"Young Master. ...Young Master Allen!"
Schord, the private tutor, hollered.
It happened out of nowhere, I just found myself reincarnated in a fantasy world of sword and magic as the third son of a viscount.
That was the short explanation.
The event leading to this realisation, in brief, could be said to be the bone-breaking study I was made to go through day and night because of the entrance exam to the Yulgria Royal Knight and Mage Academy (also called Royal Academy in short). Now add in the secret recipe of pressure from the family to pass at any cost and viola, the stress limit went through the roof and the psychological shock led me to recall the memories of my previous life.
"The entrance exam is just around the corner! Does the Young Master think he has all the time in the world to daydream like that?"
Schord's sermon continued.
Due to the policy of my parents in the previous world, I had offered my whole youth to prepare for the exam.
Alas, you could say I wasn't originally gifted in academics to begin with.
I had somehow managed to score enough to enter into a cram school in my hometown until high school, but sadly, I couldn't perform the same miracle and failed in scoring for the prestigious National University of Tokyo that my parents wanted me to enroll in. Well, I did manage to gain admission to a famous private university after another year of gruesome study.
Didn't they say habits cultivated at a young age lasted a lifetime?
Even when I became a college student, the compulsive thoughts to study kept coming to haunt me, and the feeling of guilt never left me whenever I went to hang out. Such was what my mind was molded into.
My breaks during my college years were spent studying to acquire even more qualifications. Due to my condition, I ended up acquiring trivial and unspecified knowledge that generally served no purpose in anything.
"You are 12 years old, Young Master. Considering the time it'll take to travel to the royal capital, I can only teach you for around 2 months at best! If we are blessed by the gods, and you manage to enroll in the Royal Academy, your ranking in the entrance exam and your class assignment will greatly impact your future success, career, promotions, and effectively your entire life! This exam is the turning point of your life, I'm not exaggerating this even a bit! Yet I don't sense any urgency from you at all, Young Master. Are you even listening!?"
Was this a reincarnation gone wrong? This fantasy world was wildly different from my imagination......
I managed to score somewhat better than average in the university through cramming and thanks to that, I managed to find employment in a top-tier food company. I was finally relieved that all my hard work paid off.
Alas, the world never was as rosy as my parents made it out to be— that qualification was all you needed.
The times had changed.
The things in demand were communication skills, problem-solving aptitude, and most importantly of all, interest and curiosity in the things that held not an ounce of relation to one's work.
I raised the white flag there. I mean, it was no different from saying 'Become a different person!'.
While my more capable colleagues were building their skills and achievements, I, who was only capable of doing what I was told and was easy to order around, diligently carried out tasks that anyone could do but avoided because they were too troublesome, and became a convenient yet unremarkable junior in the workplace.
It wasn't like it was worth doing, but the young me was satisfied with that. As the years piled up and I crossed the age of 30, I became the senior and the generation kept making progress so an even harsher reality was waiting for me.
Like the days of being scolded by my superior for being a 'wait-for-instructions kind of guy that wasn't needed'......
My peers mocked me as 'AI-kun who breezes through easy tasks', while my juniors talked behind my back, labeling me 'useless'.
I attended seminars, acquired even more certification, and participated in volunteer work— basically, I did everything in the name of 'self-improvement' that you could find on the internet, all in the hopes of changing something. Alas, fate was a cruel mistress, and the fault apparently lay in my thinking process, as a result, all my effort was for naught.
After becoming a working adult, I drowned myself into reading online novels, especially the kinds with fantasy world reincarnation, to ease my boredom and escape from reality.
"Hmm? I'm awfully calm given the incredible situation......"
Wasn't I taking all this reincarnation stuff too casually? No, I guess my sense of reality was off, my thoughts had yet to catch up with it, huh?
"I'm asking you to have some sense of urgency! This isn't the time to be calm! Young Master, you are barely scoring passing grades!"
Damn, so noisy......
"For generations, the kids born in the Viscount Rovenne House are tasked with the duty to tackle the Royal Academy exam. Alas, none have managed to open this door of opportunity.
This is the dearest wish of Rovenne House for its 700 years of existence! Finally, the glorious future is just within reach!
If I were to bring shame upon the history of its family's blood and tarnish the efforts and tears of the ancestors, I would not be able to face Master! I am fully prepared to apologize even in death as your exclusive tutor!"
What was this chant, a curse......?
So grim......
My cheeks twitched in response as I tried to calm Schord down for the time being.
