I Have Awakened (1)
I Have Awakened (1)
I sighed inwardly, then bowed my head to the Duchess.
A true aristocrat, indeed. The Duchess acknowledged my greeting.
Once I saw the Duchess give an almost imperceptible nod, I shifted my gaze to her side.
Beyond the two boys, whose expressions were no different from a few days ago, stood a young girl and a woman.
They were my sister, Elena de Gracia, a year older than me, and the second Duchess.
My adorable sister gave me a small wave when she saw me.
Unlike my two insolent brothers, she and I were reasonably close.
Though her mother was only a viscountess, she herself was a proper noble.
Unlike me, she was a legitimate daughter of the Duke. Perhaps thanks to her mother, she and I still got along well enough, at least for now.
I bowed my head to the woman standing behind the girl.
The woman smiled warmly in response to my greeting.
Maria de Gracia, the second Duchess, was the youngest daughter of the Ibiza Viscountcy, which ruled over a small rural territory.
Unlike the first Duchess, she was a quiet, deeply considerate, and benevolent noble.
Even now, she didn't discriminate against me despite my status as an illegitimate son.
It might simply have been her personality, but it could also have been because she had only a daughter and thus had no reason to worry about me.
Hmm. Thinking about it like this makes me seem a bit twisted.
I shook my head to clear away the idle thoughts and looked forward.
Standing directly in front of me was my father, the Duke.
Beside him, I could also see the elderly chief butler and a priest who had been brought in just in case of an emergency.
Yet I found myself completely transfixed by the Duke's glaring gaze, and it was quite terrifying.
"Come over here."
I was standing behind my mother when the Duke called me over in a calm voice.
I took a deep breath. Fortunately, my stiffened body relaxed.
Under the worried gazes of my mother and the maids, I walked forward.
Pat, pat.
Only the sound of my young footsteps echoed through the stone chamber.
Then my footsteps stopped in front of the Duke.
The Duke stared at me for a moment before speaking.
"Today, on Alex's 6th birthday, we will begin the Awakening Ceremony."
At the Duke's words, I forced my furrowed brows to relax.
I couldn't believe I was being referred to only by my name, even at my own Awakening Ceremony.
As expected, the words I had heard a few years ago had meant something entirely different from being accepted as the Duke's son.
They were merely a promise to protect me until my Awakening Day.
Indeed, it was difficult for an illegitimate son to become a true member of the Duke's family.
Even so, holding the Awakening Ceremony offered nothing more than a faint hope.
'Do they think they're giving me an opportunity?'
I snorted inwardly.
In a situation like this, even if I did awaken, only a path of suffering lay ahead.
I didn't care if I failed to awaken. I had felt to my very bones that the position of a duke or a noble was just as dangerous as the power it held.
"Our Gracia Dukedom, which split from the royal family at the time of the nation's founding, inherited the abilities of Knight Carlos, who was a member of the Hero's party in the distant past..."
Thanks to that, my tension completely dissolved. I let the Duke's ceremonial speech drift past my ears, simply waiting for time to pass.
When I finished listening to the speech with a calm expression, the Duke looked at me strangely.
Regardless of his expression, I simply waited for the ceremony to proceed.
The expression that had briefly appeared on the Duke's face vanished at once, and he soon continued with the ceremony.
"We will begin the awakening."
The Duke raised his hand, his face stern. At last, the awakening was about to begin.
Awakening: the moment when one awakened the ability inherited from one's ancestors.
Still, there was one more thing I was hoping for on this Awakening Day.
'It has already been several years since my 'Automatic Save Point' was set.'
If I died in the future, I would undoubtedly return to the last point of death—to when I was a one-year-old baby.
Fucking hell.
I shuddered. I would have to go through infancy all over again? Learn to crawl, learn to speak, go through potty training...
I had absolutely no intention of ever repeating any of it!
But I couldn't just commit suicide in the meantime, either. Unlike being killed by someone else, there was no telling what would happen if I took my own life.
My life might simply end permanently, or the Save Point might not be recorded.
Ultimately, the reason I had dragged things out until this moment was that I was pinning my hopes on the Awakening Day.
The Duke—my father in this lifetime—placed his hand on my head.
"From this moment, I shall awaken the ability passed down from our ancestors."
Along with the Duke's blunt words, the hand covering my head grew slightly warm.
A warmth like a father's love... Bullshit.
Heat was literally radiating from his hand.
It's hot!
"Do not move! You must have heard that it would be hot! Endure it!"
The Duke scolded me when I flinched.
But nobody had ever told me it would be this hot.
Damn it, did they skip the details again?
Even during my awakening, they had to rub salt in the wound. I couldn't help clicking my tongue despite the pain.
Enduring the heat, I forced my collapsing body upright.
The heat coming from his hand enveloped my head. It gradually seeped deeper into my mind.
My vision blurred from the heat, and my consciousness began to fade.
Pain stabbed violently inside my head, and the heat scorched my entire body.
But I endured it.
It was excruciating, but compared to dying, the pain and heat were nothing.
And in the next moment,
Flare!
The pain vanished.
At the same time, a sentence floated before my eyes.
[Awakening successful. A new 'Save Point' has been set.]
Nice! It was exactly as I had hoped.
If this automatic saving was meant to help me, there was no way it would only trigger through repeated deaths.
If this ability wasn't a punishment inflicted on me, I figured there would be intermediate Save Points even without dying.
And that theory proved correct.
On my sixth birthday, I obtained a new Save Point.
At the same time, I felt something deep within my mind that hadn't been there before.
Though it had no physical form like a brain, a new organ had manifested inside my head.
