The Engineer of Westmarch

Marcus Aldridge is a software architect at the top of his game — until he wakes up in a dungeon, inhabiting the body of Cedric Thornhaven, a disgraced nobleman sentenced to hang for high treason. The shackles on his wrists aren't just iron — they're circuit boards carved in runic code, siphoning his mana like a parasitic feedback loop. Marcus doesn't pray for salvation. He reverse-engineers his escape. Arriving in Westmarch — the crumbling estate he now legally owns — Marcus discovers a town bleeding to death. The Royal Academy of Magic has embedded tithe-wards into every stone and grain exchange, extracting ambient mana from the land and its people at a sixty-eight percent rate. The locals aren't just poor; they're drained. Magic, in this world, is a monopoly enforced by decree, and breaking that monopoly means challenging the Crown itself. But Marcus isn't a mage. He's an engineer. Where Academy-trained mages see sacred rites, Marcus sees recursive loops and bottlenecks. Where they see gatekept power, he sees a broken system begging to be patched. Armed with ledgers, copper wire, charcoal schematics, and one point of mana, Marcus begins his revolution from the ground up. He teaches a scullery boy that magic is conductivity, not bloodline. He builds a system that gives commoners access to what the Academy spent generations hoarding. The Academy will come for him. The Crown has already signed his death warrant. And the system he's building — one that teaches commoners the code of the universe — is the most dangerous heresy in the realm. For fans of progression fantasy, kingdom building, and protagonists who outthink rather than outfight.