Transmigrated to the Middle Ages

A moment earlier, in another time and space.

Night had fallen over a dim alley in a small coastal city of a great eastern nation.

A thug in a suit was fleeing for his life. The knife wound on his cheek kept spurting blood in rhythm with his strides, crimson blood soaking through his collar and running down his right arm onto the fire axe smeared with scraps of flesh and bone.

Excessive blood loss had left the suited thug, not yet thirty, pale and haggard. The gash in his cheek had split outward, exposing bone and teeth in a horrifying sight.

After running some distance, he leaned against the mottled alley wall and panted harshly. He looked back at the figures close on his heels, only to turn around and find figures blocking the path ahead as well.

There was no escape. The suited thug hardened his heart, raised his axe, turned around, and charged at the pursuing shadows.

He had barely run three or four steps when a thunderous bang erupted behind him.

A lead slug from a homemade shotgun punched through his left shoulder. The tremendous impact flung him down, spinning him half a turn before he crashed onto the ground.

The agonizing pain that followed sent him into a brief shock.

After a while, the sound of leather shoes pacing across the ground grew clearer. The figure holding the homemade gun came to his side, confirmed that he had fainted, then slowly crouched and used the barrel to stir the suited thug's gunshot wound.

In a gloomy voice, he said, "Roger, you run your contraband, I sell my drugs. We keep out of each other's way, but you just had to block my money road. I'll send you on your way right now."

As he spoke, he aimed the cold, rough muzzle at the suited thug's temple.

The instant the muzzle pressed against his head, the suited thug's right hand tightened silently around the axe handle.

At the very instant before the trigger was pulled, the fire axe in his right hand shot upward and hacked toward the gunman's head.

Bang!

Bang.

The heavy crash of a kicked door jolted Roger awake from his nightmare. Though he had not opened his eyes, he could sense a tall man entering the bedroom and approaching the bed.

"My lord, you finally came." A middle-aged woman with tears streaking her face rose from beside Roger's sickbed, forcing a faint smile onto her haggard face.

The middle-aged man who had kicked open the door wore a stiff leather coat over chainmail, with a dagger and knight's sword at his waist. Beneath his long, scarred face hung a thick beard.

He paced to the bedside, his face full of displeasure. "The priest said this bastard won't die?"

The middle-aged woman stepped forward half a pace. She had already wiped away her tears, and joy filled her face. "Thank God, our son has come back to life. Though he often babbles nonsense in his sleep, he has come back to life at last."

In stark contrast to the woman's reaction, not a trace of joy showed on the man's face. "The Campbell Lineage has produced meritorious nobles for generations, yet it produced an evil ghost that even God refuses to take in."

The middle-aged woman replied with resentment in her voice, "My lord, Roger is your son. No matter what, he carries the blood of the Campbell Lineage."

The middle-aged man snorted coldly, then turned and walked to the small bedroom window. He looked at the island across the distant bay. "This afternoon, I will lead the estate soldiers to assemble at Brodick. Tomorrow, we will sail from the island and go to Galloway to fight the English."

"Once I return from this campaign, I will send this scourge onto his uncle's sea ship and let those coarse sailors teach him how to be a decent man."

"I refuse." The middle-aged woman took two large strides to the man's back.

"Roger is still the child of a noble house. How can he keep company with those lowly sailors?"

"Besides, the sea is full of towering winds and perilous waves, with bandits running rampant. How could our son endure such hardship?" The woman's voice was not loud, but her attitude was utterly resolute.

"It is not your place to agree or disagree." The man turned and barked at her.

"Do not forget, this bastard is merely the second son. Since he refuses to serve God, then let him be friends with the Sea Monster. In any case, this bastard cannot be allowed to remain on the island and wreak havoc."

With that, the man shot Roger, whose face was pale on the bed, a hateful glance before turning away.

At the bedroom door, the man gripped his sword hilt and stopped. He ordered the old steward standing nearby, "Confine this bastard for a month. If he steps even half a pace out of the bedroom, I'll chop off both your legs."

"My lord, you cannot do this..." The middle-aged woman pleaded as she chased after him, and the wooden bedroom door slammed shut behind them.

At last, peace and quiet returned to his ears. Roger slowly forced open his eyelids. A thick crust of sleep in his eyes made even that simple movement extraordinarily difficult. Only after a long while did a sliver of light finally pierce the endless darkness.

Counting the three days he had spent deeply unconscious, this was Roger's sixth day in this world.

What had happened to him was too bizarre, beyond the limits of his imagination, yet he had accepted reality within only a few short days.

For a suited thug who had already died once, extreme adaptability was merely the most basic survival skill in that cruel world.

The sky was clear and bright. The gentle light of the rising sun shone through the small stone-framed window into the dim bedroom, fine motes of dust floating through the rays.

Roger narrowed his eyes and adjusted for a moment, then endured wave after wave of pain as he slowly turned his head and surveyed the entire bedroom.

The room, barely twenty square meters, had only a window opening two feet wide. Were it not for the sunlight diffusing through that opening, Roger would have thought he had fallen into a pitch-black mine pit.

The gray-black, moldy stones covering the surrounding walls made the room seem even more murky and gloomy. A half-burned yellow candle sat in the iron candlestick fixed to the wall on the left side of the bed.

A black, hollow fireplace was set into the stone wall directly opposite the bed. The bedroom's wooden door stood in the wall facing the bed, its oak frame low and heavy.

