Chapter 2: I'll Shower You with My Filthy, Lowborn Seed
The carriage rocked gently as someone shook my body with rough urgency.
"...sir."
What the hell? I was dead, wasn't I?
'Shit. Don't tell me that crazy bastard actually brought me back just to get his revenge?'
What a fucking lunatic.
No matter how pissed off you are, dragging a dead man's soul back into the world of the living? That's some next-level insanity.
I kept my eyes tightly shut, refusing to move an inch. But whoever was trying to wake me clearly couldn't stand the sight of me playing dead any longer.
Suddenly, a hand slipped into my side and started tickling me without mercy.
"Ah—fuck... you got my weakness."
"Ugh... uwaaah! W-what the hell?!"
"Master Kael!"
Kael? My eyes snapped open.
A burly man was grinning at me like an idiot. For a split second I thought, I'm completely fucked. Is this guy about to plow my ass?
But the moment I took in my surroundings, I immediately discarded that disgusting thought.
I was inside a carriage.
"Master Kael. We'll be staying at the inn here tonight. We should arrive in Castellia sometime tomorrow afternoon."
I stared at him blankly for a moment, then simply nodded. "Got it." I stepped down from the carriage.
My eyes drifted to the side of the coach. A crest shaped like a feather adorned its paneling.
'The Cleanberry family. So... Kael Cleanberry, huh.'
I'd heard that name before. Who was it again...?
'Ah...'
It hit me.
He was supposed to be my new teaching assistant at the academy.
Wait. Did that mean I was now Kael?
I looked down at my hands. The wrinkled, aged skin was gone. In its place was smooth, firm, pale flesh.
I touched my face—forehead to chin, paying special attention to the area around my mouth.
'They're gone. The scars I got on the battlefield in my youth... I can't feel them at all.'
So it was real. I had come back to life.
And in someone else's body, no less.
"Master Kael? Is something the matter? Why aren't you going inside?"
I turned my head. It was the same muscular coachman who'd woken me earlier.
"Perfect timing. Tell me—what's my full name again? Including the family name."
The coachman gave me a strange look but answered anyway.
"It's Kael Cleanberry, my lord."
"And where exactly was I headed?"
"Weren't you on your way to take up your post as an assistant instructor at the academy?"
So that's how it was.
My mind spun with complicated thoughts.
I'd ripped my soul from my body thinking about suicide, only to hijack someone else's flesh and become its new owner...
As a mage, my curiosity surged like wildfire.
"Master Kael? Are you feeling alright? Your speech seems a bit... off. You're not ill, are you...?"
"Ah, no. Not at all. I'm just trying to sound a bit more mature. Wouldn't want the students looking down on me, you know."
"Ah, I see. I've heard it's quite tough. Most of the students are nobles, after all. And just two days ago, that commoner professor was executed, wasn't he? All because those rotten little shits had it out for him."
Huh? Isn't that... me he's talking about?
"How do you know about that?"
"Everyone who matters already knows. That the professor was framed and killed because the students had a grudge against him."
Well, damn. I'd been stuck inside the academy and hadn't realized how fast rumors spread.
That was the moment I learned just how quickly gossip could travel.
Still, this guy seemed awfully close to the original Kael. He was making some pretty dangerous statements without hesitation.
"So your name was..."
"Hans, my lord. Don't tell me you've forgotten me? I've been with you since you were a baby...! You really aren't sick, are you?"
I see. Since childhood, then.
After listening to him ramble on, I pieced together that Kael had lost his parents early and had been raised by the maids, the butler, and this coachman.
At only twenty-two years old, he was already the head of the household. A baron, with two younger siblings beneath him.
I calmed the tearful man and said, "I'm fine, Hans. I was just trying to speak more properly."
"Ah! I see. And here I was blathering on without realizing. Well then, sleep well, Master Kael...!"
He gave me a deep bow and disappeared toward one side of the village.
When I looked up, a shabby-looking inn came into view.
'Roughly what I expected. A baron's family, forced to stay in a dump like this even for one night...'
Whatever. It didn't matter.
Money could always be earned.
Now that Jeren Diya Aslan had taken over this body, this family was destined to rise to greatness.
— Ugh, is the professor really not getting replaced?
— For real. The thought of learning from a damn commoner makes me sick.
— But what can we do? They say he's got the most experience from the actual battlefield.
— Practical magic my ass... Just blast one strong spell and it's over.
"......"
Aslan remained silent as he listened to the students' vicious gossip.
It wasn't because they were nobles and he had once been a commoner.
He simply recognized one simple truth.
'If those idiots went to the battlefield in that state, ninety percent of them would die. Not that it's any of my business.'
They weren't his kids, after all...
If losing an arm or a leg woke them up, it would actually be a blessing.
That's just how the battlefield was.
The next morning.
I opened my eyes with a faint suspicion that it might all have been a dream, but I was still inside the same young body.
Yesterday everything had felt somewhat dreamlike, but now my soul seemed to have fully rooted itself in this flesh. Every sensation was as vivid as it had been right before my death.
'Since things have turned out this way, I might as well live this new life to the fullest.'
Time to start planning, then.
In his previous life, Jeren Diya Aslan's goal had been to become a grand archmage.
