"Hey,"
"Hey,"
A young man smiled awkwardly, not knowing what to say anymore. But then the young girl he had just waved to in response approached and sat across from him.
"What are you doing?" she asked, placing her elbows against the table, her hands supporting her face as she leaned forward.
"It's... for a project," the young man responded promptly, snapping his laptop shut, to which the young girl gave a knowing grin.
"You know you have a room for that, right?" she asked, and the young man's eyes darted around to make sure no one else had seen what he was doing.
"...S-sure, but I like working in a more open environment," he responded with a strained smile, to which the young girl raised an eyebrow.
"You do know I know what you were REALLY watching, right?"
.
.
.
.
"!"
Aurelius jolted upright. "What... a nightmare?" he gasped, his mind turning back to that embarrassing memory from Joel.
He then sighed and fell back onto the bed, but just then... he felt something strange. It was slow at first, but with every passing second, it seemed to be taking over his entire being.
"What's this feeling?" he pressed his hand against his chest, but it helped no more than that. The strange sensation continued until his back arched against the bed, frozen in a silent scream, which went on until...
BAM!
He collapsed back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling with an inexplicable feeling of detachment.
"I feel numb," he muttered. It was as though the world had flipped from colorful to monochrome in a split second, a feeling so odd that he could not put it into words. It was quiet. Not that it had not been before, but this time, it was quiet in his mind as well, which was unusual, a mess of a million versions of him screaming at each other. This time, however, it was just... quiet. Unsettlingly so, but oddly, he was not disturbed by it.
"...."
After a while of thought, his mind returned to the present.
'The bed... I'm back here again.'
He thought, touching the soft mattress.
As he did, his gaze fell on his bandaged hand, and he recalled everything that had happened.
"System," he said.
[USER CAN NOW ACCESS STATUS BY MENTION OF STATUS]
A translucent blue screen appeared, which, unlike before, did not startle him in the slightest.
This level of apathy was almost pathological at this point.
"Status,"
[PLAYBOOK
NAME: Aurelius Morningstar
AGE: 17
LEVEL: 1 [EXP: 12|200]
RANK: F-
STRENGTH: 7
STAMINA: 6 (23)
VITALITY: 9
INTELLIGENCE: 31
AGILITY: 5
MANA: 20|20
CHARM: 50
BLOODLINE: HELIX
SPELLS: Fireball, Lightning Whip, Fire Spear
SP: 0
TIME: 364:11:01:23:54:12]
He simply stared at each and every stat, taking note of the word used, 'Playbook.' As odd as it sounded, the young Morningstar knew better than to waste his time asking questions the system would most definitely not answer.
Next was the level, which was 1, and the rank being F-, due to Aurelius being born with a pitiful mana capacity, which made growing stronger far more of a burden than it should have been, even for a normal human, much less a pure-blooded Morningstar. He attributed the level to the system, then moved through strength, stamina, vitality, and agility.
"Pathetic," he muttered, taking note of his trash mana, which had been put into figures for the first time, and as expected, it was beyond useless. This brought a sigh to his lips, after which his eyes ran down to the one thing that stood out to him.
"Helix... so that was the name," he thought.
He had, of course, found out he had a bloodline, but that was later down the line, sometime in the future just before his death, and he had only used it once.
Unfortunately, the system gave no explanation for the bloodline, but from what he had noticed after using it on a certain someone back then, it had somehow bound the individual to him, enslaving them to his will.
"Sigh," the young Morningstar exhaled, taking a look around. "I went back to the past," he noted. "And since this poster is still here..." he glanced at the one with Queeneth, "I either haven't slept with her, or... just recently had."
If that was so, it should place him somewhere between late sixteen or mid-seventeen.
"Wait... the system said seventeen," he remembered, glancing at the interface, then continued thinking for a while, after which he moved to the side of the bed, to a small table with a cupboard attached to it, which he pulled open.
He then touched a certain point, and a hidden compartment slid open. Reaching inside, he brought out a letter.
"Late seventeen it is," he mused, looking at the letter, which he clearly recalled had come from Queeneth some months after their night together in her van.
Queeneth, aside from being an influencer, was also an actress, something she took on later in life after gaining popularity from social media apps like Tiktok, Instagram, Webbull, Startube, and others. She was actually a hunter, an awakened one, and a high-ranked hunter at that. But at some point, the danger of diving into gates and risking her life seemed to become too much for her, so she began building her popularity through other means before moving into acting.
That did not mean she stopped participating in gates. It was a duty of every awakened citizen, after all, but the number she took part in was minimal.
But that was besides the point.
The point was that he had found a way to get her attention and even met her. What he had not known was that she herself was interested in the idea of being linked to royalty. So, being the kind of woman she was, knowing her own charm better than most, and aware that the young prince was fixated on her, she took advantage of it and ended up in bed with him.
And thus came the result.
The letter now in his hand, sent to the young Morningstar a month ago, stating that she was pregnant.