The whole thing was utter nonsense. If the origins of Combat Force and the historical records of magical civilization were actually true, then those Sword Saints and Sword Gods who supposedly left behind noble bloodlines were nothing more than cannon fodder manufactured by mages. Just think about the legends of wars between mages and gods — wave after wave of Sword God legions thrown onto the battlefield. How many soldiers in a single legion? At least twenty thousand, and even Sword Saints were only fit for logistics and transport. Put in that perspective, the question answered itself: what was so noble about the bloodline left behind by cannon fodder?
Even though the body he now occupied originally belonged to someone who could be considered part of the aristocracy, the values he had carried from his previous life — that the victors become kings, that all people are equal — meant that the current Lorist simply could not perceive the divide between nobles and commoners in this world. In his heart, he was still that forty-something-year-old small-town man who spent his days bustling about, managing his own modest handicraft factory.
How had he gone from having a few too many drinks at an old comrades' reunion to waking up as
In his previous life, he had grown up in a small town in Jiangnan. His family was a large clan and a martial arts household. His grandfather had been an old Chinese medicine practitioner and a true master — he must have reached the stage of Hidden Force, at least. He remembered there being an eight-immortals table at home with a round hole in it, about the size of a wine cup. When he was still a child, a ruddy-faced man from Henan had come to visit and pestered his grandfather into a contest. His grandfather laid out a banquet, toasted the man with a cup of wine, then pressed the empty cup down, slowly sinking it into the table until it was flush with the surface. The ruddy-faced man's eyes went wide; he didn't even dare drink his wine, bowed with clasped fists, and turned to leave.
His father had been in poor health, and his second and third uncles worked far from home. His grandfather had kept a tight rein on him and his cousins from a young age, forcing them to practice martial arts and study medicine. They trained through the bitterest cold of winter and the most sweltering heat of summer — reciting meridian points and acupressure maps in the mornings, reading medical texts and prescriptions at night. Life was tough, but remarkably fulfilling. As a child, he had been a terrible troublemaker, and whenever he had a bit of free time, he would drag his cousins through the town, raising absolute hell.
But as a youth, he had grown weary of the unchanging life in that small town and longed for the wider, more exciting world. His grades in high school were poor, he was always getting into fights, and eventually he dropped out and enlisted.
During his seven years of military service, he had always been a backbone of his unit and had even made Sergeant Major. But his years in uniform had coincided with a time when the nation needed peace and stability, focusing its energy on economic development. Society was fixated on money, and soldiers — once called the most lovable people — had become invisible, able only to endure and silently guard the nation with their blood and youth. Yet another round of military downsizing was underway when he received news of his father's critical illness. He filed his discharge papers and went home to inherit the small handicraft factory his father had founded.
The transition from soldier to businessman had been brutal. From crafting artisan gifts to replicating antiques, he did whatever turned a profit. He thought back to his grandfather's hopes for him — that he might become a Chinese medicine doctor and carry on the family's medical legacy — and contrasted that with the version of himself he had become, reeking of money, his belly swelling outward. How long had it been since he had last practiced the ancestral Golden Water Technique? He could no longer remember.
Though he had a family, a wife and children, a luxury car, and a Western-style house, this life left him feeling an ever-deepening emptiness. That was why, at the reunion with his old comrades, he had reminisced about his days in the army. For the sake of that lost youth, everyone had gotten thoroughly drunk — crying, laughing, and drinking until he couldn't remember a thing. All he knew was that when he woke up, he had become Norton Lorist.
He looked through the memories of this young noble, nicknamed "Little Locke." The family's fief was located in the northern highlands of the Krisen Empire. Though it was merely a barony, the territory was vast — most of it consisting of desolate wilderness that technically belonged to the Norton Family. The population was sparse, just a few thousand people, with a single small town and one castle. The family was not wealthy; the entire fief's main source of income was a single small copper mine.
The Norton ancestor who had obtained the title of Baron had originally been a jungle hunter. In his youth, he had been persuaded by a wandering bard to enlist in the army of Krisen I, the founding Emperor of the Krisen Empire. Starting as a scout, he fought in countless battles and earned distinguished merit again and again, winning the deep trust of Krisen I, who elevated him from a commoner to the rank of knight.
Later, after the Krisen Empire was established, Krisen I asked his loyal knight what he wished for. The founder of the Norton Family answered that he wanted to go home — to die on the soil of his homeland. Gazing at the knight who had followed him for most of his life, now with graying temples, Krisen I sighed with emotion. He summoned his Court Chancellor and brought out a map, and saw that the Northland was nothing but wasteland. So Krisen I, with a grand sweep of his pen, elevated the aging knight to Baron and designated a vast stretch of barren frontier at the empire's far north as a hereditary barony. He also bestowed upon the new Baron a high-tier Combat Force manual — Inferno Combat Force — with the blessing that the knight's family would guard the northern border of the empire for generations to come.
He had heard that his second uncle was doing rather well. As for his third uncle, he was the Steward of the family trade caravan that had escorted Little Locke to
In Little Locke's memories, his mother had been a very beautiful and gentle lady. His maternal grandfather was a wealthy merchant who, despite spending a fortune to purchase a knighthood, did so purely for the convenience of trade. There was also an uncle who was an inveterate bookworm, clutching a book at all times. His father was stern. His older brother, three years his senior, was a brash, powerful big lad. Life should have been perfectly happy, but when Little Locke was seven, his mother became pregnant again. After giving birth to his younger brother, she fell gravely ill and ultimately passed away, leaving Little Locke behind.
