Prologue: How it all started (2/2)

James always had his doubts about his father's job, but he was now certain that his father wasn't a digital nomad.

A digital nomad shouldn't be capable of the things Leon had managed. The same goes for military personnel and civil servants. Only secret agents and spies trained by powerful secret agencies could do the things Leon have done to get the bottom of his investigation.

James guessed that his father was either a CIA agent or something along those lines. 

As he had more pressing matters to attend to, he didn't bother verifying his guess by questioning Leon about his real job and demanding answers.

James also didn't bother curbing the nagging feeling in his heart by asking Leon if the reason he was rarely ever home was due to his demanding job or if it was due to his deep-seated aversion and dislike for him.

James always thought it to be the latter. He believed Leon blamed him for the death of his wife and hated him. But after getting to know what Leon was capable of, James started to believe that it might be his misunderstanding. Leon might not necessarily hate him. James started to hope that the reason his father was largely absence from his life was because of his "real job."

'I feel like I have heard about people mysteriously disappearing before, but I can't remember where I heard about it.' James thought to himself. 'Try to remember, James. Try to remember. It might be the key to surviving the troubles that might come for me if I am unlucky enough.'

James knew he could be experiencing a sense of déjà vu. If that was the case, he should just brush it off as a strange sensation and move on to his daily tasks. 

However, his gut feeling was telling him that this was definitely not the case.

He had heard about people disappearing mysteriously before today. He just couldn't remember when and where.

James racked his brain trying to recall where he had first heard about it.

The scene around him faded as he delved deeper into his memories, the sounds and sights of the study he was in blurred into insignificance for him.

After a few moments, his eyes widened suddenly and he sprang up to his feet, as if he had finally snapped into place the crucial piece of the puzzle he was solving in his mind. 

He succeeded in recalling where he had first heard about people mysteriously disappearing—it was in the synopsis of the novel he had bookmarked just a month ago.

It didn't even have a single chapter at that time. He had decided to wait until there were over a hundred chapters available of the novel before starting to read it. If he liked it, he would support and follow it to the end. If he didn't, he would drop it.

Now it seemed like the world of the novel was becoming real.

If that was really the case, he had to read it. 

It would give him an idea of the game people were being forced to participate in by the extraterrestrials.

Thud!

In the study of his father's villa, James stood up from his seat so abruptly that it fell to the ground with a resounding thud.

"What is wrong?" Leon asked as he looked at James with a concerned gaze.

"There is something I need to check. Excuse me," James said to Leon as he left the study in a rush, under the bewildered gaze of his father.

In the hallway, he came across a few housekeepers who looked at him weirdly.

He didn't question why they were looking at him like that because he was in a hurry.

Besides, he had an idea of why every person he came across on his way to his room looked at him as if he were an exotic animal in the zoo. It was not every day that you get to see a man armed to the teeth, dressed like a special soldier going to war.

"Young master, why are you dressed like that?" 

The nanny who asked this question was Maria.

Leon had hired her to look after James a day after he picked him up from his grandparents' home and brought him to live in his villa. She has been working for them since then.

Those who were hired to look after James and the villa at the same time as her were dismissed because they were either caught stealing or stepped out of line, poking their nose into matters that didn't concern them. As Maria had never stepped out of line and adhered strictly to her professional duties, she was never asked to leave.

It wasn't without a reason she was so professional. The amount she was getting paid to look after the young Howlin' and maintain the villa was ridiculously good. She didn't want to lose her job.

Anyway, this was the first time she stepped out of line while interacting with James.

James felt surprised by her behavior.

"Ask father."

James's response to her question was curt, not out of disrespect but caution.

Revealing the truth could inadvertently draw them into dangerous situations. 

After all, those who sought to bury the truth were influential and ruthless. 

As per Leon, anyone interfering with their plans or sharing the truth they wanted to hide faced severe repercussions.

They would face the same if they were found divulging the truth to others.

Thus, despite his fondness for Maria, James didn't disclose the truth to her.

People weren't plant. After spending more than 12 years with her, James have started to see Maria as way more than just his nanny. He felt more closer to her than most of his relatives. But he didn't let his emotions get the better of him.

Rather, he left it up to his father to decide if it was safe to tell the servants of the house the truth or not.

Leon had an idea of what they were capable of as he was in the same line of work as them. Unless he deemed it safe to spread the truth to others, James knew he should keep quiet about it. He was being smart here.

James entered his room and unplugged his handheld device from the charger.

