Time passed, or at least it seemed to. Inside that warm, viscous cocoon, the notion of hours, days, or months was an impossible luxury. All I had was that muffled beat—a distant, steady, constant sound. A heart. Not my own. That of the one carrying me.
And yet, strange as it was, I didn't feel desperate. There was no despair because there was something else with me. Something flowing through the thick, sticky air, piercing my developing skin, and seeming to want to mingle with me.
That energy.
I had already taken the first step: exploring it, feeling how it responded to my will, mapping every tiny part of the body it inhabited. Now, I needed to move forward.
If I couldn't open my eyes.
If I couldn't reach out.
If I couldn't leave here…
Then I needed a map.
I closed my awareness to the flow of that energy and tried to organize it. Not in movements, not in attacks—it would be foolish to use what little I had on something so risky. What I wanted was to measure.
To quantify.
To create a way to understand what was inside me.
At first, it was just a flash of intuition: moving the energy in circles, as if I were drawing lines on an invisible screen. Each completed revolution seemed to register a mark. Each mark, a number.
Until the darkness of my mind began to take shape. A small, primitive mental screen, almost a scribble, formed.
[Primary Status]
·Vital Energy: Unstable, growing.
·Internal Energy: 12 (fragmented).
·Flow: Slow, scattered.
·Physical Form: Incomplete.
It was crude. There were no vibrant colors, no details like in a game or futuristic dashboard. It was a mental sensation translated into symbols that my own consciousness invented. Still, it was my first tool.
I smiled mentally.
"So... I can actually organize this."
It wasn't perfect, but it gave me a starting point.
I began observing what I called Internal Energy. I didn't know if it was mana, spiritual power, life force, or something else. All I knew was that it was my fuel. If I let it dry out, it would probably go out.
The number 12 blinked on my rudimentary screen. It was low. I felt that if I tried to use it to force anything, I would immediately collapse into exhaustion.
In other words: no crazy things.
Instead, I focused on the Flow. It was slow, scattered, as if every drop of energy had to fight to move within me. I tested a simple hypothesis: imagining channels. Paths.
With each attempt, I noticed small results. The energy flowed more easily when I visualized veins of light coursing through my body. It was still difficult, but not impossible. My mental diagnosis updated itself:
Flow: Irregular, but responsive to visualization.
A detail I didn't miss. The energy obeyed my imagination.
And that's when a nagging doubt struck.
—But after all… what am I?
I knew I had been reborn. I knew that small body was a fetus. But of what species?
In my past life, I had watched, read, and played worlds where supernatural creatures existed. Demons, angels, fallen ones, dragons, yokai, vampires, gods. Each with a type of energy, with a characteristic power.
I looked at the number pulsing on my rudimentary screen: 12.
If I were just human, would I have energy like that? Maybe not.
If I were a demon… it would make sense.
If I were an angel… would I feel something different, more "pure"?
And if I were a fallen one, would I have such unstable energy? Dragons… absurd creatures, but their energy would be more violent, more oppressive.
Yokai, perhaps, but the flow seemed different from what I imagined for beings of natural spirits.
I didn't know.
And the uncertainty hurt more than the darkness around them.
I decided not to insist on labels. Deep down, it didn't matter if I was an angel, a demon, or anything else. What mattered was that I had this energy and that it responded to me.
With this thought, I established a personal rule:
"I don't need to know what I am. I just need to become something no one else can control."
Maybe it was too early to set goals, but I couldn't help it. If I had been reborn, if this was the starting point of my new life, I didn't want to be just a piece thrown on the board.
In my past life, I dreamed of being a character in the supernatural world.
Now, I was.
But this time, I didn't want to be secondary, I didn't want to be an extra.
I wanted to be the rule, not the ruled.
I continued to develop my mental map, slowly. Testing, without taking too many risks. The status system grew a little more each time I focused. Not in complexity, but in clarity. At the end of that cycle—I don't know if it was hours, days, or weeks—the internal panel was already clearer:
[Internal Status – Prototype]
·Vital Energy: Stable (fetal formation).
·Internal Energy: 15/15 (gradual growth).
·Flow: Controlled by imagination.
·Physical Form: Developing.
·Observation: Anomalous consciousness in a gestating body.
Yes. I added that last line on purpose.
A reminder: I wasn't from here. I was a strange consciousness, trapped in a new body.
And if that was it, then I needed to take advantage of every second of this cocoon to prepare myself.
Because when I was born, the game would truly begin.