From being doted upon to being utterly neglected, Little Locke blamed everything on his younger brother. He believed his brother was the origin of all misfortune — the one who had stolen his beloved mother, the one who had stolen everyone's attention from him. Deep in his heart, Little Locke loathed his brother with a passion.
When the thirteen-year-old Little Locke began receiving the Norton Family's traditional education, it took him only one year to awaken his Combat Force — an unprecedented feat that earned him praise from his perpetually stern father. High on confidence and satisfaction, Little Locke went out to the courtyard and saw his younger brother playing by the well with a maidservant attending him. A sudden surge of malice rose within him. He strode forward, reached out, and shoved his younger brother into the well.
The terrified shriek of the maid rang in his ears, followed by utter chaos. Finally came his father's face, blazing with fury. A palm swung, and Little Locke was slapped hard. His vision went black, and he collapsed unconscious.
When he next awoke, he was in Little Locke's small bedroom. Old Steward Kreis looked at him with an expression of bitter disappointment and said that Father had ordered solitary confinement — he was to remain in his room and not leave until a decision on his punishment was made. As the old Steward turned to leave, he added that the younger brother had been pulled from the well, though he had been badly frightened and had caught a chill from the cold water and was now ill…
Three days later, Father delivered Little Locke's punishment: he was to leave the family fief and travel to distant
His older brother, the old Steward, and his third uncle all pleaded on Little Locke's behalf, but Father was resolute. He said that in the wild and savage Northland, if one did not know how to unite with and cherish one's own family, then the Norton Family could not survive. What Little Locke had done chilled everyone to the bone — he had laid hands on a child of five or six, and his own younger brother at that. Even if he were forgiven this time, it would plant a seed of discord within the Norton Family. Therefore, Little Locke had to leave the fief. He was to be exiled.
The small-town handicraft factory owner from another world found himself suddenly turned into a fourteen-year-old boy. The shock goes without saying. Two sets of memories flickered and overlapped in his mind, leaving him thoroughly confused about who he truly was. It took him more than ten days before he finally came to understand that he had — possibly, probably, almost certainly, definitely — transmigrated, just like in those internet novels he had read.
Despite having Little Locke's memories as a foundation, the world before him was still utterly foreign. His current situation was especially grim: the body he had transmigrated into was wrapped up like a mummy, laid up in bed, unable to move freely, racked with pain, and haunted by longing for his loved ones from his previous life. Tossing and turning in the dead of night, tears streaming ceaselessly down his face — that had become a regular occurrence.
After more than ten days, the factory owner finally accepted the reality of his transmigration. From that moment on, he became Norton Lorist — Little Locke. In order to better understand this world, he increased the nurse's wages and instructed the plump, freckle-faced woman to bring him history books to read aloud. These were subjects the original owner of the body had never cared about.
The chubby female nurse brought him the *Ten Thousand Year History of Galentea*. The title gave Lorist quite a shock — if a world had ten thousand years of recorded history, its civilization must be extraordinary. But once the nurse began reading, Lorist understood that this so-called ten-thousand-year history was in fact mostly mythology and legend. Only the last two or three thousand years were at all reliable.
Legend held that ten thousand years ago, Galentea was the domain of the elves, and humanity was merely a minor tribe under elven rule. The war between the elves and the dragon race, which had been raging for thousands of years, continued to inflict collateral devastation on humanity even under elven protection. During those long years of war, a tribe of goblins began to rise. Through their ingenuity, they developed an entirely different kind of magical-mechanical civilization and used it to help the elves defeat the dragons.
However, the goblins' magical-mechanical civilization wrought terrible destruction upon the environment, which the nature-loving elves found abhorrent. Eventually, the two races went to war. To everyone's surprise, the elves — who had sworn to teach those lowly underground rats a lesson — were utterly crushed by the goblins' magical-mechanical legions. In the end, they had no choice but to surrender the throne of Galentea's ruling race to the goblins.
But the goblins, chaotic by nature, had no interest in governing a continent. What they loved was wild imagination and all manner of fantastical inventions. After more than a hundred years of disorder and anarchy, the beastmen arrived from the western wastelands, bringing with them blood, fire, and slaughter.
In the tide of the beastmen — savage creatures who wore their furs, drank blood, and possessed thick hides and hardy flesh — the goblins' refined and formidable magical-mechanical legions were swallowed up by the beastmen's overwhelming, expendable-horde tactics. The goblins fell from power.
The beastmen, freshly crowned as Galentea's dominant race, immediately launched into a reign of brutal, bloody conquest and repression. They swiftly succeeded in uniting every other race against them.
And so began another war lasting several hundred years. Among all the races resisting the beastmen, humanity learned magic and combat techniques from the elves, engineering and metallurgy from the dwarves, and arms manufacturing and trade from the goblins. Leveraging their vast population, humanity became the bulwark of the resistance. When the beastmen were finally driven back to the western wastelands, humanity had claimed the throne of Galentea's preeminent race.
The gods waged war, both sides suffered devastating losses, and in the end the world was thrown into upheaval. The magical elements faded, and the Age of Magic came to its end.