The moment the word spilled from his lips, the gates of hell opened upon the earth. The silver-armored knights drove their warhorses directly into the defenseless crowd. The villagers, clutching nothing but wicker baskets or rusted farming tools, began to fall beneath the weight of blades and lances within seconds.
Slash! Thwack! Gurgle!
The screams of the dying merged with the sickening, wet sounds of blood soaking into the parched soil. This was not a battle; it was an absolute, systematic genocide.
Akira watched the incomprehensible slaughter from his front yard, his mind reeling as if he'd been struck by a physical blow. Just a few meters ahead, he saw Lilia walking with her father, the baker. A mounted knight was barreling toward them at full gallop. Lilia's father lunged forward to shield his daughter, but the knight's colossal blade descended in a single, brutal arc.
Sunder!
Blood sprayed like a macabre fountain, painting Lilia's face a horrific crimson. The young girl collapsed to her knees, letting out a soul-shattering shriek.
"No! LILIA!" Akira roared.
It was time. Time to awaken the Level 129 monster lurking within his frail frame. Just as he had done in the church, he would incinerate everything in his path, casting these armored butchers into the deepest pits of the abyss! He flung his arms wide, focusing every fiber of his being on the mana coursing through his veins, and bellowed with the raw fury of a cornered god:
"BURN!"
However...
Nothing happened.
No black flames erupted from his fingertips, nor did the air grow heavy with the weight of his presence. Akira's eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing shock. He reached for that gargantuan ocean within his chest, that infinite reservoir of mana he had felt before, but he found nothing but a hollow void. It felt like a well that had been sucked dry, sealed shut by thick, invisible chains.
No... Is my mana gone?! Did I burn it all away in the church?! he thought, a cold, visceral terror clawing at his throat. He had no magic. He was nothing but a frail, helpless eight-year-old boy.
As he stood there, trembling in his impotence, Lilia's shriek was suddenly severed like a knife through silk. Akira turned his head just in time to see the knight's warhorse ruthlessly trample that small, red-haired girl into the dirt. Those cheerful, shy green eyes—the eyes he had promised to protect—turned dull and lifeless forever. His world didn't just crumble; it was pulverized.
"VALERION! RUN!"
His father's roar, sounding like a clap of thunder, jolted him. Zephyro, wielding his massive woodsman's axe like a cornered, frenzied bear, threw himself at the knights. He brought the blade down on a horse's legs, toppling the rider. "Elysia! Get him to the forest! Don't look back!" he bellowed. But three elite, mana-enhanced inquisitors closed in on him simultaneously. The giant of a man swung his axe one last time with a final, defiant kükre, but three spears pierced his chest, stomach, and back at once.
Thwack! Squelch! Pierce!
Akira's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His breath hitched. Even as his father's mountain-like frame collapsed onto his knees in a pool of blood, his dying eyes were still searching for Akira. And then, he slumped into a lifeless heap upon the earth.
"Father..."
The word died on his lips before he could even whisper it. Elysia seized his arm with a strength born of pure desperation, her tears washing over her face as she ran with frantic speed. She scooped up his small body and sprinted toward the dense treeline of the forest.
"Mother, Father! Father fell! Lilia... Lilia is dead!" Akira thrashed in his mother's arms, sobbing hysterically. His adult mind had been utterly shattered, retreating into the subconscious as he became trapped within the raw trauma of an eight-year-old child. He was weak. He was useless.
But the shrill neighing of a horse behind them signaled that death had caught up. The edge of the forest was only a few strides away. A mounted knight raised his lance.
The moment Elysia heard that lethal whistle of air behind her, she didn't hesitate. Using her own body as a living shield, she threw herself over Akira, hurling him into the thick, thorny underbrush of the forest.
Shluck!
The sickening, wet sound of cold steel tearing through warm flesh... Akira tumbled through the brush and looked up, only to see the blood-slicked tip of a lance protruding from his mother's chest. As the spring-morning green in Elysia's eyes slowly faded into a dull grey, she reached out one last time, her blood-stained hand trembling toward her son.