He put in the password to unlock it, and on the unlocked screen of his smartphone, the web novel app he was used to was already open. He had locked his smartphone while the app was still running.

He went to the library section of the app, where all the novels he was interested in reading or was already following were displayed.

He scrolled through the list of novels he'd collected in his library but hadn't read. 

Soon, he found what he was looking for.

The novel "Tales of My Regressions" was about a girl named Melody, who believed herself to be ordinary, but she was actually anything but ordinary.

One day after school, as she was walking home with her childhood friend who lived in the same block as her, a truck sped towards her.

It would have been the beginning of one of those clichéd transmigration stories if her friend hadn't pulled her to safety in time.

That same friend vanished into thin air right in front of her eyes after saving her life!

Since then, Melody made it her mission to find her.

Unfortunately, when she went to the police to report the sudden disappearance of her friend, she was taken as a prankster and sternly warned before being asked to leave.

Finding the adults unreliable, she took it upon herself to save her friend before it was too late. For that sake, she launched an independent investigation.

As she delved deeper into her investigation, Melody inadvertently caught the attention of dangerous individuals who, as per the author of the novel, were men of influence and power who operated in the shadows of society.

When they realized that Melody was getting too close to uncovering truths they wanted to remain hidden, they sternly warned her to stop.

Naturally, she didn't, as she was yet to accomplish what she had set out to do.

As their warnings failed to deter her, these men took drastic measures. They imprisoned her in a secret facility designed to contain people like her—those who posed a threat to their hidden agendas.

Even her grandfather, a respected general in the army, found himself powerless against the shadowy forces that held her captive. His military clout and connections, formidable under normal circumstances, were insufficient against the enigmatic and well-protected syndicate that had ensnared his granddaughter.

Reading the novel up to this point on his smartphone, a glint flashed in James' eyes. "Could the woman who caused a ruckus in Times Square, claiming that aliens were abducting people, be Melody?"

That might be the case. However, nothing could be said for certain, for now.

After all, in the second chapter of the novel, it was stated that Melody disappeared while still trapped in the prison. She never had the chance to announce her findings in public.

James knew there was only one way to determine if she was Melody or not; it was to continue reading the novel. He focused his attention back to reading on his smartphone.

After disappearing, Melody was thrust into the lands of trials, where one could grow stronger by passing dreadful tests. However, if you failed them, only death awaited.

Relying on her wits, she passed the first trial but died during the second one.

But death didn't signify an end for her.

Death only triggered her innate ability.

Regression. It was a broken ability that allowed her to regress to a certain point in time each time she died. She basically had an unlimited lifespan.

'No wonder the novel is called the Tales of My Regressions and not just Regression.'

When she died for the first time, she found herself back in the past when she was imprisoned in the prison of an organization which she would later learn was called the Celestial Network.

After her first regression, Melody made ample preparations to survive the trap that killed her in the second trial during her first life. As a result, she managed to progress further into the land of trials in her second life than she had in her first life.

Close to the end of the second trial, as she was crossing a corridor, she came across a corpse that was impaled with dozens of arrows. It had nothing of worth on it, so she ignored it and continued onwards, advancing to the third trial where she died once again and regressed back to the time when she was trapped in the prison of the Celestial Network.

After that, she regressed for similar reasons several times.

In her 7th regression, she managed to escape the prison before she could be pulled into the land of trials by taking emotional advantage of a guard who she knew had a daughter the same age as her. She had found out about it in her 5th regression.

After escaping, she went and announced in the first most crowded place she came across the chaos that was unfolding all around the world but being kept secret from the general public by those in charge. That crowded place was New York's Times Square.

'This confirms it, the woman who caused a ruckus that day was indeed Melody, the main protagonist of the Tales of my Regressions. To be more accurate, it's the Melody who has regressed 7 times,' James thought excitedly. He have found a shocking truth. The entirety of existence has regressed seven times already. It could be said that he as well as everyone else in the universe were living this day for the seventh time now!

The 7th volume of the novel "Tales of My Regressions" started with Melody regressing for the seventh time. 

In this volume, the corpse she had come across in the second trial in the land of trials in each of her previous lives was now armed to the teeth but still dead.

Some of his gears were too badly damaged to be of any use, but some worked although they were also damaged. She took them.

She also went through his backpack and took everything of value, including packs of compressed biscuits and jars of lotus spread.

When she removed the semi-functional helmet with integrated night vision goggles that rested on his head, she saw his face and was awestruck by his handsomeness.

