Complete darkness surrounded me while a warm, vaguely familiar feeling enveloped my very being, as if I were bathing in warm streams of water.
Could I have regressed so far that I wasn't even born yet?
A single thought flashed through my slowed mind.
.
.
.
Gathering his strength, Finlay tried to open his eyes. To his surprise, he was actually able to do so.
Slowly, the darkness around him disappeared, and his blurry surroundings began to take on clearer outlines until he found himself in a spacious room.
"Huh?"
He realized where the previous vaguely familiar sensation had come from.
Right now he was lying in the bathtub.
The clear warm water pleasantly enveloped his young body like a mother's embrace.
Of course, he could only be called young compared to the decrepit body Finlay had in the future.
'Well, it was better than starting over as a newborn.'
He didn't want to experience all the inconveniences of living in a helpless body again.
And yet, right now, he pushed all those thoughts aside.
What just happened?
He actually traveled back in time. To a time when the World had not yet been destroyed, and humanity was still idling its existence as the top of the food chain.
What the mysterious Star Hope said turned out to be true.
The warm water enveloping his body – something impossible by the standards of the Ruined World – was the clearest proof of this.
"Haha...pfhahaha...pfhahaHAHAHAHAHA!!"
Not holding back at all, a wild, uncontrollable laugh burst out of him.
"I'm really back!"
Waves of joy, along with many hormones ran through his blood, causing a crazy smile to appear on his lips.
He did it! No more sleepless nights, never-ending hunger and constant struggle for survival!
The emotions bubbling up inside him made him lean back and close his eyes.
The warm bath, which he hadn't had in so long, was pleasantly relaxing to his body and mind, which was in a constant state of tension due to the monsters in the neighborhood.
But even in this relaxation Finlay had not forgotten the one thanks to whom he could afford it.
Hope, the brightest Star of the future and his savior. No, first and foremost
his savior.
It was thanks to her that he was now able to take this bath.
He was grateful to her. In fact, truly grateful for rescuing him from a dark future where nothing but death awaited him, whether from starvation or the fangs of a roving monster.
Though he hadn't had time to ask her why she'd chosen him... it didn't change anything. To him, it didn't diminish the significance of her action one bit.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The familiar mechanical sound, which was less annoying today than usual, echoed in his head again.
Still lounging in the warm bathtub, Finlay glanced at the familiar messages.
[System Setup Complete]
[System bound to host #27063705-E]
[The process of fusing the host with the current body has begun]
[Current status: incomplete]
[The error caused by an unsuitable body for the soul has been corrected, continued fusion...]
...!
Before he could say or do anything, everything in his eyes went black as he felt a dark shroud envelop him and he lost consciousness.
***
When he woke up, the already cool bath water was washing him with its coolness, slowly bringing back the sensations in his body.
Good thing he was in the bathtub at the time of the fusion and wasn't hurt.
Dying from falling to the floor right after regression would rank in the top of the most miserable deaths, wouldn't it?
As usual after thinking some nonsense he finally came to his senses.
"Is it really me...?"
He squeezed his young, healthy hand a couple times until he was sure it was all real.
"I really did have my first life on Earth... does that mean this is my second?"
It no longer felt like transmigration into this body, rather... it felt like he had just woken up after a very, very long sleep.
Not as a modern man from Earth, but as Finlay Esterra, a native of this world.
It seemed he had lived his entire life as Finlay Esterra and was only now remembering his past life in the modern world.
He understood more now why the system called it 'fusion' and not anything else.
"Finlay's feelings became my feelings, and my feelings became Finlay's feelings."
Trying to put his feelings through words, he exhaled the murky air.
After another couple minutes spent getting used to this unusual feeling, he finally regained some of his composure.
Even though he was back in the past, one thing remained the same – he still needed information to move forward.
Closing his eyes, like so many times in the future, he tried to remember everything he knew about his own 'self'.
And this time he did it without any problems.
'First of all, my identity.'