The room contained only two pieces of furniture: the hard wooden plank bed beneath Roger, spread with rushes, and a low square table beside the fireplace, cluttered with earthenware jars, wine cups, plates, and wooden spoons. Two fat old rats were searching the plates for a living.

If the armchair by the wooden bed, with half one leg broken off, counted as furniture, then there were three pieces in the room.

This family was not poor. In fact, Roger's "father," Sir Colin Campbell, a banner knight, was the wealthiest noble on Allen Island apart from his elder brother, Baron John Campbell.

Rumor had it that the founder of the Campbell Lineage had been the illegitimate son of Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland.

Two hundred years ago, the family had moved from Ireland to Scotland. They had marital ties, close and distant, with House of Somerled, the dukes of the Western Isles, as well as several native Scottish families. They even shared an extremely faint maternal bloodline with the Dunkeld Dynasty.

Thus, the Campbell Lineage had long inherited a small territory at the southern tip of the Argyll Peninsula.

More than forty years ago, King Haakon IV of Norway invaded Scotland. Roger's great-grandfather, John I, emptied his family fortune to organize a small force and join Scotland's army defending the realm. The two armies fought a decisive battle at Largs on the banks of the River Clyde.

In the end, the Scottish army crushed the Norwegian invaders. For his outstanding military merits, Roger's great-grandfather was elevated to baron by Alexander III, then King of Scotland, and granted Allen Island.

Allen Island, reclaimed from the Norwegians, also became a fief nominally held by the royal retainers of successive Scottish kings, free from the control of the Earl of Argyll.

From Roger's great-grandfather to his grandfather and father, three generations had governed the island and gradually amassed a substantial family fortune. His grandfather, John II, had been especially skilled at trade.

For a time, Allen Island had become the pearl of western Scottish commerce and an important source of tax revenue for the Scottish royal house.

By Roger's father's generation, Allen Island and the Campbell Lineage had gradually declined amid upheaval in national power and English invasion and rule, though their foundations remained strong.

The Campbell Lineage on Allen Island had produced only one heir for generations. It was not until Roger's father's generation that there were two sons and a daughter. Thus, although Roger's father was not the eldest son, he still received a knightly title and a fief.

In recent years, Allen Island had fought the English again and again, and Roger's father had risen to become a banner knight through his military achievements.

The manor house where Roger lived had also been built by his grandfather in those years.

By the standards of this era, the residence was practically brand-new. Islanders called it the Milk House Estate because its courtyard walls, main house, and tower were all built from fine white stone, painstakingly hauled over mountains and ridges from the Goat Fell Mountains.

The roof beams, rafters, and wooden attic were all made from oak timber, and a small spire stood above the attic.

Yet Roger's bedroom was the most simple and dilapidated of Sir Colin's three sons' rooms. This was not only because he had been away from home for years and no one had tended to it, but also because he was Sir Colin's least favored son.

Roger did not yet know much about any of this. He did not even fully understand the background of the family he had arrived in.

He had heard of the illustrious Campbell Lineage in later generations, but judging from his surroundings, even if this family was related to that famous and powerful clan of later ages, that would be a matter of several centuries from now.

Roger did not care much about that. At that moment, his eyes were fixed on the wall opposite him.

A hunting knife with a wooden handle hung on the stone wall above the fireplace. It seemed to have been abandoned for years. Its exposed blade, lacking a sheath, was thick with rust, and layer upon layer of cobwebs covered it. Both the rusted blade and wooden handle had bent slightly into an arc.

But Roger desperately wanted it. If he had any sharp blade at his side, perhaps those haunting nightmares would disappear, and the unease of being in a foreign land would ease as well.

Yet this body could barely even turn its head. He could not get out of bed at all.

These past days, all manner of bizarre nightmares had constantly plagued him.

At times, the harrowing scene of slaughter in that dark alley would appear.

But more often, the dreams made no sense—sometimes he was stealing chickens and dogs in a farmhouse yard, sometimes he was following a gang of ruffians to bully farmers and their children, sometimes he was listening to tedious doctrines in a church-like building, and sometimes he was naked in an ambiguous, dreamlike bed...

The moment he closed his eyes, those dreams would return again and again.

It was strange. Roger could not only understand the language spoken in those dreams, but speak it as well. Even stranger, when he tried to speak his own language now, his words came out slurred and unclear.

That was the "babbling nonsense" the middle-aged woman had mentioned.

Roger gradually understood that those nightmares were actually memories from his two lifetimes. He was becoming the owner of this body.

Yet relying only on those vague fragments of memory, Roger could not form a complete picture of this world. It felt like watching a flickering black-and-white film with shattered scenes, always separated by a layer of distance.

He tried to control his body and sit up, but the moment he raised his linen-wrapped head, a burst of agony struck him and cold sweat beaded across his forehead.

"Young Master Roger, lie down quickly." The boy who pushed open the door hurriedly set down the chamber pot in his hands and rushed forward to support Roger's shoulders.

"The priest said the wound on your head has not healed yet. If you move around carelessly, it will start bleeding again."

The boy was about fourteen or fifteen. His childish face was covered in freckles, and a dozen faint strands of downy beard had already appeared on his thin upper lip. His worn gray wool coat was obviously too large for him, though the narrow cowhide belt around his waist was tied very neatly.