The Bloodline System Chapter 2 - Unknown Man

"Wait, I'm still alive?"

Gustav awakened to find himself sprawled in the heart of the forest.

He pushed himself up gradually, brushing the forest floor's grime from his clothes. He noted he was still dressed in his school uniform.

"There isn't a single scratch on me," he remarked, performing a quick self-examination.

To the east, the sun was beginning its ascent, casting beams of light that filtered through the canopy of the tree standing before him.

"Has a whole night gone by?" Gustav’s eyes stretched wide with alarm at the realization, though his expression flattened a moment later. "Not like anyone would actually notice my absence," he muttered with a heavy heart.

He turned his gaze back toward the mountain he had fallen from, but something flickering in the periphery of his left vision caught his attention.

As he concentrated on the blinking blue rectangle, something inexplicable occurred.

-[Welcome host!]

Text suddenly manifested directly in his field of vision.

"Eh, what is this?" Gustav exclaimed, his face etched with bewilderment.

He shook his head and looked around, but the floating text remained anchored in his sight.

Assuming it was a hallucination, Gustav squeezed his eyes shut. "I must have cracked my skull when I hit the ground."

After waiting several seconds, he opened them again, only to find even more words appearing before him.

-[Idiot host, you have been selected to inherit immense power!]

"Idiot host? Did these words just insult me?" Gustav snapped before pausing. "Wait, host?" he asked, sounding lost.

-[You have ten seconds to decide whether to accept this power or not.]

"Power? What kind of power? What’s going on here? Why am I even talking back to some strange text? Am I dead? Is this my punishment for trying to commit suicide? Some kind of afterlife insanity?" Gustav fired off a barrage of questions, questioning his very reality and mental state.

As if responding to his frantic queries, the text shifted once more.

-[You are free to refuse this power, but doing so will result in your death!]

Gustav rubbed his chin as he watched the message change again.

"So, I survived, but the cost is this madness," he pondered aloud. "Wait, did it just threaten to kill me?"

-[Ten]

-[Nine]

"Huh? It’s actually counting down," Gustav observed as the characters swapped out every passing second.

-[Seven]

"Will I really die if I don't answer or if I say no?" Having faced the brink of death the previous night, Gustav felt a surge of fear at the prospect of facing it again.

-[Six (You shall die)]

The text provided a blunt confirmation.

Gustav: "..."

-[Four]

-[Three]

Gustav felt his pulse slowing down as the timer ticked toward zero.

Ba... dump! Ba... dump!

-[Two]

-[One]

"I accept!" Gustav screamed.

The countdown froze the instant the words left his mouth.

"Huff! Huff! Huff! Was this thing actually going to end me?" Gustav panted heavily now that the pressure had vanished.

He pressed his palm against his chest, monitoring his heartbeat. He let out a breath of relief as his thumping heart began to steady.

-[Congratulations on accepting this power! Your destiny has been rewritten!]

The characters transitioned again.

"Hmm? What power is it talking about?" He stared at the screen with a look of total confusion.

-[Your body will now undergo a constitutional audit and evolution!]

Yawn!

Gustav felt a wave of exhaustion hit him as soon as he finished reading the latest prompt.

[Host will be moved to his residence and will remain in a state of unconsciousness for the next twenty-four hours]

"What ar—" Before Gustav could finish his thought, he spotted a dark blur darting between the trees about a hundred feet to his west.

Zwee! Zwee! Zwee!

The figure moved with incredible speed, circling Gustav by leaping from trunk to trunk.

It looked like nothing more than a shifting shadow.

"Who’s there?" He realized instantly that it was a human presence.

Answering his shout, a muscular man standing two meters tall, dressed in a skin-tight black bodysuit, revealed himself twenty feet away.

A green mask obscured the lower half of his face.

"You're coming with me, brat!" the man said in a gravelly, hoarse voice.

[Ten]

"Who are you? What do you want?" Gustav demanded, his face pale with fear as he instinctively retreated several steps.

[Nine]

"I just need you to follow me! No more questions!" the stranger barked with an air of authority.

[Eight]

"What are you planning to do to me?!" Gustav’s heart began to race once again.

"Just come quietly! Don't try anything clever, or I'll be forced to get violent!" the man threatened, his brow furrowing.

[Five]

Badump! Badump! Badump!

Although his drowsiness intensified with every tick of the clock, Gustav was desperate to avoid capture. 'Is he a kidnapper? A trafficker of mixedbloods? What if he auctions me off? Or tortures me? Or harvests my organs?'

Despite his recent attempt at suicide, the thought of the suffering this stranger might inflict terrified him, causing him to ignore the countdown entirely.

[Four]

'Run!'

The moment the thought sparked, Gustav spun around and sprinted in the opposite direction.

"Idiot!" The man gave a cold snort and blurred through the trees, creating a dark ring around the fleeing Gustav.

Suddenly, the man lunged from the heights of the six-hundred-foot trees straight at Gustav.

Having identified the man as a mixedblood and trying to predict his path, Gustav attempted to drop flat to the ground the moment the man made his move.

As he fell, the man was already hurtling through the air toward him at high velocity.

Gustav realized his timing was off; the man's outstretched hand was mere centimeters from his shoulder while Gustav was still mid-descent.

Time seemed to freeze as the stranger’s palm reached for Gustav...

[Zero]

[Host shall now enter a deep slumber!]

The notification flashed, and Gustav’s world instantly turned black.

A burst of brilliant radiance suddenly enveloped Gustav, and in the following heartbeat...

Zing!

Gustav vanished into thin air, leaving the man’s hand to pass through nothing but fading light particles.

Dum!

The man’s feet hit the earth, sliding several feet due to his momentum.

He whipped his head around, searching frantically.

"He's gone?" the man muttered, his face full of disbelief. "A spatial bloodline? That's incredibly rare," he whispered.

"But even so, that kid can't be more than a Zulu-ranked mixedblood! His powers won't be developed yet, meaning he couldn't have teleported far... He must still be hiding somewhere in this forest." Finishing his thought, the man vanished like a ghost, leaping through the branches at breakneck speed.

He began a systematic sweep of the forest starting from the north, hoping to stumble upon Gustav again. His efforts were in vain, however, as Gustav had already been relocated to his own bedroom.

A gentle breeze drifted through the woods, seemingly indifferent to the chaos. Gustav remained unaware that the towering mountain he had chosen for his seppuku had been reduced to half its original height.

----

-Thirty minutes prior

The sky began to pale as the sun rose, signaling the conclusion of the night.

While the world usually slept during these hours, the opposite was true for a group assembled near a specific mountain in the forest bordering Plankton City.

The individuals gathered were dressed in what looked like medical research gear.

A massive, saucer-shaped high-tech craft hovered over the peak. It emitted beams of blue light, meticulously scanning every inch of the rock face.

A man with dark brown hair, wearing a sharp azure suit, stood before the mountain. He was flanked by four bodyguards in dark, form-fitting suits.

The researchers in medical attire hurried back and forth, focused on analyzing the bizarre phenomenon of a mountain being sliced in half overnight.