Raven black hair, sharp, chiseled features, a strong jawline, and expressive, captivating crimson eyes unique to people with albinism—he was totally her type.

Unfortunately, he was dead.

She uttered a prayer for him and went ahead.

"This corpse... It couldn't be me, right?"

Howlins' weren't albinos, but they had a rather special hereditary trait. Similar to albinos, they had red eyes. A man with black hair and red eyes could only be a Howlin'. Considering he had the same type of equipment as the corpse in the novel, it could only be him!

Although all signs pointed to the corpse in the novel being him, James was unwilling to believe it. 

If the novel was becoming real, it meant he was going to die soon enough. Who would believe that they would be killed in the future after being kidnapped by extraterrestrial lifeforms and thrown into a bloody nightmare where every moment was struggle for survival?

He could deny it as much as he wanted, but the truth wasn't going to change. In the end, he had no choice but to digest the bitter truth.

He was uncertain about a lot of things, but he was certain the corpse mentioned in the novel was him.

Confronted with the reality that he was soon to die, James suddenly felt immensely depressed.

Pa!

He smacked himself on the back of his head to snap himself out of feeling low.

'Instead of feeling low, I should read the novel thoroughly and find a way to survive the trap that killed me in the 2nd trial. That's the only way I am going to survive the death I will face in the future.'

With a clear aim to find a way to save his life, James focused his attention back on reading the novel, hungry to find a way to save his life.

A month ago, the novel "Tales of My Regressions" didn't even have a single chapter, but now it had more than 500. Going through them in one sitting seemed daunting, but he was determined to do it.

Several hours passed and the night started to wane. James had read hundreds of chapters and remembered all the crucial points.

It was not possible for an ordinary individual to accomplish such a task. However, as a veteran web novel enthusiast, he had developed a skill that allowed him to skip past the filler authors add in their work for word counts with one of his eyes closed and get to the main part. Using this skill, in several hours, he had read 350 chapters of the novel that was becoming real.

Knock knock!

Someone knocked on the door to James' room.

"Are you in there?" Leon asked while standing outside the door.

He was worried that something had happened to James as he had heard nothing from him for the past several hours. He came to check on him to prove his worries wrong. However, if James didn't reply, he was ready to break the door down to see if he was still there.

Just when he was getting impatient, a voice sounded from inside the room. "Yeah, the door is not locked; you can come in," James said.

Leon opened the door and walked inside. "So, what is it that you wanted to check?" he asked James.

"Since you started talking about the disappearances taking place all over the world, I felt I had heard about it before, but I just couldn't remember where. Later on, I remembered it. It is the synopsis of a novel I bookmarked a week ago," James answered.

Leon chuckled in disbelief, "You think it's connected with what's going on?" 

James nodded. "It is not a silly coincidence. The novel has something to do with the overall situation. Dad, give it a read. You will understand what I am talking about."

Leon, convinced by James's logic, decided to give it a go. "What's the name of the novel?"

James replied, "It's called 'Tales of My Regressions.'"

Before anything else, James asked whether he had notified his grandparents, and Leon confirmed that he had. James loved his grandparents more than anyone in the world. He could compromise when it came to others, but he couldn't compromise when it came to them. Even if Leon hadn't informed them of the ongoing disaster, he would've informed them himself.

*****

A few hours later...

The sun started to rise, painting the sky with strokes of pink and orange that bled into the deep blue of the early morning. The horizon shimmered as the first light touched the dew-laden grass, casting long shadows that danced slowly across the ground. It was a breathtaking view that left one feeling awed by the simplicity and beauty of nature's awakening.

James would normally go out on a jog at this time of the day to e joy the view.

But today it seemed impossible.

Inside Leon's villa, James suddenly felt as heavy as lead, and his vision began to darken. If he hadn't read the novel, he wouldn't have understood what was happening to him. However, as he had read it, he knew these were signs that he had been chosen to enter the land of trials!

He had very little time before he would disappear from Earth. James spared the last bit of time he had left in this world with his father.

"Dad, don't feel concerned for me. I will survive and find a way back home. I promise."

These were the only words James managed to utter before he was knocked out cold.

As if seeing something disturbing, Leon's lips quivered and hot tears welled up in his eyes, but he didn't let them fall.

"I hope you survive wherever you are, son," Leon whispered in a voice strained with the effort of holding back his emotions. "I hope I will gain the chance to look for you."

In the room, there was no one to hear his whispers except for himself.

James have disappeared!

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The prolouge have ended.

Now we get to the main part.

How exciting was it till now?

Tell me in the comment section~