Baster's Pov:

The servants told me they went to the kitchen as I went on my way.
I soon saw a figure of a young girl with green hair.

It was her...
But wasn't she in the garden before I left?

I felt a chill down my spine as my expression froze just by watching her figure.

But...
This time it was different.
She had an air that seemed gloomy and less intimidating than before...
Not only that the servant was pushing a tray as she was carefully watched by them.

I shook my head and ignored it.
I don't want to get involved with that...

As soon as I reached the kitchen of the manor.
I entered the room and saw my grandfather as he said.

"Indeed, her movements were calm and refined.
It's strange how such a young girl could move and speak like that..."

He was speaking with their tutor's...

"What do we intend to do?" The tutor asked.

"Let's observe them for a bit.
It's quite impressive that the both of them  
managed to perform such clever deception.

If you managed to teach these children a bit,
It should be enough to at least draw interest towards his majesty as well.
And maybe even the prince himself."

He then sips the tea she made.

"And also..." he paused for a bit.

"This tea is incredible!..." He cried out.

He felt a jolt of energy the moment he drank it.
________________________________________________________________________________
A/N:
The reason for this is because Tori carved a few light sigils on her pot to improve its effects.
Not many perform this as it can cause the taste to go bad or become too strong that it will cause detrimental effects on those who drink it.

After many failure's she finally managed to turn her tea into a delectable energy drink that sooth and improve the well being of herself and those around her.

It is also their well kept secret which is also why Tori herself must be the one to make it...

________________________________________________________________________________
Baster Pov:

"Did anyone help her make this?" The servants including the chefs shook their heads.

"I'll ask their parents about them and this recipe later...
Rosalie, I am leaving them to you." She nods.

"Yes, my lord."

His glance soon was directed to me who was standing there shocked and confused.

"Ah, Baster?
Are you here to make your report?"

He had a cheerful smile as the tea somehow brightened his day.

"Yes."

I handed the papers to him.
He skims and reads analyzing my work.

"Not bad...
Though you made a tiny mistake on this part.
Making all of your work fall apart."

"Eh? No way!"

I was making a ledger assisting in my grandfather's work.
My intention was to possess an air-ship of his own in the future and explore the city while dealing with the dungeons in his world.

To do that, I pursued to gain favor from my grandfather.

[You are also quite a strange lad.] his grandfather thought...

"It's strange for a young boy like yourself to take an interest in these things as well.

Tell me, what do you intend to become in the future?"

I swiftly replied. "I want to have an airship of my own."

"Not a bad goal but don't you want to become any higher than that?"

Baster paused for a bit then said.

"Probably become a merchant as a secondary.
Being the head is probably a little too much for me."

Taking on the position of a duke that controlled multiple air-ship requires a vast amount of experience in their field of work.

Rufus the 2nd son of my grandfather carried experience despite his appearance which was why his grandfather sought him willing to bring him back after losing his three sons.

Though, the real reason why he was harassed by his siblings was simply due to his them being jealous of him.

He was skilled in playing games of chess and quite a tactician in the battlefield.
But due to his poor ability to defend himself in practical training, he is often called pathetic by them showing their superiority.

This made him scorn his own family despite his grandfather's wish to have him as head.

If that wasn't bad enough.
I've heard rumors from the servants that his own siblings

Pushed the more difficult task unto him.
during an important operation but every time things go sour or worse for them.
They always blame him claiming that he wanted them dead.

Of course, he honestly worked to keep them safe while in the frontlines.
But that didn't matter as he finally had enough and quit.

That's the story that was told to me by one of the oldest servants around this place.

After being gone for 15 years the family managed to handle most of the work without him.
Until one incident led to the death of the three brothers with my mother currently married to another.

Still that sucks.
If I start getting blamed for every mistake and loss on the battlefield I rather quit as well.

His grandfather gave him a wry smile with a bit of dismay.

"I... I see."

My grandfather soon let me off on my own as I walked towards the training area of the manor.
But still, what were my grandfather and the tutor talking about?

"Did the story change?" he wondered while setting up practice dummies.

I equipped the tools left by my servants in the area I train in.
Of course, they are at a distance watching my performance.

The tools are called

Seals...
Pistol...
Rifle...

Now then...
One of the mechanics of this game is...

Arc Seals or so what the game calls them.
Arcane Seals for short.

