First Points Reward!

Seeing your handwriting feels like seeing you in person.

As he looked at the familiar handwriting, the image of that girl appeared before his eyes—stubborn and serious as always, clearly the same age as him yet constantly putting on the airs of an older sister, always eager to stand up for him.

Noah could not help but laugh. As he drank the iced herbal tea provided by the restaurant, he opened the letter and began reading it from the beginning under Rosinante's envious, jealous, resentful gaze.

The first few paragraphs were exactly as he had expected, filled with accusations about why he had gone so long without contacting her.

A string of emphatic exclamation marks seemed ready to leap off the page and help the fuming girl knock some sense into him.

Only around the middle of the letter did she finally seem to have vented enough. Her tone softened, the exclamation marks vanished, and every line revealed her concern for Noah's recent circumstances.

For example, she worried whether he was being bullied by his seniors at Marine Headquarters, whether the cafeteria food was enough and suited his tastes, whether he had secretly grown taller again after leaving East Blue at just over six feet tall, and so on.

"Such an accurate guess..." Noah scratched his head. He really had grown several more centimeters over the past few months. At this rate, he would probably surpass two meters before the end of the year.

When he saw Bell-mère again, even if she stood on tiptoe with all her might, she would probably only reach his chest. He wondered whether she would be frightened when the time came...

His gaze continued downward. By the final passage, the exclamation marks had reappeared.

[That's everything I had to say! Hehe, are you already moved to tears and missing me terribly?]

[Lastly, you idiot, Noah! You promised me that we'd get married after your twentieth birthday! There's less than a year left now, so you should be ready, right? When are you coming back to East Blue to marry me?]

Pfft!

Noah sprayed out a mouthful of tea. Shiryu across from him was the unfortunate victim, but Noah did not have the slightest attention to spare for the man raising his head with murderous intent. He held the letter in stunned disbelief, his face full of shock.

Get married after his twentieth birthday?

When the hell had he ever said that?

It was true that he and Bell-mère were childhood friends with deep feelings for each other, but they had never even had a proper romantic relationship. How had they suddenly skipped straight ahead and jumped directly to marriage?

Oh, wait...

A distant memory buried deep in his mind was stirred. Noah suddenly remembered that when they were six or seven, Bell-mère had climbed a tree to pick oranges for him, only to fall and burst into loud tears from the pain.

He had said everything he could think of to comfort her back then, and among those things... he seemed to have said that they would get married at twenty.

Hiss—

Noah sharply inhaled a breath of iced tea.

No way, did that kind of childish comforting talk count too? He had made countless boasts to the girl beneath that orange tree back then. Why did she have to remember this one stupid thing?

Noah rubbed his brow, instantly feeling a headache coming on—he had always held onto the views from his previous life, believing marriage was something that should happen at least after twenty-five. It was still far too early for someone who was practically still a teenager!

Besides, he had activated the Love Cell Cultivation System today. He was counting on this thing to be reliable enough to help him break through his current physical limits and realize his dream of becoming one of the Navy's strongest.

If he somehow became a married man just like that, what romance would he even be dating for? What the hell would he be conquering girls for...

"Wait a second..."

Noah suddenly remembered something, and his expression changed slightly—since Bell-mère had laid things out so openly, what exactly was their current relationship? Did it meet the system's criteria for a romantic relationship?

He instinctively reopened the status panel and glanced at the information box in the upper right. Sure enough, where it had previously been blank, he saw the following notice.

[Bell-mère has completed the initial conquest. An ambiguous relationship has been established.]

[Player has received the first points reward: 4,000 points.]

[A romantic relationship has not yet been established. Please keep up the effort and complete the final conquest as soon as possible to obtain the second reward.]

There really was a reward?

Seeing that his points balance had become "5501," Noah was both shocked and delighted. It felt like being hit by a demolition payout and transforming overnight from a penniless nobody into a nouveau riche.

Of course, this amount was not enough to make him truly rich, but after buying those two cheap random items of the week, he would still have enough left to exchange for basic attribute points. He would no longer have to agonize over choosing between the two like before.

"Only considered an ambiguous relationship..."

Noah gripped the letter and thought to himself—he estimated that establishing an official romantic relationship with Bell-mère would not be difficult. Their emotional foundation was already there. As long as he called her and made things clear, everything would naturally fall into place.

But he absolutely could not do that. For the foreseeable future, Noah had already decided that he would reply only by letter and never contact Bell-mère through Den Den Mushi, lest he be dragged into the whirlpool of the "marriage" topic.

In any case, there was no point thinking too far ahead. He should make good use of the points he had obtained first!

Just thinking about the things he could currently exchange from the system made Noah unable to suppress the eager excitement in his heart.

Intermediate Kami-e, attribute points, here I come!

He put away the letter, wolfed down the last of his meal in a few bites, and let out a satisfied burp. Then he bade his two friends farewell, left the restaurant, and eagerly headed back toward the training grounds.

Today's training tasks were already complete, but Noah's reputation as a training fanatic was well known throughout the Marine Headquarters Elite Training Camp. Rosinante and Shiryu were long used to it.

Still, today was somewhat unusual. The two watched Rossi's retreating back with strange expressions, then turned their heads at the same time and exchanged a look.

"You noticed it too, right, Shiryu?"

"Yeah. That guy seems unusually motivated today..."

The reason was obvious as well. It had everything to do with the pink letter Vice Admiral Garp had brought.

"Must be nice. If I had a girl I loved checking in on me too, forget extra training—even if I worked myself to death on the training grounds in the middle of the night, I wouldn't mind!"

"Mm..." Shiryu unusually did not mock him.

In the early summer night of Sea Circle Calendar 1501, the air in the corner of the restaurant was filled with a sour atmosphere.

This is my first time writing a novel, so please give me some recommendation votes. Also, this book has already been signed; once the signing process is complete, it will maintain at least two updates a day during the new release period.