A few hours had passed and Vell was still sitting on the edge of his bed with one elbow on his knee, staring at the dark blue screen hanging in front of him.
His room looked the same as it always had in the first year, small, clean, and barely worth calling a Saintfall dorm unless someone had never seen how the noble students lived.
He had already checked the date three times, checked his body twice, and smacked himself once just to see if the pain would wake him up properly. None of that changed the fact that he was back to the past, on the day that started everything.
'So I really came back,' he thought, dragging one hand down his face before looking at the screen again. 'That's amazing and all, but can somebody explain why I am suddenly seeing a glowing screen in my room?'
[Name: Vell]
[Rank: E-Rank Mid]
[Affinity: Null]
[Core: Stable]
Below that sat a second set of lines only he could see, and those were the ones making his head hurt.
[True Affinity: Infinite Evolution]
[Core Trait: Assimilation]
[Dominion: 0]
[Seat Capacity: 1]
'Seat capacity?' he thought, squinting at the screen. 'What is this, some kind of management job?'
He had spent the last few hours trying everything he could think of, from waving his hand through the screen to muttering at it under his breath like an idiot. Nothing worked, and the system had ignored all of it so completely that he was starting to get offended.
"Alright then," he muttered, leaning forward and glaring at it. "Explain."
The screen flickered as new lines began appearing one after another.
"Seriously? That's all I had to do to get answers?" He rubbed his temples, annoyed at how dumb and easy the solution was.
[Throne System recognized host intent]
[Beginning base explanation]
More lines appeared while he read.
[Primary function: establish a hidden throne faction]
[Primary method: identify and recruit high-value female targets as Seats]
[Seat growth feeds host growth]
[Faction expansion increases host authority]
He kept reading then he blinked in confusion, "hold on," he said, frowning at the screen. "You're telling me this thing wants me to build a faction by recruiting women? What the hell, that's so fucking weird."
The screen stayed silent, showing the same four lines without adding any explanation.
'Great, it answers when it wants to,' he thought, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. 'So I have some kind of faction-building system that needs female members to work properly. This is either the best thing that ever happened to me or I'm going to end up in some very awkward situations.'
He sat there for another minute, watching the dark blue interface hover in front of him.
More lines appeared below the first set, filling out the screen with smaller details about functions he had not tried yet.
[Mark: identify potential Seats]
[Recruit: offer Seat position to qualifying targets]
[Share: distribute growth benefits to faction members]
[Ascend: consume Dominion to upgrade host capabilities]
"Mark, Recruit, Share, Ascend," he read out loud, testing how the words felt. "Sounds like a cult recruitment guide."
He tried tapping the word [Mark], but nothing happened, same with the others.
'Probably needs some condition I haven't met yet,' he thought, rubbing his eyes. 'Or maybe I need to actually find one of these high-value targets first. How the hell would I even know who qualifies?'
He waved his hand through the screen again out of habit, and this time it flickered slightly before stabilizing.
[Awaiting first Seat recruitment to unlock full interface]
"So you're useless until I find someone then," he said, dropping his hand to his knee. "I am annoyed right now."
He sat there staring at the screen, waiting for it to offer something else useful. When nothing came after a full minute, he made a decision.
'Fine,' he thought, pushing himself up from the bed. 'I'll figure this out later, right now I have bigger problems.'
He walked over to the small mirror mounted above his desk and looked at his own face. He starts rubbing his hair, messy ash blond that starts fading into a muted silver-blue. He used to hate how much attention it got from people who only wanted an excuse to stare at him and say something annoying.
Right now he was more interested in the fact that he looked younger and less drained.
Then his eyes shifted past his own reflection and landed on the academy schedule pinned to the wall beside the mirror, and just blanking stared at it before he realized.
"No way," he said, leaning closer and squinting at the date even though he already knew what it said, "so it's today, this day determines your future in the academy, the class assignment exam."
In his first life, he had performed like trash that day.
Saintfall split the first years by results after the exam, and because his combat path, mana control, and written scores had all landed in the same sad middle ground, he got pushed into Class D with the leftovers, the slow starters, and everybody the academy did not expect much from.
That was where the first rot started.
Class D got worse instructors, chances, attention, and by the time he clawed his way into something decent, the people in the better classes had already built teams, reputations, and connections he never caught up to. He had spent years trying to recover from one bad start, and now that he knew how bad the future really was, there was no way he was letting that happen again.
'No, screw that,' he thought, stepping away from the mirror and reaching for his uniform. 'I already know what Class D does to a person's academy life. I'm not going back there.'
He pulled on the Saintfall uniform as fast as he could, dragging the shirt into place, buttoning it wrong the first time, swearing under his breath, and fixing it without slowing down. The cream jacket came next, followed by the dark trousers, and by the time he reached for his boots, his mind was already racing ahead to the exam hall.
"I cannot be late," he muttered, grabbing the last piece of his uniform and forcing his hands to move faster. "Not today, not for this, not when I actually know what's coming now."
He gave himself one quick look in the mirror, saw a first-year Saintfall student staring back instead of the wreck who had died in that tunnel, then snatched up his things and rushed for the door.
'System nonsense later,' he thought, yanking it open and stepping into the hall. 'Fixing my placement comes first.'