Complaining changed nothing.
Life went on.
Dinner came and went without much attention.
Instead of diving straight into his books, Soren leaned back against his headboard, closed his eyes, and went through a proper eye massage routine.
In his last life, he’d ended up in glasses by middle school, his prescription spiraling out of control.
Not repeating that mistake.
Fingers working circles around his sockets, he pulled up the Achievement System.
The magical world achievements page was still under construction.
Only the Muggle world page was available for now.
Rows upon rows of achievement subcategories stretched out before him, dense as stars in the night sky.
Related achievements connected through golden threads, weaving together into an intricate tree diagram.
The closer to the canopy, the harder the achievement and the stronger its bonus.
The roots told the opposite story.
So far, only one golden achievement glowed on his profile, hanging near the top of the tree.
The rest were low-tier filler cluttering the bottom like sparse root tendrils.
For the record, this was not for lack of effort.
The conditions to unlock achievements were brutal, far beyond what any orphanage kid could pull off casually.
Take the Dark Gold Achievement, World’s Richest, perched at the peak of the wealth tree.
Below it sat Golden Achievement, Hundred-Billionaire, then Silver Achievement, Ten-Billionaire, Purple Achievement, Millionaire, and so on down the chain.
At the very bottom of that chain sat Soren’s current standing: Gray Achievement, Penniless.
[Penniless]
[Description: The name says it all.
You are flat broke and cannot scrape together £400 if your life depended on it.
Silver lining: nothing to steal.]
[Bonus: None]
[System Evaluation: Literally anyone can unlock this.
You didn’t actually expect a stat boost from it, did you?]
Similar gray achievements filled out the rest of his collection:
[Orphan]
[Description: You are an orphan, abandoned at the orphanage doorstep as an infant.
Nobody knows your true origins.
The only clue is a slip of paper tucked beneath your swaddling clothes, bearing the name your parents gave you: Soren.]
[Bonus: None]
[System Evaluation: There are countless orphans in this world, and you are merely one of them.
Look on the bright side: you have no weaknesses.
Born invincible.]
Then there were others like [Orphanage Overlord], [Child Genius (Primary School)], [Model Student (Primary School)]…
Twenty-something achievements in that vein.
Zero bonuses, or bonuses so negligible they might as well not exist.
The sole exception: an exclusive talent achievement.
When the Achievement System first activated, it granted him a single choice.
He could unlock one talent of his picking and claim its powerful bonus.
Soren combed through a roster of golden talents, weighing each option with painstaking care, before settling on what he calculated to be the optimal pick:
[Description: An innate ambition is rooted in your very soul.
You are destined to bow to no one, hungry for achievements beyond anyone’s reach.
Nothing can stand in the way of your blazing, boundless ambition!]
[Bonus: Extraordinary Vitality.]
[Effect: The ambitious burn with relentless energy.
Only the briefest rest is needed to recover full condition and plunge back into the endless pursuit of dreams and success.]
[System Evaluation: Ambition is the spark that ignites a wildfire, and the double-edged sword that cuts toward your own heart.
While others slumber in sweet dreams, your soul burns without end.
This flame will help you shatter every chain that binds you, and in the dead of night when no one is watching, it will gnaw at your reason.
The true test comes when your ambition swells beyond what the old world can hold: will you prove worthy of becoming the beacon that guides the new one?]
Set side by side, the gulf between a golden achievement and a gray one became obvious.
Uncrossable.
Unlocking this talent achievement had cost Soren six grueling months.
Armed with theoretical knowledge and countless hours of practice, he’d painstakingly mastered deep sleep techniques, breath control, and meditation.
He compressed his sleep window further and further until the Ambitious achievement finally lit up.
After that, four hours of sleep per night kept him running at full tilt all day.
Throw in a short vacation, a thirty-minute power nap, and he’d gain a Clear Thinking buff that boosted his learning capacity.
These advantages were how he’d left his classmates in the dust.
Perfect scores across every subject.
Looking back on what he’d put himself through to unlock that achievement…
he’d suffered plenty.
He gave himself a few seconds of self-pity, then shook his head with a wry grimace.
Ambitious was fantastic in every way except one: it worked against him heading to Hogwarts.
Everyone knew Hogwarts had its own traditions.
The guiding philosophy could be summed up as “sort first, ask questions never.”
The Sorting Hat adhered strictly to the standards laid down by the four Founders, distributing incoming students among the four Houses based on temperament and character traits.
He could still recall the sorting criteria:
Gryffindor believed the bravest
deserved the highest honor;
Ravenclaw held that the sharpest minds
would always rise the farthest;
Hufflepuff felt those who worked the hardest
had earned their place;
And power-hungry Slytherin
loved above all those with ambition.
And there was the problem.
Ambition.
He, Soren Reed, didn’t merely possess ambition.
He had it as an intrinsic, certified trait, a golden talent stamped into his soul.
By the Founders’ standards, Slytherin would love him.
The trouble was, Slytherin House served as headquarters for the pure-blood faction, a gathering ground for aristocratic young lords and ladies.
And him?
Soren held no illusions about his background.
Pure-blood was almost certainly off the table.
Half-blood was a stretch.
The most likely scenario, same as Hermione, was that he was a Muggle-born wizard.
If the Sorting Hat dropped him into Slytherin, a new arrival from a Muggle orphanage would stick out like a sore thumb among the snakes.
Bullying wouldn’t be a possibility; it’d be a guarantee.
“The road ahead is paved with misery,” Soren murmured with a long sigh.
There was another wrinkle, too, one that could prove far more dangerous.
His origins already mirrored Voldemort’s disturbingly closely.
If he wound up in Slytherin on top of that, how would the most powerful wizard alive view him?
How would Dumbledore see a boy who walked the same path as the darkest lord in living memory?
He hadn’t even started school yet, and he could already map out the obstacles and the targeting campaigns waiting for him.
Once term actually began, who knew how much garbage would come raining down.
Changing the Sorting Hat’s decision, though, was nearly impossible.
Even someone as extraordinary as Harry Potter had been earmarked for Gryffindor from the start.
Sure, the Hat had offered him other options, but Soren would bet anything that was theater, possibly even a test.
The outcome had been locked in the moment the Hat confirmed his temperament.
Hogwarts belonged to the four Founders.
Their standards left no room for negotiation.
“Slytherin…
Slytherin…
Slytherin…”
He repeated the name like a mantra.
Frustration coiled through his chest, looped around a few times, and then, without warning, dissipated into a carefree grin.
“Slytherin it is, then.
They respect strength.
They live by pragmatism.
Once I’ve beaten that crowd of brats into submission, I’ll earn myself some genuine friends and march straight toward glory.”
To make that plan a reality, the next item on the agenda was obvious: read and study.
“Ah~~ studying.
Studying brings me joy!”
Soren opened his eyes, rallied his spirits, and settled back down at his desk.
The clock read seven-thirty in the evening.
Still early.
He set a modest target: another seven and a half hours.
What was that slogan from before his university entrance exams?
Oh, right.
Study till it kills you.
If it doesn’t, study harder.