The Empire's Northwind Province lay in its furthest northeastern corner.
It was far removed from the prosperity of the West Coast, yet close to the biting, wintry cold of the Northern Lands.
Poverty and cold—these were the few descriptions that defined this place.
Were it not for the connecting passage known as the Winged Canyon, this region would appear on a map almost as a detached exclave.
The radiance of the Lord of Dawn spilled down upon the lush mountain forests, dispelling all traces of the cold and allowing a disheveled, fair-faced youth—who sat leaning against a great tree—to finally recover from the shock of his sudden transmigration.
Ryan Clayton—that was his name.
"That is my name."
The youth struggled to his feet. He looked down at his chest, where his once-splendid garments were now torn open; on his back, in the corresponding spot, a sensation of dampness—even more pronounced than the front—registered against his touch.
These were the marks left by an assassin's rapier, which had pierced clean through both his chest and his back.
With pale hands bracing himself against the great tree, the youth—a transplant from the distant Blue Star—gradually assimilated the entirety of the memories now residing within his mind.
"This *is* my name!"
In this fantastical world—a realm inhabited by gods, sorcerers, and mages—Ryan Clayton firmly embraced his new reality.
He had transmigrated, taking the place of the original Ryan Clayton—a young baron on the verge of reaching his own fiefdom—who had met his end beneath an assassin's blade.
Shaking his head to clear it, Ryan felt his limbs begin to tremble; it seemed he had lost a great deal of blood during the attack.
And just a short distance away, a pair of hungry eyes had already fixed their predatory gaze upon him.
"You've got to be kidding me... I just transmigrated, and now I'm about to die?"
Ryan felt as though he might well go down in history as the most unfortunate transmigrator of all time—for he had just sensed the presence of his "System." I had transmigrated, and I even possessed a System—yet here I was, on the verge of death.
Was there anything more despairing than having hope right within reach, only to have it slip away?
Fortunately, a voice calling out from deep within the woods rekindled a spark of hope in Ryan.
"Young Master Ryan!"
"Young Master Ryan!!!"
"Beard! I'm over here."
Ryan turned his gaze toward the source of the voice. He saw an elderly man with disheveled white hair, accompanied by eight apprentice knights—their clothes stained with blood—hurrying frantically toward him.
They were his butler and his knightly escort.
Upon seeing that he was still safe and sound, Ryan could clearly sense the old man heaving a sigh of relief.
"Young Master Ryan, thank goodness you're unharmed."
"If you had been injured, even dying a hundred times over wouldn't be enough to atone for our failure," Beard said, reaching out to feel Ryan all over, anxious to check for any wounds on his body.
"Beard, I'm fine."
Gently deflecting the old butler's rough, outstretched hand, Ryan paid no mind to the gesture; after all, from childhood to the present day, it was this very man who had essentially raised him.
"By the way, what happened with that band of bandits?"
Ryan asked, steering the conversation in a new direction.
At the mention of this, not only did Beard's face flush with rage, but the eight apprentice knights surrounding them also saw their expressions shift from shame to indignation.
"Those dirt-poor peasants—to think they dared to call themselves *bandits*! They actually dared to lay an ambush for the Baron!"
Deren, the Knight Captain, gritted his teeth as he spoke; it seemed that only through such bluster could he hope to mask his own dereliction of duty—the failure that had resulted in Ryan being separated from the group.
Ryan remained silent. It appeared that the "bandits"—a ragtag group formed from vagrants—had merely been a smokescreen, intended to conceal the true assassins sent to kill him. For a nobleman to fall at the hands of an elite assassin is, for the entire Empire, no trivial matter.
For it signifies that, within the political arena, certain individuals have begun to act with unbridled impunity.
Moreover, the very reason he found himself in this remote, freezing Northwind Province was, in itself, the result of a political gambit.
"It's fine; didn't I make it out alive?"
"Let's move out. We need to reach the Frozen Lands before noon."
Ryan was still young—only fourteen years old—and, suffering from extreme weakness in his limbs due to severe blood loss, he had to be carried on the back of a knight.
As they trekked through the dense, pathless forests, he dared not simply drift off to sleep, despite his physical and mental exhaustion. Instead, he was busy sorting through the sudden influx of memories and knowledge—spanning more than a decade—that had abruptly flooded his mind.
Those dazzling spells and intricate knightly combat techniques filled him with a deep sense of yearning.
This world was home to deities; indeed, a hundred and thirty years prior, a multitude of gods had ushered in their "Twilight," igniting a cataclysmic, pan-planar war.
The War of the Gods raged for thirty years, leaving many deities either slain or cast into eternal slumber.
Yet, the devastation wrought by that conflict extended far beyond that. On the continent of Norris—which some deities referred to as the "Prime World"—two-thirds of the land was plunged into an eternal winter.
