Chapter 2: Huo Yuhao.
Douluo planet.
Star Luo Empire.
White Tiger Duke's mansion.
In a small cottage behind the mansion.
"Augh…" Jason groaned as he felt like he had been hit by a truck. Wait a sec, that already happened.
'What the hell?' Jason wondered as he opened his eyes and stared at the strangely familiar and unfamiliar ceiling.
It was familiar as he thought he had lived here his entire life, unfamiliar because this was Jason's first time seeing it. Needless to say, he was confused as hell.
'So, am I dead or what? Is this heaven? It looks too shabby, like really too shabby, like my messy room is ten times more pleasant than this place' young Jason thought to himself as he scanned the area around him.
He found himself in what looked like a storage room; everything looked like it had been poorly maintained. He grasped his head as it was still throbbing in pain and tried to get up from the uncomfortable bed.
"Hmm ~" A soft voice startled him as he turned his head and was greeted by a strangely familiar and unfamiliar beautiful blond woman sleeping beside him. Familiar because he felt that his body felt comfortable staying beside her, unfamiliar because this was his first time seeing this woman.
"What is going on right now?" he asked in a very low voice, afraid to wake up the woman beside him, but he quickly noticed something different.
'This is not my voice, why does my voice sound like a kid?' he wondered as he touched his throat and then it finally occurred to him as he noticed his small hands, no, not just his hands, his body was small like a kid.
'Okay, I have a guess about what is happening, and I hope I am wrong.' He dreaded the thought of what he guessed to be true. Because if his guess was true, he might be in a difficult situation.
*Deep inhale sound*
'Okay, let's just calm down a bit.' He managed to calm his racing heart that was about to jump out of his chest by taking a deep breath.
'So, I got hit by truck-kun, and I woke up in a strange place and have strange feelings towards this unknown woman sleeping beside me. Not only that, but also I am in the body of a kid with a very weak physique and a head-splitting headache.' He sighed as he assessed his current situation.
'So, did truck-kun do his job and reincarnate me in the body of a kid? I thought truck-kun only went after dense Japanese high school students. What does that have to do with me though? I lived at the opposite end of Japan.' He lamented his situation.
'Okay, so is this a typical trash isekai story in a cliché swords and magic world, and do we have to defeat a demon king or something like that?' he thought to himself as a small smile made its way across his face.
'Personally, I would use a spear with the addition of magic as an assist route, and if I can get rune magic or something similar, I can be like Cú Chulainn in this world and invest all my extra stats in luck. Imagine a lancer with A-rank luck. I think the world would be destroyed at that point.' He quickly shook off these thoughts as he had not confirmed what type of world he was in right now; maybe it was just his world but a different time period or a different country, or maybe he was in a coma at the hospital and his brain was creating a detailed simulation using his memories as a template.
'Okay, simple test.' He mumbled a word that all the handsome readers were familiar with.
"Status."
He waited for a couple of seconds and nothing happened. His face was beet red from the embarrassing situation, so embarrassing in fact that the author was dying/cringing inside right now.
'Okay, so no system. That can be both good and bad. Good because a system entity can literally make me a slave for its desires, and bad because without a system, gaining strength in a fantasy world would be difficult,' he thought to himself as his path was already looking difficult.
'What to do now?' he wondered as he felt his headache getting worse by the minute.
'Ah, I will just sleep. I am in too much pain to bother with all that stuff; future me will handle it. Now I want to rest.' He simply did what every teenager and young adult is best at, which is procrastination.
The moment he rested his head on the pillow, he fell asleep immediately without noticing the golden string that passed through the void and entered his chest.
The golden string's action failed to wake up young Jason as he simply fell asleep and his body subconsciously entered the woman's embrace as he drifted into a deep and peaceful slumber.
After the golden string entered his chest, two pearl-like balls entered his forehead, one white with a hint of golden color and one dark with a hint of purple color. As they entered young Jason's spiritual sea, they tried to fight for dominance until the golden string in his chest let out a gentle glow that instantly made the two beads stop as their actions were damaging Jason's spiritual sea.
With another glow from the golden string, the damaged spiritual sea restored itself and became twice as big as it was originally, easily accommodating the two beads as they kept a wide distance from each other.
After the little war happened between the three parties, a new one joined, as violet sparking dust cluster that sinned like stars attached itself to the nape of young Jason and formed a tattoo of a crescent moon with an eight-pointed star in the middle of it with three roses before disappearing. The golden string tried to resist, but it had already used its energy to stop the two beads from fighting and damaging Jason's spiritual sea.
Sad golden string noises.
[Tattoo image]
Fast forward to morning time. The warm sun was waking up, announcing the beginning of a new day, and early birds were filling the air with their pleasant chirping sounds as they flew high and free in the sky.
The blond woman arose from her slumber, and as she tried to get up from the bed, she noticed someone snuggling close to her. She turned her head, and as she watched the scene in front of her, she smiled a beautiful, warm smile that was filled with love and affection.
'He looks very cute,' she thought to herself. Then she started to notice the purple bruise on his stomach, and her happy mood simply disappeared and was replaced by sadness, sorrow, and self-blame.
She tried to cheer herself up and not sink into dark thoughts, yet her mind wandered to the events that happened yesterday.
