CHAOS BORN

It wasn’t like Nero hadn’t thought of the obvious, like training under someone professional or engaging in combat.

For the first point, no one in Agroville village fit his needs, and neither did anyone was up to be a worthy sparring partner nor were there any brawls that gave him a chance to intervene since the village head and Granny resolved any disputes here maintaining no situation escalated to unnecessary lengths. 

Going out of the village was something Granny ruled out, so seeking someone was also out of the question. And no skilled warrior would come specifically to the outskirts of the kingdom to train him.

The closest to someone like a trainer he had was Alvin—the taciturn guardian who came here for only two reasons. 

To patrol the Agroville peripheries from the Crafts wood village, once in two months. He would stay here for less than 3-4 days checking signs of magic beast activity or any threat that may need his attention. Alvin was never on board with the idea of Nero disturbing his duty, but in consideration of Granny gave an occasional spar or a pointer. 

On the other occasion, he will be here to oversee the Ascension ceremony alongside his wife Mrs. Rafaella, making Alvin even more busy just as much as Nero himself.  

Overall, Alvin didn’t feel great about Nero for being pesky in his duties, while Nero felt the same as his special senses gave out Alvin as weird.

Ultimately, Nero grabbed whatever he got from him and focused on other venues for better results.

Namely, on earning money and his deus ex machina or cheat power if you call it. 

The first thing he did after gaining his memory was to check any signs of a system or anything remotely similar, and Nero was not disappointed. To his delight, he discovered a magical wobbly tattoo the size of a curled baby fist. It was constantly in motion, changing, shifting, and transforming itself. At its most stable state, it transformed into unsettling circles with an ‘X’ at its core, accompanied by four disarrayed thorns adorned with runes tangled and gnarled.

Nero didn’t mind how it looked but was deeply disappointed with what it revealed. 

Whenever he focused on the tattoo, a holographic panel would materialize, visible only to him. It displayed his full name, affinity, SP (which he deduced stood for system points), and a line showing Charm demon with a progress bar next to it.

Nero after scraping through all the books he could find on the subject guessed the progress bar corresponded to his dormant Demon bloodline abilities. 

Charm demon.. sigh, talk about bad luck.

Although having a demon in his family lineage didn’t bother him, Nero was infuriated by the specific demon he was connected to and what power it brought to the table.

Charm Demons, commonly known as Incubus for males and Succubus for females, had a notorious reputation for all the wrong reasons. 

Incubus were ugly gremlins that used magic to disguise their appearance, hiding their grotesque forms and vile desires all to seduce young and married women. Enamoring them with sweet words, and false promises, taking the best years of their lives, and then casting them aside like an old glove! And if rejected, bearing ill will, they crawl into homes with their powers empowered by the darkness of night, dragging the innocent and dainty maidens to the unknown, forcing them to bear their offspring.

This is at least how local folklore narrated and gossiped about them. They were often painted as villains in the stories to scare the womenfolks from venturing out in the night. The wild stories usually claimed the demons’ nightly deeds to be real while others believed no evil could trespass under their Goddess’s watch. But all of them had something in common, none dismissed their existence.

Nero’s bullshit recognition radar spiked up, telling him that all of it seemed like made up. It wasn’t like he was no stranger to myths surrounding Incubus from his time on Earth. He always regarded them as fabricated stories created to shift blame onto fictional entities by influential individuals to hide their sins. For example, the nobles or clergy may commit all the nasty stuff but lay it on the doors of demons.

But hey this was a different world. Maybe the tales were true. Perhaps demons are ugly, capable of kidnapping and violating innocent women. And just maybe, he might have to do it too.

Ah, what am I saying? I refuse to become a sex offender after being reborn in a magical world. Or would he?

Nero pondered over the matter. The easiest and most known way to awaken dormant bloodline powers is to stimulate them with corresponding powers.

If you had a fire path creature’s bloodline in you, you could consume the fire beast’s specific parts to strengthen the bloodline’s prowess further. 

But there was another method that was known to him, albeit less effective than the popular methods, but was still good enough to awaken your powers. It was to take actions similar to the being of the bloodline you possessed, as in you should act like how that creature would. The source material he read listed some crazy theories to back up the dubious claims that warranted immediate medical attention. 

Nero couldn’t quite figure out what this acting part meant. What does that mean? If you had a Botaur beast bloodline, are you supposed to graze in the fields while saying moo~ moo~?

Regardless of the method chosen, the amount of bloodline existing within you determines the results, and how strong your bloodline’s power can be is directly correlated with the creature itself.