To surpass even the dragons' magic—something said to be unreachable by humans—and reach the realm of 'the Ultimate', a level only demi-gods could attain.
But that Aslan had died.
A new life required a new goal.
'Still... no matter how I think about it, it pisses me off.'
The moment I remembered being screwed over by a bunch of snot-nosed brats, rage surged up from the depths of my soul.
'Those fucking bastards. And that damn emperor.'
Not to mention the academy's headmaster.
No matter how much I thought about it, the only one who truly benefited from my death was that headmaster bastard.
Which meant he must have had a hand in the whole thing.
Grind.
You all looked down on me because I was a commoner, didn't you?
Well, I'm Aslan. The crazy mage who returns a slap across the face with a Fire Hand to the jaw.
So I set my new goal: revenge.
And beyond that, I would completely overhaul this rotten empire.
'I'll create a world where there's no distinction between commoners and nobles.'
The moment I made that decision, the anger finally subsided, replaced by deep satisfaction.
I cooled my head, closed my eyes once, then opened them again.
Time to take the first step toward that goal.
First, I decided to learn everything I could about the owner of this body—Kael Cleanberry.
"So you want me to tell you everything I know about the Cleanberry family?"
"That's right."
To get revenge, I first needed to understand who I was now and what kind of background I had.
Only then could I figure out what tools were available to me and how best to use them.
A normal professor would have known a fair amount about the various noble houses, but I had been a man obsessed with nothing but magic. I knew absolutely jack shit about any of it.
I'd rather memorize boring statistics about how slime viscosity affected corrosion rates than waste brain space on that garbage-tier basic knowledge.
Hans looked slightly worried, but after I gave him a plausible excuse, he accepted it.
"It was just too boring sitting in the carriage doing nothing."
"Haha. You are at that age where your body gets restless, after all."
And so the explanation began.
The Cleanberry family ruled a small territory located roughly between the capital of the Kshanberg Empire and its border.
Kael's grandfather, the first head of the house, had been a commoner. He earned his barony through great military achievements during the war.
The problem was...
"There was nothing of real value in the land. If you dug, you only got rocks. And it wasn't along any major trade routes either."
That was crossing the line, wasn't it?
I listened with my mouth hanging open in disbelief.
He had safely escorted the isolated Third Prince back to the empire, and all he got was a barony? On land that produced absolutely nothing?
It was a fresh reminder of just how much the nobles were utter pieces of shit.
They must have gone to the emperor and insisted it was absolutely unacceptable.
And then came the line that really pissed me off.
"His current Majesty was too harsh. If not for the previous head of the family, he wouldn't even be alive right now..."
Whoa... So that Third Prince had grown up to be this emperor?
Like father, like son. The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree.
For the record, the current emperor had only given me—a man who had achieved countless merits in the war—a cushy government job as a professor.
I still clearly remembered the audience where I'd stood before him with sky-high expectations.
— In recognition of your service, I grant you an honorable position that will let your name shine.
Fuck that. If he'd just given me a barony instead of that so-called honor, I could've lived without working, eaten well, and spent my days doing all the research I wanted.
'The emperor and those noble bastards... I'm really going to have to sort them out properly.'
Anyway, my conversation with Hans continued, and by the time we reached the capital, I had come to a conclusion about who Kael Cleanberry was.
A commoner wearing a noble's skin.
He had almost nothing to his name.
His family's short history as nobles was part of it... but the bigger issue was that his father, mother, and even the previous head and his wife had all been commoners.
'Still, it's a lot better than who I used to be.'
Even if it was only in name, being a noble was something.
That fact alone would make people treat me quite differently.
That's just how nobles were.
"Then I'll take my leave here, Master Kael..."
Hans waved a handkerchief, his eyes glistening with tears.
He looked like a grizzly bear but had the heart of a poet.
"Yeah. Get home safely. See you next time."
"Yes, sir!"
Hans dropped me off at the academy's main gate and left.
I turned around.
A massive gate guarded by four soldiers came into view. Beyond it stretched a huge garden, and further back were numerous large and small buildings.
Since it wasn't peak hours yet, only a few people were coming and going. But in another two hours, the place would be packed with talented young people.
Even though I'd only be here for three days, just being back filled me with a sense of relief.
Fifteen years spent in the back alleys with no idea where I'd been born.
Thirty years conscripted for no reason and spent on the battlefield.
After that, I'd lived at the academy the entire time.
The only place that could even remotely be called home in my heart was probably this one.
But that peace lasted only a moment.
The thought of having to look at those aristocratic bastards' faces made my blood boil all over again.
'You little shits... You'd better believe you're completely fucked.'
I'd spent thirty years on the battlefield.
I might not have been good at politics and got screwed because of it, but I knew one thing for sure.
If someone hits you, you pay them back double.
And you crush them so thoroughly they never even think about trying anything again.
As I walked along pondering exactly how I would get my revenge, my eyes suddenly landed on a statue standing in one corner of the garden.
The moment I saw it, I made my decision.
I'd steal the men and claim the women.
'I'll pump you full of my filthy, lowborn seed.'
From now on, there would be no such thing as noble blood left in this land.