Two Months Ago

 *ding* *ding* *ding*

   I was woken up by a hated loud ringing of an alarm. I lazily opened my eyes and saw a white ceiling decorated with silver floral ornaments. I slowly got up and looked around the room while still sitting on the bed, I saw a wooden table near my bed decorated with yellow roses, a rather large door in the corner of the room, a huge 2m tall bookshelf filled with books to the brim and finally, a woman with silver hair and soft features was dozing off on a marble chair right beside my bed. She didn't seem to be woken up by the alarm, a skill which I was quite envious of. I faintly chuckled and reached out for her head and ruffled it softly.

 "Mm.."- She made a cute noise as she slowly opened her eyes.

   She drowsily looked at me and closed her eyes again, but it didn't last long. She snapped open her eyes as she stood up, and looked at me with disbelief, she slowly reached out and carefully touched my face. "Haa"- She sighed and stared straight into my eyes. After a while of staring into each other's soul, she seemed to finally give up and went back to sit on the marble chair. She looked around the room, and her eyes went back to me again. She carefully looked at me, assessing my whole body with her eyes. After around 3 minutes of staring at me, she probably wasn't able to stand the silence anymore.

 "Hey... Let's do something together"- she said,

 "What 'something'?"

 She went silent for a bit, and after a moment she seem to have figured out what I meant and her face turned beet-red.

 "L- li- li- like reading a book? maybe?"- she timidly said while her face got redder.

 Seeing that, I faintly chuckled, "What do you want to read?"

 "Uh.. Can you pick it for me?"

 "Hm.. How about the history of your house?"

 "No, it's boring"

 "Wow, that.. was rather fast" -While I admire her decisiveness, I disagree with her saying that the history of her house was boring, because it wasn't. I decided to stay silent about my disagreement and tried to find a book that she wouldn't find boring. After around a minute of pondering, I finally decided to read her a book by Theophania, the goddess that blessed her family.

  I began reading her the book while we sat side by side on my bed, and she listened to it interestingly for a while. For a while. She slowly closed her eyes and leaned on my shoulder. I gave her a little nudge with my shoulders to see if she was still awake. There was no response, and she was still breathing. So I slowly put her down on my bed and continued reading the book while she was still asleep.

  She was Marianne Theophania. She was the second daughter and the 3rd child of the Theophania house. She was also an awakener of Theophania's bloodline, which was not very rare in their house unlike ours. Well, there were also lots of awakeners of our bloodline but they all dropped dead from the illness that comes with it. The awakeners of Theophania's bloodline grow over time, compared to ours that supposedly immediately makes the awakener the best in their generation. There were also lineages that was inferior to bloodlines, and they're quite complicated.

  Lineages are awakened when there will be a bloodline in the offspring of the lineage awakener. For example, my father awakened his lineage because one of his offsprings will awaken the bloodline of the respective lineage, or in this case, the Harezlynger bloodline. The bloodline of Harezlynger can only be awakened by males, and the Theophania bloodline can only be awakened by females, fortunately, there are no other bloodlines limited by gender like ours. The bloodline awakeners also suffer from side effects depending on the tier of the bloodline, in my case, it was either extreme illness or daily nightmares where you can die inside, and fortunately(?), I got the illness and I won't suddenly drop dead from a bad dream.

  I continued reading for a good 20 or so minutes, and there was a knock on my door. "Come in" -I said. The door slowly opened, revealing a middle-age man with shoulder-length golden hair that didn't lose its lustre even in the dimly lit room. He was known as Paul Harezlynger, a Grand Duke of the Henthovena Theocracy. Besides serving as a Chief Holy Magician for the God of Earth and Fire, Harezlynger, he was also the Patriarch of our Harezlynger House and more importantly, my father. He looked over at the girl sleeping with cloudy golden eyes, then those eyes reached me,

 "Has she confessed to you?" -He asked with a straight face, which made me burst out laughing.

 "Haha- Dad, you're going wayy too fast"

 "Really? But your mom confessed to me at this age?" -He awkwardly replied with a slightly reddened face unfitting a chief magician.

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 "That was your lineage in act" -I repied with a neutral voice, feeling quite amused from his reaction.

 "But your bloo- oh right, you haven't awakened it yet" -He belatedly 'realized' and stopped talking about it, he also had a terrible personality just like myself. There was an awkward silence in the room, and he probably didn't know how to break it either.