"I am sorry, Gramps. I was just lost in thought. But fear not, I do have a sense of urgency. Please continue the lesson."
I raised my hand to stop his endless rant and bowed my head.
Though he gave me a doubtful look, he stopped after receiving a response from me.
"......As long as you understand. Let's continue the lecture."
Despite his confusion, Schord resumed his lecture.
I think I know the reason behind his confusion. My response was unlike the usual me.
Blessed with the relatively well-off environment of a viscount family, and being the younger son that I was, I had been pampered and spoiled by those around me. This had, obviously, resulted in my character being that of a spoiled, selfish brat.
Had it been me before gaining my past life's memories, I would have surely responded like this:
"Shut up! All everyone yaps about around me is to study from morning to night. I'm fed up with it!
Hell, what even is knight work? You just need to follow orders, be strong, and be able to make reliable comrades in the tavern after working without stuttering or fumbling.
Continent's history? Sorry, but I don't see it helping me in my life in any way at all!
Mana conversion principle? What use does it even have for me who is in the bottom rung in terms of talent to release mana outside the body when the only thing I can do is body-strengthening magic!?
Do you think I'll become a magic engineer or an Artificer? Mark my words, even if my arms come off in today's practice and my path to being a knight is cut off, it would never ever be possible!
The hell is wrong with the world forcing me to learn all these things knowing very well it is useless but nay, we gotta do it just because it's covered in the entrance exam!
From which angle do you think an idiot who takes these unnecessary lessons can even serve any purpose?
Also......"
The past me would have directly poured out his grievances like that. A typical study-hating brat.
Truly a brat who has no idea of the real world.
Well, whatever. I would first need to sort out my situation.
First, I regained my memories of my previous life just a while ago. It's a pain to keep repeating it like this, so let's just say I 'awakened' at the age of 12 after my reincarnation.
I did have the memories of the past 12 years living as 'Allen' but perhaps my past life's memories had influenced me as there were definitive changes in my personality and thought process.
Also, the past me had no interest in sports and was a studious introvert, so I felt like my past life's character hadn't completely integrated itself. My current personality was more like a hybrid of 'Allen' and the 'past me'. (T/N - It was the same mumbo jumbo of the Japanese language here which is hard to explain, about different pronouns. In short, think of it as the past him was calmer and more collected while the younger one uses a brasher tone)
After being exploited as a corporate slave, I fell ill and died at the age of 36.
This sorted out my identity issue so it was time to look into the country I was in and the environment around me.
I was the third son of the Rovenne Viscount family in the Yulgria Kingdom, the oldest kingdom on this continent which boasted a history of over 1,200 years.
The Rovenne Viscount family was located in the southeast region of the nation governed by Marquis Dragoon, who ruled over a fort city and several villages around it.
As for siblings, my eldest brother did challenge the Royal Academy entrance exam, though, like others, left his name in the 700-year history of the family as another dud. He then proceeded to take the civil servant course in the Aristocratic Academy located in the territory of Marquis Dragoon and graduated with fairly impressive grades. Following him, the second brother took the knight course from the same academy and he, too, graduated with good marks.
The first-born son wasn't automatically entitled to the position of heir in this nation, but it was generally based on birth order, current head nomination, and the King's approval.
Familial relationships were good as their status, although unofficial as it was, was already decided with the eldest son being the head of the family with the next son as the spare in case of unfortunate situations but, for the most part, just an assistant to manage the territory.
The chance to be engulfed into some boorish inheritance strife was pretty much nil.
It was more or less decided that I would leave the house one day but if, by the grace of the gods, I managed to pass the exam of the Royal Academy, this would open the path for me to become a royal knight, enter the Kingdom's knight order, or become a State Bureaucrat, which my family longed for so ardently...... It wasn't certain so I should be more realistic.
I was pretty sure the tremendous authority gained through it would undoubtedly promote the family's influence in both open and private relations.
The pressure on my shoulders was immense.
By the way, both the Royal Academy and the Noble Academy offered not only knight courses but also civil servant and mage courses. My eldest sister, four years my senior, attended the Aristocratic Academy's Mage course (Artificer Major) and graduated with the first-grade score.
As a matter of fact, she would have surely broken through the fate of being another failure in achieving success in the Royal Academy.
Everyone in the family believed so. However, that year, the magic aptitude threshold happened to be set unreasonably high, and she ended up failing.
