[Huhuhuhuhu, Host, are you okay?]
Cia was leaning on the bed frame, staring at the wall blankly. In fact, he was looking at the system interface. It had issued new missions by the time he woke up.
---
[Entry Mission 2: Awaken
Countdown: 6 days, 2 hours, and 34 minutes.
Reward: 200 EXP
Punishment for Failure: Both the System and the Host will be flayed alive until death or shock.]
[Main Mission: Keep your siblings alive.
Countdown: Until They Reach Dawn
Reward: ▇▇▇▇▇▇
Punishment for Failure: Both the System and the Host will be flayed alive until shock or death.
Siblings' status:
Safe: (4)
In Danger: (0)
In Risk of Dying: (0)]
---
Reading that, Cia finally lost it. "Is this a babysitting system?" It felt like he had just gotten transmigrated here to be a tool man.
Heck, the rewards weren't even clear. Also, what does Dawn mean?
[It shouldn't be. I can feel that my functions seem to be related to your awakening.] Such a slander. This time, the system sounded serious.
Cia gave up. He summarized the missions.
The awakening seemed to be very vague. Cia had no idea how it was done, because even in the original owner's memories, Awakeners were something of a legend.
As for keeping the siblings alive, that did sound very ominous. But keeping a few brats alive should be easy, right?
"What's Dawn?" he asked the system.
[That's a Power Realm. You can think of it as level 100.] The system finally showed its use.
"So that means I'll need to awaken them too?" Cia lamented. "This task is very scummy. It directly skipped the awakening task, thus saving some rewards. How stingy."
"Level 100... that sounded like I'd probably babysit them for the rest of my life." He was feeling downcast. He was an orphan and was responsible only for himself. He just couldn't imagine being reliable for someone else's well-being.
The system started cheering him up, but it didn't work. Just as the two of them were chatting, his door opened.
"Big brother?" A little girl carrying a folded blanket came inside. "Eri told me to give this to you. He said that the blankets here were too thin." She passed Cia the blankets.
At first glance, she was adorable: curly black hair like a bundle of phone wires, big shiny eyes, cheeks so round they looked photoshopped.
A doll. A literal, creepy Victorian porcelain doll brought to life.
Her eyes looked a bit off; not that it was abnormal, but it was the way she looked at people that was unnerving.
"Thank you, Rena." Cia placed the blanket on his lap, still feeling awkward about the role of a big brother.
After completing her task, Rena did not leave. She stood there at the side, staring at Cia's face.
"Is there something wrong?" He almost wanted to caress his face to see if something was there. Was there any wound?
Rena tilted her head. "Are you staying here like other brothers now?" She walked toward the bed and sat beside him. From the looks of it, she clearly wanted to chat.
The original owner had a scandal at the city where he was schooling. Of course, he couldn't go back there. He was blacklisted by the mayor. Going back meant RIP.
"Yes. I'll be staying here to take good care of you." Cia softened a bit. Such a cute child.
Her eyes shone. "Big brother is the eldest, right? So Eri, Ain, and Sam won't disobey you if you say something?" Her cheeks flushed with excitement.
Cia had a bad feeling. "Why? Are they giving you a hard time?" Surely not? Based on the original owner's meager memories about his siblings, they clearly spoiled the only girl, Rena.
She shook her head. "Not really, but Sam is getting very annoying."
"He's praying in the storage room. Again. All day. All night. He says Lucere is going to save us or something, but I think he's crazy." Rena pouted. Her room was beside the storage room.
Every night, she kept hearing Sam's prayers, and it was starting to annoy her.
Cia paused. He remembered that Sam seemed to be a very devoted believer of the God of Light, just like their grandmother.
He then thought of when Sam opened the gate. He was wearing strange necklaces. After receiving the memory, he realized that those were prayer beads.
Was that his usual accessory, not just something he wore for a certain occasion?
Rena was happy seeing that Cia was listening. She continued her complaints. "We can't even enter the storage room now! Oh! And he drew a circle with his own blood last night! He's a weirdo!"
The storage room was clearly her playground. Now Sam was turning it into his base. How could she not hate it?
The blood sounded an alarm bell in Cia's mind. His mission was to keep his siblings alive. Surely his brothers were not one of those desperate cultists, right?
