Reborn: From Fallen Noble to the Empress's Favorite

A techie who worked 996 hours and died suddenly transmigrates to a magical alternate world, becoming a useless scion of a declining noble family who is on the verge of starving to death. He’s trapped in a desperate situation from the start: bullied by the steward, abandoned by the head of the family, and left with only three bags of moldy black bread on his estate. His tenant farmers are so hungry they’re eating tree bark. But he gets the [Universal Synthesis Platform] golden finger! Black bread + snowmelt = nutritious meal bars; salted fish + weeds = low-grade jerky; waste ore + magic power = magic crystals... From driving off the tyrannical steward to winning over the half-elf girl Elariel; from striking a mithril vein and getting rich overnight to blasting the legion cavalry who came looking for trouble with magic bombs; from building the Northern Frontier’s first magic tower to venturing deep into the ice fields and wiping out the Dark Church’s lair... In just one year, Lynn rises from a down-and-out noble to a rising star of the empire, and wins the heart of Empress Elvira, who has lived for three hundred years and never fallen for a man. But the road to becoming the imperial consort is far from easy: impeachment by the old aristocracy, assassins from the Dark Church, an invasion by 300,000 troops from a neighboring kingdom, and the appearance of a mysterious Dark Pontiff... When Elariel takes a fatal blow for him and falls in a pool of blood, when fragments of divinity awaken within him, and when the Dark Pontiff, who has lived for five hundred years, reveals the secret that “there is a divine nature within you”... Lynn realizes that his transmigration is far from simple.