They are rectangular objects attached to one arm and can also be hand-held and pocketed.
Think of them as portable spells that a person can use.

They are also very expensive and can break if you recklessly get hit while using it.

Another downside to this is the fact that each and every person has a specific element they can use and not use.

Which means even if you have all of the seal's.
If the element isn't for you.

"It won't activate."

That sucked...
Since that means most of the awesome seals can literally be unusable even if I did get them.

[Of course, we need to go dungeon diving to get them.]

The seal on my hand is a basic seal called『Volt』.

As I activated it the color shined yellow as a magic circle appeared in front of it.
The bolt of lightning was released from the circle as it reached the dummy.

Of course there was a bit of recoil from it and it is pretty convenient and easy to use.

The protagonist will use these things in combat and he/she has a cheat that enables the character to use all of them. Which is freaking broken since he can mix up his play-style in any way he wants depending on the situation.

There is also called Analyze seal.

When activated, it displays the health and parts of a living person or monster.

Arm = 100%
Leg = 100%
Body = 100%
Head = 100%

Body and head are obviously the most important that will instantly kill the target if it reaches 0%.
However since humans are quite naturally fragile, the game literally kills you when you fuck up and made a mistake since most enemies will cause Bleeding and hemorrhage status will cause it to drop by 0.1% to 5% every 5 sec based on how big the damage you took...

Of course this only character-specific debuffs.
Monsters are immune to it due to their quick regeneration based on the plot.

But a specific seal can be used to patch yourself up to remove those statuses.
It is called the Seal of Restoration.
There are, unfortunately only three candidates in the story who can Utilizes light magic.

There is also a Tonic's which is a drink that can quickly remove the status as well but now that this isn't a turn-based anymore, it's going to be difficult to use the damn thing while in combat while firing my weapons.

There was also no level system attached.
This is why the combat aspect is interesting.

It takes a bit of preparation and strategy to beat the toughest monsters in the game.
And a single mistake will literally wound you, forcing a retreat using a "Return Seal".

Sending you back to the nearest recovery center.
[Ugh, the pain of all that resources lost just to get to the boss fight.]

If you fail to activate that.
You are greeted with a game-over which is way worse if you have IRON-MAN MODE activated.

Thankfully there is vanilla there which made things easier.

Sadly this is now real life.
Iron-man mode is instantly activated and I won't take a beating or accept a ridiculous death like that...

Which is why I'm planning on testing out multiple seals to train my body to handle the weight of its use. Because it's really energy-draining to activate and there is a specific system called "Mastery" where if you continue to spam abilities, the cost per cast starts to lower with each repeated use...

I forgot to mention that they don't let anyone below 6 members through any outside dungeons unless successfully conquered a specific novice dungeon in this city. That is what I am currently aiming for...

The Adventurer License.
Cheesy as it sounds having this is enough to travel inside the dungeon without any companions.
Since it requires the characters to handle most of the dangers of a dungeon as a group of two or three.

Of course, I intend to bring someone unfamiliar to the plot or a candidate to my side.

After I felt drained from using this thing, I soon pulled out a weapon from my holster.
This one is a simple pistol-like from my time except its design is a bit rusty.

Due to the existence of Seals these kinds of weapons isn't very popular since it requires a lot of aim and quite costly to use due to ammo. Every human that fights in this story use's a melee weapon and a specific seal which protects them from these kinds of weapons.

Making the weapon irrelevant.

But still, I prefer to fight at a distance.

Unlike the weapon from my past life, however...
*BANG*

It penetrates the dummy with multiple pellets.

It's short-range and quite useful when you want to surprise an opponent.
I rather use seal's then utilize the shotgun pistols as everyone in the game calls it.

Though the funny thing about this weapon is the fact it was called a Meme weapon.

That can also inflict blindness too due to the numbers of shot that causes critical hit on the target's eyes.

The monsters in the game recover quite fast after 1 turn and sometimes they will still hit you even with the blindness.

Which freaking sucks...

Not to mention,
They recover quite quickly that it didn't even matter and reloading the gun takes a single turn.

Like what the heck!?

But I can probably just fire and ditch the gun and pull out a rifle instead after running away.

The rifle in the game is backline-types of weapon.

In the game, there are front-line and backline units.
Which made things both easier and also tough, since some monsters can literally ambush your backline units forcing a melee and suppressing their supportive ability.

