Chapter 1: Death and Reincarnation
[3rd Person POV]
April 12, 2020, the second month of the COVID-19 Pandemic, in the land called the Philippines, in one of its largest hospital Intensive Care Units, the blipping sounds of the heart rate monitor can be heard in a white-walled room in which a man is drowning in his breath despite him being supported by a breathing device and a giant tank of oxygen.
The COVID-19 patient has a handsome appearance, those appearances of men who laid their hands with numerous women, yet he is as innocent as he gets for he is just ten years of age, though if an adult woman who is well versed in looks is to see him, she will immediately see the bright and women filled future of the child
But unfortunately, this bright future, he will never reach.
He calmed his breathing, though wheezing sounds coming from his lungs can still be heard, he just stared at the ceiling ignoring the strange sound coming from his chest, knowing that he is beyond salvation, knowing that this day will be his last.
He stared at nothingness as he started to think about his past.
The genius of the Segundo Orphanage.
The reincarnation of Rizal.
The Promised Child.
Those titles and praises among many others have rained down on the life of Emilio, who seem to just able to master anything and everything that is thrown into him, literature, academic, sports, online gaming, you name it all.
However, even in his childhood the people around him already knew that he is special, for Emilio, no matter how much it sounds farfetched, hell this occurrence was portrayed in a Japanese fiction manga, it is the truth.
Emilio, at the age of three months of age, an age for a newborn, very far away to be independent, let alone utter a word, said the word "Father"(As in the priest). At this moment, the whole orphanage knew that he will be a genius growing up, and alas he did become one.
He became the top of everything he did, he got accelerated from grade to grade every year and became the youngest sixth grade in his country, became a champion in UN letter writing completion that earned him a UP scholarship by which he excelled, became a Math Olympiad competitor in a very young age of eight and become a high school student two years later, the reason two years has passed before he became one is that, a child in the single digit of age cannot enter high school.
He is a generational talent, some people even said that Emilio is a "bug in the system", a person of immense talent that should never exist, but then again, Filipinos have a great fondness for achievements (Author is saying this based on personal experience) and thus cannot just hate him because he is more talented than normal people
He is the ideal child, any mother would crave this kind of son that will bring them the glory of raising such a prodigious child.
But then, here comes a question, a question that every person in the world who are in the field that Emilio ever participated in and dominated who knows him, personally or competitively has in their minds.
Why is Emilio still an orphan?
Why he still doesn't have an adoptive mother despite him being the best prospect for it?
He is very famous, he is intelligent beyond imagination, he is athletic for his age, and more importantly, despite him being showered by ocean waves of praise, he remained courteous, respectful, and humble.
It is simply just unimaginable that anyone won't desire such a child, but no, it's as if no one wanted him and in all of his competition only his first name "Emilio" is present and he doesn't have a surname, signifying that Emilio doesn't have parents and still an orphan.
And the truth is, of course, known by the person himself.
Emilio disdained all the people who showered him with praise, he wants to smack people black in the eyes when he heard them say words of envy of his genius and look at him with envy because of his ability. They want to be like him, they want everything he has that Emelio achieved despite him being barely a teenager, they want all of it without knowing, that if he can, he will gladly give all of it up and give his "talents" unconditionally.
People already know him as an orphan, but despite that, they do not know how he became one.
Ten years ago before the pandemic, the Priest of the Segundo Orphanage, in the middle of December, the coldest month for a tropical country like the Philippines, found a child in a basket, without any protection from the cold, or even a blanket to cover the child's back against the little thorns at the basket, hell not even the blood from the moment of his childbirth is removed as clotted and dried up blood is all over his body is visible in the eyes of the priest.
Even the priest, who is serine as he can look and get cannot help but click his tongue, as a servant of the church, even if the church didn't allow it, he cannot help but feel hatred for parents whom will bear children and just leave the child after they gave birth, seeing this child in front of him if he hadn't known better, he might splurge out vulgarities, but he restrained himself.
He is a servant of God and knows that nothing good will happen no matter how much he hates seeing children being abandoned, instead, he knows that what he can do right now is to accept the child with open arms.
The priest who later will be the father figure of the child pondered for a while.
"Emilio, you will be called Emilio, that's my father's name, and so will be yours."
And thus the life of Emilio in the Segundo Orphanage started in the embrace of the only person he deemed as his father.
The priest, knowing that Emilio is an unwanted child from just seeing him especially took care of him, Emilio also made a good and exemplary child thus the other orphans cannot exactly hate him for he also has that little brother aura on him that makes him the target of doting.
However, that was just the surface, Emilio, other than his photographic memory also has another ability, an ability that was deemed a fiction that was portrayed in many works of literature in the said genre but Emilio still has it nonetheless, he, the moment he was born remembered all of the things he heard without being hindered by infantile amnesia and thus remembers also why did he got abandoned in the first place.
Segundo Conglomerate, the largest Conglomerate Company in Southeast Asia owned by the Filipino Business Giant Family, The Segundo Family. They have a wide history that spanned back after the Spanish Revolution and was deeply rooted in the culture of their home country and in SEA (Southeast Asia) in particular, naturally, they are also the biggest business partner of the Philippines and the reason for the Pearl of the South's rapidly expanding economy.
They have many businesses and of course, they also have charity organizations one of the said organizations is the Segundo Orphanage which was governed by the servants of the church, making their fame of being a religious company soar.
But Emilio knew of all of this as a bunch of closely knitted fabric of lies. The owner of the company has a fondness for ladies, and no, all of those ladies got swept up not by money but by his natural charm, of course, money is also a deciding factor but once a woman came into his room, the moment the woman came out, she will be an obedient cum dumpster for the President of Segundo Conglomerate.