Her final breath escaped her lips in a faint, haunting whisper: "Live..."
And then, her body slumped onto the cold, unforgiving ground.
The knight didn't even bother to retrieve his lance. He hadn't noticed the tiny boy hidden in the shadows of the brush. He simply wheeled his horse around and galloped back toward the village, seeking more victims amidst the rising smoke.
On the dim, silent edge of the forest, only Akira and his mother's corpse remained.
The black smoke billowing from the village choked the sky, blotting out the sun. The stench of charred flesh and iron-thick blood drifted through the trees on the wind. Akira remained on his knees, staring blankly at his hands, which were now splattered with his mother's blood. He didn't know how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? The tears in his eyes had long since dried into salty tracks.
A primal, guttural rattle rose from his throat. It wasn't a sob. It was the sound of a psyche snapping—the final breaking point of a man who had lost everything in his first life, only to have the brief heaven he found in his second life savagely ripped away.
Lilia's smile... Zephyro's booming laugh... Elysia's lullabies... All of it was buried in the bloody mud. He hadn't protected them. His power had abandoned him at the very moment he needed it most; it was as if the universe itself was playing a cruel, sadistic joke on him.
Akira rose to his feet, his movements slow and mechanical. His face was painted a gruesome crimson with his mother's blood. His frail legs shook, but his steps led him deeper into the darkness of the forest. The childish innocence, the hopeful light of an isekai protagonist—all of it was dead. Now, in those eyes, there was only a bottomless, pitch-black void, and a pure, concentrated hatred so terrifying it threatened to consume the very light of the stars.
He dug his nails into his palms until the skin broke and blood trickled down. Slowly, he turned his head toward the pyre that was once his village, toward the butchers who remained. As the wind whipped his golden hair, a dark oath—one etched into the very marrow of his soul—spilled from his cracked lips.
"Your Goddess... your Inquisition... this godforsaken, rotten world of yours..." he whispered, his voice as frigid and lethal as a gale from the deepest pit of the abyss. "I will tear every last one of you apart, piece by excruciating piece, until you drown in your own filth and blood."
As the shadows of the forest swallowed him whole, he left behind nothing but a village in cinders and the birth of a true demon upon the earth.
Within the unreachable, silvery silence of the cosmic void—in a dimension beyond the constraints of time and space—the Goddess watched the bloody tempest unfolding below.
Hidden behind that flawless, divine silhouette woven of pure light was a dark, jarring detail that no mortal would ever behold. As the ashes of the village scattered into the sky and young Akira was consumed by the forest's pitch-black embrace, a twitch disturbed the Goddess's indistinct features. Her lips curled into a grin—not the tender smile of a saint, but a demonic, sickly smirk. Everything was proceeding exactly according to her cruel script. Pain, betrayal, and blood... the perfect cocktail of trauma to push her chosen "toy" to his absolute peak had finally been prepared.
At that same hour, leagues away in the Royal Capital surrounded by its colossal fortifications, a different wind was beginning to blow. ,
From the gilded balconies of the royal palace, the "joyous" tidings had already been proclaimed to the masses: "The Holy Inquisition has uprooted the demon's nest that dared strike at the House of God!" In the sprawling, cobblestone streets of the capital, wine barrels were burst open, and vibrant fireworks streaked across the sky. The people celebrated the brutal slaughter of innocent, mud-caked peasants and children they had never met with festive glee. Aristocrats raised their chalices to justice, and the "heroism" of the knights was already being woven into epic ballads by the bards.
Oblivious to these nauseating festivities, Akira was treading through the very bowels of hell.
The dense, suffocating gloom of the forest had begun to yield to the raw, grey, and biting frost of dawn. He had walked throughout the night, his muscles screaming and tearing with every stride. That clean linen tunic, once embroidered with blue thread by his mother's own hands, was now shredded by thorns and stained a ghastly crimson and brown with the blood of Elysia and Lilia. He was barefoot; with every step, jagged stones and broken branches sliced into his soles, yet he didn't even register the physical agony.
