Chapter 1

Chapter 1. I Became the Duke's Illegitimate Son (1)

It had not been much of a life.

I had been an ordinary young man who liked games.

It was an ordinary life, one spent getting crushed by work and struggling to pay off credit card debt.

The end of that life had not been much either.

Cause of death: hypothermia.

On a winter night, after being dumped by the girlfriend I had dated for quite a long time, I got dead drunk and staggered home. I was knocked unconscious by a mugger and left there, only to freeze to death.

And just like that, my first life came to an end.

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a baby crib, wrapped in swaddling cloth.

Then I heard an unfamiliar language I had never heard before.

"Alex, you are the son of Duke Gresia."

Strangely enough, I understood it at once.

A beautiful woman smiled gently at me, now that I had become a baby, and spoke.

She was a blonde woman in an old-fashioned dress. She was my mother, and I was a newborn child.

The moment I heard her words, the term "past life" naturally came to mind.

It was unbelievable, but I was certain that I had truly been reincarnated, and this place did not seem to be Earth either.

With three moons hanging side by side outside the window, it was impossible to think this place was Earth.

Time passed.

In any case, my new life looked rather good.

No, it was more than merely good.

A splendid room with a medieval feel. Several maids.

And my mother's words that I was the son of a duke.

I had clearly been reborn as the son of a great noble.

Even as I struggled against sleep, I was tremendously happy.

But of course, good things were never going to happen all the way through.

Not long after I first opened my eyes, a handsome man came in and then left. He gave me, the baby, a brief glance before taking my mother with him.

Judging by his appearance, he was clearly my father, the duke.

He did not look particularly pleased even after seeing me.

As it turned out, my mother was a commoner, and I was an illegitimate son unrecognized by the family.

Worse, there were already two duchesses and two older brothers, making me a thoroughly unwanted child. I even saw a maid click her tongue at me under her breath when my mother was not around.

The relationship between the duke and my mother also looked quite different from the married couples I had known. The situation did not seem good at all.

This is no time to be happy just because I was born into a noble house! What kind of ancient cliché is this? If I was born as a duke's son, shouldn't I at least be the easy-living youngest child, or maybe the secretly overpowered eldest? Or at least a system window ought to pop up!

No glittering spirits appeared before my eyes, and no matter how many times I shouted for a system window, a settings window, or a status window, nothing appeared. There was no gift from a god, and I had not seen so much as a shabby angel, let alone a god.

I tried forcing my sleepy eyes open as I searched for some kind of answer, but that worry could not even last a few minutes.

I was a newborn baby who had just been born. All I could do was drift back to sleep under the weight of drowsiness.

Perhaps because I belonged to a great noble house, my mother's room and mine were separate, and I passed my days drinking a wet nurse's milk while burdened with useless worries.

Then one night.

I suddenly woke up.

A maid was standing in the moonlit room.

Ah, it's Kanna. Is she on night duty tonight?

She was one of the maids who helped my mother take care of me.

But why did I wake up? I'm not hungry, and I didn't wet myself...

Having woken without warning, I stared blankly at Kanna, and the maid looked back at me with a gloomy expression.

"Just stay asleep. Why did you have to wake up...?"

Murmuring in a voice that sounded strangely apologetic, she silently walked over to the cradle.

Something about the situation felt ominous.

Startled, I opened my mouth, but before I could do anything, a large pillow came down over my head.

The two hands holding the pillow were Kanna's, and the pillow covered my face before I could even cry out.

I could not breathe.

"I'm sorry. You were born far too early, Young Master."

Those words reached my ears as everything grew dimmer and dimmer.

No, what kind of trashy melodrama is this?! This can't be happening! Assassination when I have not even been born for a few months? I haven't gotten to do anything yet!

I screamed inwardly with all my might, but even a cry could not escape from the mouth pinned beneath the pillow.

My consciousness slowly faded.

Regrettably, no salvation came even at the final moment.

My breathing stopped.

Damn it, what kind of absurd reincarnation is this?

With that empty grumble as my last thought, my second life also came to an end.

Pitch-black darkness. A dissolving mind. Death had come.

At the very end, a brilliant light began to appear before my eyes.

Is this heaven?

......

How much time had passed?

FLASH!

The light swallowed the darkness whole.

And then.

"WAAAHHH!"

I opened my eyes again.

A beautiful woman stood before me.

"Alex, you are the son of Duke Gresia."

The woman I had seen every day until then spoke to me once more, wearing the same expression she had worn the first time I saw her several months ago.

And then.

At last, words appeared before my eyes.

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

The moment I saw the Korean text floating before my eyes, I stopped crying cold.

After spending several days in a daze, I had no choice but to admit it.

I had not truly died. I had clearly returned to the moment of my rebirth after dying.

Reincarnation, and then regression on top of that.

It had already been absurd enough to die only a few months after being born, but now that I had been sent back to the very beginning again, I felt both delighted and utterly dumbfounded.

What was more,

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

when I concentrated, the words that appeared in the empty air told me that this regression was not something that would happen only once.

Autosave point...

It was a phrase I had often seen in the single-player games I used to enjoy in my previous life.

Rather than the player saving manually, the game would save automatically after the player passed a certain point, and if the player died afterward, they would revive from the place where the game had been saved. It was the save-and-load system.

And the phrase that appeared then was precisely "autosave point."

If it's a point in time rather than a location, then it's tied to time, not a place.

Thanks be to whatever unknown being brought me into this world.

As expected, I had not simply been thrown into an unfamiliar world with no recourse at all.

But even if I could come back to life, that did not mean it was an unqualified blessing.

I have to find a way not to die in the future.

There was no point in reviving if I just kept dying every time.