[Flashback starts]
She had just finished her long shift working as a maid in the White Tiger mansion, where they handed her the lower-paying jobs that didn't fit her maid ranking, but she had no choice but to accept as she needed the pay to survive with her son. Yesterday, he told her that he would get fish from the river, so she was excited to cook him a delicious meal.
Unfortunately, that was when the event happened.
Her son had just finished catching a few fish from the nearby river, and unfortunately, on his way back, he met with the young master of the White Tiger mansion. The young master just stared at him and started beating up her son.
Her son did not insult, talk to, or even look at the young master, so why did that unreasonable young master beat up her son? Simple, because he found her son's existence to be an eyesore, and he wanted to beat him; no more reason was needed for him to act upon his desire to beat her son.
Parents would usually get furious and want to beat the brat that hit their son or daughter for no apparent reason. But what did she do? She just shielded her son from getting any more beatings so that the young master would leave him alone. She wished he would stop, and fortunately, he did. He just stared at the mother and son duo with a menacing aura and left with his entourage of servants that looked down on the duo.
After they left, she wanted to check on her son, only to find him passed out holding the fish that he had caught in the river for their dinner. Silent tears poured out of her beautiful sky-blue eyes, and she carried her son and his fish back to their shabby storage room that they called home. She wanted to treat her son's wounds, only to be reminded that they were dirt poor and did not have any medicine at home.
She just did the best she could do and hoped that her son would get better the next day. She laid her son on the only bed in the storage room, laid beside him, and fell asleep due to exhaustion.
[Flashback ends]
As she remembered the events that happened, silent tears started pouring out from her eyes.
All her little movements and sobbing sounds caused young Jason to wake up to the sight of the beautiful woman crying her heart out, which confused the hell out of him.
Noticing that her son was awake, the beautiful woman wiped out her tears with her sleeve and smiled at him.
"Good morning, Yuhao. How are you feeling today?" the beautiful woman asked her son worriedly.
'Yuhao?' Young Jason had a confused look on his face. Just as he was about to ask the woman who that was, memory pieces smashed into his head, giving him the answers that he wanted.
'Huo Yuhao, so this is my name.' Young Jason finally understood what world he was in. A fictional world that he had read about before his death, a world that was doomed, and the protagonist's fate was miserable, with every step he took already decided by a powerful being who was monitoring his every move.
He really wished that all this was just a dream, but the feelings he felt and the memories he gained all indicated that he had clearly reincarnated in Douluo Dalu in the timeline of the second part of the series, and he had become the protagonist, Huo Yuhao.
After getting a clue about his current situation, he subconsciously hugged the beautiful woman in front of him. This blond woman should be this body's mother, Huo Yun'er, and he said, "I'm fine, Mom."
'I am tired,' Jason, now called Yuhao, thought to himself. And that is the beginning of a new journey for this young soul. Will he be able to escape the clutches of the being that is calculating his every move? Will he be able to take his fate into his own hands? Will he be able to save his kind and gentle mother? Who knows! ~.
(Chapter 2 finished.)
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An:
Hey guys, this is my first time writing anything, so be gentle with your comments, okay?
Also, do you want Huo Yun'er (Huo Yuhao's mother) to be his partner as well? It is kinda hard to write romance, but I will try.
Just add a comment to either of the following:
Yes
No
Do you want a system or not?
Yes
No
Like I said, a system has its merits. It can help him get stronger faster and more efficiently, but a lot of people hate it, so I don't know. I have a couple of ideas for his cheat.
Route A
The golden string in his chest can be a catalyst to implement otherworldly rules into the Douluo rules, but it would require charges.
So, it can manipulate the world around Yuhao but will require charges.
He can make himself hidden from fate/destiny.
He can hide himself from a certain control freak God King who measures Yuhao's every step.
He can use it to go to other dimensions (I kinda want to include some worlds here as Douluo II itself is boring if you follow the original plot and has a lot of tournaments that are pretty boring as well).
He can use it to turn back time by a certain period.
He can use it to reverse cause and effect.
But it also depends on how many charges he has. If he has six charges, he may be able to go to other dimensions, but can't reverse cause and effect.
Another example:
Let's say the golden string is charged to grant four desires. Let's say Yuhao wants to change the skills he gets from Skydream to skills found in other anime like JJK/God of High School/etc.
He wanted to merge spiritual detection and spiritual sharing into one skill and sacrifice the other two skills to free three spots from Skydream's soul ring, and he wants to fill them with three other skills.
He will use one desire from the golden string to merge spiritual detection and spiritual sharing.
He will use one more desire from the golden string to grant a skill that he wants into Skydream's soul ring, but it depends on the skill.
If he wants to add, let's say, an essence as a skill, that would definitely cost more than one desire (I don't think an essence can even fit into a soul skill; it is an OP skillset that has infinite potential). But something like infinity from JJK or sin of greed from Seven Deadly Sins or elemental sight from Mahouka can cost from one to two desires.
Route B
The other route is a normal system with no slaving involved, and quests are issued by the host.
The problem is I don't know what to set as a reward, and I don't want to set a currency system, so no buying skills, items, etc. It ruins the story. Like the MC is in a difficult position, "Oh system, please search for this specific skill that I am gonna use in this one scene and will forget about in the next 40 chapters" or something.
You get what I am saying, so what are your suggestions? I need ideas to keep this fic going, and if it does well, I may start writing seriously.