Chapter 4: Complex as I Am

In the warm, opulent living room, Anselm tossed his wolf-fur cloak onto the floor and slumped into the sofa by the fireplace, sprawling bonelessly.

Outside, the cries for Hydra continued unabated.

He sighed, digging at his ear. “So noisy… Saville.”

The elegant elderly man standing in a corner of the room smiled. “I thought you enjoyed such scenes.”

“Once in a while, it’s fine, but if it keeps going like this, it’s a bit much.”

The youth, as if stripped of all his sinister and regal aura, gazed lazily at the roaring flames in the fireplace. “A few loyal dogs are enough. Too many, and it’s no good.”

“But this is your duty.”

“Too much hassle.” Anselm sighed again.

Saville shook his head. “You’ll need to get used to it soon.”

“I know.”

Anselm stretched his legs carelessly, slumping in the pose of that bald man from the great library in his mind. “But that’s still far off, Saville.”

“The master’s days are numbered, as are His Majesty’s,” the old man said, looking helplessly at his young lord’s casual demeanor. “Even if not for duty, for your own sake, you need to take control of the eight Contract Heads soon.”

The Contract Heads were a unique aspect of the Hydras, tied to their essence and the Empire’s supreme Flame-Feasting Royalty.

Legend has it that ten thousand years ago, the Flame-Feasting Ancestor defeated the unstoppable, continent-ravaging ultimate beast Hydra and tamed it.

Under divine witness, they formed a contract, becoming eternal allies and founding the glorious Celestial Conquest Dynasty, the Empire’s predecessor.

Of course, Anselm knew the so-called legend was nonsense.

While the Flame-Feasting Ancestor and the Hydra beast were more or less accurate, there was never any “contract,” let alone anything divine.

No contract could bind them.

The only reason the Hydras served the Flame-Feasting Royalty as vassals through the Empire’s thousand-year history and beyond was simple.

Only the Flame-Feasting Royalty could burn away the madness in the Hydra bloodline.

The Flame-Feasting Ancestor turned the Hydras from mad, ignorant beasts into “humans” with intellect.

Intellect was a poison no beast could resist, a million times more addictive than power.

No sentient being could bear returning to bestiality—that was the leash around the Hydras’ necks.

Over the ages, the Flame-Feasting fire reshaped the Hydras’ essence, turning them from beasts into beings nearly indistinguishable from humans, though the madness in their blood still flowed.

As time passed, the Flame-Feasting clan found suppressing the Hydras’ madness with their own power too costly.

It drained their lifespan, slowed their growth, and risked infection by that ultimate chaos, driving them to madness in their later years.

Thus, the Empire’s founder, Norland Kaiser Flame, with his astounding intellect, forged a new path for the Hydras.

Newborn Hydras would be refined by the Flame-Feasting fire in their embryonic stage, splitting their unformed power into nine parts.

The core remained with the Hydra, while the other eight became “seeds,” preserved and growing alongside the Hydra’s core.

Most crucially… they could be bestowed upon others.

Those who received the Hydra’s power became the Contract Heads.

Only a Hydra with all eight powers assigned was complete.

This method greatly eased the burden on the Flame-Feasting Royalty, reducing the negative effects to a manageable level.

As for the Hydras?

They initially resisted fiercely, their bestial nature unable to accept splitting their great power into nine.

The Empire’s founder nearly broke with that generation’s Hydra.

What happened in the end, even Anselm didn’t know.

He only knew his ancestor… succumbed to the yearning for reason and humanity.

“If it were me, I’d have made the same choice.”

Anselm muttered to himself, idly flipping through the library in his mind.

“…But the Contract Heads.” He rubbed his brow.

For Anselm, choosing candidates wasn’t the issue.

It was almost too easy.

His mind held the perfect candidates for his Contract Heads, selected when he was just ten years old.

The problem was getting those candidates to willingly submit to him—a task far from quick or simple.

“But indeed, time waits for no one.”

Within a few seconds, Anselm stretched, pounded his head, and as if switching personas, banished all his laziness.

“Saville, bring those sisters to me.” Anselm waved a hand without turning. “Have the maids prepare wine, cake, and jerky.”

The tailcoat-clad butler bowed and left, while the young noble in a black dress vest and shirt continued gazing at the firelight.

In the flames, he saw the future—his deranged father slaughtering indiscriminately in a blaze, the family’s thousand-year glory consumed by blood and fire, and himself surviving, only to fall into a place more despairing than the abyss.

“No matter how many times I see this scene, it’s still such a headache.”

Anselm chuckled lightly, murmuring in a casual tone.

“If not for my transmigrator friend, I wouldn’t even know such despair awaited me.”

A transmigrator, yes, a transmigrator.

An unfortunate transmigrator who, at the moment Anselm’s embryo was formed and the current Emperor refined his core with the Flame-Feasting fire, happened to transmigrate into Anselm’s body.

Under the dual assault of the Flame-Feasting fire and the Hydra’s vast, terrifying soul essence, he perished instantly.

His memories were burned away by the Emperor’s flames by nearly forty percent.

The remaining sixty percent… were “devoured” by Anselm in a peculiar form.

His memories became books with visuals… or, in the terminology of that world, “movies,” stored in Anselm’s consciousness for him to access at will.

As mere “visual books” and “movies,” they couldn’t directly influence Anselm’s consciousness or thoughts.

Even so, these memory books profoundly shaped Anselm.

Despite receiving the most orthodox—what his library called “feudal aristocratic” education—from his fetal stage, reading these memory books made him largely uninterested in it.

Even though the memories, burned by the Flame-Feasting fire and reduced to sixty percent, were incomplete in many ways, Anselm’s mindset didn’t belong to this era.

—The most blatant example: unlike his near-tamed ancestors and his father, Anselm held no loyalty or reverence for the imperial Emperor.

However, due to the memories’ incompleteness and the influence of his upbringing, his mindset didn’t fully belong to the transmigrator’s world either.

To Anselm, these were secondary.

The most important thing he gleaned from those memory books was—

“Young master, they’re here.” Saville’s voice came from the door.

“Come in.”

The elderly but upright butler entered with two girls.

They were of similar age, both with flawless snow-white hair—one long, one short.

Their beauty was undeniable; even Anselm, seasoned as he was, was struck with awe at first sight.

Anselm stood, moved to another sofa, and propped his chin, studying the two girls.

The short-haired girl shielded the timid, fragile one behind her, her twitching face and bared canines reminiscent of a wolf charging across a frozen wasteland.

The corners of Anselm’s mouth curved uncontrollably upward.

Ideals, mindsets, the science or art from another world—Anselm cared little for these.

In the face of that one thing, they were insignificant.

—Fate.

Anselm saw the scars fate had carved into this world.

The fierce yet seemingly frail girl before him was named Hitana Lansmarlos.

The future Queen of Ten Thousand Armies, Conqueror of the Frozen Winter, Eternal Ally of Dragons, Goddess of War walking the mortal realm, the unslain, undefeated, undying Heavenly Wolf Empress.

The destined protagonist and… hero.

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