When the tedious explanation finally ended, the scribe—no, my general education teacher—looked at me and asked, “Any questions?”

He sounded almost disappointed, and his expression was faintly condescending. It brought home just how awkward my position was.

Of course I had a question.

“As you said, nearly every noble on the continent gains an inherited ability through awakening. And the ducal house of Gresia inherited the ability of Sir Carlos, the hero.”

“That’s right.” The scribe nodded, looking a little pleased.

“But how has the same ability been passed down for five hundred years? Even allowing thirty years per generation, that’s already thirty generations and at least thirty marriages. The odds of manifesting the same ability as Sir Carlos would have fallen to one in tens of thousands.”

Even if both parents were nobles, the chance of inheriting one particular parent’s ability each time was only one in two. There might have been marriages between the same families along the way, but after thirty successive marriages, the odds would still shrink to one in hundreds or thousands.

“And siblings can manifest abilities at the same time, while some might inherit only the other side’s ability—their mother’s. So how did they keep passing down the same one?”

Had they kept marrying close relatives? None of them seemed that crazy.

The scribe’s eyes widened. His condescending look vanished, replaced by an awkward one.

“Hmm. I don’t think it’s time for you to learn about that yet. You’ll probably hear about it separately after your awakening.”

He made it sound as though there were some secret, but that expression told me he had no idea!

Was Mendel’s law of inheritance still too much for the people of this world? With my awakening day so close, though, this was an important question for me.

Until a thousand years ago, this world hadn’t been very different from medieval Europe on Earth, where I’d lived before. There had been no magic that could set the world ablaze, no knights who could cleave stone and shatter castle walls. Priests couldn’t use divine arts, and alchemists were nothing but swindlers.

Then the Great Cataclysm came a thousand years ago, and this world became utterly unlike the Earth I remembered.

Black gates appeared across the continent, and monsters crossed over from a world called the Demon Realm. Ordinary animals turned into monsters, and a being known as the Demon King appeared to lead them.

Just as the world hurtled toward destruction, humans with extraordinary powers appeared too. They were called heroes—people who split the sky with swords and set the seas ablaze with magical fire. They saved humanity from extinction, drove out the Demon King, and sealed the gates to the Demon Realm.

Humanity survived thanks to them, but the world was never the same.

The creatures that came to be called monsters remained scattered across the continent. The heroes’ abilities passed to their children, creating a new ruling class: the people now called nobles.

The day those nobles gained their ancestors’ abilities was called their awakening day—their sixth birthday.

Mine was two days away.

After the lesson, I followed Flora out into the corridor. I could get around perfectly well on my own, but no one would let a duke’s son walk about unaccompanied, even an illegitimate one. Fortunately, I’d spent plenty of time winning over the maids, so having one with me wasn’t much trouble. Sometimes it even helped.

Like now.

“Hey, mongrel.”

We had run into a group in the corridor: two boys walking with their attendants. The younger one picked a fight the moment he saw me. He pointed at me with an arrogant look on his face, though he was about a head taller than I was.

The older boy glanced at me, then walked past without a change of expression. He ignored me while the younger one stayed behind to provoke me. They didn’t seem to think of me as a brother, but they were my brothers.

Simon de Gresia and Manuel de Gresia: the duke’s two sons by his first wife. Unlike me, his illegitimate son, they were rightful heirs of the ducal house of Gresia.

The eight-year-old sneered at me. “Your awakening’s in a few days, right? But can you even awaken?”

He mocked me whenever we met, but this time his words stung. The little brat had a point. Both of them had passed their awakening days, and both had awakened properly.

Manuel kept taunting me, sparks dancing between his fingers.

Unlike Simon, the eldest, who was watching us from farther down the corridor, Manuel had awakened an ability from his mother’s family, the first duchess’s: a mage-type ability. That put him a step behind in the succession to the ducal house, though it might make it easier for him to gain support from her side of the family.

My mother, on the other hand, was a commoner with no ability. Her merchant family was reasonably prosperous, but to nobles, that meant nothing without an ability.

From everything I’d researched in the library, the gene responsible for inherited abilities behaved much like a recessive gene—one that was difficult to express. With a commoner for a mother, my chance of awakening was only one in four.

‘So does the ability to go back in time when I die not count as an awakening?’

Or perhaps remembering my previous life was my awakening. Hmm. Come to think of it, I had more than I’d realized. My thanks once again to whichever god was responsible.

‘Well, I didn’t awaken my resurrection ability on my awakening day...’

In fact, it would be a serious problem if the ability I already had was my inherited one. Then I’d have no other ability to gain on awakening day. After that day passed, I might be pushed down to commoner status and spend my life as a scribe or administrator in some corner of the territory, if I was lucky.

