It was close to midnight. Saya and Caelum lay on the bed inside Caelum's bedroom, exhausted.
"Why not sleep here for the night?" Caelum asked a Saya who was dressing herself, preparing to leave the room.
"That won't do, Young Master. You have a reputation to uphold. You only woke up today. If I don't return to my quarters tonight, rumors will undoubtedly spread, painting you in a lecherous light. If nothing else, most servants are very good at gossip," Saya replied, a hint of sadness flickering across her face.
Whether her sadness stemmed from the inability to stay with her Young Master for the rest of the night or something else remained unclear. Her mind was weighed down by concerns she was unwilling to share with Caelum yet.
Caelum considered her reasoning and felt that what she said made some sense.
"What you say, unfortunately, makes sense. Wait a while, and there will come a day when you can openly sleep in my room without anyone daring to whisper behind your back," Caelum said, his tone sweet and reassuring, intending to assuage her worries.
Saya smiled warmly at his gesture, even if she didn't fully believe his words. She was familiar with the personalities of people in power. Not to mention, Caelum's charm and handsomeness made him almost too good to be true. The rational side of her doubted her place beside him would last. Yet, a small part of her hoped his words would come to pass.
With a heart both light and heavy, Saya returned to her quarters.
As soon as she left, the perfect smile on Caelum's face faded. In its place was a blank expression, devoid of any emotion.
'System,' Caelum called out to the system interface in his mind. There was only one stat he was interested in.
[Devourer's Madness]: 0.0%
The smile returned, this time tinged with a bit of cunning. Caelum had checked how his Madness was doing soon after he started getting intimate with Saya. It would be a lie to say that he wasn't enjoying himself, so he had been curious if that was reflecting in his Madness deterioration.
What he saw left Caelum feeling very pleasantly surprised. Devourer's Madness had dropped to zero even before they were done with foreplay. The deterioration rate was extremely high at multiple points throughout the act.
'Perfect,' he thought.
Relying on Madness to naturally decay was simply not a viable option. He had to rely on improving his mental state to increase the deterioration rate. He had been thinking of activities that might bring him great joy, and unsurprisingly, sex was pretty high up there. Caelum did have a somewhat promiscuous nature. When his life and soul weren't under immediate threat, he liked indulging himself.
'My experiment has paid off. With this, I can be more flexible with how many times I use [Devour] per day.'
Caelum walked to the window of his bedroom, gazing out at the enchanting view of Wintram City at night. The city's lights melded with the pale glow emitted by the whirlpool of energy surrounding the newly forming rift, creating an ethereal scene.
As his eyes wandered to the pale yellow moon hanging in the sky, his thoughts turned to the System and its mysterious origins.
In the beginning, Caelum had believed that the System was the creation of an immensely powerful entity—one that intended to use him as a mere pawn. He imagined a grim future: devouring others, only to eventually be devoured himself, all to strengthen the System's creator. It was pessimistic outlook.
An entire day had passed since his transmigration, and while Caelum still believed the System's true creator was out there somewhere, waiting for him to deliver himself, his fear of this entity had diminished slightly.
The reason for this shift lay in the limitations of the System itself, particularly the existence of Combat Contribution and Devourer's Madness.
Initially, Caelum had assumed that the creator of the System was nearly omnipotent, making any form of resistance futile. However, the presence of these constraints suggested otherwise.
If the System's creator were truly omnipotent, such limitations would be unnecessary. These restrictions revealed that the creator, too, had weaknesses.
To Caelum, this realization was significant. It offered something extremely important: hope. Hope was the foundation upon which people built their resolve to face life's challenges. The mere existence of the System's limitations gave Caelum the hope he needed to continue living.
Ultimately, everything in the cosmos was subject to the dominion of the Heavens themselves. Even the most powerful entities had their bounds.
Looking back at the serene full moon, Caelum smiled in an attempt to hype himself up. "This is not a game I am destined to lose," he thought.
With that thought, he lay down on his bed, ready to go to sleep. It was his first night in this strange new world. He entered a somewhat restless slumber, his mind troubled by strange dreams that we would not remember the next morning.
* * *
Caelum woke up before sunrise the next day.
'I'm still in this world, huh? I guess this isn't just some weird dream then,' he thought to himself, slowly rising from his bed.
Some time later, he noticed that Saya was standing outside his door, so he invited her in. She seemed to be somewhat panicked.
After she entered the room, without a word, Caelum pulled her into a hug, kissing her soft lips. The kiss wasn't deep, but it was tender. For a brief moment, Saya's worry seemed to melt away as she relaxed into his embrace.
Only after the kiss was done did Caelum ask her, "What's wrong, Saya? You seemed a little distressed earlier."
As if recalling the urgency of her thoughts, Saya's expression turned serious, "Young Master, something bad has happened. I think someone is trying to slander you!"