Chapter Seventeen: Returning to the Family

The vast human empire is divided into four territories and seven provinces.

The four territories are the imperial royal family’s direct domains: the East, West, South, and North Territories. They border each other and lie at the very center of the empire’s map, serving as the densely populated heartland.

Surrounding these are the seven provinces, colonial outskirts of the empire: Riverbay Province, High Official Water Province, Valley Province, Plateau Province, Cloud Ridge Province, Wilderness Province, and Storm Province. Most of these areas are inhabited by humans and other races living together.

It is worth mentioning that the names of all these regions are direct translations from the Elvish language of the ancestral Elf Empire.

Riverbay Province lies to the southeast of the continent. The ancestral elves called it “Muenshi Takurachi,” meaning “the warm land surrounded by river bays.” Its southern mountains are home to many wild elf tribes—considered close kin to the high elves and descendants of the ancestral elves—while the northern plains, crisscrossed by rivers, are primarily settled by imperial humans.

The Faher family is a noble house from Riverbay Province. Their hereditary seat is Ravenfort, perched deep in the southern mountains of the province. Historically, an ancestor of the Faher family earned great merit in campaigns against the wild elves and was thus granted knighthood and lands for military service.

Today, however, when people speak of the Fahers, two impressions prevail:

First, Faher men are extraordinarily prolific.

Almost every male in their lineage was a prolific sire, known for keeping numerous mistresses and fathering countless illegitimate children, so many that the family once became the subject of ridicule and disdain among other nobles. In the eyes of imperial aristocracy, illegitimate offspring were considered the reckless product of poor household management.

The current Marquis Faher, Rain’s father, in an effort to uphold family tradition while salvaging the family’s reputation, altered his approach to marriage. He would marry daughters of minor nobility, then divorce them when bored, remarrying immediately with seamless succession. As a result, he fathered twenty-seven legitimate children, Rain Faher among them.

The second characteristic: extreme ugliness.

With bulbous noses, small beady eyes, thick lips, rough skin, and a tendency to gain weight by middle age, the Fahers were rumored to have once intermarried with wild elves, their bloodlines mixed and their features distorted into widespread ugliness.

Of course, exceptions existed.

Rain Faher, for example, possessed a strikingly handsome face, with a prominent nose and clear, delicate features, completely unlike the typical Faher look. This caused the Duke Faher to suspect he had been hoodwinked, prompting him to take the newborn to the cathedral’s archbishop to verify his lineage.

The verdict was that Rain was indeed his biological son. The archbishop even claimed that it was “by the mercy of the gods” that the historically ugly Faher lineage had finally produced a son graced with divine beauty.

Despite this, the Marquis never fully overcame his doubts, which meant Rain never truly earned his father’s favor throughout his childhood.

“This one is not like us!”

After a long sea voyage, the family fleet finally passed the Salt Islands and docked at Seastone City.

Though Ravenfort was the Fahers’ ancestral home, its southern mountainous terrain often invited raids by savages and wild elves, so the family had long since relocated to Seastone City.

Elina and Daia stepped out of the ship’s cabin, taking in the bustling harbor of Seastone City. Laborers sweat profusely hauling cargo, street vendors shouted their wares, and sailors laughed and leaned on each other, ready to enjoy the nightlife at the Songbird’s Nest tavern.

Having grown up on the Rainforest Peninsula, Daia was accustomed to the presence of many lizardfolk. Now, seeing so many human kin, she suddenly felt a surge of kinship.

Elina, however, felt nothing of the sort. Her eyes scanned the surrounding mountains and terrain.

The Faher family had risen through military merit, and the choice of Seastone City’s location was impeccable: mountains to the west and south made large-scale military invasion difficult; the east and north faced the sea, paired with a naval base on the Salt Islands, making waterborne attacks equally challenging.

The only accessible route was a narrow corridor along the coastline from the northwest, circumventing the mountains.

Of course, Elina was no longer a princess of the Elf Empire, so studying how to conquer a human city was pointless.

She merely engaged her mind to stay active and distract herself from the oppressive emotions inflicted by the malevolent necromancer who controlled her.

At the stone pier of Seastone Harbor stood the nearly sixty-year-old Marquis Faher, clad in a leather coat, personally greeting the long-absent Rain Faher.

Behind him were a dozen of Rain’s brothers—excluding those away on business, stationed at fortresses, or serving other houses, nearly all were present.

The brothers harbored resentment, since the Marquis had always disliked Rain, leaving him low in the family’s hierarchy.

Though rarely interacting, the brothers openly looked down on him.

Now, with the Marquis suddenly shifting his attitude, they were unsettled and struggled to reassess their impressions and stances toward Rain.

No choice but to rely on acting.

“Rain!” the Marquis called out, arms wide, “Come here! Let your old father see you!”

Rain Faher stepped forward and was pulled into a firm embrace by his father.

The old marquis exuded a faint stench—an inevitable decay scent of old age. Rain didn’t mind; as a genuine necromancer, he had endured far worse odors.

He felt no strong affection or hatred toward the Marquis. On one hand, as a transmigrator, he had little emotional attachment to this biological father; on the other, despite the coldness, the Marquis did provide him with advantages far beyond commoners.

Perhaps his feelings were about thirty percent dislike and seventy percent reluctant acceptance.

“Won’t you introduce them?” the Marquis released Rain and shifted his gaze to Elina. “Who are these two?”

Rain immediately grasped the real reason for the welcome: it was not truly for him.

Geographically, across the sea from Riverbay Province lay the Gem Isles, home to the high elves.

High elves were renowned for producing exquisite handcrafted luxury goods, artworks, and magical artifacts, prized and scarce in the noble markets of the continent. Yet they were fiercely conservative and isolationist, maintaining a longstanding policy of closed borders and forbidding trade with outsiders.

High profits combined with trade embargoes bred rampant smuggling.

Like other coastal noble families in Riverbay Province, the Fahers’ primary income derived from smuggling goods from the Gem Isles back to the mainland.

Unpredictable sea weather and elusive pirate fleets could not halt these smuggling operations, but the high elves’ naval fleet posed a formidable threat.

Each additional patrol lengthened the smuggling cycle and sharply reduced profits.

The Marquis intended to find a way to infiltrate the high elves’ naval faction through Elina, who seemed to be a high elf noblewoman.

Realizing this, Rain’s mind conceived a new plan.

Though he had not inherited the Fahers’ ugly features, he did inherit another trait from the Marquis:

An aptitude for scheming and manipulation.