"I still can't wrap my head around it, Elise. You're actually a beast tamer now."
Arthur's voice carried across the corridor, bright with manufactured enthusiasm.
"You give me too much credit, Cousin. Really, it was just fortune smiling on me."
Elise's response came soft and self-effacing. Brown hair woven into a thick braid fell across one shoulder, framing a face both delicate and arresting. Everything about her whispered approachability: the height, the willowy frame, the unassuming grace.
Her cousin cut a different figure entirely. Silver hair caught the light as he grinned, though the expression never touched his eyes. Youth still clung to his features, but the jewelry weighing down his outfit told a louder story. Diamonds. Gold. Money that had never been earned.
Elise's dress, by contrast, spoke in quiet elegance. No embellishments. Just refined simplicity.
Several paces back, a girl with cascading blonde curls fixed her gaze on Elise's retreating form. Beauty couldn't mask the envy twisting her expression into something ugly.
The awkward triangle moved forward. Elise and Arthur maintained their pleasantries while the blonde girl nursed her silence. The castle's main hall waited somewhere ahead.
They'd barely made it twenty feet when footsteps approached from the opposite direction.
A young man emerged, tall and bespectacled, a wicker basket hooked over one arm. Ink-black hair, darker eyes, features that would've been striking if not for the way he carried himself: careful, measured. The glasses lent him an intellectual air that softened the sharp angles of his face.
"Good afternoon, young masters. Miss."
He delivered the greeting with practiced efficiency, a smile that belonged on a wind-up doll, and didn't break stride.
Elise returned the gesture with a genuine nod. Arthur and the blonde girl didn't acknowledge his existence.
When he drew level with her, the blonde girl actually recoiled, as though proximity might contaminate her.
Elise's feet stopped moving. She twisted to watch him disappear down the corridor.
"What's so fascinating about that waste of space? Come on... we're already late. Mother and Father arranged this whole celebration for you. Your awakening as a beast tamer deserves recognition. Even Grandmother's making an appearance."
Arthur's tone pulled her back to the present.
"I've only been at the estate a short while, Cousin, but I keep crossing paths with him. What's his story?"
Genuine curiosity colored her words.
"His story?" The blonde girl, Rose, cut in before Arthur could respond, her voice sharp with contempt. "Father's bastard. Last year's ceremony? Couldn't awaken as a tamer, couldn't even scrape together enough talent for warrior or mage. Nice enough to look at, I suppose, but utterly useless. Just another mouth draining the family coffers."
"Rose." Arthur's warning came clipped. "Say what you want about him, but keep Father's name out of your mouth."
Rose's response was a derisive snort, though she bit back whatever else she'd been preparing to say.
The moment passed. Within minutes they'd reached the dining hall, where the Remington family's elders had already assembled, and the festivities swallowed them whole...
Leon pushed through his door, ignoring the servants' poorly concealed sneers that had tracked him through the corridors. The basket made a dull thud as he set it down.
His quarters held nothing worth mentioning. A bed. A table. Chairs. The absolute minimum required for human habitation.
The basket's contents revealed themselves when he lifted the lid: a full meal, proportioned for one. Adequate, if nothing else.
Just crushingly solitary.
Not that Leon minded. Solitude had its advantages. Gave him space to think. To strategize.
To do what he needed to do without witnesses.
He cleaned the dishes methodically after eating, returned the basket to its place, then settled onto his bed. Cross-legged. Eyes shut.
His consciousness peeled away from physical reality and dove inward.
Another world bloomed into existence.
Vast plains stretched in every direction, populated by creatures of terrible power. Mountain peaks pierced distant clouds, their summits lost to mist.
Nestled in a valley between those peaks sat a palace, ancient and half-ruined, surrounded by the bones of what had once been something grander.
Weather and time had stripped away the structure's glory, leaving behind only weathered stone and stubborn dignity.
Plains. Mountains. Palace. This pocket universe existed solely within Leon's mind. He'd named it the Mystic Ruins Realm.
It was also the only evidence he possessed that this second life came with perks.
Because Leon didn't belong here. Not originally.
Earth had been home. Thirty years building a business from nothing, pouring everything into making it work. The IPO was scheduled. Success, finally, within reach.
Then came the celebration dinner. Too much alcohol. The decision to drive anyway. Metal shrieking against metal, the world spinning, and then...
Nothing.
Until there was everything again, but different.
The Aeternum Continent. A world where technology advanced beyond Earth's capabilities, where magic threaded through reality, where beasts the size of buildings could be tamed and controlled.
His second chance had begun in winter. A baby abandoned on the Remington estate's doorstep, already dead from exposure when Leon's soul came crashing down. The Mysterious Emerald Pendant, a curiosity he'd purchased at some forgettable antique market in his previous life, had protected that soul through the impossible transition, fusing consciousness with cold flesh in an act of resurrection.
The pendant now hung from the palace doors within the Mystic Ruins Realm, inert but present.
Eighteen years in this body. But the Mystic Ruins Realm had only manifested six years ago.
Initially, darkness had been absolute. Leon had explored it like some bizarre strategy game, methodically uncovering terrain one section at a time. Years of patient mapping had finally revealed most of the realm's geography.
The beasts that prowled here answered to him, though their power couldn't yet extend beyond the realm's boundaries.
The palace, though... that had been the real discovery.
Its interior twisted into a labyrinthine battlefield frozen in time, littered with treasures that shouldn't exist. Cultivation manuals. Miraculous pills. Weapons pulled from legend.
One catch: the palace gates operated on their own schedule. Four months closed, sometimes six. When they finally opened, Leon got exactly one day before being forcibly ejected.
But that single day? Worth every minute of waiting.
His collection of salvaged artifacts had grown impressively over the years.
This secret would die with him. No exceptions.
"That's the limit. Any more cultivation would just waste energy. Time to move."
Leon opened his eyes, feeling the primal spirit energy packed impossibly dense within his body, compressed to its absolute threshold. Determination settled into his expression alongside a smile that knew exactly what came next.
The Aeternum Continent's technology dwarfed anything Earth had managed. Earth couldn't build mechs that towered ten stories high, couldn't harness the ambient energy called primal spirit that saturated this world's atmosphere.
Humans here could absorb that energy through specific cultivation methods, channeling it into power. Three paths existed: beast tamer, warrior, mage.
Beast tamers occupied the apex. Rarest, most respected. Warriors and mages were fallback positions for everyone else.
Because the beasts here were apocalyptic.
Vast stretches of the continent remained unconquered specifically because of the creatures that claimed them as territory. Cities positioned poorly faced periodic beast tides that could obliterate civilization. Beast tamers, who could command these forces rather than merely fight them, naturally commanded society's highest regard.
The culture here worshipped beast battles: organized competitions that scaled from local tournaments all the way to international championships. Nothing generated more excitement. Nothing came close.
So Leon's first objective was obvious.
Become a beast tamer. Claim the prestige that came with it. And never look back.