Chapter 9: Careful Planning

Bo woke up sweating.

His hands were checking his abdomen, his breathing rate fast enough to make him cough.

He looked at his palms. They were shaking, but they weren't covered in blood.

'Shit.'

He sat upright and moved to the edge of his bed, planting his feet on the ground.

'What the fuck was that?'

That figure came straight out of a nightmare. It was melting and didn't have a face.

And he encountered it after experiencing the worst night of his life.

He went through too much in such a short amount of time.

'That thing... that monster... wait.'

Suddenly, everything clicked.

'Is that what the heroes are fighting? Monsters?'

It was the only thing that made sense. For that monster to find him on this particular day meant that they were common enough for it to happen by chance.

'It could be that I'm just very unlucky.'

He was still shaking and breathing roughly, which reminded him of the shining orb.

It was beautiful, but it came straight from inside him.

'And that monster tried to eat it!'

What was it, and why had it tried to consume it?

Bo didn't have a clue, but he knew that it was precious to him and that he should protect it at all costs.

He heard crying coming from outside his room.

'Life, this is too fast. I can't think straight, everything just happens so fast.'

As usual, he calmed Abi down and tried to find his brother's sword.

He opened the drawer, yet there was no sword. The drawer was empty.

"Abi!" Bo exclaimed, "Did you touch Cal's sword? I told you it's dangerous to touch it."

"No!" Abi screamed from her room, her sound muffled by the walls that separated them. "I would never!" She sounded offended.

As Bo went to her room to interrogate her, a knock sounded from their main door.

'Life!'

Hunger was already here. Calming himself down after telling Abi to stay in her room, he approached the door and opened it.

Two individuals stood there, Hunger and the right, the Creator on the left.

"Hello," Hunger began speaking, his smile bright. "My name is Al, and I'm scouting for recruits to the Organization. Are you Novice Greatness's little brother? The first one anyway."

Bo thought about trying to look shocked, but he wasn't a good actor.

"Hello, it's nice to meet you," he said.

Hunger said his usual lines, not deviating much from previous loops. He hadn't said anything about him having power in the realm of emotions, probably because Bo was nervous enough for it to seem appropriate.

Finally, Hunger asked Bo to check his status.

----

Name: Unreadable

Cultivation Stage: Novice (Pure)

Attributes: [Legacy of the Unreadable], [Memory of The Dead]

Ideas: [Greatsword]

Legacy: Bitter Obedience - First Stage

--------------------------

'Huh?'

A new category appeared. Ideas.

Setting his eyes on the [Greatsword], a description popped up.

[Greatsword - Once held by a chosen of Greatness, used by him from his first to final battle. The sword, searching to fulfil its purpose, now serves Unreadable.]

The unreadable part was bugged out once again, but it was pretty clear that it was referring to him.

'Why is the sword in my status screen?'

"Well," Hunger interrupted his thoughts, looking as impatient as last time.

"What does it say?" he added.

'Shit.'

Being able to remember past loops, he realized this exact situation was very dangerous.

In one loop, Hunger killed him, and in another, accepted him, taking him to the headquarters.

Reminding himself of the situation where he wore the mask made his hand shake, but he had no time to let those thoughts distract him. He had to answer fast to not make Hunger suspicious.

'What should I say?'

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Bo decided on what to say.

As Hunger was about to comment on the long pause, Bo replied.

"Y-yes, it's just that I'm shocked. I thought Happiness chose me."

------

Bo was sitting in his room. It was quiet.

He managed to survive this time, but tomorrow he'll have to get to the headquarters again.

He was sitting on a nice brown chair in front of a white table.

Cal's great sword was lying on the table, pristine as ever.

'So it's like a storage in video games but weird,' he thought.

His improved memory made him connect dots more quickly. It seemed that remembering better made him smarter.

He realized that it had to be something like a storage. His brother had somehow made the sword appear and disappear at will with a golden light. So he tried doing that himself.

After focusing on the [Greatsword] Idea, his brother's sword appeared in his hand.

He sat there, using the time he had to think, staring at the sword intently.

Even if he remembered everything, he needed to think about the memories for him to envision them. He had to find out what was going on.

Why was he timelooping? How was he going to survive? How was he going to get back at Hunger?

Rage enveloped him from the inside, his face contorting.

Those were the thoughts that ran through his mind for an hour now.

Taking deep breaths, he calmed himself down and took a pen and a notebook.

'I'll write down the current timeline, it will help me think straight... This situation is so weird, who would've thought I'm writing about timelines like a crazy person.'

He started writing what occurred to him in the loop where he got to the headquarters, as that was what he was heading towards right now.

'First, I got to the Organization headquarters in my city. Then I was somehow transported to the main one by going down the stairs into a huge hall with a collection of gates.'

He marked that down, as it was crucial information.

'This is probably some sort of transportation system between headquarters. Maybe I could use it.'

He continued writing. He wrote about the headquarters itself, about Ares, who seemed to be the secretary, and then, with some hesitation, about the facility where he died.

Having it all on paper made him think about the situation logically, yet he did not like the idea that he came up with.

'Light... Isn't there anything better to do than to kill myself?'

He could try to get to a different headquarters, maybe enter a random room in the hallway leading up to the door that led to the facility, but he'll just be caught by Hunger.

'I'll kill him someday,' Bo thought.

Hunger was the main culprit of this whole situation. It felt like he was the main boss of a game, but for some reason, he met him in the tutorial.

The most productive thing he came up with was to learn the scary information that he decided to forget, whatever Hunger explained to him before putting the sense blocking helmet on.

The problem was that he was going to get himself killed again, and not only that, but he was risking the grey orb in his abdomen.

It seemed that everyone was attracted to it, as every time he died, he got cut down in his abdomen.

'Nothing happened to me last time, though. I'm going to be fine...'

It was nerve wracking, but after what Hunger had done to his sister, he was willing to do anything to get back at him, even if it meant dying once or twice.

Little did he know that it was going to be much more.