The library didn't smell like antiseptic or ozone; it smelled like dust, old parchment, and the silent desperation of students who realized they were failing far too late in the semester.
I sat at a secluded mahogany desk in the South Wing, a place so deep in the archives that the mana-lamps flickered with a dim, orange hue instead of the usual white or yellow in populated areas.. My head throbbed, but it was a different kind of pain this time. Every few minutes, a strange, phantom sensation would ripple through my muscles—a dull ache in my calves, a sudden tightness in my chest.
[Share Connection: Active] [Stamina Gain (+0.01) attributed to Primary] [Vitality Gain (+0.01) attributed to Primary]
I leaned back, closing my eyes for a second. Somewhere, several kilometres away, my Clone had likely just crushed the core of some F-Rank Slime. It was a bizarre feeling, like being in a dream where you're running while sitting perfectly still.
"Focus," I hissed to myself, rubbing my temples.
I looked down at the massive, leather-bound tome in front of me: The Early Records of Sigil Craft and Geometry. In my previous life, Erhart had found a powerful set of runes in this very section—runes that allowed him to reinforce his mana circuits enough to withstand the pressure of A-Rank spells without his body tearing itself to dust. Although I was missing a few skills for the runes to have that much of an effect. Regardless, if I was going to keep using B-Rank compression with a D-Rank body, I needed those runes more a lot than he did.
But as I turned the heavy pages, my left hand—the one with the black mark—began to feel unnervingly cold.
The ink on the page seemed to shimmer. For a moment, the Latin script blurred, rearranging themselves into a language that didn't exist in any textbook I had ever read.
[Warning: Zero (■) is reacting to external data]
"Not now," I whispered, my eyes darting around the empty aisle.
I wasn't alone.
The footsteps were faint—too rhythmic to be a distracted student, too heavy to be a normal librarian. They were coming from the Restricted Section behind me.
I didn't turn around. Instead, I slowly reached for a pen, my mind racing. I had two Swaps left. If this was a threat, I could be in a dungeon in the blink of an eye, leaving a very confused assassin to deal with a silver-eyed clone.
But if I left now, I'd lose the book.
"You're looking in the wrong section, Aren Vale."
The voice was soft, melodic, and held the unmistakable resonance of someone who had lived far longer than their appearance suggested.
The hand of a larger person, their gender or identity I couldn't tell, reached over the shelf, gripping the corner with a concerning force.
"Didn't expect to see you here." It continued, its voice morphing into something else
The only person I thought it could be was the emerald eyed man, so I looked up, expecting to see him.
Only to be met with...
Me.
I stared into my own eyes, concern rising up my throat.
No. Fuck no.
I'm not even going to try with this.
"Swap." I immediately went for the safest option.
[Swap in progres—]
The hand reached through the system box, breaking it into rough halves, and grasped my neck.
"That's not happening now is it?" It brought me closer, whispering into my ear as if to prevent someone... something from hearing.
"System!" I was running out of options fast, I tried to see if I could purchase any item or skill that could help me here.
[System is currently unavailable.]
Shit shit shit shit shit.
What the fuck was I supposed to do?
Die?
Roll over and give up?
The entity reached it's spare hand up, and with a familiar black marking, it cocked its arm back, and then everything went black.
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I woke up, cold sweat running down my face, drenching my clothing entirely.
What happened?
Was I alive?
"Are you ok?" The familiar voice of the librarian asked?
"Wuh?" I was too disoriented to speak any real words.
"Do you need me to come with you?" She seemed genuinely concerned for my safety.
"You were shaking and speaking unintelligible phrases in your sleep," she started "something about systems?"
She had somewhat accurately guessed what had just happened.
I was starting to calm down.
It wasn't real.
Nothing had happened.
I was safe.
Right?
Because if so, why had the mark on the back of my hand grown slightly.
It was now threatening to consume the entirety of the front of my left hand.
"Do you want somebody to talk to?" The librarian was now looked less concerned for my physical safety, and more concerned for my mental safety.
I didn't blame her in any way.
"I'll be fine, thanks."
Nobody could help me with this anyway.
I looked back down at the book as the librarian walked away, her soft steps slowly getting quieter and quieter.
The language on the book had returned to what it had been.
[Skill: Regressor's Blessing (SS) Deciphers the contents of the book.]
It had finally done something, I had been expecting it to stay dormant like some other skill had been doing.
The mark on my hand seemed to have gotten warmer, a slight sign that the area was returning to normal.
It didn't make me feel any better.
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I stepped out of the library, the smell of the old archives having distorted my sense of smell slightly.
It smelt fresh outside.
Too fresh.
I tried to ignore it, to pretend that it all didn't bother me.
But it did.
Horribly so.
Why am I even trying? If a version of me can just reach through my screen and choke me, a few days of training isn't going to save the world.
I was alone in my struggles. I always would be.
