Gnosis: I don't need a system to survive!

Chapter 1: A rough start

A man lay on a surgical bed, surrounded by a team of surgeons, their voices muffled as his vision blurred into mashes of white and blue. The slow, steady beeping of the monitor signaled his imminent demise, his skin growing cold as he no longer felt the pain of his injuries.

'Ah... so this is it, huh...' he thought to himself, finally accepting his end. His life flashed before his eyes, a series of mistakes and regrets haunting him. If only he had taken action sooner, perhaps his life wouldn't have spiraled into such disaster.

"H-hey...!... No... he..." one of the surgeons stammered, noticing the flatline on the monitor. "It's too late... he's passed away..." another said, their voices heavy with sorrow. Solemn expressions adorned all their faces as they gazed upon the lifeless body before them.
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A pale-skinned young boy gasped for air as he woke up in the middle of a forest, his black messy hair seen better days and a pair of black eyes. He donned a tattered set of clothing reminiscent of an upper-class member of olden days' European society: a white, dirtied blouse accompanied by an unbuttoned blue coat riddled with scratches and slashes, along with black trousers.

Sitting on the dirt with his back leaned against a towering oak tree, confusion and fear plastered on his face as he frantically touched his body and looked around. His vision was blurry, strange lights appearing in front of him. He placed his palm on his face as if inspecting it, and his vision cleared up, allowing him to see properly. As soon as his heart and nerves settled down, his nostrils were assaulted by a pungent stench resembling that of a rotting corpse.

"What in the-! Ughh!" He pinches his nose, eyebrows furrowed following his face turns over to the source of the foul smell, it is to his right. His face is drained of its colors the very instance he sees something that he had never dreamed of witnessing before, a decaying corpse of a man in a fancy yet tattered suit, its back leaned on an another tree just like he himself right now, the corpse hasn't been fully decayed away yet, with his face retains some of its features, but such things won't last long as a worm made a hole through his cheek, followed by a stream of blood oozing out.

He hunched over with his hand holding back his mouth, feeling his insides churning at the grotesque sight, recognizing that he couldn't hold it back for long and needed to puke somewhere else, with adrenaline, he got up to his feet in a state of panic. Here he discovered something odd in a span of seconds.

First his body isn't what it used to, through his perspective, his height is absurdly low. And second, is that his legs, or any of his limbs for that matter, are wobbly and lacks any strength like he thought it's supposed to. He stumbled across these two revelations after tripping over a small rock and falling down on a puddle.
He rolled over to his right, got on his knees and threw up on the ground.

His body felt like it was drained seventy percent of its strength. For half of a minute, he let his insides flows out, and when he had finished, he fell over on his back just centimeters away from the mess he had just made.

Panting, his heart pumping at an alarming rate for a minute before he ultimately let out a sigh of exasperation. "God-fucking-dammit, I didn't expect to see that first thing after waking up..." He curses, feeling like an idiot after making such messes after just seeing a dead body in its decomposing state.

"Seriously, what's going here...? I thought I was dead..." He muttered to himself, feeling perplexed about how he could even been alive after suffering so many bullet wounds.

He gets up again, finding a little struggle to find balance due to being unfamiliar with that body. He slowly makes his way back to the corpse to inspect it more closely.

"Who's this guy? Why....does he look familiar...?" he pondered, finding the features of its face strangely nostalgic. It invokes certain emotions within his soul, as if this corpse belonged to a man very close to him, yet he has no recollection of that man whatsoever.

Suddenly, a surge of memories flooded his mind, overwhelming him with images of his birth, his upbringing in a grand manor, memories of his father, mother, elder sister, and the many servants who tended to their household.

"AARRGGHH!! UGGHH!!" he groaned in agony, losing his balance once more. He collapsed to the ground, rolling back and forth while clutching his head tightly. The weight of years of information proved to be an arduous burden.

To him, this phenomenon was both a blessing and a curse. The newly acquired memories clashed with those he already possessed, as if two individuals were battling for dominance within his mind.

Despite the influx of memories, they paled in comparison to the decades of life he had experienced before his untimely demise.

Now inhabiting the body of a young noble boy from a distinguished lineage, he bore the name Rufus Sutherland. Supposedly killed by assassins, he miraculously survived, unlike his unfortunate butler.

However, the memories of the body he now inhabited were fragmented, a result of the clash between two distinct sets of memories. Only a few notable ones remained, while the rest vanished into oblivion. Desperate for clarity, he sifted through the remaining fragments, hoping to glean some useful information from them.

Through a few bits here and there, he could roughly piece the information together, understanding that his bloodline is that of an aristocrat, and he had an elder sister, presumably alive as of current, with the same assumption going for his parents as well.

"But still, this is rather hard to believe. Let's just chalk my situation up to reincarnation or transmigration. I'll figure out why in time, but there's an elephant in the room." he ruminated, directing his attention to perhaps the most important thing he had discovered ever since landing in this reality:

The SYSTEM.

'A system... I vaguely recall something from his memories. It looks like a floating semi-transparent screen that operates similarly to an ID card and it allows you to get more powerful. Though it could be more than just that. Maybe I can use it....' he pondered, Swaying his head back and forth in deep thoughts with closed eyes.

Opening his eyes, glinting with determination, he exclaimed, "Alright, let's give it a try..." Silence followed by a realization of a newfound minor, or perhaps not so minor, predicament.

"Nnnn... how do I even open it? Status open?" Another deafening silence befell him. Realizing that wasn't it, he tried a different route. "Status Open!!" This time, it was louder than the last, yet again, nothing of note occurred.

"Not it either... Status open." Imitating a voice actor he knew from Britain that had a deep voice, he facepalmed. Of course, this wouldn't work. Like a middle school student trying to figure out how Mendel's laws work for the first time, he was completely in the dark.

"Status! Open! Aprire! I command thee, reveal thineself! Arise! Bada Bing Bada Boom! Alexia! Sirius! Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary!"

Five minutes of relentless flurry of attempts to attain access to the otherworldly phenomenon known as the system returned with nothing but the sound of erratic breathing due to nonstop chanting and cursing.

Slumping over with both hands on his knees, beads of sweat cascading down his forehead, some trickling into his eyes, prompting him to wipe them with his sleeves in frustration at the futility of his short, not-so-hilarious endeavor.

Looking up to the sky, obscured by layers of leaves casting shadows over the area, he relaxed his legs and arms, shutting his eyelids. He breathed in the air deeply with a loud sniff, holding it in for one or two seconds before the inevitable process of letting it all out began.

"This isn't looking good."