"Young Master, Young Master, it's time to wake up for breakfast."
An aged but stern voice echoed in Zhao Hai's ears. He paid little attention to it, only aware of a splitting headache. He assumed his computer had been left on, playing dialogue from some drama.
But the voice continued: "Young Master, it is time to rise. As a noble, punctuality is a virtue."
Zhao Hai froze. The voice didn't sound like it was coming from his computer — it was right beside him, far too real to be his cheap speakers.
Despite the throbbing pain in his head, he forced his eyes open. Instead of his familiar white ceiling, he was greeted by the sight of a canopy curtain.
He blinked and turned his head. He was lying in a large wooden bed. Standing beside it was a man in his fifties, grey hair combed immaculately, expression grave and composed, watching him in silence.
Zhao Hai stared blankly at the stern old man, then slowly looked around. The room was built entirely of stone — crude and bare. Apart from the bed, only a desk and a single chair counted as furniture. The floor and walls looked freshly swept. The window frame was wooden, covered with white paper. A glowing stone hung overhead as a light source. Nothing else.
The old man spoke again. "Young Master, you have recovered. Please rise promptly. A noble should maintain a disciplined routine. It is currently breakfast time."
Zhao Hai's gaze drifted back to the old man. A single thought crashed through his mind — I've transmigrated. Then a wave of searing pain exploded in his skull, and he blacked out.
Grimm Buda stared at the collapsed young master for a moment, then turned and walked briskly outside. Four people stood waiting — two men, two women.
The men were young, barely in their teens by appearance, yet both stood nearly two meters tall, their bodies built like iron, dark-skinned with close-cropped hair. They were identical twins, though their expressions were permanently blank and dull.
Of the two women, the older was in her forties — stout, blue-haired, with kind eyes now creased with worry.
The younger girl was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with long cyan hair, a delicate oval face, a petite frame, and fair skin. She stood with her head down, expression hollow.
The moment Grimm emerged, the older woman rushed forward. "Grimm, how is he? Has the Young Master woken?"
Grimm nodded, then shook his head. "He woke briefly, then fainted again. Merlin, was your magic not effective? Or was there something wrong with the medicine? Could someone have tampered with it?"
Merlin's face darkened. "If anyone dared — I'd tear them apart. The Young Master may have been a reckless fool, but he is the last blood of the Buda family. Have those imperial dogs forgotten everything the Master did for the Empire? Ungrateful bastards, the lot of them."
"Go check on him," Grimm said evenly. "Use water-attribute healing magic again if needed. Whatever happens, we must protect the last heir of House Buda."
Merlin nodded, then fixed Grimm with a fierce glare. "And when he recovers — don't you dare go imposing all that noble etiquette nonsense on him. We've been exiled to this godforsaken wasteland. Noble manners? Those people can go to hell. The very sight of those aristocrats makes me sick."
Grimm gave her a tired look but remained firm. "I cannot abandon it. The Young Master holds the title of Viscount. He must carry himself as a noble. It is the least I can do to honor House Buda's kindness."
"If you keep that up," Merlin snapped, "I'll stop cooking for you. I'll starve you. Look around — we don't even know how long we can survive here, and with the imperial court still watching — do you honestly think the Young Master will ever return to the Empire? Stop dreaming."
Grimm smiled bitterly and said nothing more. He knew she was right.
They had been exiled to this barren wasteland at the command of the King himself, backed by the great noble houses. The only reason House Buda hadn't been wiped out entirely was the weight of its legendary history — too glorious to simply erase.
House Buda still existed — but in name only. No one in the imperial circles would ever welcome them back. In time, people would simply forget they had ever existed.
What broke Grimm's heart most was this: the King, fearing a resurgence of House Buda, had ordered their Young Master — Adam Buda, last heir and final hope of the family — to drink the Water of Nothingness.
The Water of Nothingness was a treasure beyond price. A single drop could reduce a Saint-level mage, a War God-ranked warrior, or a divine knight to an ordinary person in an instant — permanently stripped of all magic and combat energy, with no cure in existence.
It did not harm the body. It simply made you ordinary.
For a commoner, it was just water. But for a noble — for a warrior — it was a fall from the heavens into an abyss with no bottom.
And so Adam Buda, by royal decree, had drunk it. He would never learn magic or martial arts. He would live and die as a common man.
For another noble family, perhaps that was bearable. But for Adam, it was a death sentence. He was the last heir of House Buda, the one meant to restore the family's glory — and now that hope was gone.
Grimm was not afraid of weakness alone. He himself was an eighth-rank warrior. His wife Merlin was an eighth-rank water mage. His granddaughter Meg was a sixth-rank wind mage. Together, their strength was considerable. In their original territory — a prosperous southern domain with one main city and four mid-sized towns — rebuilding House Buda would have been entirely possible.
But the King had taken even that. Their southern lands were stripped away and replaced with a grant of the Black Wasteland in the far north.
The Black Wasteland. One of the most infamous dead zones on the continent. Vast — covering nearly a third of the entire Aksu Empire — yet utterly lifeless. Nothing grew there. Not even desert plants. Even vegetation that survived in the harshest deserts withered and died upon touching this soil.
Legend held that the land had once been fertile. Then a great battle had taken place, and several Saint-level mages had jointly cast a massive forbidden spell that cursed the earth permanently — nothing would ever grow there again.
Even that Grimm might have endured, if only there were trade routes. But the Black Wasteland was ringed by the abandoned Dwarf Iron Mountains, and beyond them lay the Corpse Swamp — one of the continent's five forbidden zones, and technically also part of the Buda domain. On paper, House Buda now held the largest territory in the entire empire.
The only exit from the wasteland bordered the territory of House Versailles — and though the two families were once bound by a marriage agreement, what standing did a ruined house have to negotiate with the Empire's most powerful noble family? It was a dead end in every sense.
The one saving grace was a small abandoned castle on the Dwarf Iron Mountains, which had escaped the curse. Some land there could still be farmed. They would not starve.
The moment Grimm confirmed where their new domain lay, he converted every last coin of House Buda's wealth into slaves, supplies, seeds, and tools. Then he led the unconscious Adam — who had been in a coma since drinking the Water of Nothingness — to this place and settled into the crumbling but usable castle.
With him came Merlin his wife, his granddaughter Meg, a pair of twins named Blockhead and Rockhead — orphans once adopted by Adam's father — and one hundred slaves. No one else.
Throughout the long journey from the capital, Adam had remained unconscious. Only Merlin's constant magical care had kept him alive. Yesterday, she had examined him and determined he might wake today — which was why Grimm had been standing at his bedside, calling him to breakfast.
What none of them knew was that the young man now lying in that bed was no longer Adam Buda.
He was Zhao Hai — an ordinary homebody from Earth, wearing a dead man's skin.