Once again, both Host and System arrived at the System Space.
He Yuan looked around the room with an absentminded look in his eyes. His mind kept flashing with the events of the last Task realm and, for once, he welcomed it. He liked seeing images of the twins.
On the other hand, 888 looked at his host from head to toe and subconsciously took a step forward. He Yuan was still dressed in his white shirt and back pants -looking as formal and pristine as ever, except his hair wasn't sleeked back anymore but had formed a split bang in his face.
His soul had increased in density once more to it was easy to see the outline of his toned body in the white shirt.
888's eyes darkened and he followed the outline of He Yuan's body until he moved up to the man's neck... And then his face... and then- 888 frowned.
He Yuan was staring straight ahead with a lost look in his eyes.
888's eyes widened. "He Yuan!"
He Yuan stood still for a while more before slowly looking down at his System. Knowing what it was that alarmed 888, he smiled a little. "Don't worry, I'm fine."
888 eyed his host for a few seconds before sighing. This was about the twins wasn't it? There were tons of things he could say at this moment but he remained silent because... there was no need.
He Yuan was fully aware of the pros and cons of counterattacking. Getting attached to certain personalities and having to leave them behind was, unfortunately, one of the common norms.
888 nudged his head in the direction of the room. "Let's supress the memories first."
He Yuan let out a sigh and nodded. At that, the both of them walked to the inner room and set things up for him to absolve himself of the memories of the last task realm.
There was no concept of time in the Soul realm so He Yuan had no idea how long it took but at some point, he began to feel more and more relaxed.
Behind He Yuan, 888 was seated crossed legged with both palms on his host's back as he supplemented the meditation process with his own soul energy.
Soon enough, the rioting energy began to settle and a different kind of awareness flooded the System's senses.
With his head cocked to the side, 888 watched as He Yuan's back muscles flexed sleekly with each breath he took. A second later, the System went from supplementing his host with his energy to tracing the lines and dents on his host's back.
With the index finger on each hand he drew a double lines from He Yuan's neck... to his shoulders... and down his spine.
In the silent room, He Yuan slowly opened his eyes. Three seconds later, a confused frown settled on his face. He felt a tingling sensation spread through his back with each pattern his System traced on it. His confusion soon turned to curiosity. He swallowed before asking, "What are you doing?"
888's eyes widened and he quickly retracted his hand. When He Yuan turned to face him, his face burned and he quickly raised a fist to his mouth to cough. "I.. was.. just. making sure the energy was evenly distributed."
"Oh?" He Yuan raised a brow and a smile tugged at the coners of his lips. "Are you satisfied with the results? You're free to check some more."
888's face reddened and He Yuan burst into laughter.
.
.
.
Some time later, both system and host were in the reception of the Tasker's dorm.
After clicking on his panel for a while, 888 turned to He Yuan. "Toby and Kylie are available and it appears they know a way to get a mental fortitude manual."
He Yuan's eyes brightened. "Good. Let's go."
888 took a few steps after his host but suddenly paused. Personally, he also had something to take care of. Ever since they'd encountered that Reaper and their System in the last task realm, his mind hadn't been settled.
The words, 'First generation System ' kept taunting him even when he tried so hard to supress it and he desperately wanted to know what those words had to do with him.
His earliest memory was when he'd suddenly opened his eyes in a pure black void. It had been so dark that he'd initially thought he was blind. What was worse was the looming silence. It was so eery that it appeared as if the silence itself could speak.
Even without any concept of time, he'd somehow known that he'd been stuck there for so long before he was abruptyly dumped right in the middle of a fairly busy street in the Soul Realm with nothing but an oversized black shirt, glasses and long messy silver hair.
The souls walking about hadn't even looked over or shown a little bit of surprise at his sudden appearance. He'd later come to realize that it was quite a common phenomenon for Systems to be dumped into the Soul Realm that way.
Terrified, confused and feeling alone on that street full of souls, a small stats panel had suddenly appeared before him stating;
[Name: ?????]
[Age: ???]
[Origin: ???]