‘Wait...’

I stopped with my mouth hanging open as the thought sank in.

“Maybe failing to awaken wouldn’t be so bad?”

“What?”

The words had slipped out, leaving little Manuel looking baffled.

“Hmm. It might be much better for staying alive...”

Life had been fairly good since the duke placed me under his protection. Before that, though, I’d died more times than I could count. Without my ability to come back, I would have been a dead baby long ago.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Manuel shouted right in front of me, but I barely heard him. I was too busy weighing what would happen if I awakened against what would happen if I didn’t.

‘Maybe I’ve been looking at this from only one angle.’

Facing death again and again had made me desperate for the power to avoid it. Awakening was the only way I could gain power in this world, so I’d let that narrow my thinking. But now that I looked at it differently, perhaps not awakening would be better.

The duke’s protection would only last until my awakening day anyway. Once it passed, the threat of death would surely return.

But if I failed to awaken, I might escape that danger altogether. I might be able to live out my life as a quiet civil official.

“Thanks, brother!”

I seized the little brat’s hand.

ZAP!

A sharp jolt of static ran through my hand. His ability was still weak and undeveloped, but my whole hand tingled. Even that little bit of pain made me happy.

“What are you doing all of a sudden?”

Manuel flared up, but he only expressed his anger in words. He and Simon were both properly educated sons of a duke, and the household staff, including Flora, were watching us in the corridor. It wasn’t easy for a duke’s son to resort to physical violence in front of them.

I waved to Manuel and to Simon, who was still watching from a distance, then headed the other way. Manuel’s face was mottled with anger, while Simon watched me with a frown. But I had no intention of squabbling with ten- and eight-year-old kids.

“To brush off the second young master’s words like that—you really are remarkable, young master,” Flora said from behind me, her admiration coming out of nowhere.

I was simply glad I had one less reason to worry about awakening.

Awakening day came quickly.

That morning, after I had dressed in splendid clothes, Mother hugged me tightly as I was about to leave the room.

“It’s all right if you don’t awaken. You don’t need to worry about a thing. You’re my dear, beloved son.”

The warmth in her voice filled my chest.

Having a child’s body seemed to have softened my heart whether I liked it or not. Besides, unlike the duke, Mother loved me. Even with my memories of a previous life, she was still my mother.

“Yes. I love you.”

At those words, which I’d said to her for the first time, her arms went rigid around me. Then they tightened until I couldn’t breathe and my face turned blue.

This was dangerous. I’d almost died.

A little later, as I walked down the corridor with Mother and the maids, I returned to the question I’d been turning over for days. If I failed to awaken, I was worried about Mother.

A child with no inherited ability could never become a noble. And Mother might be cast out of the ducal house for having borne a child it had no use for.

‘Well, my mother’s family isn’t poor. If it comes to that, I can support her myself.’

It would mean separating from Father, but leaving this mansion, where we were always on thin ice, might be better for Mother too.

‘It’s not as though I know nothing about economics and commerce.’

I had experience from my previous life. Working for my mother’s merchant family didn’t seem like a bad option.

In any case, nothing had been decided yet. I could worry about it once the awakening ceremony gave me an answer. I gathered my thoughts and followed Mother.

Our quick steps brought us to the family tomb in the mansion’s rear garden. It was an underground stone chamber containing the sarcophagi of the direct line, from the first duke—a king’s younger brother—down to my grandfather.

Only the duke could enter the innermost reaches of the tomb. The mansion staff had all sorts of rumors about that secret part of the ducal house. But the place Alex had come to was the outermost chamber, where ceremonies were held. Stone walls hung with banners and decorations hid the sarcophagi from view. Apart from those hangings, the chamber held only a huge pattern drawn on the floor.

People were already waiting inside. On one side stood the two brothers who had picked a fight with me a few days earlier, along with the duchess.

Duchess Brivia de Gresia. She was the eldest daughter of the still-powerful Marquis of Lanzarote, the duke’s first wife and his official consort.

She gazed ahead with her usual composed expression. Beautiful and remarkably young-looking, she carried herself with an elegance that marked her as a highborn noble at a glance.

‘She and the duke really do suit each other...’

With his impassive face, he looked like her perfect match.

‘But was she really the one who killed me?’

Of all the possible culprits, she had the position and power to do it. She could easily have stopped the duke from pursuing whoever was responsible and made the maids who had tried to kill me disappear without a trace.

‘But I have no proof...’

Judging by the way the duke behaved, proof might not matter much anyway. It was also possible that nobles who supported her had acted on their own. All she would have had to do was turn a blind eye.

My death would have been no more than that to her.