> Chapter 1 (Partially Restored)
Consciousness returned to me. I opened my eyes and glanced around my room, seeing both my mother and father crouched next to me, concerned faces looking down at me.
A block of text interrupted my thoughts.
> [System restoration: 13%]
>
> [Primary Race restored]
>
> [Insufficient material available to complete body restoration]
>
> [General skills restored]
>
> [Class 1 [Bladesinger - Cold Iron] restored]
>
> [Class 1 skills restored]
>
> [Class 2 pending]
>
> [Class 3 pending]
I blinked. I could now remember who I was and why I was here, or at least the earliest and latest parts. I had thoughtfully set up the restoration to run an outside-in algorithm. Looking down at myself, I frowned.
“Oh right, shit. That butterfly asshole put me in a boy body. That’s one more thing I’m going to have to fix.”
I looked back over to Jonathan’s parents -- my parents. Thankfully, I had said that last bit in English, and as far as I knew, there were currently only 4 people on this planet who would have understood any of it. One of those four was the entire reason for my return to this realm. Even so, they stared at me in confusion.
My mom asked, “Jonathan, are you OK? I came up to look for you when you didn’t come down for breakfast. You’ve been unconscious for over an hour.”
I switched back to the standard human language common to Rolland. “Mom? Dad? I’m fine. My system unlocked and then something weird happened.”
“Honey, you’re identifying as question marks. Tell us what happened, please.”
I sighed. “Well, I’ve got a short answer and a long answer, and we definitely don’t have the time for the long answer,” I said. I wasn’t sure how fast everything on my status sheet was going to update, and the full system restore hadn't even completed processing. “Well, mom, as it turns out, eight years ago you gave birth to a particularly ancient, reincarnated soul, and all of my memories from every past life I’ve ever had are coming back to me. Also, I have to thank you for keeping me safe for the past 8 years. You really have been some of the best parents I've ever had. You should definitely have more kids.”
I really was grateful -- This was my thirteenth attempt at returning to this timeline in this particular century. From the records I had found from around a millennia in this world’s future, I knew for certain of one specific place Alexandra would be and when she would be there. I even had a deadline.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
I knew that she had been a student at the School for Sorcery and Spellcraft, but had disappeared sometime during the early days of the next Immortal War, along with the majority of the residents of that island. There weren’t many records remaining from those days, but I did find a personal diary from one of the instructors, who was purported to also have been the original founder. Regardless of the woman’s actual identity, her account of the events told of one of the more reclusive professors whom she had never bothered to meet had opened a massive portal gate and led the majority of the students and other professors through it, presumably to safety. Most of those students and the professors had later been located in a well stocked bunker, perfectly unharmed, but Alexandra and the instructor had not been among the students. A simple resignation letter had been left behind.
Based on this information, I could only assume that the professor had been none other than myself. Time travel wasn’t exactly possible, but when you have the capability to purposely shunt your soul off into a realm where time has no meaning, a person can manage to accomplish quite a bit of shenanigans. I couldn’t change any events. The spatial magic professor had done nothing noteworthy, simply performed adequately during their tenure -- the surviving records didn’t even have a gender marked down on any documents. There was nothing to be found from any of their actions prior to arriving at the school and demonstrating their knowledge and abilities. I already knew how advanced spatial magic had been during this time period, and could certainly dumb things down to the accepted level. The people of this millennia were not prepared to deal with self-sustaining Einstein-Rosen bridges, and I definitely had to keep a lockout on my [Rift] skill, as the local gods were still attempting to hide their little backwater fiefdom from the multiverse. There was that annoying problem with the so-called Void Lord, but I’d get around to dealing with that bag of dicks once I had reunited with Alexandra. And here I am rambling again. You’d think that after literal trillions of years of existence, I’d have figured out a better way to deal with ADHD, but no, some things really are soul deep.
My current parents were still looking at me. I guess they probably didn’t understand why I had been staring at the wall, eyes unfocused. Truth be told, apart from the mental wandering, I had been stretching out my senses, trying to locate a decent source of iron. I found one. There was a seam of iron ore between one and two kilometers beneath my feet, and it would only take a few moments to draw it up.
“Well, it’s been real, but I have to go now,” I said to the pair. I then stood up, and displaced myself outside.
I then conjured a pile of iron sand and willed it into the shape of my runes and then pushed 50,000 mana into the array, which precisely drew up five hundred kilograms of the iron from the seam I had located in the form of black magnetite sand. The sand flowed up around my body and then merged into me.
> [*ding!* Sufficient material procured, primary race has been restored to 15.38461538461385% functionality]
>
> [Race: Katabasian Human]
>
> [Racial traits restored: 2 of 13]
>
> [Racial trait [Reconstruction] has been restored]
>
> [Racial trait [Anti-Apotheosis] has been restored]
>
> [Reconstruction] - Your body was reconstituted from available materials. Due to your elemental affinity, you have subconscious control over the makeup of those materials. When at full Mana, your body will slowly return to the idealized state. Similar materials may be absorbed from the environment to increase the rate of restoration.]
>
> [Current body material composition by mass]
>
> [Iron: 80%]
>
> [Oxygen: 12%]
>
> [Carbon: 5%]
>
> [Hydrogen: 2%]
>
> [Various trace elements not worth bothering you about: <1%]
>
> [Anti-Apotheosis] - You will be prevented from gaining that last point of experience that would otherwise push you over the limit for natural Apotheosis. This trait may be deactivated at any time.
>
> [Would you like to initiate reconstruction of body to idealized state?]
>
> [Y/N? _ ]
“Yes.”