- [Blood Reincarnation]

Looking through the skills gained from Firr, he surprisingly found out a lot about the keeper's personality. There were a lot of 'kinky' skills he learned that a person with good moral and ethical standards should not normally have in their arsenal. Although, Zex having such dirty thoughts and knowing about them, it also means that he isn't a clean person himself. What right does he have to judge the man?

Again, he buried these NSFW skills at the back of his mind.[1] Instead, he focused on the most imminently useful skills like the 'system restore' technique which was called the [Blood Reincarnation] technique. 'Such a poor sense of naming.' Zex stopped himself from shaking his head.

He stalled for time as he was moving in and out of his Mind Space to master the techniques he learned and when he was able to, he motioned for the keeper to start.

What he discovered was that to keep the current memories of the owner during the usage of the technique, they would have to undergo a faux reincarnation cycle, letting the current state of the owner reexperience major events of his life recorded in the essence of the blood.

This was a concept that was used in a game he played in his previous life where descendants of certain historical figures were attached to a device that could tap into their DNA memory passed on through previous generations. The game lets the player take control of the descendants living through their predecessor's key points in life and synchronize with them to search for relics of mysterious power. [2]

For his memories to survive, he needed an anchor point. Luckily, he had his whole Mind Space to create an anchor point. He just had to enter and exit his Mind Space from time to time to reinforce his anchor.

Firr told Zex to sit in the center of a magic circle inscribed with blood. He called in the other keepers to assist him as he took one of the phylacteries that contained Drago's blood and opened it.

The blood inside the bottle slithered its way out of the opening like a snake and moved towards the area above Firr's palm, forming a gooey sphere.

Zex was sitting cross-legged inside the magic circle and entered a blank state of mind as Firr instructed. When Firr sensed that he was ready, he glanced at the hiding Elik before starting to voice a long chant as the other keepers started infusing Zex with their mana.

The blood sphere then violently jumped towards Zex and entered his orifices and started enveloping his brain.

'Talk about rushing blood through the head' Zex mused to himself.

The next moment, Zex was running across the bustling streets of the kingdom, squeezing through the barricade of the knights and into the main street where a man clad in crimson armor was riding a horse leading thousands of men behind him.

This man stopped and reached out his hand to him, lifting him to the air and onto the horse.

"Daddy! Welcome home!" Zex was having a strange experience as if watching a movie from the camera's point of view. However, he could feel his soul catching up to the movements of the body he was riding. The longer the time passed, the more familiar he felt with the memories and more in sync his soul was with the movements.

The man riding on a horse was Drago's father, the strongest Dragon Knight in the history of Grimley, Avegar.

Zex also realized that he was starting to lose his memories rapidly. 'This fast?'

He miscalculated how long his soul could hold out and keep his memories. It seems he will have to time his entry and exit to his Mind Space properly. In this way, he could keep himself intact and be able to still recall the lost memories, or else he would turn into Drago himself even if his soul was entirely different.

So after a while, he entered his Mind Space and meditated to recall the memories of his past life. He recalled his youth, the memories of having a younger brother fighting over brother stuff. He recalled the mockery from kids his age due to him being a weirdo; the first time he stole some money from his mom and dad just to play some video games in the neighborhood; the first movie and anime he watched, the first book he read, the first game he played. He recalled the reason why he loved video games more than playing on the street with the other kids; the first friends he made who became his closest friends until his last breath; and the memories of being left behind at home by his mom and dad almost frequently because his mother was a doctor who worked at a faraway hospital, and his dad was in the military, assigned far away as well.

When he was young, he and his brother got accustomed to their parents being unavailable at events and being accompanied and taken care of by nannies who mostly never had children of their own. For most of them, he and his brother were their first children, and that sentiment was kept by them for a very long time. To society, he and his brother grew up well and played by its 'rules' but only the two of them knew the truth --- They were broken inside. They just learned to hide it from everyone else, even from each other, for the longest time.

Recalling the memories he lost during experiencing the 'system restore' process, he decided to exit from his Mind Space and continue with it.

The next key memory was about Drago's father beating his mother. The dragon blood within their family has a certain trait that directly relates to purity: the tendency for violence. His father was respected in the kingdom due to his might on the battlefield. However, he was not a good man... nor was he a good husband, at least after he earned the title of Dragon Knight. He had the purest blood among the generations in the Grussiva family, which made him stronger than anyone in their family line of Dragon Knights.

Unfortunately, this also caused him to be brutal, battle-hungry, and lustful. Aside from constantly being on the harshest battlefields, facing all kinds of deadly creatures and races, he had so many concubines and raped so many women in his time on the field. Even when he was inside the kingdom, he would buy female slaves and kidnap commoners' daughters to be his playthings, which was one of the things he and his wife would constantly fight about. However, despite his extreme and uncontrollable lechery, he was only able to sire one child. This was a testament to how hard it was for a Dragon and those of its kin to procreate.

In the said key memory, Drago was hiding and listening in. His father was not drunk or anything, he was just in the heat but his mother released the slaves who were scheduled to be his outlet for that night. When he could not handle his urge any longer, he tore off his wife's clothes and started making love... if you could still call it that.

Zex, who was listening to all of this, felt sadness, agony, rage, and guilt for not being able to do anything due to the strongest emotion that welled up in himself... fear. He could feel every ounce of it... every second of it. The mother who loved him and cared for him all his life was being hurt by the father he idolized for as long as he could remember that he always wanted to be like him. He was trembling and crying the whole time that the biggest wish in his heart was to escape from this reality.

Yes. He lost the battle without even realizing there was a battle. He was consumed by Drago's emotions and memories that Zex lost himself in the process.

Everything was so real. It was not anything like the games he played before where he would imagine himself in the character's shoes. In the process, he was actually in Drago's shoes. It was a memory of the body and brain he currently owned once held. They were familiar, and they were undeniable that they were of this body. Experiencing these memories the first time himself, made it less of memory but more of a new event he was going through.

If he was the real Drago, this memory would just be a sour one as he would already have subconscious guards up when going through it even if he had amnesia. The emotions would not be as overwhelming and the 'remembering' process would have kicked in early on, giving him a better chance at avoiding being consumed by the memory and losing himself.

In other words, 'Zex' was no more.

[1} NSFW - Not Suitable For Work or Not Safe For Work... but you knew that, right? *Smirk*

[2] The title of the game is Assassin's Creed by Ubisoft.