Since that time, the frigid northern territories have been known to the people of the south simply as "the North."
Snow and blizzards blanketed the entire North; the ceaseless winds and the depths of the glaciers were so intensely cold that they could even forge "True Ice"—a substance that would never melt.
The lands of the North were no longer fit for human habitation; consequently, all those among the northern populace who had survived the war fled southward. The Flor Empire—once an obscure entity in the south—suddenly rose to become the undisputed hegemon of the Norris Continent, having annexed vast territories over the last few decades.
The Northwind Province, where Ryan currently resides, was conquered just over a decade ago by Duke Meyers—one of the Flor Empire's four Grand Dukes—at the head of his tens of thousands-strong Nightmare Knight Order.
However, the Northwind Province does not currently fall under that Grand Duke's jurisdiction.
Evidently, this was yet another nauseating political power struggle.
Far removed from the warm breezes and bustling prosperity of the West Coast, the Northwind Province represents the Empire's closest territorial outpost to the Northern Lands.
Moreover, thanks to the various factions within the Empire meddling in Grand Duke Meyers' affairs, the region has devolved into utter chaos. The bandits and vagrants encountered by Ryan's predecessor were, in reality, nothing more than a desperate populace driven to banditry by the unchecked oppression of their own lords and the intermittent plundering by neighboring nobles.
Such is the state of the Northwind Province—a region so burdensome that the Imperial Capital is even contemplating abandoning it entirely, as it drains the Empire of over a million gold coins annually.
And the barony to which Ryan is bound—the Frozen Lands—lies at the absolute northernmost extremity of the entire Northwind Province.
If the Northwind Province itself could be likened to an exclave of the Empire, then the Frozen Lands constitute an exclave of the Northwind Province.
One reaches the Frozen Lands only after traversing a treacherous expanse of swamps and forests—territory that falls victim to harassment year after year.
It is *his* domain—a place beyond the reach of any external authority—yet that fact is by no means a blessing.
Had the Frozen Lands possessed even the slightest shred of intrinsic value, they would have been seized by others long ago; their continued existence as an unclaimed territory is solely because no one has ever been able to extract even a single silver coin's worth of profit from them.
Too far removed from the West Coast; too close to the Northern Lands. Yet all of this was precisely what he had to face. However, the recent assassination attempt had taught him that what lay before him was not merely the biting winds of the Northern Territories, but also the mounting pressure from within the Empire itself.
Every noble title within the Empire was a treasure beyond compare; his own elevation to the rank of Baron had, in fact, been the result of a power struggle among the Empire's highest echelons.
Ryan Clayton—among the numerous offspring of the Earl of Clayton—was the one with the least presence of all.
The Clayton clan boasted many descendants far more exceptional than he—individuals who yearned desperately for a noble title, even if it were merely that of a Frontier Knight.
Given this context, the circumstances surrounding Ryan's barony were all too easy to surmise. However...
"Three months ago, Count Clayton led his 30,000-strong Flame Dragon Knights on a 1,200-mile expedition deep into the heartland of the Northern Orcs. He slew the High Priest of the Mammoth-men atop the snowy mountains and slaughtered hundreds of Orc tribes."
"Over 300,000 Orcs were taken as slaves and are currently being transported back to the Empire."
"The spoils amounted to tens of millions in gold coins—and that is merely what has become public knowledge. There are even rumors that Count Clayton managed to seize the wisp of divine radiance that the Mammoth-men tribe had kept hidden as a sacred treasure."
"Within the Empire, the Clayton clan began maneuvering, attempting to elevate Count Clayton to the rank of the Empire's fifth Grand Duke!"
"Consequently, a silent political struggle erupted even before the Count had returned to the Empire."
"The pie is only so big; no one—neither the Imperial Family nor the four existing Grand Dukes—was willing to accept a fifth claimant vying for a slice."
"The ultimate result was that an otherwise insignificant figure—Ryan Clayton—was granted the title of Baron; and specifically, a Baron in the Northern Wind Province."
"Thus, a single barony served to offset the entire merit of the Count's expedition against the Orcs."
Drawing solely from these few scattered memories, Ryan could sense just what a treacherous minefield—a veritable 'mountain of blades and sea of fire'—the Imperial Capital of Roer, thousands of miles away, truly was.
"If it were merely Ryan—well, if it were *only* Ryan, he would have already perished somewhere along the road to his fiefdom."
"And if I were simply a run-of-the-mill transmigrator, facing a world governed by such rigid and draconian rules, I fear I would be utterly helpless."
"But I have a System." At this thought, the tension in Ryan's mind eased ever so slightly.
With a mere shift of his will, a palm-sized, translucent light screen materialized before his eyes. Spirituality: 9]