Finlay Esterra, age 20, bastard of the Noble House of Esterra, heir to the nothing.
'Secondly, the place where I am now.'
It was a guest house that members of the Esterra Family usually used for hosting guests or keeping bastards like him.
'Third, my future plans... let's skip that one for now.'
'Fourthly, what I possess.'
"The system...?"
He uttered with some expectation, but in response... only the sound of flowing water was heard in the silence.
"Okay, I didn't hold out much hope for that. Real men don't rely on some system, they only rely on themselves."
Saying a few encouraging words to quell the bitterness in his mouth, Finlay tried to reason logically.
While nothing was yet clear with the system, he still had what Hope had handed him.
'Something the system called the Origin.'
...!
At the thought of this, an unknown part of him instinctively reacted to it.
Bizarre runes appeared in front of him, changing nonstop for a while before taking on a shape he was comfortable with.
— — —「Origin」 — — —
「Inherited from ■■■■■■」
❖ Name: Veil of Vulnerability ❖
❖ Type: Evolutionary (Ex-Rank) ❖
➤ Stab in the Heart
➤ Web of Lies
➤ ????
➤ ????
— — — — — —
"Veil of Vulnerability... What a strange name. Should I say it suits me very well?"
Staring at the runes in front of him, Finlay continued to study them.
"If you think about it that way, the choice of other titles is pretty specific, too."
Stab in the Heart? Web of Lies? Whoever picked them definitely had their own view of life.
Again, as soon as he thought of one of the titles, Veil of Vulnerability reacted like a cute puppy and quickly gave him all the information about it.
'That's what I call good service, not like some cheap system.'
He gave a snort in the direction where he thought the system should have been before turning back to the information provided.
— — —「Stigmata」 — — —
❖ Name: Stab in the Heart ❖
❖ Type: Emotional Vulnerability ❖
["Emotion is a fragile whisper that can only be heard in the silence of the soul."]
➤ Depending on the target's level of emotion, reveals their vulnerabilities and secrets.
— — — — — —
"...How poetic."
Whether it was created by the Origin itself or its past owner, it was quite fancy.
But if he had to roughly assess it, then....
"Isn't that kind of like a status ability?"
Although the activation conditions were different and he didn't know how far this ability could go, it was a nice thing.
Regardless of the world he lived in, be it allies or enemies, information was paramount.
And as long as he could evoke emotion, he would have an advantage over others.
Was anyone better suited for this than an inhabitant of the 21st century, a time in which ways of pissing people off have reached a new level?
"With all the words I know, even a monk would spit blood..."
Once more assessing it, Finlay confirmed.
'Not bad. Though the choice of titles is still a little scary.'
He studied the fanciful runes for a moment longer. He'd never in his life – no, in two lives – met them, but even so, their meaning was intuitively clear to him.
Was this another merit of the Origin?
Finally, he called them off, feeling some affinity for this ability.
At least, unlike the ridiculous system, Origin was responsive to his commands.
"Nice work, Veil of Vulnerab... Vul... Vulner... Vulner... ability... damn, I'm really going to break my tongue if I say that every time."
Finishing his attempt to thank Origin for a job well done with failure, he scratched his head.
"Hmm...I'll just call you Veil. I hope we work well together, friend."
Having said that, Finlay remembered that there was one more thing he hadn't had time to explore.
"I think it was called the Grace of the Sun—"
Knock knock.
A brief knock on the door interrupted the flow of his thoughts and triggered a sense of deja vu.
"Brother, are you there?"
Although the voice was just as pleasant, it was still different from Hope's.
'Who could it be?'
After going through his entire family tree at an accelerated pace and coming to no definite conclusion, he decided to make a bet.
"Uh, Sister Rhea?"
A long silence followed before the person behind the door answered.
"...It's Remy."
'Oops, miss.'
He quickly recovered from this setback and calmly climbed out of the bathtub, the water in which had become as cold as the voice of the person outside.
"Wait a couple minutes, I'll be right out."
Guess it's time to meet my sister.