Six years had passed in the frozen solitude of the Northern Annex, a desolate wing of the Kayser estate where the chill that permeated the stone walls was permanent.
For Axel, now inhabiting the frail body of a six-year-old child, these years had not been a childhood, but an extended, unskippable tutorial level designed by a sadistic developer who had clearly never heard of the concept of "user experience."
"Again."
The command was sharp, cracking through the frigid air like a whip. Axel stood shivering at the edge of a stone basin filled with water that had been drawn from the deeper glacial aquifers, dark
and so cold it smoked.
"Mother," Axel chattered, his teeth clicking together in a rhythm that annoyed him immensely.
"Hypothermia... doesn't actually build character."
"Silence," Iliana said, though her voice lacked heat. She stood wrapped in furs, watching him with a stare of a scientist observing a rat in a maze. "Your mana circuits are sealed. You cannot circulate energy to warm yourself like a normal Devil. Therefore, your flesh must learn to endure the cold on its own. Adaptation is the only survival mechanism you have left. Get in."
Axel sighed, a puff of white mist escaping his pale lips.
In his previous life, the government scientists who had imprisoned him were monsters, certainly, but at least they understood the fundamental value of climate control, they wanted their super-calculator to function at peak efficiency, so they provided a warm cell and nutrient paste.
Iliana, on the other hand, seemed to operate under the delusion that if she made his life miserable enough, his body would simply evolve out of spite.
"Fine," he muttered, stepping into the water. "But if I die, don't put 'Beloved Son' on the grave. Put 'Failed Investment.'"
The shock was immediate and agonizing, a thousand needles piercing his skin as the water enveloped him up to his neck. He didn't scream but simply closed his eyes, forcing his mind to retreat from the screaming nerves of his body.
He endured it for ten minutes, then twenty. When Iliana finally hauled him out, wrapping him in a coarse blanket and rubbing his limbs to restore circulation, he didn't cry. He simply looked at her with a deadpan, cynical expression that was entirely too old for his face.
"Adequate," she assessed, checking his pulse. "You lasted two minutes longer than yesterday. Go to the library. Study. I have duties to address."
Axel watched her leave, shaking his head. "She's not raising a son," he thought, pulling the blanket tighter around his small frame as he shuffled towards the main house. "She's tempering a sword, and she doesn't care if the fucking metal screams while she hammers it."
He navigated the corridors of the Kayser like a ghost. To the servants and guards, he was the "Sickly Scholar," the Archduke's shameful mistake who had somehow survived infancy.
He played the part perfectly, hunching his shoulders, coughing wetly whenever someone passed, and clutching a stack of heavy tomes to his chest like a lifeline.
It was a pathetic image, one that ensured he didn't get unwanted attention, depicting him beneath suspicion.
He slipped into the library, a massive, dust-mote-filled cathedral of knowledge that was usually empty, as most Devils preferred swordplay to study. Axel climbed onto a secluded chair in the back corner, opening a thick volume titled The Physiology of the Abyss.
He had been reading it for weeks, searching for a workaround for his condition, but today, he finally found the confirmation of his grim theory.
"Unlike the mortal races of the lower planes, the High Devils of the Abyss are semi-energetic beings. While they possess flesh and blood, their cellular regeneration and metabolic functions are fueled primarily by ambient mana. A Devil unable to process mana is akin to a fire without oxygen; they will not grow, their organs will wither, and they will slowly succumb to a state of energetic starvation."
Axel stared at the text, his red eyes narrowing.
"Great," he whispered, slamming the book shut. "Just perfect. I'm not just powerless; I'm a battery running on 1% health while the charger is broken. The 'Seal' isn't just capping my power; it's slowly starving me to death."
This explained why, at six years old, he looked four. It explained the constant lethargy, the brittle bones.
He was dying, purely because his soul was too expensive for this cheap body to support. If he didn't find a way to crack the seal or find an alternative fuel source soon, his grand plan of universal domination would end with him passing out before puberty.
Axel pushed aside a heavy tome on magical theory and pulled a dusty, rolled-up parchment toward him. It was a cosmological chart of the Astra World, the universe he had been dumped into.
"Let's see the map design," he whispered, unrolling the chart. "If I'm going to conquer this place, I need to know the layout."
The structure was absurdly vertical. Unlike the spherical planets of his old universe floating in a vacuum, this reality was composed of flat, colossal planes stacked on top of each other like a cosmic layer cake.