There was no guarantee that I would keep coming back forever, and even if I did, I might be trapped in a life where death repeated endlessly for all eternity.

If that happened, the power to revive would not be a blessing at all, but a curse.

But finding a way not to die was no easy task.

I had died only a few months after being born. I could not speak, much less crawl.

Starting on hell difficulty right from the beginning...

Even so, I could not just let myself die again. I would have to relive this stifling life as a baby while carrying the memory of that horrible death. I absolutely had to survive.

Fortunately, I knew who the culprit was.

Of course, someone else had probably given the order from behind the scenes, but since I knew who had carried it out, all I had to do was get rid of the one responsible.

The maid who had killed me was Kanna.

She was a woman who did not particularly stand out.

Even among my mother's maids, she was neither especially sharp-edged nor troublesome, and she seemed reasonably diligent.

Even through the eyes of someone who had lived a past life, she did not seem like the sort of woman who would casually kill a person.

Well, I suppose it's a different era from my previous life.

At a glance, this was a medieval age where blood and flesh would splatter without restraint. Even if it was a prestigious noble household, the people were bound to be no different.

Fighting off the waves of sleep, I kept observing Kanna.

Because of that, my mother and the maids began to think I was strange, saying I was a child who hardly cried and barely slept.

But I had no room to care about those looks.

The same stretch of time flowed by once more.

My father, the duke, occasionally came by to look at me with an indifferent expression, and as I gradually needed less sleep, I had more time to observe.

And the more time passed, the darker Maid Kanna's expression became.

How did I not notice this before?

Now that I was seeing it again, her face had grown dark enough that I could spot it at a glance.

The other maids were looking at her with worried expressions as well.

She is about to kill someone. More than that, she is about to kill the duke's son. Of course her face wouldn't look normal. Is she not even thinking about what happens after that?

She had used a pillow to make it look like a natural death, but that did not mean she would escape responsibility. If things went badly, she might end up paying for it with her life.

But when I saw Kanna's darkening expression, I merely snorted inwardly. There was no reason to pity a murderer.

"Ah! The Young Master smiled."

"He hardly ever smiles, so that's a relief."

"But doesn't his smile look a little strange?"

"Tsk! Where did that nonsense come from!"

The maids chatting as they looked at my face were promptly scolded by the head maid.

Apparently, I was still too young to be snorting mockingly.

The time of my death drew near before my eyes.

At first, the maids had taken turns standing watch every few hours through the night like soldiers on night guard, but after a few months, only one maid remained at night.

Unless I cried, they would sit in the chair by the corner of the room and doze.

It was far sloppier care than at the beginning, but compared to my previous life, it was still excessive. As expected of a great noble house.

It seemed Kanna had been waiting for the night when she would be left alone.

The night Kanna was left by herself.

"You may go in."

"Then take care."

"It's all right. The Young Master is so quiet that it is not difficult."

Kanna waved back at the other maids as they exchanged farewells before going off duty.

Afterward, she turned to me and gave me a fleeting look of apology.

But I had no interest in her expression.

A few hours later, once the night grew deep, the same thing would happen again.

I could not let that happen.

Instead of waiting, I opened my mouth as wide as I could.

And I burst into loud sobs.

"WAAAH!"

The cry of a child who almost never cried rang throughout the manor.

Naturally, chaos broke out at once.

"What is it!"

"It's the Young Master's crying!"

The maids who had just left immediately rushed back, and even my mother, who had been resting in her room, came running in a single bound.

The maids who came running, and even my mother, asked Kanna what had happened, but Kanna, pale as a sheet, could only shake her head without saying a word.

"He just suddenly started crying."

"He has always been such a calm child. How could that happen for no reason!"

My mother snapped angrily at Kanna. She was not someone who angered easily, so she must have been badly shaken.

But what Kanna said is true, though.

The head maid carefully lifted me into her arms.

"It seems he had a bad dream, or perhaps he woke suddenly and was startled. He should fall asleep again soon."

As if. The moment I fall asleep, I am done for.

"WAAAHHHHH!"

Once more, at full power!

I cried with all my might until my face turned red.

The startled head maid nearly dropped me.

"Bring the priest and the physician at once!"

My mother shouted at the maids.

Huh? I understand the physician, but why a priest? Could it be...?

In any case, while people ran this way and that, I desperately kept crying.

It was hard. I was exhausted.

Some babies apparently cried all day long, but how could that possibly be true? That would be insane.

But this was only the beginning. If I wanted to live, I had to endure.

I did not stop crying.

"WAAAH, waaah, huh. Huh. Ack, waaah!"

That night, I burned myself out until dawn.

The next morning.

I was sprawled on the bed, gasping for breath.

"There does not appear to be any particular illness. Aside from his throat being swollen from crying so much, he is perfectly healthy. And even the swelling should go down soon."

I heard the physician's voice, but I could not pay attention because I was focused on something else.

A brilliant light was filling my vision and throwing it into disarray.

An old man in a white robe had placed his fingers on my tiny throat, and a radiant light was pouring from those fingers.

When they said to call a priest, I had wondered for a moment, but I had never expected it to turn out to be true.

This place was not an ordinary medieval age like the Earth of my previous life.

The clergy here could use the power of the divine.

Then that means...

There may be magicians here, and knights who use sword aura too.

Is that good? I still cannot tell whether that will work to my advantage or not.

No, that is not what matters right now.

I had made it safely through the night, but nothing had changed.

No new message had appeared saying the danger had passed, and Kanna was still standing over there, perfectly fine.

If anything, my mother was walking over to Kanna to apologize to her.

"I was too startled yesterday. Please do not take it to heart."

"It is all right, my lady."

If Kanna was still unharmed, then the danger had not passed yet.

It was disappointing, but I had expected a situation like this.

I was not finished yet either.