Cia sat up straight. "Did he join some kind of cult? No, that shouldn't be... God of Light is an authentic and orthodox religion." Why did he become an oddball?
Rena was now leaning on his shoulder. "He said it's for protection. I think it's spooky. So I told him to cut it out, but he ignored me."
"Big Brother Cia, you're the eldest, right? So you can make him listen to you. Tell him to stop! Or I'll sneak into his room and toss his Holy Book into the stove!" She hugged his arm and started to act cute.
"Don't do that." Cia had a headache. Being the eldest didn't mean prestige. What's more, the original owner was rarely home. He couldn't just boss them around and expect them to follow.
"What about Eri and Ain? Did they say anything about that?" Surely they would be anxious about Sam's behavior now?
Rena puffed up her cheeks. "They are the worst! Eri doesn't care, saying that it makes Sam happy. As for Ain, he is barely here. I think the gambling house is his real home." Clearly, she was very discontent with her brothers.
That was a lot of information. It was not good.
Cia was talking to the system in his mind. "These siblings are trouble. So far, I haven't heard a single good or logical trait from Rena's mouth."
A zealot and a gambler. Rena seemed to have her quirks too, but he had no idea what was up with Eri.
[I don't think they are that bad.] Since it needed to rely on Cia for now, it kept feeding him encouragement. \[You can do it, Host!]
Listening to it made Cia's headache worse. Maybe he should check Sam out.
...
Cia carried Rena to her room and tucked her in bed. After closing her room, he looked at the storage room beside hers. Was Sam inside?
He slowly walked toward the storage room and pushed the door open. It wasn't locked, of course. Rena had been messing around there.
[This feels like a prelude of a horror movie.]
"Shut up."
Cia took a peek inside. It was filled with candles. There was a makeshift altar in the middle. The symbol of the God Lucere, which was a silver rose, was surrounded with tiny droplets of candle wax.
Sam was kneeling right in front of it, dressed in white robes with yellow embroidery lining on the edges.
There didn't seem to be any concerning behavior. He was just praying quietly.
"Big brother?" Sam felt his gaze and looked toward the door.
He stood up, but because of his hastiness, he kicked a candle. His robe was very flammable, so it combusted into flames.
"You!" Cia ran inside, and the system in his head started screaming like a rubber chicken.
"Stop moving!" Cia was going crazy. Sam had no survival instincts. He kept knocking over candles as he was trying to put the fire out.
He grabbed the panicked Sam and pulled his robe off. The entire storage room was in flames now.
Cia ran to the kitchen. He grabbed the tablecloth on the way and soaked it with water. It wasn't that he didn't want to pour the water directly onto the flames, but this household didn't have enough water.
He went back to the storage room and saw Sam and Rena standing by the flames. He almost wanted to eat them out of anger.
"Stop gawking there like a rock!" He walked inside and covered the flames with the wet tablecloth.
The fire finally went out. Cia wiped his sweat. It was good that this house was not made out of many flammables.
"You're not allowed to do those rituals now," Cia told Sam. "See what happened? The house almost went up in flames. I just arrived here, and now I was already stressing myself out."
Sam felt guilty. His head was down, but for some reason, Cia felt like he was about to cry.
"... Not, at least, without my supervision." Cia finally relented.
Sam nodded.
After the lecture was over, he sent them back to their rooms.
[That was smooth! You managed to handle Sam without making him feel like you're an alarmist!]
"I don't feel happy. That just showed how dull his sense of crisis was." First night, and it was already a mess.
[Y—yeah. But at least he is obedient,] the optimistic system said.
"Where's Eri, by the way? He didn't respond to the mess." Cia stretched his body. "Whatever. I'm going to sleep now."
Just as he was about to go back to his room, the system issued another mission.
---
[Sub Mission: Eliminate Rena's stalker.
Countdown: 3 days, 4 hours, and 30 minutes.
Reward: 300 EXP
Punishment: Rena's death and failure of the main mission.]
---
"This..." Cia almost slipped. "Eliminate, does that mean..." He made a slashing motion across his neck.
[Yes.] The system checked. [The condition written in my program for elimination is 'Kill.']
"Did those fuckers get the wrong guy?! I'm not an assassin. I'm a gigolo, for goodness' sake!"