You need to defeat the frontline units as swiftly as you can and take out the backline.
Which will inevitably lead to a game-over screen if you aren't prepared enough to use a grenade which costs a lot of money to use to wipe them off and help your backline.

Or you can also sacrifice all your MP on Seal's and tear them to dust.
But at that point the boss battle will tear you apart since you don't have enough energy to kill it.

Yes, this is what makes the game intense when going inside a dungeon.

Especially when someone is dying...
When they die the character and the otome path of that character *Ends there.*

Here lie your waifu and husbando.
Killed by a man-eating worm/slug or beast thing that came underground or above the caves.
Which only happens if your an idiot without a Ground Detection Seal.

Now that I think about it...

Isn't this game really difficult when adventuring alone?
I suppose it's the reason why there aren't many adventurers in the game storyline.

But I'll probably think about it when we start going to school.

Because in 3 years my grandfather will send me to that school.
But until then...

As I lower all my tools and thanked the servant for their service.

I soon returned to my room as it already went dark and I became quite hungry requesting a meal in my room.

...

...

...

Night-time.

After taking a nice bath and in my bed...
I soon slowly dwindled to sleep as I slowly closed my eyes.

But after a few minutes.
The sound of the creaking door of my veranda opened.

"That's impossible," I thought.

I was so damn sure I locked the door's including THAT part.

I slowly opened my eyes and saw it open.
While a figure of a young girl's feet was also there as its slightly dirty wearing a simple one piece.

"Huh!?" was my reaction.

Startled from my bed, I gazed at the figure of the feet as I saw her figure as she slowly stepped into the moon-light.

『I told you, I'll haunt you.』

The young girl for what I recall was called Tori.
As I paled, her green hair and silver light from the moon made my face pale.

"What are you talking about..." I replied to her while searching for my seals.

Fuck they are across the room!
I need to run to that table beside her.

As I positioned myself feet on the bed to hop and reach for it.
The young girl then said.

『Didn't I warn you, to not.
Tell anyone about what I said.』

My body froze from the spot, I felt multiple cold hands reaching from my feet, shoulders, and body.

"Seriously, I didn't tell a soul about it!" I tried to persuade her.

『Then how did they know about it?』

"How should I know!?
I just came there to report my daily ledgers!"

『Huh?』

My heart was beating erratically, this is terrifying.
I can't move nor can I jump off this stupid bed.
not only that, these black hands on my body are so cold and really damn scary!.

Tears and snot fell from his face.
Terror and fear filled his face as the young girl walked towards him.

She walked towards the lamp and switched it on.

The creepy hands on his body disappeared with it.

"Haa... Haa... Haa..."

『If that is the case...
Then that idiot must have blown her own cover.

What a fool!』she said with an annoyed expression on her face.

Baster would have seen it as cute if she didn't terrify him so much.

"How on earth did you open the door?"

She then showed a small pin.

『Easy as pie.』

"How did you even get here?"

『Through the roof.』

"What the fuck!
This is like the opposite side of the third-floor manor from your room.
How did you even get to the roof with that size!" he cursed her while wiping his snot and tears with his clothes.

『Experience's from my past life.』

"Huh?" I was puzzled by the last phrase she said.

I already knew there were people in the past that got reincarnated.
Are there other's people from my world sent here?

She then frowned.

『Don't think about it too much.
Just be quiet and answer my questions.』

"Yes!" I answered her with great fear.

Later on she asked me question regarding the family...
What was happening around the place and what they intended to do with them.

I only told her what I overheard from my grandfather and the rest of what I know.

『I see...』 she said.

『So, they really did find out... 』

"Find out about what?"

『But I guess hiding it was inevitable.
That she was once royalty in her past-life.』

"Eh? seriously..."

『You believe me?』

"Well... I'm a reincarnated myself."

『Hoo? You're lucky then...』

"How so?"

『Because before I got reincarnated.
Some stupid idiotic sorcerer toyed with my soul.

After that, I met with my sibling where my soul was bound for years inside her.

Then finally...
I am in this body.』

"Hey wait!
Sibling!?"

『Didn't you know?
Your step-sister are twins and I'm the feisty one.』she proudly said.

『Since you know what we are now.
You are now an accomplice.』

"Hey wait, accomplice with what!?"

『Help us deter their stupid plans trying to drag us into their shenanigans!』

At this point, the two conversed regarding their intention and why they are trying to trick the family.