I Just Wanted Modest Power
An annual salary of thirty million won.
A monthly take-home of 2,251,650 won.
After rent, maintenance fees, transportation, phone bills, and every other miscellaneous expense, even scraping together a million won in savings each month was a struggle.
A future that stayed stifling no matter how hard you ground your life into the work.
So I made a decision.
I'll just pretend I'm already dead until I hit thirty-five.
And so I worked my main job, then a side hustle, then another side hustle on top of that. Two jobs, three jobs—I stacked them and saved every scrap I could.
Not to stay a cog in some company's machine, but to live my own life. To have even a little say in the choices that shaped my existence.
Then one day, a junior from work texted me about grabbing a drink.
His parents owned several apartments in Gangnam—the kid came from money—but separate from that, he was a decent junior: diligent, and always happy to pick up the tab.
But then this bastard said:
"Hyung, honestly, I just don't get it. If you want to make money, invest a little, you know? Or if you don't have money, save it up. Honestly, I borrowed a hundred million from my parents for seed capital, right? Money I had to pay back. But people still go on about how I'm some rich kid who had it easy…"
This little shit?
"No, seriously, I don't get it. You work, so why don't you have money? You're just blowing it all, aren't you? High risk, high return. If you want to make real money, you've got to take risks. Why don't you have money? Is it that you don't have any, or that you're just spending it all?"
"Y-you little…!"
"H-hyung! Hyung, what's wrong with you?!"
The rage only lasted a moment before I blacked out.
And then—now.
"I… died like that?"
At fifteen years old, Khtun of House Falaon remembered his past life.
A bright, sunny afternoon.
I stood before the mirror, quietly studying my reflection.
Black hair, pale skin, a face decent enough to look at. It was the same face I'd grown sick of seeing until yesterday, and the room reflected behind me held nothing particularly special either.
In other words, there was no reason for any of this to feel unfamiliar.
So why did it?
Probably because of the memories from just a moment ago. The memories of Kim Kangmin—a frail, discharged Korean man of thirty-three who worked himself to death, only to meet his end when some bourgeois capitalist junior's careless remarks made his blood boil… memories that couldn't be heard without tears.
So here's the question.
What exactly were these memories?
Fortunately, the answer lay within thirty-three-year-old Kim Kangmin's own recollections.
It's a past life.
Among the holy trinity of web novel tropes—regression, possession, and reincarnation—this fell under the third: reincarnation.
Does this even make sense?
…Not that the question didn't cross my mind, but that's just how the world works. There aren't many things that can be explained neatly and cleanly.
Thirty-three-year-old Kim Kangmin knew this well. So he'd learned how to accept things. In a world full of unreasonable and unbelievable situations, fretting and feeling wronged never solved anything—so you just accepted it.
And now that I'd accepted my past life…
I sank into depression all over again.
Why? Because I'd reincarnated into a medieval fantasy world? Or because of Kim Kangmin's pitiful, tear-jerking demise?
Neither.
I'm… a bastard.
That's right. This body was a bastard's.
The product of a fling my father, Baron Sahad Falaon, had started on the battlefield while supposedly out there raising the family's fortunes—raising something else entirely instead.
My mother had left me at House Falaon about a year ago, and my father learned of my existence for the first time in fourteen years.
Fortunately, even from my past life's perspective, Father was a good man.
He accepted my existence—awkward as it must have been—and even felt guilty about it.
That would have been fine, except there was a problem.
I had an older brother.
His name was Vilheim. Age twenty. Born to Father and his lawful wife, he was the legitimate heir of House Falaon. I still remembered our first meeting vividly.
—I-I'm Khtun.
—…Vilheim.
That frigid look in his eyes as he stared at me.
Father said he was just naturally taciturn, but as far as I was concerned, Vilheim was a psychopathic murderer with a complete absence of human feeling.
I was certain of this because I'd seen it with my own eyes.
I'd woken early one morning and gone for a walk, when someone entered the castle. Curious, I snuck a glance—and what do you know?
It was Vilheim.
I had no idea where he'd been at that hour, but his body was soaked in blood. As if he'd just finished dunking someone in it.
A complete madman—and the bigger problem was that this madman had his eyes on me.
Whenever I felt a gaze and turned around, Vilheim would always be watching me from a distance.
Because I was a bastard? Or because he'd realized I'd seen what happened that night?
I didn't know which, but one thing was clear: Vilheim was watching me, waiting for his chance.
So I had to leave.
But empty-handed?
No way.
In a world where farmers moonlighted as bandits and slave traders actually existed, a fifteen-year-old Khtun was nothing more than easy prey. This wasn't Korea, with its ten-thousand-year Confucian history of refining benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Especially if I ran into a monster—I'd just become a hearty meal.
Which meant I needed power…
And by some stroke of incredible luck, there was a way.
What was it?
The Blood Awakening Ceremony.
A ritual noble bloodlines underwent on their fifteenth birthday, using a special chalice to awaken the talents latent in their blood.
And that was today…
Knock knock.
"Young master, it's time."
"Right, I'm coming."