Looking around 'my' agemates' biggest concern would be grades, or rivalries, or petty arguments.
The world has less than 120 hours left for fuck's sake.
[Stamina Gain (+0.01) attributed to Primary]
What's the point.
0.01 isn't going to mean anything in a fight now, let alone in 5 days time.
I watched the students across the quad. Two girls were laughing over a shared screen, and a group of boys were arguing about a mana-theory lecture.
They looked like they looked forward to every day, I never wanted tomorrow to come.
There was a fundamental wrongness in the way the sun hit the pavement. It was too bright for a world that was already rotting from the inside out. I looked down at my left hand. The black mark was a bruise on reality, a reminder that my 'second chance' was just a more elaborate way for the universe to kill me.
Maybe the entity was right. Maybe regression was a useless skill. All it did was give me a front-row seat to a tragedy I couldn't stop.
"System," I muttered, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears. "Status."
[Status: Functioning.]
"Functioning," I repeated, a bitter, dry laugh escaping my throat. "Yeah. Barely."
I started walking toward the dorms. I didn't run. I didn't check my surroundings. I didn't even care if Selene was watching me from a window. Let her watch. Let her see the 'genius' of the 123rd rank fall apart.
Every notification from the Clone felt like a mosquito bite. A tiny, irritating reminder that I was still tethered to a life I was starting to loathe.
[Vitality Gain (+0.01) attributed to Primary]
I stopped in the middle of the path. I wanted to scream at the sky, to tell whatever was watching me to just finish it. To stop the countdown and just let the darkness in the library take me for real. But I didn't have the energy for a tantrum.
I just felt heavy. Like the weights from the training room were still pressed against my chest, invisible and permanent.
I reached the 'Dumpster' dorm and didn't even bother to look at my roommates as I walked in. I didn't head for my desk. I didn't open a book.
I just collapsed onto my thin, lumpy mattress and stared at the underside of the bunk above me.
The wood grain looked like a face. Or a crack. Or nothing at all.
[4 Days, 12 Hours Left]
"Shut up," I whispered to the empty air.
I closed my eyes, but I didn't sleep. I just waited for the time to go away
If time had never been on my side once till now, I wouldn't expect it to do anything for me now.
The sound of students outside slowly got quieter, a kind of personal alarm that the day was nearly over.
The thin mattress beneath me felt less like a bed and more like a slab. I could hear the muffled sounds of the academy outside—distant cheers from the training grounds, the rhythmic thumping of someone playing music in a nearby dorm. It was the sound of life continuing, blissfully unaware that it was balanced on the edge of a razor.
The wood grain of the bunk above me began to blur. My vision didn't fail; my mind just stopped bothering to process the shapes. I was staring at infinity in a six-foot space.
[Stamina Gain (+0.01) attributed to Primary]
"Stop it," I croaked. The blue box flickered, indifferent to my command. It was a progress bar for a game I no longer wanted to play.
I thought back to my last life. I had been a soldier, a survivor. I had seen cities fall and friends turn to ash. I thought that by coming back, I was the hunter. But laying here, in the dim light of a room that smelled of unwashed laundry and cheap mana-refining oil, I realized I was just a fly that had been pulled out of the spiderweb only to be dropped back into the centre of it.
What was the point of the runes? What was the point of outrunning Erhart?
Even if I became the strongest person in this era, I was still just a puppet. The 'Me' from the library had proven that. He hadn't just beaten me; he had humiliated the very concept of my struggle. He had reached my absolute 'advantage'—the System—and snapped it like a dry twig.
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room as my roommates eventually trickled in. I didn't move. I didn't even adjust my breathing to pretend I was asleep.
"Hey, Aren? You okay, man?" One of them asked. I think it was the one who always talked about his family's farm. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well.
I didn't answer. I couldn't find the energy to form the 'I'm fine' that usually sat on the tip of my tongue.
"Leave him," another whispered. "He probably overdid it in the mock assessment. You saw the fight. Guy's probably just burnt out."
Burnt out. If only it were that simple. You can fix burnout with rest. You can't fix the realization that your soul is being tattooed by a cosmic entity that thinks your existence is a joke.
I felt the Black Mark on my hand throb in time with my heartbeat. It was warm now. A mocking, parasitic warmth. It felt like it was laughing at me—a slow, rhythmic pulse that said 'I am the only thing that is real here.'
I rolled onto my side, facing the cold, stained wall. The countdown in the periphery of my vision was the only thing that had any colour left.
[4 Days, 11 Hours Left]
The numbers moved. The world moved. But I stayed still. I was waiting for the hopelessness to either kill me or become so heavy that I finally stopped feeling it. I was a Regressor who had run out of road, staring at the wall and wishing the clock would just skip to the end so I wouldn't have to watch the seconds tick by.
I closed my eyes, and for the first time in two lives, I hoped I wouldn't wake up to see the next number.