This was a moat that couldn't be crossed over no matter the hard work. The god of exams didn't have any chill even in another world, huh? What a harsh world.
After graduation, she enrolled in the prestigious Advanced Magic Device Research Institute, something very tough to get into, and has been busy with her research ever since. It had been a while since I last saw her.
Back when she was still at home, she used to dote on me too much, I was like the apple of her eye. But, the current awakened me now could tell that she was a severe bro-con......
She also sent me letters, too frequently to be more precise, that I found annoying and didn't bother replying to. Apparently, she cried to our parents about it.
However, our parents judged that it would hinder both of our studies so instead, they limited the letters to just once a month, with only three sheets at maximum. Also, in case they found her violating the rule, the letters would find their way straight into the fire instead of reaching me. She was still fuming over it.
No, seriously, I was damn scared of the cursed letter which was written with such tiny letters that one would need a magnifying glass to read it.
So, stopping at 3 boys and one girl was our sibling composition. It didn't seem like there would be another addition to this dynamic either.
This might sound like a small family for someone with a Viscount status, but it is what it is. I think it was the influence of how this kingdom was made up. Long story short, there were too many aristocratic families.
The aristocratic system in this nation followed the usual hierarchy of Duke, Marquis, Count, Viscount, and Baron.
Dukes were treated as a sort of insurance for the continuation of the royal lineage. Seldomly, you would see them working as officials directly under the king, but basically, they didn't have any territory. Instead, they were heavily involved in infrastructure projects such as roads and waterways, as well as groups like merchant associations and explorer associations where they had the most say. They wielded considerable authority.
However, the long years of history caused the duke families to increase in number which had begun to hurt the interest of the other nobles like Marquises and below. Naturally, what followed was a bloody political struggle and since then, the number of Duke families had been limited to just three.
Marquises govern over the region which were as big as the Kanto or Chubu region in Japan, and so far, there were only nine Marquis families in this vast (well not that I know which measuring unit they use to grasp its size) Yulgria Kingdom.
These Marquises were the undisputed leading aristocrats who oversaw diverse specializations that were in line with their respective territories including agriculture, forestry, mining, maritime, materials derived from monsters, and processed goods.
Each of the nine Marquis territories had its own Aristocratic Academy, a branch of the Explorer Association, and basically all the essential regional facilities you could think of.
The majority of the noble sons who fumbled their Royal Academy's exam usually enrolled in the academies of their corresponding Marquises, the same type of academy my siblings graduated from.
After them, the Counts were somewhat medium-ish sized aristocrats who governed over territories as large as a prefecture in Japan. Their territories generally consisted of multiple cities and a large number of villages. There were more than 80 Count families in this kingdom.
Many of the Count families ran advanced specialization schools that taught the core skills concerning their respective territories and industries. For example, the territories near the sea taught courses in sailing and fishing.
There were a lot, certainly, but compared to the next rank? They weren't even worth mentioning.
The problem started from the Viscount rank, which included the Rovenne family as well.
Viscounts often possessed one or two central cities and the surrounding areas as their territories. The Rovenne family was one such typical viscount family. Basically, they were somewhat like the mayor of a city.
But, the lower you go down the hierarchy, the larger the number of noble families. Following that logic, the number of Viscount families reached over a thousand.
Finally, coming to the last one, Barons were at the bottom of the barrel and were like heads of villages or frontier settlements, a far cry from the nobilities often imagined by the Japanese. In fact, many of them served as village chiefs without being appointed as one. They maintained a close relationship with their population, and their lifestyles were pretty simple and modest.
Some barons may also visit the royal palace only once in their lifetime either when they were conferred or inherited the court rank.
Their count fluctuated quite frequently due to scandals or promotions, and according to what I heard, no one correctly remembered how many of them there were as well as their names.
Once every decade, the royal court conducted a survey on the number of noble families and according to the last survey, there were 8521 baron families. ......If you give it a bit of thought, that was one heck of a number, wasn't it?
It was like a bargain sale of nobles but on the level of a congested summer beach in Shounan.
Anyway, the massive noble population spurred the low birth rate among the aristocratic families.
Why? One primary factor was that this nation was quite developed. When a society's system was well-established, everyone enjoyed a certain level of happiness, and when society was stable, it tended to lead to a decline in birth rates in any world or country.
It wasn't like the threat of disease didn't exist in this world or that monster attacks weren't equally devastating, but the nobles understood well that rearing more children when they didn't have a post to grant to their kids would result in conflict over inheritance, which was far riskier.
