Aqueo followed Hermina quietly just as she had requested right after they came out from the kitchen.

    She walked rather fast for a girl, occasionally halting when passing an intersection of corridors to cautiously peek before turning or going straight. Aqueo couldn't exactly tell if she was walking or running because of her long black-and-white maid uniform that was almost touching the floor when she was just standing still. He had to jog a bit to catch up to her.

    They had been walking and jogging for a while and as they did, Aqueo had also been feeling a sense of deja vu as if he had already walked these corridors before. He curiously looked at Aquifer that had been beside him the whole time. It might be because the spirit had already wandered this mansion before, but he couldn't exactly recall just like some of the memories with the herbs.

    And just when he was trying to remember, a woman wearing a white dress came out from the corridor to the right in front of them. Hermina immediately stopped track and pushed Aqueo in the open room next to them.

    Aqueo only saw the woman briefly but her appearance came with a vague recollection of memory at the back of his mind—the spirit following her in a similar corridor while she was holding a crystal orb on her right hand that was radiating with strong magical energy. Someone was following her, but the memory was too vague so he couldn't exactly tell the appearance of that person and the huge thing that person was carrying.

    Aqueo heard Hermina greet the woman outside. He waited until she came back and continued their discreet walk to the guest room.

    They climbed a few stairs and passed several corridors and hid a few more times to evade other servants before finally reaching the guest room.

    "I'm sorry about the push a while ago. Azbert instructed me to make sure no one else will see you," Hermina bowed her head.

    "Ah, it's okay, it's okay. I experienced something much worse," Aqueo said as he recalled the truck incident.

    "Also, this room is rarely used and hasn't been used for ages, so there's a lot of dust everywhere. There are clean clothes for men in that wardrobe over there. And the bathroom is behind that door. I'll stand guard outside. I'll make sure nobody will find you here," Hermina said in a soft voice.

    Aqueo nodded, "Hmm, thank you for bringing me here."

    Hermina made a curtsy before closing the door.

    Aqueo inhaled deeply as he observed the room. It smelled like flowers here even though this room hadn't been cleaned for ages. There was a bed, a table and a chair on his left, two wardrobes and a full body mirror on his right, a painting of the sunset at the side of the large window opposite to the door, and the bathroom door at the far right side of the room.

    His attention suddenly turned to the design of the wallpaper. It was different from the wallpaper used for the corridors they passed through. But this wallpaper, it was the same with the wallpaper of the corridor in the memory with the woman a while ago. 'Maybe the other corridors had the same wallpaper,' Aqueo thought and just simply ignored it.

    He opened the wardrobe Hermina pointed to and took the clothes out one by one to examine how they looked. They all had the same style differing only in color and size. He took the blue one his size and went inside the bathroom.

    Just like seeing the familiar herbs in the lake chamber, the design of this bathroom felt like something he had already seen before. The cloud-like curves of the edge of the mirror, the flower markings on the bathtub and sink, including the smooth white stone floor and walls. The memories started to vaguely come at the back of his mind.

    "This—," Aqueo said while his eyes were tightly closed. "These are memories of people taking a bath. But—" He tightened his eyes even more, including his eyebrows in the effort of trying to remember.

    After a moment of trying hard to remember, he disappointedly opened his eyes and put his face close to the spirit's.

    "Why?" Aqueo said seriously as he stared directly at the spirit's eyes. "Why are most of the memories so vague? Are you censoring them because they're all n*ked?" Aqueo said in both a lamenting and accusing tone.

    Silence followed after his question. He got no answer just as usual.

    Aqueo just sighed disappointedly and started to g*t n*ked. He untied the leather chest armor. Now that he removed it and observed it close to his eyes, he wasn't exactly sure if the thing was actually made of leather. The hard nonmetal plates stitched to a fabric underneath were dark brown, thin, but really sturdy—he couldn't bend them using his hands.

    It was the same with the arm guards protecting his forearms, but he was quite surprised when he removed them, because both his forearms were covered in tattoos. But not just normal looking tattoos. They looked like shackles with chains spiraled around his arms. The details were quite astonishing—all the lines forming the image of shackles and chains were made of intricately drawn patterns. And the most striking thing about it was the tiny fragments of gold embroidered along the black ink, shining from the light like gold dust sprinkled on a starless night sky.

    Aqueo's eyes glinted in mesmerization as he observed the black-golden tattoo. His heart swelled with the feeling of being so blessed. First, he escaped his hellish life, then found a cave with a lot of treasure, he still wasn't sure about Aquifer draining his energy and all but he still considered the spirit a blessing since it saved him, and then he was saved again by a young mage, and now this. This tattoo must be special. It looked like something that only the rich could afford to have. He wondered why the previous owner of his body had this tattoo. Was the owner of this body so rich? He didn't have any way to find out now so he finally proceeded to undress everything.

    "AHHHHHHHH!"

    He screamed at the top of his lungs.

    Hermina heard the muffled sound from the outside and immediately opened the door of the room. "Our dear guest—" Her worried call got cut off by another scream from Aqueo in the bathroom.

    "WHY? WHY AM I C*RSED TO HAVE A SMALL MANH**D IN THIS LIFE?"

    Hermina's face flushed pink. She crept out of the room and closed the door without a sound while blushing.

    "N—no," Aqueo said defiantly as he held the wall at the left side of the mirror to support himself and clenched his right hand. "I shouldn't lose hope. This is a world of magic. There must be something here that can fix this."

    He closed his eyes once again and tried to remember something that had to do with his current situation. It had been more than a minute before he finally gave up and just directly went into the bathtub.

    He soaked there a bit and finally said, "Ah. That's right. My previous one had the same size. . . . This world is so similar to my previous one. This bathroom is no different from a bathroom on Earth. They have soap, faucets, and bulbs," Aqueo mumbled while his neck was submerged in the water, still a little dazed by his recent discovery.

    If it was him before he died, he must be feeling several times worse. But thanks to the warmth and relaxing feeling the spirit was exuding beside him, his body felt great as if it was full of energy. Back then, if he was having depressing thoughts, his body would follow—he would just slump or sulk somewhere. Although he was quite sure, if it wasn't because of the dr*gs he was forced to take from the human traffickers who held him captive, things would've been a lot different.

    Aqueo smiled and looked at the spirit, "It must be nice being a spirit like you. You've never felt depressed, hav—oh, that's right. How come they couldn't see you? I waited for them to mention you or something but they didn't."

    The spirit just floated there with a questioning look.

    "Based on the memories I've seen so far, nobody had ever seen you wandering around for over a hundred years. What if you materialize like you did in front of them? Will they be able to see you?"

    The spirit just curiously looked at him, not understanding a thing he said.

    "I think I should keep you a secret first. I've never seen anyone having a spirit accompanying them in your memories. Or maybe they are in the memories that I can't quite remember."

    The spirit gave no answer nor showed any sign of understanding, so he just focused on bathing himself.

    When he was finished, he was quite perplexed when he saw himself clearly in the mirror. He didn't pay attention to the details of his face when he was at the lake. His hair had a combination of patches of dark brown and black. That wasn't all, his face was somewhat similar to his old appearance—the shape of his brows, eyes, nose and lips.

    "What does this mean? My previous body had dark brown hair. And this body looks a bit like me too—and yet, somehow different. Does it have anything to do with my reincarnation?"

    Aqueo just disregarded the question for now, just like the other questions he had ever since the first time he opened his eyes in this new world: why he couldn't properly recall the other memories of the spirit, the mysterious healing sound the drop from the crystal was making, his experience in the darkness, the identity of the previous owner of this body and everything about his being here in this world.