 "How's your research on the cure going?" -I decided to divert the topic as it was not very cormfortable.

 "The cure is going pretty well, and the magic dolls are also fine so I'm thinking if I should release it or not, there might be unknown side effects that will happen in Seraphs that did not happen to magic dolls." -he replied.

   There was a flu going on in our town and there was a vaccine that his holiness, Harezlynger developed and it was quite effective. There were also people who were infected despite the vaccination and my father was researching the cure for it along with the Mirennia household, the household of Healing and Medicine. Their goddess was "temporarily disconnected" as the gods said, but there were bloodline awakeners and their household is still going strong. To go back on topic, my father, although he was a chief combat magician, he was also a researcher and a friend of the current Patriarch of the Mirennia house, and he was researching about the cure to the flu with the Patriarch of the Mirennia house.

  The magic dolls were based on fragile humans whose average life expectancy was 8 years, they called it 80 'years' but I find it quite foolish that they call months 'years'. A year is the time that it takes for our planet, Gaia to orbit our star, Gridannia, and it takes 10 months, each month had 365 days and it's the time that it takes for the first moon of Gaia, Rune to orbit it. A year had 3650 days, 10 times the amount of days it takes for Rune to orbit Gaia. A month was in human terms, 'a year'. Back to topic again, magic dolls were made to replicate humans, and although our builds are quite similar on the exterior, and we were still quite similar in the immune system too, but our basic strength, endurance and lifespan was far superior to the inferior humans. Despite being quite cute and lovable as a pet, they only lasted for 8 years compared to our 300 year lifespan. I assume that's the reason why their whole haven't been captured for pet trade.

  After asking about the progress on the cure, we continued having a chat about random things that somehow got into the conversation. Our chit-chat lasted for around 20 minutes and he left after that as he had more research to do. Before leaving the room, he looked at Marianne and looked at me again, and said "Take care of her"

 "Mnn, I will" -I nodded and said that in response and he left the room. Marianne was still somehow asleep beside me on the bed, and I continued reading the book. Minutes later, the door opened again, it was my father.

 "I forgot to say this, but your official and full awakening will be next week" -He dropped that bombshell and left the room.

  My awakening will be next week, 5 days from now on. It flustered me, and I almost woke up Marianne in my panic, but I somehow calmed myself down. It was big news, his holiness finally decided to give me an awakening, which meant that, at least temporarily, my illness will be gone. I would finally be able to look at the outside world again and interact with other people and get some much needed social interaction. I took a deep breath and calmed myself down again. Marianne finally woke up after this, she seemed quite refreshed, and as she also had a bloodline, there was a side effect too. Her bloodline's side effect was obsession, and it shouldn't act up as long as I don't interact too intimately with other females. She looked at me innocently and smiled, it was quite cute. My vision was slowly fading away, and I felt quite sleepy suddenly. "Good night" she whispered in my ears, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

  I woke up, and saw the familiar dirt ceiling of my shabby little hut. I slowly got up and sat on my bedroll. I was sweating on the back quite a bit so I decided to clean myself in the pond nearby. I slowly walked down the path, and thought about the dream I had. 'Marianne', she was my fiancee but I haven't seen her since she went to the battefields against the Ishkar race. So I would have to assume that she's dead, but I'd like to have more evidence before believing that she died.

  Ishkars were the only other race left on this island apart from humans and us Seraphs. Quite despicable, but humans, Seraphs and Ishkars went on and eradicated every other race on this island without even making an alliance with each other. I can't even imagine how weak those races must've been to be eradicated by humans who didn't even have any gods leading them. The others were eradicated in the golden age of the gods before they were "disconnected" as the gods called it.

  I travelled until the sun went down, and I could've reached Harven if I had walked for 4 or 5 more hours but I decided it would be a good idea to take a rest. Nothing was chasing me anyways. I set up my tent using my sprit abiliy. I slowly put down the bedroll. I cooked the Rabv that I took out from my magic storage and cooked it. It might be my ego kicking in but it was delicious, I'd say I would get a job as a chef if I wanted to be one. After eating the delicious Rabv, I decided to hunt another Rabv, butchered it and put it in my magic storage. I decided to go to sleep after that.