"Haaa!"
The sterile scent of antiseptic and the steady beep of medical machinery pulled me from the depths of my slumber as a breathless gasp escaped my lips.
The harsh ceiling lights overhead made me squint as I tried to make sense of my surroundings.
I had to fight the sedatives that must've been injected in my veins to keep myself from dozing off.
Looking around, I noticed clean white walls, a drip attached to my arm, a machine constantly monitoring my heart rate, and the faint hum of distant conversations right outside the door.
As I thought, I was still in the hospital room.
I ended up here last evening after… the fight.
"Arghh," I groaned, bringing a hand to my face and massaging my eyebrows. "So everything I remembered is real, huh?"
That was... a problem.
More than a problem! It was a disaster!
My name is Samael Kaizer Theosbane.
I'm the fifth son of Duke Arthur Kaizer Theosbane. My father is the Overlord of half of the Western Safe-Zone and one of the strongest Hunters to have ever lived.
I naturally lived a lavish and privileged lifestyle as the youngest child of the Theosbane clan. From a very young age, I was deemed a child prodigy.
I was smart, clever, and a quick learner.
That title of genius stuck with me until my early adolescence.
The problem was that even by the age of thirteen, I had yet to awaken my Origin Card.
An Origin Card is awakened after experiencing a strong physical or emotional ordeal – ranging anything from years of grueling training to a harrowing near-death experience.
That's why all the Great Noble Clans put their children through harsh physical and mental discipline from a young age to help them materialize their Origin Card early, because one can't awaken it after the age of fourteen.
So, I had only one year left if I wanted a chance at awakening.
All my siblings had already awakened by this time, even my twin sister, who was only a few minutes older than me! Even she had awakened!
What was wrong with me?
Was I broken?
I could see the disappointment in my father's eyes growing every single day. And after some time, he stopped paying any attention to me at all.
It was torture. I wanted him to look at me with pride—or just look at me at all! I wanted him to notice me, to be happy with me, to tell me he was there for me! But he never did.
I trained from dawn to dusk until all the bones in my body howled in agony. I meditated for hours upon hours every day. I even started getting into fights—real, ugly street fights. But nothing worked.
When I had lost all hope, in an act of desperate measure, I snuck into our family's private training dungeon below the clan mansion and unshackled a Spirit Beast there. Then, I attempted to fight it.
Needless to say, I was overpowered in seconds and was about to be mauled to death. Thankfully, my father showed up just in time and rescued me by slaying the beast.
I was... ecstatic! Overjoyed not because I was saved, but because my father had finally noticed me! Maybe getting nearly killed was worth it after all!
...It wasn't.
After dispatching the threat, my father turned to me, his eyes cold and merciless as ever, and said in a voice completely devoid of any love, "You're a disgrace."
Disgrace.
That word must've echoed in my ears a thousand times… taunting me, mocking any hope I had of a happy relationship with my father.
At that moment, I knew he would never love me. I was too weak for his standards, a mere waste of his precious time.
It shattered me. Broke me. I cried for days, weeks even, after those heart-wrenching words were uttered to me by the man I grew up worshiping as my idol… my hero.
It was the worst fourteenth birthday I could've asked for...
But just hours after that incident, I finally did it. I manifested my Origin Card.
People, including my father, thought it was because of the dungeon incident. They were partially right.
It was indeed a result of what happened in the dungeon — not because the Spirit Beast almost killed me, but because my father's words did. Only I knew that truth.
I had little hope of ever gaining his approval after that. He had already judged me useless.
Even though I awakened a powerful Origin Card with high-rank Soul Potential, I still paled in comparison to my twin sister, whom my father began grooming as his heiress and the next Duchess.
Perhaps it was then, in a cry for attention, that I began lashing out — ranting and raving at servants, hitting people, picking on children my age, and often bursting into unprovoked violence... all because I knew I would face no consequence.
So what if my father saw me as a disgrace? I was still the Duke's son. That thought alone gave me a perverse sense of power high. I really began to enjoy hurting others.
Everyone was merely a toy for my amusement, after all. And inflicting pain on people became the most gratifying way to satisfy a dark, twisted part of me.
Who would dare to stand against me?
Even without my noble status, I was strong. In fact, I was the strongest Awakened kid my age I knew—second only to my twin sister.
I ruled my high school with an iron fist. With unparalleled strength, I subdued all the teen gangs in the city, making a name for myself as one of the toughest fighters.
Sure, I was arrested a few times—for underage drinking, violent crimes, drug use, unlawful weapon possession, and some other things I can't mention—but it was nothing my clan couldn't handle. I was bailed out every single time, with all charges dropped.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I was never punished for my improper behavior. I believed I was invincible.
...But I wasn't.
A few months back, one of my friends started picking on a Mundane kid in our high school—Mundane, by the way, is slang for someone who hasn't Awakened even after crossing the fourteen-year age mark.
In our society, Mundanes are deemed worthless. Okay, maybe not exactly worthless, but they're definitely put below the Awakened populace.
On top of that, this kid was an orphan, ugly, chubby, and way too much of a goody-two-shoes. We were a bunch of bullies! You can't possibly blame us for picking on an easy target like him!
Right?
I mean, if you don't want to get bullied, then maybe you should lay low around a bad group of people. And don't try to take a stand for other bullied nerds unless you want to join their ranks!
That kid didn't understand those simple rules. He did try to take a stand for a classmate of his. So, one of the guys in our group put him in his place—by throwing him inside a locker, that is.
But he didn't relent. He kept trying to raise his voice against us.
So, we made him our errand boy.
