Seeing his brother Aaron quickly approaching the table where he stood, Ragnar was quick to act. He placed his hand on one of the many sheets of paper on the table and dragged it until it covered most of the bloody area.
"What do you want, Aaron?" Ragnar asked with a grim voice that thankfully made his brother stop in his footing and become bewildered.
Aaron then folded his hands on themselves and, with a cringe sound in his voice, he spoke, "Is it wrong for me to visit my brother before I return back to our family house?"
Ragnar felt a knot tie itself within his throat. He had spoken out of line. 'How nice, with this kind of mistake I am practically telling him I am another guy.'
The young Lord knew he had to pretend to be like the original Ragnar to Aaron here, as to not make him suspicious—and for now, he needed suspects for his murder.
Seemingly, Ragnar still had a vague amount of memories—about a week long—and some of the missing information was no less than his big brother Aaron.
Which typically meant there was a fat chance he was part of the murder case.
'Be glad, Aaron, because your stupid face just climbed up to number one on the suspect list.'
Aaron, after a long awkward silence, finally let out a sigh. And in his mighty crimson armour, he paced through the room toward the closest window and stared out of it for a while.
Through this window there was a view of the entire academy, but he was not looking at the view—but instead, something else.
The bloodshot moon that shone a red radiance over the entire land for as far as the eyes could measure. It was truly surreal, and every time he stared at it, he would feel a lump in his throat.
Not just him, but other humans would have the same feelings staring at the blood moon—it would cause their stomachs to stir, as it was more than meets the eye.
"I know you must be really exhausted and stressed about walking into the First Realm, and that's why I am here," Aaron finally broke the silence, and his tone held trueness. It held no pity, just a beckon for obligation.
Ragnar smiled at the tone. "Finally, you stop lying to me with your words and come clean. After all, that 'big brother cares' act is so old and cringe."
The mighty man clad in armour scoffed, a bit amused by his own brother's words. He then turned his gaze to Ragnar, with his smile still far-stretched on his face. "You were always too smart for your own good, Ragnar."
With that, he turned around and began to take small steps to the door, his metal boots echoing through the room with each passing step. And when he was finally at the door, he grasped the knob and turned to Ragnar with a darkened countenance.
"I don't want a brother weak as our father. I can't have you stain my name when I become Lord of the Rok House." With that, he opened the door and walked out, leaving the satisfied Ragnar alone in his room.
The young Lord had at least gained something from this confrontation. "Truly, nobility is scum."
Ragnar stretched his hands and went straight to the ground and started a routine that he normally would do in his old life—he started running a sequence of pushups.
As Fang Zhen, he trained his physique every night and day. This was to maintain a fitness for battles and a strong body to consume Mana. Not to forget, he could not go claiming to be the strongest cultivator around without being a very attractive gem.
What was the gain in that?
So, after his routine, the young man climbed onto his bed and then he sank into its unforgiving comfort that dragged him into his unconscious mind.
---
Ragnar's gaze widened in the morning—not from a nightmare but from the fact that he heard a particular chime he was already getting accustomed to.
It was a message from the Informative System?
Ragnar sat up and read the message, anxious.
{Your shadow has returned to you}
{The dancer}
{Would you like to view information gathered?}
The young Lord's eyes widened in unexpected awe. He could not believe what he was seeing—or more appropriately, the imaginative mind he had that was just spiralling out of control.
His gaze immediately turned to his shadows, the chained crooked links to him on the bed, but the other two were—
Ragnar turned his head around, and before he jumped to conclusions, his mind was comforted as he saw the other two. "There you are, bastards."
The poet sat right beside him on his bed, scribbling nonstop into the shadow book in its grasp, and the dancer was busy dancing around the room more weirdly than the other day.
It seemed to be on a single pattern of movement, which Ragnar could care less for.
"Show me the gathered information."
{Warning: a Dancer is one that takes many forms, many different dances, and many different interpretations. Some might be straightforward, but others just need a bit of a quizzy mind to figure it out.}
"How eccentric, information that needs to be deciphered. Am I expected to applaud?" Ragnar spoke with a sense of disdain in his voice.
And the dancer, for the first time, stopped dancing and nodded at the young Lord in agreement.
Ragnar was taken aback a bit, his mouth opening to speak and then closing back up. 'So these bastards can hear and understand me? How comforting to know that after a few hours of muttering nonsense to myself before bed.'
The information that the dancer had gathered was later presented by the system to Ragnar, and he studied it eagerly.
The information at the start seemed very appealing. It told him about the entire academy, the weird habits of some of the students, a bit of information about gossips that had nothing to do with him—girls' type of talk.
And then it got all weird. It was as though the words became parables—riddles in the next set of lines. Some he could decipher, and others were farfetched from what the young Lord could understand.
Some were about the nobles, their hate for each other—and that was when it got personal. His name had been mentioned in a group of eight thousand men, according to the information on the notification, but that had to be an impression of there just being a number of people there that discussed about him.
It was a discussion of hate. One of resentment. And death was mentioned.
After that, the information from the dancer became unreadable—it was gibberish. Ragnar waved the notification away and then turned to the dancer with an empty expression.
"The only thing I gained from that piece of information is that you are garbage of the highest quality."
The dancer clearly would be groaning after hearing this, as he disconnected from Ragnar and walked off to a far end of the room.
Finally, this left Ragnar time to think about his current situation.
'I'm being targeted by a group... probably the ones that killed me.' But even he doubted that. With the number of grim things Ragnar had done before Fang Zhen had taken over his body, he knew others would be out for his blood for more than a hundred reasons.
Ragnar frowned now, thinking about the presumed number of enemies he had already accumulated in this life. "Truly, nobility is a cruel thing."