This boy was an orphan, without a name, let alone a surname—that was a privilege reserved for the nobility in this world. The people of the small town called the boy "Carter", short and easy to remember, conveniently homophonous with James Carter.

Because of malnutrition, Carter had been extremely thin and weak since childhood, but his temperament was ruthless and fierce. He never allowed himself to be bullied, often fighting other orphans to the death for a bite to eat, and even competing with stray dogs for food. He usually managed to snatch it, but every time he ended up covered in wounds.

These dark years, teetering on the edge of life and death, lasted until he was twelve. Carter was lucky enough to survive to the age when someone might hire him. He found his first job, working as a helper at the town’s tavern. Although the daily pay was pitifully small—just three pieces of black bread, and only a single silver coin for a month’s wages—at least he no longer had to worry about starving.

What surprised James Carter was that this boy not only struggled to survive, but also never gave up any opportunity to learn. To this day, at sixteen, the boy could already read most of the common script used in the Storm Kingdom, and had managed to read a few books by any means possible, giving him a much broader perspective than most.

Because of this, Carter was not like ordinary orphans, muddling through with no sense of the future. He had ideals in his heart, and a will strong enough to pursue them.

Within this frail body, he harbored a thought that ordinary people wouldn’t even dare to imagine—he wanted to become a mage!

Since ancient times, mages had always been the privilege of the nobility; common families simply could not afford the enormous costs. Even some minor nobles often found their families on the brink of bankruptcy from raising a single mage.

How could he, a helpless orphan, possibly hope for such a thing?

But nothing is absolute. There was still a chance—if one possessed extraordinary magical talent, such people were often favored by official mages, taken in as disciples, and personally trained.

To save up the money needed to take the magical aptitude test at the Mage Tower, Carter helped out at the inn during the day, and at night worked as the night watchman at the Wildfire City cemetery. This lowly, unlucky, and even somewhat dangerous job was the only one in Wildfire City that no one fought this orphan for.

The small wooden hut he was in now was the night watchman’s quarters. Outside the hut was a cemetery spanning over a hundred acres.

After roughly digesting the boy’s memories, James Carter let out a long sigh. “What a humble yet magnificent life.”

A single magical aptitude test at the Mage Tower cost one gold coin! For any ordinary family in the Storm Kingdom, this was a huge sum!

Because of the night watchman job, the temple in Wildfire Town paid Carter three silver coins a month. And one gold coin was worth 100 silver coins.

To save up a gold coin would take more than two years, during which he couldn’t spend a single cent. It was truly a long journey.

James Carter felt some admiration for this boy. If James Carter hadn’t taken over his body out of nowhere, with the boy’s perseverance alone, as long as he was lucky enough to survive, he would definitely achieve something in some field decades later, becoming a person of great influence.

However, admiration was one thing—those days were now in the past. James Carter’s attention quickly shifted to the mages in the boy’s memories, which fascinated him greatly.

Legendary mages—mysterious, noble, powerful enough to destroy the world, capable of anything. Some extremely powerful mages were almost regarded as gods on earth.

Chapter 3: Just Seeking Enough to Eat

In the prosperous Earth Federation, “not having enough to eat or wear” had long since disappeared from the dictionary.

But after arriving in this strange world, James Carter truly experienced the poverty and misery behind those words on his second morning here, especially on the eve of the Return Festival, the coldest time of the year.

By the way, the Return Festival in this world was as important as the Spring Festival or Christmas in the Earth Federation—a very grand holiday, but also a very cold one.

“Hiss~” The cold pierced to the bone! James Carter summoned all the willpower from his previous life just to convince himself to leave the relatively warm bed and get to the town tavern as early as possible.

But when he put on the pitifully thin, tattered rag hanging on the wall, barefoot—yes, you read that right, barefoot (because he couldn’t find any shoes)—opened the door of the little wooden hut, and looked out at the knee-deep snow, all the willpower from his previous life immediately fled back to his previous life.

No wonder the boy’s feet were covered in sores—they had literally been frozen that way!

Driven back by the cold, James Carter slammed the wooden door shut and frantically searched the poverty-stricken, seven or eight square meter hut, nearly tearing the place apart.

Clinging to a one-in-ten-thousand hope, he tried to find a pair of shoes in some corner—even straw sandals would do, as long as they could keep out the snow a little.

He was destined to be disappointed. There were no shoes, and the boy didn’t have the skill to weave straw sandals himself. Walking barefoot was a habit the boy had been forced to develop over fifteen years.

But it wasn’t a total loss—he found a wooden box, a hardwood sword, and several irregular stones with one side worn smooth and covered in intricate carvings, all hidden in an extremely secret pit under the bed.

Inside the wooden box were all the boy’s savings: twenty shiny, adorable silver coins.