[Serial No: 888]
[Purpose: System]
[Source Energy: Restricted]
[Soul energy: ???]
[System Energy: 0]
[System Exp: 0]
[Access Points: Restricted]
[Host: Unassigned]
[System Space: Tasker's Dorm, Room 365]
The appearance of the panel did nothing to clear his confusion so he'd remained on the street looking around.
After a while, he braced himself and began asking questions. That was when he finally got the hang of things.
At first, he'd been so excited about the concept of Taskers and Systems.
He had been so lonely and lost that the idea of having someone who would go through different experiences with him seemed ideal but then... He began to learn more about what it meant to be a System and the more he knew, the less enthusiastic he became.
This became especially worse when all new Systems began to get 'training' as it was called when in actuality, it was just brainwashing.
That was where he'd met Toby.
The golden eyed man had been a chaotic ball of energy back then as opposed to his enigmatic bearing but for some reason, they became fast friends.
During the training, they had been thought a myriad of skills but using them without permission was wrong. They were also thought what to expect in the task realms but then again, directly interacting with a task realm in place of their hosts was wrong.
They were taught that not being within a particular distance of their hosts was wrong and finally, because they were 'great scourges,' they had to be completely dependent on their hosts.
This meant that, like an obligate parasite, the death of their hosts automatically meant their deaths too. That had rubbed 888 and Toby off the wrong way. The very idea sounded absurd.
They'd both asked themselves how it was possible that they weren't permitted to do basically anything but had to die if things went wrong.
That was the first ever time he'd made the mistake of challenging a Hunter and had gotten his first ever punishment.
888 frowned. Now that he thought about it... He clearly remembered how it felt, but for some reason, he could no longer remember what kind of punishment he'd gone through that day.
There were also a lot of other things he couldn't remember. Like who he'd been before he woke up in that void and what exactly he had done to become a System in the first place.
He also didn't know what his name was before he became a System. He used to think other Systems just named themselves but that turned out to not be the case.
Even when his friends had decided to call him Ren... The name column on his stats panel still showed a bunch of question marks.
The Soul Realm had no concept of time but the souls had somehow coined out a method of telling time through the compilation of the amount of time a multitude of different souls spent in a task realm at different time periods.
For the first ten years, he'd been without a host and then Toby's assigned room in the Tasker's dorm received Kylie. As more time passed by, Toby became more and more accommodating of the rules the more time he spent with Kylie.
On the other hand, 888 became more closed off as time that passed by. Without a host to practically 'serve', he'd spent more time thinking about the general situation of Systems and the very idea became more outrageous the more he analyzed.
This was because although a lot of Systems had committed henious crimes, some of these crimes had been done because they'd had no other choice.
Take Akari for example. The woman had become a System after she died because she'd burned down an entire orphanage full of children.
Although this seemed cruel but the truth was that the orphanage had been a cover up for the sex trafficking of children and Akari had grown up in such conditions.
At some point the young womancs mind had broken and she'd set the orphanage on fire. The plan had been to buy some time for her mates and the children to escape but unfortunately, she had miscalculated, causing everyone to burn in the orphanage -including herself.
Akari wasn't the only System with such a case and twhen faced with cases such as these, 888's aversion to the blatant manipulation only deepened.
Some of them did absolutely nothing wrong so he saw no reason why they should be punished. Unlike Taskers, they weren't even offered the choice to reincarnate. No.
All they got was being dumped in a random place in the Soul realm without warning.
888's mind returned to the present and he stared at the man before him. His host.
When He Yuan had suddenly showed up in the System space he'd been assigned, his automatic response had been disgust and hatred.
He'd felt it was very unfair that some souls could live as freely as they wanted while others had to depend on them by force. Especially when these newbies to the Soul Realm had zero survival skills at the time of contract!
Deep down, he'd been terrified because he'd met tons of Systems who met their ends due to being bound to these newbies Taskers.
Luckily... He Yuan was a fast learner and was quite capable and at some point, 888 had gone from being constantly afraid to slowly learning to trust this host of his more.
Even with all his perversion.