I had no problem with it at first, until my girlfriend, Lily, came to me. She asked me to stop torturing the poor guy and told me his life story. She knew about him since they were both in the same class.
Apparently, he lost his parents a few years ago—both his father and mother went missing while on duty in the Spirit Realm. His only family was his uncle, aunt, and three cousins, who were all abusive to him.
Basically, his life at home already wasn't great.
I'll be honest, I pitied the guy.
Sure, I was a monster, but I wasn't heartless!
However, even after knowing all that, I couldn't just ask my buddies to stop tormenting him. That would make me look weak, especially after my girlfriend came advocating for him.
So, I did nothing. In my defense, I thought my friends would grow bored of him and leave him alone in a few days.
…They didn't.
The bullying worsened.
Lily pleaded for him many times, but I kept avoiding her. Until one day, she threatened to break up with me if I didn't stop hurting people.
She gave me an ultimatum.
Now, don't get me wrong, our relationship was totally superficial. She was a councilman's daughter and I was the son of a Duke. We were both elites, so we started dating.
There was nothing more to us. No love, no chemistry. I definitely didn't like her or anything.
...At first.
The truth is, after spending some time with her, I did start to like her presence. She was just so pretty, adorable, and her cute smile was absolutely infectious!
Honestly, just seeing her would make my day better. She was like a warm ray of sunshine in my cold, dark, empty void of a life. I enjoyed her company.
Obviously, that meant I didn't want to break up. Maybe she was also aware of that, that's why she used our relationship as leverage. So, I went to her class one evening to tell her that I would stop and try to be better.
But there...
There I saw something that devastated me. I saw Lily kissing that guy. The light of my life, the person I would have given everything to, kissing a weak, pathetic, miscreant!
Anger and jealousy—mostly anger—clouded my reasoning.
I jumped on that boy and started pummeling his face. Lily tried to stop me and pull me off him, but I kept punching until his countenance was a bloody mess.
After that, without a word, I got up and stormed out.
Lily followed me, explaining that she was only there to console him because one of my buddies had again beaten him up today. One thing led to another, and they ended up kissing.
I didn't care.
I ghosted her after that day. Didn't pick up any of her calls, neglected messages, and eventually blocked her from all my contacts.
As for that guy, well, I made his life even more of a living hell than it already was. Every day he would be brutally beaten, shoved in trash cans, and publicly humiliated.
If I could have killed him, I would have. But he was an orphaned son of martyrs. Killing him would have politically affected our clan.
So, I kept making his existence miserable.
That was… until yesterday – the last day of high school.
After the farewell party, we dragged him out to an abandoned alley behind the campus. We thought no one would hear his screams there. No one would come to his aid.
Well, spoiler alert – he wasn't the one who needed any aid yesterday.
As soon as we were alone, we started using him as our personal punching bag as usual. But in the midst of our beating, he… awakened.
There are rare cases of people awakening even after fourteen, but it was my first time seeing it in person. And his case was especially rare since he was awakening at seventeen!
Yes, there are late bloomers in the world… but not THIS late!
Did we give him so much trauma that he awakened so late in his life? Impossible!
But from the looks of it, that was exactly what happened.
Long story short, he materialized his Origin Card and started fighting back. We also used our powers, but two of my group members were easily taken out by him within the first few minutes.
It was then I realized that he hadn't awakened just then. No, he must've awakened weeks ago.
After all, no one could just awaken their powers and start using them as masterfully as he was doing it. In fact, it takes days to even understand one's Origin Card.
That's when it hit me.
This guy had been practicing in secret for weeks. Maybe he awakened the day I beat him half to death for kissing Lily. Or maybe even before that.
All this time, he had been training in secret, plotting his revenge.
And now, on the last day of high school, he decided to act.
It was an impeccable plan. With high school ending, he could apply to a Hunter's Academy the very next day. He would be beyond the reach of my clan's influence after that.
Basically, he could do anything, and no one would be able to punish him for it unless it was a really big crime. And beating us up could easily be chalked up to self-defense.
Why couldn't we hunt him down illegally?
Because no one, not even the Ducal Clans, could harm an applicant or a cadet of a Hunter's Academy. It was law, and the law was absolute.
On top of that, we had brought him to a secluded place. There was no one to come to our rescue now. Our simple plan had backfired spectacularly.
Frustrated, I used my own Origin Card and joined the battle.
Sure, that guy had awakened his powers! Sure, he had taken down a few of my powerful group members! And sure, he was strong!
But was he stronger than me?! Were his powers better than mine?! Did he surpass my SS-rank potential?!
...As I soon found out, yes. Yes to all.
He was indeed strong. No, he was more than that! He was an absolute monster—a ruthless fighting machine.
For the first time in my life, I lost to someone my age other than my twin sister in a fight—if that one-sided carnage by him could even be called a proper fight.
However, that isn't the important part!
You see, at the end of the fight, after taking a particularly brutal blow from him, I collapsed and hit my head on a pointy rock.
As soon as the rock struck the back of my skull... I remembered.
I remembered my past life as Noah. Twenty years of memories came flooding into my head in a flash, the sudden influx overloading my brain almost to the point of shutdown!
My eyes rolled back and my body went limp. I lost consciousness as memories of that other life rolled before my eyes like a reel.
And in that moment, I also remembered the game I was playing the day I died—Spirit Realm Chronicles.
Funnily enough, I had been reborn inside that very game.
And by a sheer twist of fate… that guy we had been bullying all this time was none other than the game's protagonist himself! He was Michael Godswill!
But then where did that leave me? Hah! If it wasn't clear already, let me spell it out—I am one of the game's minor, later turned major, villains.
And I was destined to die in all forty-one routes!