One disappointment after another left Count Raymond thoroughly disillusioned with his son. Afterward, however, he began working even harder.

Do not misunderstand. He had no intention of wasting any more effort on a talentless idiot of a son. The Count merely redirected his efforts toward his beautiful wife.

Since this son was already worthless, doomed to be unable to inherit the family or bring it glory, then... he had to work hard to have another son.

After a full month of diligent “sowing and cultivation,” the Count's efforts with his wife finally bore fruit. The Countess soon became pregnant again, and in the winter of the following year Count Raymond received the second son he had wanted.

While the whole estate celebrated, Du Wei remained in his room, earnestly reading the magical potioncraft books he had managed to gather.

Thank the gods, Mage Clark's parting suggestion had not gone to waste. Thinking, What could possibly be worse? the Count simply allowed his idiot eldest son to study magical potioncraft.

For several months, the Count had no mind to visit the son who had disappointed him completely. Even the previously affectionate Countess had to visit less often as her pregnancy progressed.

The day after his mother gave birth to a younger brother, a servant led Du Wei to the Count's room to see his exhausted mother and the infant.

The Count was plainly delighted. Like the Rowling Family's tradition demanded, the newborn cried loudly and strongly. Though only just born, he already looked certain to grow sturdy.

Count Raymond had no interest in looking twice at his useless elder son. After a formal greeting, he waved Du Wei away. The Countess felt some pity, but the new baby's crying drew her attention at that moment.

Du Wei left quietly. Behind him came the Count's satisfied laughter and the baby's cries. His heart had long become numb, but he still could not help feeling a trace of loss.

He reminded himself: Stop thinking such nonsense. You do not belong to this world. He is not your father... and she... she is not either...

Then he remembered the stormy night when this beautiful woman had knelt all night before the Goddess's statue for him. A sour ache rose in his heart, and he shook his head hard.

Trying to drive away those thoughts, Du Wei could only throw all his attention into study.

There was no denying that he was intensely interested in this world's magic. Though Mage Clark had judged him talentless, Du Wei was unwilling to accept it completely and still clung to hope. A Count's estate naturally held a substantial library, including many books about magic.

After reading widely, Du Wei had to admit that Mage Clark was right. He truly did not have the talent to become a mage. Even after sitting for a full day and night, he could not feel the slightest fluctuation of magical elements. Once, he even fell asleep without realizing it.

Still refusing to give up, Du Wei turned his efforts to the magical potioncraft Mage Clark had mentioned.

Magical potioncraft seemed to be a kind of magic, after all. And a potion mage could barely count as a mage. But after asking the household servants, Du Wei learned what that phrase—“a kind of mage”—really meant to people in this world.

People said potion mages were a type of mage, and even the Magic Guild publicly affirmed it in writing. In truth, what everyone really thought was: This counts as a mage?

Potioncraft, as its name suggested, was the study of preparing magical potions.

After hearing enough about it, Du Wei formed an apt comparison with the medical profession of his former world. A true mage was like a doctor in one of a hospital's departments. A potion mage... was at best a nurse assisting the doctor. They both worked in the hospital, but the nurse's status and income were far below a real doctor's.

But after studying it carefully, Du Wei became very interested in potioncraft.

To him, it was an entirely new field.

For example: how to combine the eyeballs of a Dorog jumping frog with purple wormwood to make a potion that would render someone unable to speak for a short time. Or how to grind the saliva of a Stafun sword-ruler lizard with clover and the liver of a Keke triangle-scaled fish into a powder that could petrify someone.

Or take the substance extracted from fire-scale grass. Dry it, crush it into powder, scatter it anywhere, and it would instantly ignite.

Yet almost every one of those animal and plant names—jumping frog, sword-ruler lizard, Keke triangle-scaled fish, fire-scale grass, and the rest—was something Du Wei had never even heard of.

What did it resemble?

It was exactly like the chemical system of another world.

Du Wei had never imagined that magic could be understood this way.

A potion that could make one mute, one that could petrify a person, one that could cause fire... interesting, was it not?

To Du Wei, potion mage was much more like a physician. A physician saved people, while a potion mage was better at creating harmful poisons.

Du Wei did not know that this idea perfectly matched the world's own judgment of magical apothecaries:

Poisoners.

Days passed. Du Wei remained absorbed in magical potioncraft, but his knowledge remained purely theoretical. The countless strange ingredients mentioned in potioncraft were not available even at the estate of the wealthy Rowling Family.

Only genuine mages' laboratories kept such materials. Within the magical field, potion makers usually served as assistants and helpers to true mages.

And no one would dare provide dangerous magical materials to such a young child, even if he were the Count's son.

Six years passed without notice. During them, Du Wei's younger brother grew into a vigorous child. Named Gabriel, he was far more like a typical heir of the Rowling Family than the idiot Du Wei.

Du Wei's brother had been healthy and lively since childhood. At six, he had already begun sword training under Captain Alpha. The captain reportedly thought very highly of the Count's second son. Nearly everyone in the estate treated Gabriel as the Rowling Family's future hope. The Count clearly lavished all his attention on his second son, and had even decided that when Gabriel turned eight in two years, he would formally teach him the family's inherited battle aura arts.

The servants adored him, the captain praised him, and his father doted on him. Even the tutor hired for his early education considered the Count's second son highly gifted. It was said that, for the family's future, the Count had already decided to arrange an illustrious marriage between his six-year-old son and another family in the capital.

Outside all that was Du Wei, the family's eldest son, forgotten in a corner.

The Count rarely saw his eldest son even once a month. Only the Countess still often came privately to visit. On some nights, she would come barefoot in her nightclothes to Du Wei's room, hold her pitiful child, sing him lullabies, and soothe him to sleep.

Only then did Du Wei's heart soften. At times, he had to pretend to be asleep to escape moments that made him want to cry. Often, the Countess's tears and sighs accompanied him into sleep.

At last, when Du Wei was thirteen and Gabriel seven, word came of the Count's final decision.

Beginning the next year, he would personally teach Gabriel martial arts and the Rowling Family's inherited arts. Count Raymond also made a marriage agreement with the Empire's Minister of Finance. The two political allies would deepen their cooperation through the marriage, and Gabriel's future wife would be the current Minister of Finance's nine-year-old granddaughter.

In truth, there were whispers that the marriage had been arranged much earlier—even before Gabriel was born. The child originally chosen to marry the Finance Minister's daughter had been Du Wei. But Du Wei was now considered a hopeless idiot, so the burden of the alliance between the two families had shifted to his younger brother, the gifted Gabriel.

As for Du Wei...

On a dark, wind-swept night, he left the Imperial Capital in a carriage. His destination was the Rowling Family's holdings in Cote Province in the Empire's south. The public announcement was that thirteen-year-old Du Wei, nearing adulthood, would go to the family lands to oversee its properties.

In fact, Du Wei understood perfectly:

He had been exiled.

Oversee the family properties? That was a joke. Everyone knew the family's important business was in the Imperial Capital, the Empire's political center. The properties on the family lands—farmland, farmers, taxes—needed only a few stewards.

And Du Wei had learned the exact truth. From then on, he would live in an old family house somewhere in the countryside of southern Cote Province. Unless Count Raymond summoned him, he would never return to the Imperial Capital in his lifetime.

Everyone understood that the title of “heir to the Rowling Family” had passed from Du Wei to his seven-year-old, gifted younger brother.