By the way, due to the long history of this kingdom and the abundance of noble families, many commoners also had noble blood. No wait, let me put it correctly, there were just so many commoners with noble lineage that you could try all you wanted, but you wouldn't find a single commoner whose ancestry wasn't related to nobles in one way or another.
This was the current situation of the noble families, and only one person could ever inherit the title from a family.
It has been 1,200 years since the country's founding, and over the years, there has hardly been any major war, and while there was also the extreme threat from monsters once in a while, natural disasters hardly occurred. Naturally, a low death rate meant a high population, and consequently, a lot of people who couldn't inherit a title. So where would they go? Yes, they were dropped to the rank of commoner.
If you trace back the ancestry, it wouldn't be rare to find commoners with royal lineage as well.
In the early days of the country's founding, there weren't as many noble families, and the genetic traits that strongly indicated magical aptitude were more prevalent among the privileged classes, but now, there wasn't as much of a gap in magical aptitude between commoners and the nobility.
So occasionally there would be commoners with exceptional aptitude for magic, and in such cases, upper-class noble families or their vassals, the houses of the retainers, may adopt them as adopted heirs.
But of course, in exchange for supporting their rise to prominence including preparing them for the Royal Academy, they were used to benefit the family who granted them all this.
After years of repeating the following practice, the notion of 'Noble Lineage' has become an empty shell, and the only thing that remained relevant was the economic disparity.
So reincarnated I might be into a noble family as the third son of Viscount, I basically have zero chance of inheriting the title. I was a half-commoner already at this point unless I managed to find my way into the Royal Academy and would be a full-time commoner in case of failure. Who said reincarnation led to a rosy life?!
Yes, I am reincarnated into a noble family in a fantasy world of sword and magic. Yes, I am the unfortunate third son of a Viscount who was destined to become a commoner in this academic-conscious society.
I almost wanted to flip the table. What the hell was with this reincarnation setting?!
Just as I was mentally screaming at my situation, I noticed Schord's gaze staring at me.
"Young Master, you weren't focusing on the lecture just now, were you? This Schord has been your exclusive tutor for 4 years. I can tell that much just from the look in your eyes. Why does Young Master......"
I swiftly raised my hand again to stop him from continuing.
"Relax, Gramps. I am properly listening to your lecture. Look, I am taking notes as well."
After saying that, I showed Schord the notepad as thick as three normal notebooks. In my previous life, no matter how boring the lectures were, I diligently and earnestly took notes for hours every day.
Even after turning into a working adult, recording everything about the meeting had unknowingly become my responsibility......
So I just found myself automatically summarizing the key points about the kingdom's history and geopolitics— which was at the level of middle or high school in my previous world— even while I was lost in thought.
Well, considering my current age was 12 years old, maybe he broke down the stuff into easier bits for me to understand. Initially, Schord looked at my notes with suspicion, but soon he turned towards me with a deeply moved expression.
The notes succinctly and clearly summarized the lecture's key points.
"What do you think, Gramps? Don't hesitate to point out any mistakes in the notes."
With my first ever smug expression since my awakening, I spoke to Schord, who looked deeply moved all this time.
"......At last, at long last, my sincerity finally reached you, young master!"
He spoke with a choking voice. However, realizing that praising me too much might make me complacent, Schord reined in his emotions.
After all, I had endured four years of his relentless lecturing. It wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking just by looking into his eyes.
"Yes, it's amazing, but diligence is a continuous effort. Let's keep this up without slowing down, work hard as if death is almost at your door for the next three and a half months! I, Schord, will definitely, absolutely lead you to success, young master!"
Oh man, so intense...... And can you not speak about death to a nobleman's son?
Though I understand where he was coming from, it would have been impossible for the previous 'Allen' to neatly summarize the main point of the Gramps's tedious lecture. I mean, it would have been a miracle if he could listen to it for one hour already.
After the sudden awakening, I could now tell exactly that it wasn't a lack of crisis awareness, mental maturity, or anything of that sort that hindered 'Allen'. It was just his inherent temperament that made it impossible for him to take notes about the lecture in which he didn't hold any interest.
This called for the common template in the early stages of reincarnation in another world: verification of one's own ability affected by reincarnation.
Editor - So what do you guys think of the 1st chapter? Quite the info dump, I must say. Also the mc's rant about his previous life was way too real 😅
T/N - I can’t imagine myself going through the same. Also, the Majority of info dump is only in this chapter.