Twilight bled red across Bedrock Town.
Gareth pushed open the creaking door of his cottage and stepped inside. The fire had died hours ago, leaving only a few embers glowing weakly in the hearth, stubborn against the cold.
He dropped his tattered basket by the door. Inside were a few stalks of Tier 1 Hemostatic Grass, the sum total of a full day spent combing the edges of the Wailing Forest. No jobs at the Mercenary Guild today either. Zero income.
"Eighteen years old and still this broke," he muttered, tossing the herbs onto the small pile in the corner. That pile was his entire month's harvest. Maybe enough for a few silver coins at the apothecary.
He checked the wooden box hidden in the firewood stack. A handful of silver and copper. After taxes and living costs, it would last him two more months, if he was careful.
No parents. No family. No one waiting for him anywhere.
That was the whole of his eighteen years.
His parents had been mercenaries once, well-known around Bedrock Town. His father, a Tier-2 Knight; his mother, a 9th circle apprentice mage. They'd disappeared on a scouting job in the Forest of Doom when Gareth was eight, and never came home. What little they'd left behind was the only reason he'd survived this long.
He dug out the last of his birthday supplies from the bottom of the basket: two strips of dried monster jerky, and a bottle of cheap ale from the cabinet.
"Guess a birthday should have some kind of ceremony," he said to the empty room.
He lit the oil lamp, poured a cup, and lifted it in a private toast. "To turning things around by nineteen."
The ale was sour enough to make him cough. The jerky was tough as leather and salty, but it was meat, and meat mattered for cultivation.
Outside, the town was settling into its nighttime rhythm: the blacksmith's hammer silent, the Guild hall growing loud with laughter and the clink of bottles. Gareth had no coin and less interest in joining them.
He was reaching for a second cup when the light hit.
It came without warning, a burst of gold flooding his mind all at once. A voice followed, flat and without feeling.
[The Ascendant Bloodline System has been activated.]
His hand jerked, spilling ale across the table. A translucent panel hung in the air before him, lines of golden text scrolling into existence.
[Host Bound: Gareth Draventhal.]
[Status: Adult male, 18. Activation conditions met.]
[Function One: Union Reward]
[Forming a bond with a woman of 80 Aptitude or higher grants corresponding rewards. Aptitude is measured across Grace and Gift, combined.]
[80-85: Notable. 86-90: Gifted. 91-95: Exceptional. 96-100: Transcendent.]
[Function Two: Legacy Reward]
[Offspring will be assessed for Aptitude at birth. Corresponding rewards will be issued to the host.]
[Grades: F (None) through S (Divine).]
[Passive Skill Unlocked!]
[Unbound Path]
[The host is not bound by the law separating Aura and Mana, and may cultivate both simultaneously.]
[A starter gift has been issued! Please claim it.]
[Note: Bedrock Town is unlikely to contain any candidate above 80 Aptitude. Consider seeking opportunity elsewhere.]
Gareth sat frozen.
His first thought was that someone had slipped something into his drink. He pinched his own leg, hard. The pain was real. The panel didn't waver.
Then the memories surfaced, the ones he'd buried for eighteen years. A past life. A desk job. A body that had simply stopped one night, worked past its limit.
He'd been reborn into this world as an infant, and had spent nearly two decades convincing himself he belonged here, that the old life was a dream fading at the edges. Now it came rushing back whole.
"The Ascendant Bloodline System," he read aloud, and almost laughed. Of all the things to wake up with.
Find a wife. Have children. Get rewarded for both. It read like something out of a novel he might have skimmed once, half-asleep, in another life entirely.
And the system's advice was blunt to the point of insult: nothing in Bedrock Town was worth his time.
He didn't need the panel to tell him that. He already knew every eligible woman in this town, more or less, farmers' daughters, a blacksmith's girl with windburned cheeks, the butcher's daughter built like her father. Good people. Not what the system was asking for.
Gareth looked down at his own hands, then at the patched, threadbare coat he'd worn for two years running.
Eighteen years old. A low-tier Apprentice in Aura, barely past the first real threshold of strength. In a world with nine full tiers above him, each with their own ranks, he wasn't even a footnote yet.
If he walked out of Bedrock Town as he was now, the road wouldn't take long to kill him.