At the very top sat the Upper Realm, the VIP lounge for Gods and cosmic entities. Below that was the Lower Realm, divided into three distinct zones.
"The 'Heaven' layer at the top," Axel traced the faded ink with a pale finger. "Home of the Angels and the 'Good' factions. Naturally.".
Below that was the Mid Zone, a massive sandwich of four interconnected layers housing Humans, Elves, Dragons, and Demi-humans. It was the chaotic neutral ground, the buffer zone.
And right at the bottom, was the Abyss—also known as Hell, home for those of the 'Evil' factions.
According to the annotations in the margin, the surface area of the Abyss layer alone was roughly equivalent to the planet Jupiter from its old solar system. And the Mid Zone was double that size.
"This isn't a world, it's more like a megastructure," he thought, feeling a rare flicker of awe suppressed by his exhaustion. "Traveling from one end of this layer to the other without teleportation would take centuries. And I'm supposed to dominate all of it?"
He leaned back into the oversized chair, staring at the ceiling. The sheer logistical nightmare of conquering seven layers the size of gas giants was enough to give anyone a headache. But for Axel, the problem wasn't the size of the map.
It was the fact that he was currently stuck in the starting village with a broken avatar.
"One step at a time," he sighed, reaching for the next book, The Physiology of the Abyss. "First, I need to figure out why my health bar is permanently flashing red."
"Hey! Trash!"
The screeching voice interrupted his brooding. Axel didn't flinch; he simply suppressed a groan of pure exhaustion.
Mikel. His ten-year-old half-brother.
Axel peeked through the gap in the bookshelves. Mikel was stomping through the library, knocking books off shelves just for the noise. He was large for his age, stupid, and possessed a cruelty that lacked any creativity. He had made it his personal mission to remind Axel of his place.
"I know you're in here runt!" Mikel shouted, kicking a chair. "Father gave me a new dagger! I need something to test it on!"
Axel looked up at the massive oak bookshelf he was hiding behind. Attached to it was a rolling wooden ladder, used to reach the highest volumes. It was heavy, made of iron-bound wood, and stood about twelve feet tall.
"Oh, beloved physics," Axel thought, his cynicism sharpening into something dangerous. "The great equalizer."
He knew Mikel would come looking for him in the upper alcoves. He also knew, thanks to his obsessive observation of the library's decay, that the top left wheel of that specific ladder was rusted through.
Axel stood up, leaving his book on the table as bait. He quickly moved to the ladder. He didn't have the strength to break the wheel, but he didn't need to.
He took a small metal stylus from his pocket—one he had stolen from a scribe—and jammed it into the already cracking wood of the wheel's bracket. He twisted it, hearing a satisfying snap of the internal locking pin.
Now, the wheel is held only by friction. It would support the ladder's weight... until someone heavier than a malnourished six-year-old tried to climb it aggressively.
"Gravity plus the mass of an overweight demon child," Axel calculated, retreating into the shadows of the adjacent aisle. "Result: catastrophic loss of balance and a rapid deceleration against the stone floor."
He waited in the darkness, listening to Mikel's footsteps getting closer, his heart beating with cold anticipation.
But before the show began, he needed to see exactly how dire his situation was.
"Zero," he subvocalized. "Status Report."
A blue screen flickered into existence before his eyes, invisible to the world, displaying the quantified tragedy of his existence.
[
[TYRANNY SYSTEM]
[HOST]: Axel von Kayser
[AGE]: 6 Years
[RACE]: Ice Devil (Defective)
[RANK]: F-
[STATUS]: Energetic Starvation - Stage 2
[STATS]
• STRENGTH: F- (Atrophied)
• AGILITY: F- (Sluggish)
• ENDURANCE: F- (Fragile)
• VITALITY: F- (Critical)
• INTELLIGENCE: F+ [S (Soul - Locked)]
• CHARM: C (Passive) [A (Passive - Locked)]
[SKILLS]
• [Analytical Eye (Lvl 3)]: Ability to estimate structural weaknesses and basic data.
• [Gamer's Mind (Passive)]: Immunity to psychological trauma. Detached rationality.
[RESTRICTIONS]
• [Divine Seal (Tier 10)]: Blocks 99% of Mana Output.
[TYRANNY POINTS]: 0
]
"F-," Axel sneered at the floating text. "I have lauhable the stats of a sick pigeon. Well, let's see if I can break a demon's neck."
The heavy footsteps stopped on the other side of the shelf and Axel smiled in the dark.
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/fTkhvM7D