At the words of my personal attendant, John, I left the room.
Today, I gain power.
The power to run away.
I didn't need great power. Because if I gained too much, that lunatic Vilheim would definitely slit my throat.
So what I needed was modest power—useful enough, but not enough to provoke Vilheim!
Well, I was a bastard, so I probably wouldn't get anything impressive anyway.
With that thought, I made my way to the Blood Awakening Ceremony grounds.
The training grounds of Falaon Castle.
"Please enter."
As I approached, the soldier guarding the entrance opened the door. Through the open doorway, several faces waited for me in the training grounds.
Father at the center. To his right, Lady Hella—Father's lawful wife and Vilheim's birth mother. And the man standing to Father's left…
Vilheim.
Vilheim was watching me with a face so cold you could stab him and not draw a single drop of blood.
I deliberately averted my eyes from that frigid gaze and stepped before Father.
"You've come."
"Yes."
"Today's Blood Awakening Ceremony will be attended only by our family and Sir Valt. Keep that in mind, and stand before me."
He spoke so stiffly now, but he wasn't like this when it was just the two of us.
Regardless, I stood before him as ordered.
That was when Father called for Sir Valt the knight.
"Sir Valt, bring the chalice."
"Yes, my lord."
Incidentally, Sir Valt was a war comrade Father had met in the same war where he'd met my mother. According to Father, he was far too skilled to be stuck in a rural fief like this—but that had nothing to do with me. I was leaving the moment today's ceremony was over, after all.
In any case, Sir Valt brought the Blood Awakening chalice.
"We begin."
Father stood before me with a solemn expression and placed his hand upon my head.
"Who seeks to receive the chalice?"
"Khtun."
"Speak your roots."
"I am a descendant of Ark the Dragonslayer, one of the founding heroes of the Heorn Kingdom, who slew a dragon."
"Speak your house."
"Falaon, the Sword of Heorn."
The ceremony itself was simple. Partly because I was a bastard, and partly because our territory wasn't particularly wealthy.
After the brief proceedings concluded, Father received the chalice from Sir Valt.
"Prove your blood."
"Yes."
Now all I had to do was let a single drop of blood fall into the chalice. Then the mysterious magic within would awaken the talent sleeping in my blood—or so they said. I didn't really understand the complicated parts.
I snuck a glance at Vilheim, then pricked my finger with a needle.
Plip!
A drop of blood fell onto the crude, brass-like chalice. The droplet spread along the shallow grooves carved into the interior, and so the patterns within the chalice began to slowly reveal themselves.
I swallowed hard.
Please. Please.
The talents latent in Falaon blood were two: the Giant Sword and Divine Power. You could awaken both, but that was exceedingly rare.
I wasn't even hoping for both. Just one.
And preferably Divine Power.
The color of the light indicated the type of talent; its brightness indicated its magnitude. Giant Sword was green, Divine Power was brown.
I prayed the Blood Awakening chalice would shine brown.
And then—
Tss, zzz—
The blood-soaked chalice seemed to ripple, and light began to gather in a circle at its center.
But the color was strange.
Purple?
What kind of talent was purple?
And then—
Tss, tsszzz!
W-what?
Like a snowball rolling down a slope and swelling in an instant, the light within the chalice ballooned outward.
And right after—
Fwaaat—!
A blinding light filled the entire training grounds!
I knew instinctively.
Something had gone very wrong.
Broad daylight.
The townsfolk going about their peaceful daily lives suddenly looked up at the sky.
"What in the world…?"
"What's with that light?"
A purple radiance erupting from Falaon Castle. Its color pierced the bright afternoon sun and blanketed the heavens.
Faced with that incomprehensible sight, the townsfolk stood dumbstruck, staring. The light undulated as if it possessed a will of its own.
How long did they remain entranced by that strange magical power that seemed ready to suck them in if they stared too long?
Fwaaat—!
The light covering the sky vanished in an instant.
"Hah…"
"What did I just see?"
As the townsfolk blinked in confusion, in the middle of the training grounds, Baron Falaon stared at Khtun with a rigid expression.
"What on earth…"
The baron was just as astonished. And for good reason—he'd never seen light like this, never even heard of it.
This was on the level of the great nobles—those called nobles among nobles… no, beyond even that! And purple, of all colors?
The baron stared blankly at his son Khtun. His son of barely a year, still awkward between them. His gentle-hearted boy, so frail and timid he rarely even left his room.
If even he was this shocked, how much more must the boy himself be—
"I'm fucked."
"……?"
The baron tilted his head.
What? Did I hear that right?
The baron narrowed his eyes, studying his son. Then, half-doubting, he spoke.
"My son."
"Yes?"
"What… did you just say?"
At the baron's question, Khtun tilted his head.
"Pardon? About what?"
"Just now—didn't you say something was fucked?"
"Pardon? Me? I didn't say anything."
Watching Khtun tilt his head with perfect innocence, the baron felt profound confusion.
Meanwhile, Khtun was equally confused.
What the hell do I do now?
He snuck a glance sideways—Vilheim was staring straight at him.
With fierce, blazing eyes.