"!"
When I opened my eyes, the Duke was staring at me with wide, surprised eyes.
Even without the newly formed organ in my head, I could tell just from the Duke's expression.
Happily—or perhaps unfortunately—I had successfully awakened.
"You have awakened."
As the Duke definitively declared that I had awakened, everyone stared at me in astonishment.
The first Duchess stood stiff and frozen, while the first young lord, Simon, frowned deeply. The second, Manuel, had his mouth agape.
The second Duchess also seemed incredibly shocked, and my only sister wore a startled expression as well. Unlike the others, however, my sister was looking at me joyfully.
The waiting priest and the chief butler were visibly shocked, too.
As expected, none of them seemed to have anticipated that I would awaken.
Lastly, my mother wore an incredibly complex expression. It was a mix of worry and joy, with both a sigh and a sense of pride.
I felt no different from my mother.
The outcome was completely unexpected. If this had happened before I realized certain things, I would have been overcome with joy, but right now, I felt only conflicted.
Moreover, the ability I had awakened was incredibly ambiguous.
After the new organ had formed in my head, I was able to realize what my ability was.
It was as if I had found a lost hand.
I immediately knew what kind of ability it was and how to use it.
Though it didn't have a specific name, I felt like I knew what to call it.
An ability that gradually strengthened the physical body as one underwent training and accumulated combat experience.
Tsk. Explaining it like this made it sound no different from an ordinary person.
Still, it wasn't exactly the same as a commoner's ability. Both the rate of growth and its limits were different from those of normal people.
It was an ability that allowed me to grow faster and become strong enough to transcend human limits.
It wouldn't make me infinitely strong, of course.
So even if it looked pathetic, it wasn't entirely useless!
It really was an ambiguous ability.
"So, what kind of ability did you inherit?"
The Duke standing in front of me asked me personally.
It was the first question he had ever asked me. What's more, there was a trace of warmth in his words.
As expected, the moment I seemed useful to the family, his treatment of me changed instantly.
That made me feel incredibly displeased.
I offered the Duke an apology first. In my mind, that is.
'I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll be of much help to the family.'
At the same time, I gave an answer far too mature for my age.
"It appears to be a Physical Enhancement Type. It seems my training efficiency will be significantly higher than that of an ordinary person."
Though my voice was high-pitched, like that of a child who had just turned six, I looked at the Duke and answered clearly.
"Pfft!"
A scoffing laugh came from the side. Along with it, I heard a faint sigh of relief.
It was obvious who had scoffed, and the sigh of relief had undoubtedly come from the first Duchess.
The chief butler stroked his white beard and tilted his head.
"A Physical Enhancement Type... how unusual. I am certain that among the abilities possessed by our ancestor, the Hero Carlos, there was a similar one..."
I thought I understood what the chief butler was referring to.
Thanks to my diligent studying in the library-sized study over the past few years, I also had a rough grasp of the abilities our ancestor Carlos possessed.
First, there was [Mana Resonance], which was passed down through the direct royal bloodline.
It was written that once someone realized this ability, they could perceive and manipulate the mana in the world and within their body as if they were seeing it with their own eyes.
The current king and the two princes possessed this ability.
And then there was [Mana Circuit Construction Method], the ability passed down here in the Gracia Dukedom, a branch of the royal family.
Commonly referred to as a [Mana Cultivation Technique], it was a mana-circulation technique used to project manifested mana outside the body.
Knight Carlos possessed four Mana Cultivation Techniques, and the members of the Gracia Dukedom had inherited them in turn over the generations.
While it wasn't entirely unheard of for people to inherit other abilities of Knight Carlos throughout their long history, as far as I knew, not a single person had ever obtained an ability like mine.
'Besides, since it looks pretty pathetic...'
It seemed like a growth-type ability in its own right, but then again, other abilities also grew stronger with training and the passage of time.
Almost all the abilities used by nobles were based on mana.
Magic was used by processing mana, and the sword aura projected from a blade was a physical manifestation of the mana within the body.
The royal family's ability allowed them to manipulate the foundation of all mana. Although the Dukedom's abilities were limited to the physical body, they too could manipulate the foundation of mana, which was why they were so highly regarded among the nobility.
And yet, I had physical enhancement completely unrelated to mana.
At best, I might reach the level of a regular knight.
At this rate, it wouldn't even be easy to be called a noble.
'No, wait. Isn't a pathetic ability actually not that bad?'
I quickly scanned my surroundings.
The shocked expressions had shifted to looks of relief, and my mother's expression didn't seem too bad, either.
Indeed. It wasn't bad at all.
It was an ability perfectly suited to an illegitimate son like me.
An ability that would keep me from being cast out as a commoner, letting me cling to the very edge of nobility.
If things went well, I might become the lord of a small village, eating well and living comfortably.
'I'd be more than grateful even if they just gave me a non-hereditary title.'
Even if I had received an inherited ability, aiming for anything above a viscount was utterly out of the question.
'Perfect. I'll just blend in. I've survived for five years. I'll just hold out like this until I die of old age!'
I lifted my head with a satisfied expression and looked straight ahead. The Duke was staring at me.
"So you inherited the [Physical Optimization] ability."
The Duke's quiet murmur reached my ears as I stood nearby.
It seemed the original name of my enhancement ability was indeed [Physical Optimization].
Well, the name didn't really matter, but the problem was the Duke's expression.
The Duke's face, which had always been expressionless, had changed.
Goosebumps broke out all over my body.
The look in the Duke's eyes resembled that of a wolf with a delicious prey right in front of it.