[Notice] The System restarted unexpectedly.

Please wait for the System to reconfigure...

I woke up in my own bed at the Viscoti Manor and didn't need to check my appearance to know I was 17 again.

As always, it was right before dawn, so it was dark. I could hear rain pattering against the window. I used one of the few spells I knew to light the candle on my bedside table so it wasn't too hard to see. My bedroom was not a welcome sight, even if the bed was comfortable. The same wardrobe, the same standing mirror, the same everything.

If I was going to keep coming back, why couldn't I go back further? If I'd stopped to take a good look around at all this splendor in my first life, I would've seen the lurking shadows earlier. I wouldn't have begged to be homeschooled so I could live a life of ease--eating as much as I wanted, sleeping as much as I wanted, doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I wouldn't have been so complacent.

Maybe I was still being complacent given where I'd ended up again. I thought I'd done enough so that I wouldn't have the same result for yet another one of my lives, but here I was. I'd lived every life differently after this point, and yet I died before I turned 21 each time.

Sure, the Viscoti family was the strongest in the Naedoven Kingdom after the royal family. A family of knights that had supported the first King of Naedoven's ascension to the throne. But I should've been safe from Father in the north. If I wasn't safe from Father there without doing something drastic, then I wasn't safe anywhere.

So that meant I needed to not only leave but also do something drastic.

Something that wasn't staying comfortable in bed until the servants came to wake me. Something that wasn't having breakfast with Father and my two older brothers. Awkward to share a meal with people who had me killed more times than I'd killed them. Seemed unfair, but it wasn't fun killing the same people twice.

If going north didn't work, then maybe going south. War with the Broweathen Kingdom would start in half a year's time and joining that as a soldier hadn't done anything for me. It wasn't possible to raise ranks as a royal guard or royal assassin fast enough to make any difference in the war either. That was why I'd headed north. Just totally avoided the whole thing.

Which made my best bet for escaping the Viscoti family was doing something drastic in the Broweathen Kingdom, right?

[Notice] System restart complete. Check current Stats?

I almost declined, but the door opened and my valet entered carrying a candle. No matter how many times I told him not to bother with me, he still did his job every day wearing the family's ridiculous livery. He bowed his head to me. "Good morning, Young Master Viscoti."

"Change of pace this morning," I said, getting up and stretching. "I want to head into the city and grab a present for Father before he returns from the capital tonight."

"Should I prepare the carriage for you then?" he asked me.

"That'd be great," I said. "Let's get the dressing over with."

He nodded, a hint of a smile on his lips, probably because he thought I'd finally given into him. Nope. I just wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, and four hands were faster than two.

After he finished brushing my jacket to his satisfaction, he finally left me to get a footman and a guard for the visit. That was when I started gathering a bunch of small things I could sell for a lot of money and checked my current stats to appease the System for once.

Name

Gerard Viscoti

Class

Noble

Soul

F-Class (Stage 1)

Strength

15

Cunning

11

Perception

12

Energy

11

Skills

Lucky Number 7 [0%]

Everything was the same as how it'd been in my last six lives, but there was one difference. Lucky Number 7? Was that what the reconfiguration gave me? Never had that before, but with 0% mastery, I didn't have it now, either.

I'd never been one to try to increase my stats on purpose. As a royal guard and a royal assassin, I'd naturally increased my Strength, Cunning, and Perception with training and experience.

Strength measured physical strength and robustness, strength of mind, and endurance. Cunning measured agility, reflexes, and coordination as well as the ability to learn, think, and react in situations. Perception measured general awareness and keenness of senses.

Energy was the attribute I didn't know much about. I knew it was related to magic--alchemy, spellwork, and some potion making all required a certain amount of therms of energy. Every souled being had some baseline energy at birth that increased until maturity or something like that. I also knew nothing about all this soul business. Both topics Father hadn't cared for me to cover in my homeschooling.

Quickly before my valet came back to tell me the carriage was ready, I pulled up the description for Lucky Number 7.

[Lucky Number 7]

This passive skill works to create opportunities to work in your favor if you're able to use your knowledge effectively to take advantage of such opportunities.

[0% Mastery]

Well, since it was passive, I could pretty much pretend like it didn't exist. If it came in handy, then great. Otherwise, I'd create my own luck like usual.

By the time my valet returned, I had enough cufflinks, rings, and other various expensive garbage to live on for quite a while. Leaving this manor and leaving the estate brought more relief every time I did it.

In town, the first thing I did was ditch the footman. This was all mostly routine procedure for me at this point given the way I'd been living so far in this world. Then I bought a hooded cloak, a sturdy horse, some supplies. Food, water, a few daggers I could conceal in my clothes. I also picked up a familiar at a magic shop--a cheap raven that'd give me a head's up if danger was coming. I named him Fury.

There was a dense forest on the border between Naedoven and the Broweathen Kingdom full of easy kills that'd help level up my Strength and Perception stats. With that, I'd be set for whatever I encountered in Broweathen. I had four years to rid myself of the Viscoti family one way or another without taking the fall for it.

I rode towards the Broweathen Kingdom, the raven flying high above me.