It basically had only taken Aurora 4 days after regressing back for her to kill him again.
Compared to the rest of his previous deaths, that was absolutely terrible.
He typically survived for more than a week before being murdered by Aurora after all.
Still, with what he was given, Eric didn't think he did all too terribly.
Sure, he most certainly could've done things much differently and bought much more time for himself to strategically plan things out.
And if it was someone else that had been in his shoes, there was no doubt that they would've been able to do so.
But he simply just wasn't a strategic person whatsoever, and he definitely wasn't intelligent enough like some of the other protagonists out there to change anything about that.
He was just someone who at most knew things about the world he lived in, and that was it.
Should he ultimately be the one at fault for how he failed?
Maybe.
But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Even his will to try and survive longer didn't properly work at times and became completely stale at points, otherwise he probably would've asked Celeste to heal him when he had the chance to.
He had thought about it for a bit though.
Perhaps his will to want and survive wasn't driven by pure desire and instincts, but by a stubborn refusal to let his existence amount to nothing more than a quick chapter of somebody else's grand and overarching story, and that was why it was so terrible to begin with?
Whatever it was, it was still there even though he knew he was dead now and he couldn't help but want to laugh about it.
'Speaking of which, why can I still feel myself think?'
He was pretty sure that he was dead and all of that.
But he can still feel and think as though he was alive.
"Wait a minute..."
Eric slowly opened his eyes and found himself laying flat on his penthouse bed again, just like he had done when he first recovered his memories 4 days ago.
"I'm still alive?" Eric couldn't help and look at all over his body and saw that he had no more wounds on him, and in fact, his whole entire body actually looked completely normal again.
Following that, Eric immediately checked the date on his phone.
But strangely, two days have passed since the time he had collapsed at the hospital, and there was a flood of texts coming from his parents.
And what was even stranger was that they weren't concerned as he'd expected, but happy for him.
He even saw a couple of texts calling him a playboy and how beautiful his new girlfriend was.
And that's when he understood what happened.
"Looks like I owe Celeste one, huh." Eric muttered in a voice of slight gratitude.
He didn't know why or even how Celeste got ahold of the news about his situation to begin with, and if he gets the chance to, he'll ask, but for now, it didn't matter too much.
More importantly...
"I'm finally free." Eric grinned from ear to ear as he thought about it.
Now that Aurora wasn't here in this world anymore, and he had no other target on his back at this very moment to worry about, he was now able to live a nice, calm, and worry free life mooching off his parents for the rest of his days!
How lucky was that?!
Of course, considering that he was still rich and all, he needed to be wary of any possible dangers that might come in his way as a result, but as long as he wasn't stupid about it like in the past, he shouldn't have any issues with that at all.
Wanting to celebrate this auspicious occasion while he was in the mood for it, Eric texted both of his parents saying that he was fine and well now, and then headed out of the penthouse to go meet up with some of his other friends in this world.
The moment he stepped foot outside and was about to call some of his friends to meet up however, Eric saw someone he honestly didn't want to see anymore curled up into a ball outside his door.
"Miss Aria. Is something wrong?" Although Eric had a good guess as to why she was curled like this, he still asked anyways.
Not a single word came out of Aria's mouth initally, and she simply just looked up at Eric in shock when she heard his voice.
It was only after she stared at his non injured body for quite awhile and tried processing how he looked completely okay now that she broke the silence.
"Y-your body... how?" Aria said in disbelief.
"What a silly question. You know that magic exists in this world, Miss Aria. Why wouldn't something like this be possible?" Eric frowned a little when he heard Aria's question.
He thought that Aria might've had something to do with why Celeste healed him or at the very least had known about it, but it was obvious that wasn't the case.
"You're right, I'm sorry for asking... but you had me worried sick you know! You could've at least told me beforehand that you were going suddenly disappear like that so that I didn't have to go hysterical at the hospital for losing you today in the middle of the night! And why didn't you answer your door if you were back here? Didn't you hear me pounding at your door for a few hours now? Really... I... I thought that I... I..." Noticing her voice was gradually choking up while talking, Aria shook her head to stop her thoughts, and then became very quiet as a tear rolled down her face.
"Alright, Miss Aria. I get it. I can't promise you'll be the first person I contact if something like this happens again, but I'll try to let you know in advance from now on." Eric tried to console her while lying about it.
Even if something like this does happen again in the future, he wouldn't go out of his way to contact her at all just because he didn't really want to be involved with any of the major novel characters in this world any longer than he needs to.
"Thank you..." Aria sniffled a bit as she wiped the stray tear from her face and managed to form a small smile, "Also, I'm not sure if you already know this, or if she even matters enough for someone like you to care, but…"
"Aurora was able to pull through and survive at the very end."