And one of those unfortunate women that got swept by the strokes of the Playboy owner is Emilio's mother.
He didn't know the details but he just knows that when his mother's belly started to bump, the president of the company, or his supposed-to-be father abandoned his mother and his mother blamed Emilio for it, at that time the child is not even born.
And as if all of this is still not enough, the legal wife of the owner seems to have a sick brain, the moment he learned that another woman was clinging to his husband again, she ordered the death of Emilio's mother and Emilio's mother just got lucky that she survived until the moment Emilio was born, but the mother of Emilio still hates him to her core, in her mind, if that bastard child didn't just exist then she will not be abandoned like a rag doll in the streets and three weeks later, without even properly taking care of Emilio in the first place she gave up on "taking care of him" and abandoned him in a random orphanage.
Maybe it was a mother's instinct or just her conscience but she at least doesn't want the child dead and thus she decided to at least give him to people who will be willing to take the burden of taking care of her child.
And thus with this, he grew fond of the priest and slowly forgot, or rather forcefully made those memories that are too much for a child to bear in the darkest corner of his ever so brilliant brain and enjoyed his life with the priest and nuns of the orphanage together with his older brothers and sisters.
But alas, a few years later when he is just enjoying his world fame and his time with his "Family", the World Health Organization declared the SARS COV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease a pandemic and named it the COVID-19 Pandemic, and that pandemic struck the world and shake its very core.
This Pandemic, of course, affected the Philippines too and one of the first victims of the accursed disease is the priest because the lungs of Emilio's father figure is weak and also because of the COVID-19 having a fondness for oldies, it was believed that the priest contracted the disease in the airport coming back from Japan because of Emilio's chess competition.
Maybe because it was already the time for him, the priest died and in the second month of the pandemic, Emilio became an asymptomatic patient, but for some reason instead of just waiting for recovery, he instead became worse and soon became one of the severe patients of his country.
This fact gave Emilio a shudder, Emilio despite looking small already has a mature outlook in life, too mature for his age, maybe because of his exposure to the cruel stage of competition or maybe because of the bad memories of his past, he dedicated himself in making many credits as early as possible and one of those credits is an official education from a renowned professor in Deductive Reasoning.
The reasoning is used for, well, deductions and investigations as well as the thesis and more. With this knowledge of his, and with the pieces he puzzled up and solved, he immediately concluded that he is being sabotaged by the doctors in the command of the wife of the owner of the hospital, maybe he finds him as a stain to her pride as the only legal wife of the richest man of southeast Asia but no matter what, one thing is for sure, that bitch wants Emilio dead.
Maybe she is also the reason why no one wanted to adopt him, but he is even thankful for that because that means he can be with his Father more.
Learning these facts, he didn't retaliate, in the first place, he cannot retaliate, he just started to roll and roll his horrendous past like a broken vinyl record in his brain that has the unwanted ability not to forget anything.
Emelio's breathing became rougher with every passing second, his inhales and exhale requires more labor. All of the words of his supposed-to-be father resounded from his ear in his dying moments.
"That's not my son!"
"You fucking whore, go away!"
His eyes slowly closed, slowly falling into the abyss as he remembered the resentful eyes of his mother with words.
"This is all your fault!"
"If you just didn't exist he will never leave my side!"
"I wish you have never been born!"
His eyes finally were sealed for eternity, the lifeline becoming flat, tears flowing out of it endlessly.
"I just want... a family."
And thus, with this wish as his last words, the Promised Child of the Philippines and the Bastard son of the President of Segundo Conglomerate died a lonely death.
With only an abyss to stare at.
[Emilio's POV]
How many hours, days, years, decades, centuries, or even more years I am hovering in this god-damned place that I started considering as my home, I do know.
All I know is that this place doesn't have anyone except me and I can't see shit. At first, when I died I thought that that was the end, that I will forget all of those things that happened to me, but no, I didn't, those memories continued clinging to me even after death and I can only mourn alone while remembering my past.
At first, that is, because, maybe I am just adaptive that I immediately accepted the fact that I am dead without even questioning where am I, after all, Father is dead and I got nothing left except those papers they call certificates of recognition and those chalices stuck on a wood they called trophies, I thought that I will soon disappear, but no I didn't.
I am here in this... Whatever the hell this place for as long as I can remember, and if I can remember means I know that I am here for three million, eight hundred seventy-seven thousand and three hundred years already, it's so long that my personality changed, they say when I am a child that I have the making of a future playboy, I beat up anyone who says that of course because that pussy flanker of a father of mine is one of them and I can't bear to be lumped with him.
Anyway, from a genuine nerdy student, or a "hot nerd" as those pedophiles call me, I just became those types of geniuses in light novels that think that all things will go their way, because right now I feel like this scenario, whatever the hell is this will go my way.
As I thought of that, the abyss I am previously staring at suddenly got engulfed by light, the light engulfed the darkness so fast that I can't even squint when I have eyes I mean. And in that light, a dinging sound suddenly was heard in my head.
[You have transmigrated in the body of an Unnamed abandoned newborn human]
Abandoned what?
[God of Undead: ??? Have bestowed you his blessing by giving you the name [ Sophia Demiurge] ]
I'm a girl?
[You are now an official mortal child of a god.]
[Multiple Blessings have been bestowed upon you]
[Unique Skill: Guide Acquired
Unique Skill: Necromancy Acquired
Unique Skill: Hastened Human Evolution Acquired]
What in the fucking shit is this!?
This is the first time I felt confused!
Hey, but seriously, how about someone explains the situation to me?