Chapter 134: Why does it seem different?

The place that he remembered was much different from what he was seeing right now.

It was completely white, not black. And the system did not have a voice that was so… real.

‘What happened here?’

The black scanning space was one thing but the way the system sounded so alive sent shivers down his spine.

‘It had never changed before.’

Every test was monitored by certain people from the academy and there were classes that specially did just that.

He had been to those classes and he had been on the monitoring committee several times in his past life so he knew just how consistent the system was.

Everyone first appeared in a white space and they would see a blue light scanning them. However, in this black space, there were stars all around him that were scanning more aspects of him than what he could understand.

‘Was it because Nyx hacked the system?’

The academy system was so delicate that messing with it was nearly impossible.

There were several workarounds to get what one wanted from the system but taking control of the thing itself should have been impossible.

He had tried to do it for over two decades in his past life, believing it to be something beyond human limits.

But then again, if he was the one behind this change, then it would certainly explain why he looked so tired.

‘And knowing the headmaster, she wouldn’t have missed the chance to use that little one.’

He got caught up in one of her schemes and ended up doing something way above the payment he may have received from her.

She was very good at making people believe that they were in the profit whenever they were making a deal with a carefree person like her.

‘But they are always wrong.’

She knew human nature better than anyone else and she knew how to use the people to her advantage. She had done that for longer than most people alive and only a few knew the mastermind hidden behind that cheerful childish persona.

‘Well, if they did manage to upgrade the system somehow, it is better for us.’

As great as this institution was, it did fall in the past. And if things had remained the same, nothing would have changed.

So, just like how he was here to deal with the flow of progression, he was thankful to his bird partner for what he did.

[Scanning of the Spiritual-material body is complete.]

[A test has been prepared for you.]

Depending on the person, it took the system a few minutes to finish the scanning of mind and body.

One does not realize how long has actually passed in the white, in the black space in this case.

They just stand there staring at the empty space, mesmerized by the lights that were being used to scan them.

But, as he could tell, even this process was much faster than what it used to be.

‘Especially for someone like me.’

He thought it would take the system a lot longer to scan his physical body that had several unique, unconventional features. But not only was it much faster, the magical holographic panel that opened before him looked different.

[Test type: memory lane.]

[Description: Relive the most traumatic moments of your life as the people who care about you.]

The test last time was to overcome the helplessness of being a non-tamer. And this time, it was about reliving his past, but as the people who had been around him.

[(Level-1) has begun.]

It could have been something much worse if he considered the fact that the academy system could very well scan the memories of his past life now, but this was not going to be easy for him either.

-Oooooooooooooong!

The first test started with him being transported to a different time.

‘Ah…’

In a mental world created from his memories, he was looking at his younger self.

He was much younger than he was right now. He looked sad as well.

Just like how he had spent most of his life in the main sungrade estate’s adjacent wing, the annex building where the servants stayed, he was in the small front yard of the building surrounded by hanging clothes left to dry on ropes.

He was sitting on the ground, looking at little insects with fascinated eyes.

There was the same light of curiosity in those eyes that was present even still, after an entire lifetime.

People were watching him from afar, laughing at him for being a useless child.

They talked about how he was a cursed child, they made fun of him and they were rude even though he was the son of the Sungrade patriarch.

He could hear them… she could tell he could hear them. But, he did not pay any attention to them.

‘It’s Lexie’s perspective.’

He was looking at himself from the perspective of the person that had been by his side for all this time.

It was a little strange to experience the perspective of someone other than himself.

Reliving the worst moments of his life was one thing, but this was different. The upgraded system could reproduce more than just what that person has experienced.

It seems like the new system was able to piece through multiple sets of data from different people and use the unique conscious memory storage that it already had as a better algorithmic logic center.

‘I can feel how she was feeling as she watched me from afar.’

I remember all kinds of things, so I know what memory this was. Something terrible happened on this day.

“Hmm?”

I was playing in the ground like I always do and I ended up getting bitten by a creature that should not have been there.

“…”

There was a strange spider there that I found extremely pretty and so, I tried to catch the creature.

It ended up biting me and it did not take even a few seconds for its toxins to spread throughout my body.

My body started sizing and I felt a kind of pain I had never felt before. This was my very first near death experience.

“Young master…!”

Lexie was watching me, as I could feel from her perspective right now, and she ran towards me the moment she saw me lay flat on the ground.

My entire body was shaking and foam was coming out of my mouth.

She saw the creature responsible for it instantly, caught it, and captured it in a small jar in the surroundings.

“Young master! Young master…!”

This was just a memory, but he felt it to be as real as anything he could have experienced himself.

He had become this person who cared about him more than her own life.

Her racing heartbeat, the way her entire body was going cold, the way she controlled the strength in her hands while lifting me to not hurt me with her strength… She did everything she could to get me inside the castle as quickly as possible.

‘This was… different.’

The instant lasted for several minutes and each second that passed for him, for her in this case, felt like a lifetime.

When Lady Isha saw what was going on with him, she got him from her arms and before she could rush inside the clinic, Lexie grabbed her dress and threatened her to do her best.

She knew what she was doing was wrong at the time but for her, nothing mattered more than his life.

‘…’

As Sam experienced this whole thing, his heart broke a little more.

‘I didn’t even know…’

He never knew how bad it was for her. He knew she was good at hiding her pain from him, but to this extent?

He felt bad while watching himself but as he waited outside the clinic, experiencing the way she was passing every bad possibility through her head, he understood the pain of the only true parent that he had while growing up.

This wasn’t something that he could feel by himself…

He had been a teacher, guardian, and guide to hundreds of children but a parent?

‘Never like this.’

Lexie was a maid to the people of Sungrade. She was later on punished for being so disrespectful towards Lady Isha. However, the relief of seeing Sam fine was much better than anything she would go through.

He was the reason she was in this household in the first place.

If he wished to leave in his earlier days… she wouldn’t have hesitated to bring him out and give him a far better life than what the people around him had ever felt he deserved.

Things are different now but, as someone who was experiencing these emotions firsthand… this was far worse than whatever the older system could have inflicted on him.