The quantity of bloodline you possess and the quality of the creature that you trace lineage to can heavily affect which power you get and what you can do with it.

Nero had gleaned all this information about bloodlines and demons from books Granny had deliberately kept hidden away from his eyes. He wasn’t sure if she put it away from him since they were simply full of crap or it was some forbidden knowledge.

So currently, he didn’t know whether the wild claims made in the book were true.

Moreover, even if the claims held some truth, it wouldn’t be much help, since Charm Demon’s powers and Nero’s style were incompatible.

According to the books, all charm demons’ powers were tailored to make people enamored by being desirable. What you can do heavily depends on other people. To Nero, relying on the influence and desires of others was unacceptable. He didn’t want his actions and dreams to be dragged down by others, nor did he desire to rely excessively on external forces. He desired to depend on himself and forge his path towards strength and growth. Therefore, the powers of Charm Demons held little appeal to him.

Even if he wanted to, it wasn’t like he would be getting parts of an Incubus to consume. And as for acting like one was essentially asking for a severe beating. If he were to pull some stunt in the village and get caught, the enraged villagers would rally with pitchforks to screw him over. Granny may choose to banish him or disown him altogether. In short, the rewards were not worth the risks.

The other way to use the system was to earn SP points. Nero couldn’t pinpoint exactly how system points seemed to be rewarded, but his efforts in probing were not fruitless. The usual one seemed to do the trick: killing. Killing a new creature would earn points, but the points dwindled significantly when killing the same creature repeatedly, eventually becoming a mere numbers game. The calculation of points also seems to consider the life force and level of threat posed by the creatures.

If Nero gathered enough points, he could exchange them for Ascension techniques, blueprints for gears, and information on the potions and rituals for Dao Essence formation.

Unfortunately, the most lucrative task for earning points was awakening bloodline abilities, as the system consistently rewarded 5 points for every 1% increase. However, bloodline awakening was not an option for Nero, rendering the system less helpful for him right now.

So he decided to hunt everything he could near Agroville village to grind points and try his best to land a combat job. If he can land a combat job, he will become an adventurer and enter a guild with ease once he moves to the city. Being part of a guild there will provide him with the chance to engage in monster-killing quests, which will also earn him system points to pick up Ascension techniques from the system. 

Nero knew that he was betting all his hopes on getting a combat job, but if everything goes down without a hitch, he should be fine.

Huh, look how that turned out. He glared at the panel in front, wishing to tear it off.

Alchemist. It wasn’t an awful job at all. Loads of people would want this as a path to be chosen. 

An Alchemist can be called a failed mage with one set of spells in possession they are good at. Their expertise seems to lay in brewing poisons and potions, creating gears and chimera-like creatures. At first glance, this seems outstanding, but other specialized jobs could do the same with better results. 

An apothecary could make better potions and poisons outclassing alchemists. While an artifician does a better prospect of creating gears and chimera-like things seemed more like an enigma possible only using the abilities of an advanced alchemist pathway. 

In summary, they are a jack of all but masters of none. 

Worst of all, apart from being noncombat, this job seemed skewed towards understanding and deducing knowledge of things around you and using them rather than gaining knowledge by the job itself and applying it. 

Jobs like apothecary or artifician could instinctively gain knowledge and muscle memory of their domain, while alchemists had to understand these things through trial and error. 

Nero saw alchemists as researchers who worked tirelessly in laboratories and immersed themselves in books to uncover something new. On the other hand, jobs of adjacent pathways appeared to focus on applying existing knowledge to achieve rapid results. He was sure not the former, and neither did he like the prospect of cooping up in the room to discover an elixir of life. 

This job will limit my opportunities and close many doors for me. Most guilds would not turn him down, but that was to support and enlist for non-combat stuff, not to get him on the battlefield. On the front line, his job and his skills would drag down the party, so he needed to have other qualities.

Sigh, I have to focus on getting a suitable Ascension technique before joining a guild and keep polishing my healing skills. 

That was one more point he didn’t understand. 

Out of all the paths, why did he become an alchemist specifically? Why not a warrior job? Despite his extensive medical training, why didn’t he end up with even a healer job? Despite being someone who rarely handed out compliments, even Granny gave Nero approval for his skills, commenting that he only needed more practice before being granted a license.

Whelp, the worst case was his bloodline fucking things up and earning him a weird job. That didn’t happen. Maybe that’s the silver lining to take away from what happened.

Sigh…so in the end, is awakening my bloodline the only way for me then?