Have you ever wanted to be reborn in a fantasy world?
Before i got reincarnated i used to think that would be great. The reality? Not so much.
Taxes.
Bills.
Debt.
Turns out, noble titles come with a price tag.
Four years I've spent learning what it truly means to carry a noble name. It isn't glory. It isn't power. It's a ledger full of red ink and a list of people who smile at your face while calculating exactly how much your land is worth without you on it.
'How exactly am I supposed to deal with all this?' I thought, 'Oh, I know! I could use my modern world knowledge to become rich like in fantasy novels!'
Meanwhile, my modern world knowledge:
How to cook ramen
How to play clash royale
Bits of peices of random history
I tried using what little knowledge i had like feeding a sick person some mold because i remembered that pennicelin was made of mold. Lets say that didnt work well.
'Yeah, theres probably more to making penicilin' i thought, watching the sick person throw up.
'Oh, i know! I could train magic and become a 9 star mage like in the novels.' I thought, so i sat down and tried gathering my mana.
And guess what? I felt it! I tried letting my mana out into an attack and...
Fart
Yeah, that wasnt mana.
So there I was. No useful knowledge. No magic. No plan.
Just a thirteen year old count's son sitting alone in his study, surrounded by debt letters he couldn't pay, in a world he didn't understand, with nothing to show for his supposed 'modern world advantage.'
That's when my butler knocked on the door.
'Young master,' he said, in that perfectly neutral tone butlers apparently practice in the mirror, 'the Silverstone Auction begins in an hour. Shall I prepare the carriage?'
I had no intention of going. Auctions were for people with money, and I had the opposite of that.
But my advisor had insisted. Apparently one of our former knights had pawned off some old estate belongings to cover a debt I didn't even know existed. The least I could do, he said, was go and buy them back
With what money, I didn't ask. Mostly because I didn't want to hear the answer.
I wasn't expecting much.
I certainly wasn't expecting lot number forty-seven.
"Polished obsidian block that glows." The auctioneer said "10 silver coins."
No one batted an eye. No one raised their stick. No one even knew what they were staring at.
Except me.
'Is that a smartphone?' I thought, 'how did a smartphone get in this world?'
I immediately raised my stick.
No one bid against me so i won.
The auctioneer's assistant handed it over without ceremony, wrapped loosely in cloth like it was just another curiosity from some dead man's collection.
I turned it over in my hands.
Cracked screen. Scratched edges. A small dent on the corner like it had been dropped.
But it was unmistakably, undeniably, a smartphone.
My butler leaned over my shoulder. "Young master, what is it?"
"An artifact," I said, which wasn't technically a lie.
I waited until we were back in the carriage before I really examined it. The screen was black and unresponsive, which made sense. Four years in whatever dusty vault or merchant's pack it had been sitting in would drain any battery completely.
Dead.
Of course it was dead.
I laughed quietly to myself. Of course the one thing from my old world that somehow crossed over into this one was completely useless.
Then I noticed the corner.
A faint, tiny rectangle. Barely visible.
One percent battery.
My hands were shaking as I pressed the power button.
The screen flickered.
Then lit up.