates on affinities, which awaken automatically on a child's tenth birthday like a gene being switched on. The affinities are divided into three tiers:
Common: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning
Rare: Light, Darkness, Healing, Curse
Bloodline-Based: Unique to noble houses, like my family's affinity for Weapons
And if a child awakens to nothing? They're considered affinity-less and are pushed toward the Martial Path, the cultivation of the body. Functional, but inferior in the eyes of nobility. To claim a noble title, you must possess a magical affinity. That's why succession is never announced until all children awaken. The family head waits. Watches. Judges. Then names a successor.
Mine is tomorrow. Ten years to the second. Born at 00:00, so a party at that time would be inconvenient to many nobles; thus, it was pushed to the next day. Tomorrow morning, I will walk the stage with my sibling to decide my fate, but before that, I need to check it for myself if I drew the lottery number. Also, where the fuck is my system since my transmigration?