The first thing Arthur noticed was the weight in his skull.
Not the dull fog of a hangover or the piercing needle of a migraine,this was heavier and denser.
It felt as if every thought in his head had been welded to an anvil, dragging him down toward the floor.
"Ugh… why does my head feel like it just lost a bar fight with a truck?" he groaned, his voice raspy and raw.
When he cracked open his eyelids, the world punched back. Light,blinding, merciless, sliced into his eyes like spears.
He hissed and threw an arm over his face.
"Right. Note to self," he muttered under his breath, "don't pick a fight with the sun."
It took him a full sixty seconds before he dared to peel his arm away. And when he did…
"Oh."
Suspended above him was a crystal chandelier so massive it could probably have its own bank account! Hundreds of faceted gems refracted light into shimmering constellations across the ceiling.
"…Yeah. That's odd." Arthur blinked in disbelief. "Pretty sure the most expensive thing in my apartment was a second-hand rice cooker that died last week."
He shifted his gaze, taking in polished marble floors, gilded crown moldings, and silk-draped windows towering twice his height.
Everything screamed wealth,not the kind you inherit from a comfortable middle-class home but the kind you conquer with blood and power.
"I definitely didn't get rich overnight," he muttered, eyebrows furrowing as suspicion crept in.
"Unless I'm caught up in some elaborate scam."
With great effort, he tried to sit up.
Or at least attempted to.
Pain didn't knock politely; it crashed through uninvited.
A spike of agony shot from the base of his skull straight to the back of his eyes.
He doubled over, clutching his head as reality blurred around him and then it came,the flood.
Not water. Not fire.
Information.
It crashed into him like a tsunami: names, dates, maps, ledgers written in languages he'd never spoken; arguments in smoke-filled rooms.
"Aaaghhh!"
The sound ripped out of him,raw and helpless,as sweat slicked his palms and back while every muscle trembled uncontrollably on that cold marble floor.
Somewhere deep inside him,the cynical part that had learned to endure office life without screaming,a small voice noted how poetic this all seemed.
His first death had come from too much information on a screen; this one was from too much information crammed into his head.
Time fractured around him,it could have been minutes or hours before that overwhelming tide finally ebbed away.
Arthur lay there gasping for breath before forcing himself to open his eyes again. "What… the hell was that?"
And then came curiosity,always curiosity!
He shut his eyes again, diving deep into the fragments of his past, pulling together threads until they wove into a coherent tapestry of memories.
When the realization hit him, it wasn't gentle; it was like a thunderclap.
A bitter laugh escaped his lips. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me… I transmigrated? Died and got relocated? What kind of budget reincarnation package is this?"
But beneath that sarcasm lay something raw and vulnerable.
Memories surged forth vivid snapshots from a life he thought he'd left behind:
The flickering fluorescent lights in a suffocating office cubicle.The taste of cold instant noodles devoured at midnight.
The train accident that had stolen both his parents when he was just sixteen.The hollow faces of relatives who couldn't be bothered to take him in.
He remembered clawing through high school and university, juggling part-time jobs with coursework, fueled by caffeine and sheer stubbornness.
He recalled rejection after rejection, forty companies in a row, each one dismissing him for someone with "better connections."
He had the grades,he had the ideas. What he lacked was a surname anyone respected.
Eventually, he landed a job at a mid-tier firm and that's where the real grind began:
Up at 7:00 AM.
Home at 9:00 PM. Birthdays meant staying late to finish someone else's work while promotions went to the manager's nephew instead of the man who had rebuilt their analytics system from scratch.
In his previous world, he'd been smart, smarter than most people in the room,not out of arrogance but because it was simply true.
Yet in a world rigged like a loaded deck, intelligence held no value.
He fought back once; tried climbing the corporate ladder on merit, attempted to build side businesses,tried and tried again.
But every time, it was someone's son or nephew who snagged the prize. Intelligence wasn't currency in his old life; background was everything.
By the end of it all, he stopped fighting,not because he couldn't but because the cage felt welded shut around him.
All that remained was monotony: eat, work, sleep, repeat.
So yeah...he'd read web novels and binge-watched anime during late-night sessions between stale convenience-store sandwiches and daydreams about what would happen if fate just handed him keys to another life.
The last week of his life had been an exhausting marathon filled with deadlines,no sunlight filtering through windows,just coffee and code fueling his existence.
Ignored chest pains and blurred vision over spreadsheets were signs he'd chosen to overlook until his body finally rebelled against him.
He slumped forward at his desk; cheek pressed against cool glass as the cursor blinked on an unfinished report... And then… nothing.
Now… this.
His gaze swept over the lavish room once more. It wasn't merely luxury; it was power, crystallized into every arch and column.
A slow smile tugged at his lips. "Alright," he murmured, a hint of intrigue in his voice.
"Let's see what game I've been dropped into this time."
And that's when the atmosphere shifted.
A low vibration hummed through the marble beneath his feet, resonating deep within him.
The light in the chandelier twisted and danced, refracting into streams that curled like living ribbons in the air.
[Ding… System Binding in Progress…]
The voice echoed coldly,mechanical and precise, like a scalpel slicing through silence.
[10%...]
Symbols flared to life around him, molten gold one moment, silver steel the next, cycling through crests, contracts, and diagrams that resembled empires waiting to be forged.
[40%...]
The temperature plummeted. His breath fogged before him as distant bells tolled,a deep, resonant sound that felt as if it were announcing something older than time itself.
[70%...]
Then a phoenix burst forth from the radiant light, wings unfurling majestically from a crown of roaring flames.
Its feathers shimmered with an impossible clarity, each one etched with words he almost recognized but couldn't quite grasp.
[100%... Binding Complete.]
[Congratulations, Host. The Strongest Family System has been successfully bound.]
Arthur sat frozen on the floor. This… this was straight out of the web novels he'd devoured during sleepless nights,the anime marathons on weekends when he had no money to go out.
Not only had he died and transmigrated,now he had this standard configuration too!
He let out a low whistle. "Alright… Universe, I see you! First death, then relocation; now a cheat code? What's next,a starter pack?"
[Primary Objective: Rise, Arthur Osborn. Build a dynasty that will outlast empires.]
Arthur stared at those words for what felt like an eternity. The sarcasm didn't fade,it sharpened into something far more dangerous.
A sly grin spread across his face.
"Well… well… well… look what we have here! Just days ago I was pondering this very scenario and now it's practically knocking at my door."
His eyes narrowed; the glint within them morphed from amusement to calculation.
"Not only did I die and transmigrate…but it seems the universe decided to throw in the standard configuration for all transmigrators."
A low chuckle rumbled in his chest,half disbelief and half insatiable hunger.
"Oh…" his voice dropped to a near whisper, dark with promise, "…I plan to."