Father had really gone out of his way to show his love this time.

"So you're the Duke's son?" the man asked me with an unimpressed look on his face. He was tall and muscular, wearing nice armor that would've cost quite a lot. He had a crooked nose, brown hair and eyes--really brown eyes. And too much hair. "You don't look like much."

No kidding. That was the whole point. I'd been trying to lay low and not look like much to avoid this situation. Falling asleep, waking up to someone putting a bag over my head and tying me up, getting knocked out because naturally I fought back but they'd come prepared, then waking up again later in this pit.

This familiar pit.

This was my father's dungeon beneath the Viscoti estate. I was very familiar with this place since I'd killed a few people down here in my second life and I'd died here in my last life. Down here, it was dark and damp. It smelled like mold and carried the heaviest scent of decay I'd ever had the displeasure of breathing.

The torture rooms like this were just a chair, a victim, and their would-be torturer. The room was cramped with a low ceiling and didn't have a single window, not even in the door. They weren't as nice as the cells I'd spent the last few years of my original life--the one before I'd found myself in an entirely different world with a system and magic and elves and other creatures I hadn't thought were real.

The man cleared his throat and folded his arms over his chest. "The Duke sent us to retrieve you," he said as if he were telling me what time it was.

That much was obvious.

"Retrieve me for what?" I asked just to be annoying.

"For questioning."

"What kind of questioning? What are you going to ask me?"

"I can't tell you that," he said, chuckling a little bit. "And you'll find out soon enough. You're a smart boy though, aren't you? Don't you know why Duke Viscoti is so interested in you?"

Calling me boy when I was 21 and well aware of what was going on? Laughable. I was well aware that my father was planning to use magic to poison the royal family so he could usurp the throne, but as always, he'd gotten caught, and he was trying to find someone to blame to save himself. I'd fallen for it only once. My first life. The one where I was dropped into the body around the age of 15.

"No," I lied this time.

"Then there's no point in asking you any more questions."

"Great," I said as the man left the room, shutting the door behind him.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and let myself relax. It'd probably be a few hours before anyone came back in. They could leave me in here for days and I wouldn't care. Weeks of solitary confinement in my original life made this almost nostalgic. I preferred being alone in the silence to being anywhere else.

[Notice] You still have not accepted this Quest. Accept now?

I declined who knows how many times. That was the one thing about being alone in this world. I was never really alone. Whatever this system was, it was always there and no one I'd asked knew how to get rid of it. No one I asked could tell me where it came from or what function it served, either. Just that it'd always been that way and that the system helped people get stronger so that they could fight in the dungeons if they wanted.

I didn't care about dungeons. Nobles didn't tend to interest themselves in dungeons, not when there were tea parties and balls and double-speak to worry about. They hired people to care about dungeons. They hired people to care about stats, too. Father hadn't even bothered to have me tutored on how the system worked.

All I knew was that it was bothersome always coming up in my field of vision. I didn't like the idea of Quests telling me what to do with my life. I didn't need numbers to tell me that I was strong. All I needed was myself and confidence in my own skills.

As I expected, it was a few hours until someone else came into the room. It was the captain of the guards, and I'd known him since I was a boy. He was old, white-haired, bearded, and had a scar from one side of his face to the other.

"Sorry about them," he apologized and offered a smile I'd believed in my first life. "They're just doing their jobs."

"It doesn't matter," I said. He was going to kill me here no matter what I did. May as well have fun with it this time and hope I wouldn't wake back up as a scrawny 17-year-old again. "If I'm going to be interrogated anyway, then I might as well tell you everything I can."

"Good," the captain said. He gestured to a guard standing just outside of the door, and someone rushed in to set down a chair for him. He gave a groan when he sat and he rubbed a knee. He wasn't that old. "Your father told us you had a lot to say about all of this. We figured you would try to run away if we did this any other way. Now, if we can confirm you aren't a threat to anyone, then I can untie you. Just a precaution. You know the reputation of those northerners."

"Can't you just kill me?"

