142 Ancestral Soul (1/2)

A few beads of sweat were on his face and she carefully used some clothes to wipe them away. Just when she was gently wiping his face, his eyes slowly opened.

The first thing, Ivan felt when he woke up was the pain. Every little part of his body sent pain signals to his brain, nearly overwhelming it and forcing him to blackout again. Only the fact, that he had increased his resistance before, enabled him to hold on.

*Damn, not again.*, was what he thought. It seemed like every time he blacked out he would wake up in pain. Just as when his bloodline evolved. Back then he too had awoken in pain. Not to mention these time he had gotten killed while training. Some of those deaths were so painful, that it had nearly warped his mind. But with time he had become more resistant against it, so he was now able to stand the current pain he was feeling.

He slowly opened his eyes. Even this movement was enough to send new spikes of pain through his brain. While he was trying to open his eyes, he could feel someone gently removing his sweat. The soft touch of the wet cloth on his skin felt comfortable since luckily his skin wasn't hypersensitive.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, the first thing he saw was unknown eyes staring down on him, with a gentle look in them. While he was still wondering, whom these eyes belong to, the memories of what happened before filled his brain.

*Fuuuu..., what the hell did I do?*, he asked himself, shocked that he had acted so completely against his usual behavior. *What happened?*

Before he could ask himself anymore question a gentle voice said, ”You are awake? That's good. How do you feel?”, the last question was filled with concern, making him feel warm. He never before had someone worry about him like this. Or at least, nobody had shown it like this.

He pushed the pain into the back of his mind and answered in a coarse voice, ”I'm alright. It's just that I seem to have damaged my body. How about you?”

Hearing his answer Celine's face relaxed and she smiled lightly. Still, there was some concern in her eyes, when she heard that his body was damaged. ”I'm very good as well. I'm not sure what happened, but it seems like you have activated some ritual stemming from your bloodline, which has changed my body. Now I'm young again.” At her last sentence, there was unconcealed happiness in her voice.

”I guess that this ritual has required your body to handle energies, that it couldn't withstand, so it is now damaged.”, she then explained her take on why he was injured. ”But you should first check your system prompts.”, she then advised him.

Ivan agreed with her and now that he knows that she was alright and that what had happened didn't seem to be something that had hurt her, he turned his focus towards the system prompts, that had been minimized.

>

The first one he read was a warning. And a warning that promised him a heavy fine, if he didn't stop his action, whatever it was. He had no knowledge about what the Ancestral Soul was, but it seemed like it was responsible for most of the things that had happened. Checking the system-wiki didn't yield any result either.

He then checked the next Prompt.

>

”Damn!”, when he read this prompt he couldn't help himself but cursed out loud. Losing all his honor points was a big hit. He hadn't used any yet since he had saved them up for better and more expensive things. And now they were all gone. The two months, where he wouldn't get any, was irrelevant in comparison.

”What's wrong?”, Celine instantly asked with concern when she heard him cursing.

Instead of answering, Ivan just shared the prompt with her. ”Oh, that really sucks.”, she agreed with him. Still, she was much more relaxed than him.

”You don't seem to think that it is that bad?”, he asked her.

”That's because it isn't.”, she answered and then explained, ”There are only a few rules that can be broken. Most of them are enforced by the system and there is no way of breaking them. Because the system can't enforce these rules, it instead heavily punishes those that break them, so that nobody else would even try.”