The blood dripping down his head suddenly increased in intensity, and fell like a fountain.
"I'm not.... even hurt in th—"
He fell down, unconscious.
Instantly, the woman moved, catching him in her arms.
Her blue eyes stared at him as if studying him, and at that moment a light wind blew by, not enough to disrupt anything, only enough to make her blonde hair flutter in the wind.
"Rest."
She said before turning her view away from him.
"The rest of you, spread out, and report what you find."
She said.
At her words, a dozen men and women clad in dark robes came out.
Almost systematically they fanned out.
The woman's eyes returned to the boy in her arms.
"Peaceful...."
She murmured.
He wasn't dead, the boy was still fighting.
Alive.
Even with the bullet in his head, even with the amount of blood that he had lost, and despite the fact that he was still clinging desperately to life— Like he had finally achieved something great.
After some minutes, the people that had left returned.
"Ma'am, we found 30 bodies."
"How many are alive?"
"Zero."
She looked up from the boy's face.
"Retrieve the bodies, we'll hand them over to their parents. Also make sure to carry the body of the man over there, the team will look over it when we get back."
"Ma'am, the thing about that. He isn't an awakened."
Despite the news, the woman's features didn't change.
Her expression was nonchalant at best.
"What do you mean by that?"
She asked.
"There was no tattoo on his back, instead we found this thing strapped to his spine where the tattoo should have been."
He handed a small device over to the woman.
She took it with relative ease.
It was small, brown, rectangular, and scorched by the edges.
From first glance it looked crude, however....
"Where would you be able to get this, I wonder...."
She murmured.
There was a long pause as her eyes drifted to the horizon.
"Add this to the list of what we're taking back."
The woman tossed the device towards him with practiced ease.
"Yes, ma'am."
The men then walked away.
'I suppose that if this thing is what we suspect it is, he must be working with them.'
She thought.
A device that allowed one to tap into the power of an awakened. Something that allowed an unawakened to become an awakened.
A power tap.
"And you, even without synchronizing with yourself, even with that bullet in your head, you still managed to defeat him."
Her fingers brushed his blood-soaked hair backwards.
"Fascinating...."
….
'Where am I?'
Raven thought, his eyes slowly opening.
The last thing he remembered was stomping on someone's head, after that he couldn't remember what happened.
'Did I die again?'
However, the sterile scent of antisceptics and the steady beep of medical machinery pulled him away from that thought.
A breathless gasp escaped from his mouth, and the harsh ceiling lights overhead made him squint as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
He looked around, noticing a drip attached to his arm and clean white walls.
"A hospital?"
He managed a single sentence, though it felt like he was choking on his words.
'It must have been her.'
The woman that caught him when he fell.
Unfortunately or fortunately, Raven remembered everything.
The bullet going into his head, the fight he had with the instructor, and his unbridled fury when he had when he stomped on the man's head—what remained of his head at least.
When Raven stood back up after being shot, he was bombarded by memories. Memories that weren't his, memories that belonged to the original owner of the body.
'To think I was actually transmigrated into that novel.'
He would have facepalmed himself if not for the numerous drips attached to his hand.
Main characters.... He knew many: even though the main arc of the story hadn't started yet, those from the big families and clans.
They had strong bloodlines.
He on the other hand was just—
Raven Hesse.
A boy whom his mother abandoned him from a young age, leaving him to fend for both himself and his sister.
His father was someone whom he nor his older sister never met, it was unknown whether he died or abandoned his children, hence he was officially 'missing'.
'Even in this world, my parents are still missing in my life.'
If anything, the only difference was that he and his sister weren't lashed with a massive debt. They were forced to live in abject poverty, that was until his sister enrolled.
His sister—Celestine Hesse, managed to enroll into the same academy with the main characters and earned a position in the student council.
Due to her talent she was offered a scholarship.
And while juggling her student council work and school life, she still managed to make some income and sent most of it to him.
So, Raven used the money for the only thing he saw fit—enrolling in a class.
Unfortunately for him, the very same class he had enrolled in died on the last week of the joint training program, and the very same instructor that trained him killed the boy in cold blood.
To sum it all, Raven's life was filled with hardships and suffering, only ending when death embraced him.
He was something akin to a side-character, his only relevance to the story being his death as he drove his sister to attain more power. Raven's sister was one of the main characters by the way.
And most importantly, during her period of depression the protagonist took it as his duty to comfort her, warming up to her. And "wifing" her up.
'I'll prevent that.'
The protagonist and his own sister wasn't the best couple he could think of, especially since the novel had multiple love interests.
"And if anything—"
Just as he said those words, the door opened.
A young woman stepped into the hospital room, her pink hair swaying to the side.
"Oh, it seems like you're awake now."