The captain smiled again and kept talking to me like I was a child. "Oh, no. That wouldn't do at all. Killing prisoners isn't allowed. Don't worry. We won't hurt you. Now, do you want to wait for your father to arrive before we start questioning you? We can start with an easy question. What's your name?"

"My name is Gerard."

"Gerard, good." The captain chuckled. "And do you know why you're here, Gerard?"

"No." Had to be consistent.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Interesting…" the captain mumbled to himself. "Well, you're here because we're interested in what happened to you."

"What happened to me?"

"Yes," the captain said. "I'm going to ask you some more questions, Gerard, and you're going to give us the truth. Then we'll decide whether or not you should be executed."

"Executed?" So this was going like my first and fifth lives. Almost like a blend of the two.

"You're going to die."

"I don't understand."

"You haven't given us the truth yet. Now, we need to know what happened to you in the north."

He wasn't going to believe me that I'd applied to a boarding school in the north to escape this situation. I thought if I was that far away, didn't kill more than necessary so I didn't stand out and never came back that I wouldn't have to die before I turned 21 because of the Viscoti family again.

Clearly, that'd been wishful thinking. Maybe I should've gone south and learned how to use magic instead.

"Come on, Gerard. You're the only one who knows."

"Fine. Just shut up and let me talk." What could I lose at this point? "Okay, so, I died on death row."

The captain's sparse white eyebrows shot up. "Right."

"And then I got transported to a new world. Now I'm Gerard Viscoti, as you can see."

"Yes, I can." His expression settled into something like disappointment.

"So, I tried to live a normal life, but then I ended up dying because my father and my older brothers blamed their assassination attempt on the royal family on me. Well, surprise, I didn't die for real. I woke up and I was 17 again. A second chance at life! I was excited because I wanted to get revenge for what my family did to me. But then I ended up getting executed by the king for killing every Viscoti alive and all that."

"But Gerard," the guard said, "you started out saying you were the Duke's son, and now you're saying you died for killing everyone in your family. Those things don't match up. Did the northerners plant these memories into your mind? Perhaps gave you nightmares of these events happening?"

"The details don't match up, you're right. That's because I got brought back again after I died that time. A third life! Who! Ever gets! That chance! So I was like why would I stay with the Viscoti family? I went off to war as a soldier. Betrayed on the battlefield. Quite honorable, don't you think?"

"Gerard..."

"Still I got brought back to when I was 17 again. Who'd have thought? No use doing the same things as before, so I became a royal guard. Got killed because of my family's scheming and brought back again. Became a royal assassin after that. I was pretty good. Still got killed by my own family. Do you see a pattern here?"

"I do. That's some story, kid..." He glanced wearily at the guard at the door.

It was more fun telling the truth than I thought it'd be, but I was also looking forward to dying again. Maybe this time it would be permanent and I wouldn't have to deal with the Viscoti family or the stupid system again.

"So that time when I got brought back... well that's this time, in fact. Anyway, this time I made sure to do nothing that could get me involved. Boarding school in another country as soon as I was old enough. Barely seen anyone related to me in the last four years. But you're going to kill me again. Hopefully, I'll stay dead this time. No more chances! No more lives! Just death."

Because no one would like the alternative.

"Alright. Enough." The captain stood up and approached me with his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Now tell the truth or you really will die. What happened in the north?"

I had to laugh. I laughed really hard. "You're kidding, right?"

"You're going to die if you don't tell the truth."

"I told you the truth."

[Notice] You still have not accepted this Quest. This is the point of no return. If you do not accept this Quest now, you will not be able to accept the Quest later. Accept now?

I declined again, though the system had never been quite this persistent about a Quest before. Part of me wondered if accepting it would mean I could get out of dying two months before my 21st birthday. If I did accept it, though, wouldn't it make me do something that wasn't me at all? Like beg for my life. Or sell out someone else. Or offer some other deal.

I'd done what I'd wanted to do here. If that meant death, then I'd take it. Gladly.

The captain looked at me long and hard. He looked tired. He sighed and started to head out. "He can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy. That's how brainwashed they have him. He's worthless to us."

At least this time, I died laughing.

[Notice] Quest failure. Restart required.