Not a shred of his vibrant isekai dreams remained, nor any of the sweet hope that a second life had promised. In the place where his heart once beat, there was now only a seething, obsidian pit of pure hatred that sought to consume everything in its path.
Yet, no matter how dark a demon his soul had become, his vessel still belonged to a weary, eight-year-old mortal child.
As the freezing morning frost pierced his very marrow, his gait faltered, his stomach letting out a sharp, agonizing growl. He was hungry—famished to the point of crippling cramps. For a fleeting moment, a mere millisecond, the fortified walls of his mind fractured. The scent of the hearth in their wooden cabin drifted into his nostrils, followed by the aroma of Elysia's steaming vegetable soup. Those mornings when they sat around the table to the sound of Zephyro's deep laughter, sharing the fresh, cinnamon-scented buns from Lilia's father's bakery...
"They're... gone," he whispered through cracked, bleeding lips.
His voice was a mere phantom, swallowed instantly by the mourning howl of the wind. A hot tear pooled in the corner of his eye, but before it could track down his cheek, he wiped it away with a savage, violent motion of his hand. No more crying, he commanded himself, his adult mind hardening into a diamond-sharp edge of cruelty. You will never taste those meals again. You will never hear those voices again. From this moment on, you are nothing but a weapon that breathes for the sole purpose of vengeance.
Just then, the rhythmic crunch of dry leaves snapping underfoot drifted through the thick veil of mist.
Crunch... Crack...
Akira turned his head slowly toward the sound. The eerie silence of the forest was sliced open by a low, guttural growl. Emerging from the underbrush was a silhouette that was no mere hound. It was a gargantuan forest wolf, its shoulders reaching Akira's chest, covered in coarse, silver fur. Its eyes glowed like two sulfurous lanterns amidst the morning fog.
The beast stared directly at Akira, saliva dripping from between its serrated fangs. To this apex predator, the iron-thick scent of blood clinging to the boy was a dinner bell for a midnight feast. It coiled its muscles, lowering its center of gravity into a lethal pounce.
An ordinary eight-year-old would have screamed or collapsed in a heap of terror. But Akira didn't run. He didn't even take a single step back.
There wasn't a flicker of fear in his eyes. He stared back into those feral, yellow orbs with the hollow, dead gaze of a man who had already looked into the abyss and walked back out. After watching the armored butchers slaughter his family last night, this wild animal looked like nothing more than a pathetic stray.
The silver-furred beast, driven mad by hunger in the misty dawn, locked its gaze on Akira's frail frame. Its growl was a death sentence vibrating through the marrow of the trees. The moment it tensed its haunches and dug its claws into the dirt for the final, fatal leap...
The smoldering agony and unyielding rage left behind by last night's massacre exploded within Akira like a sub-atomic reaction.
Fear? No. The twenty-three-year-old soul trapped in that delicate vessel had long since transcended fear. All he possessed now was a black, consuming hatred that yearned to reduce the world to ash.
Akira slowly raised his right hand. The Goddess's sick promise echoed in his mind: "You can wield all magic." He curled his fingers as if grasping the hilt of an invisible javelin. In that instant, a bone-shaking crack resonated through the air. Blinding, blood-red and sun-gold flames swirled into his palm, compressing within seconds into a massive spear of pure, oscillating plasma. The unfathomable heat radiating from the weapon instantly vaporized the morning dew in a ten-foot radius.
"Die," Akira hissed, his voice as cold as a gale from the bottom of the void.
He drew his arm back with the poise of an elite athlete, channeling a force that strained the very limits of his child-body. He hurled the spear of fire at the mid-air wolf. The weapon shrieked as it tore through the atmosphere, leaving a crimson trail of scorched air before plunging directly into the beast's open maw.
THRRRUM—BOOM!
The spear didn't just pierce the wolf's skull; the kinetic energy and thermal payload turned the creature's brain and internal organs to ash in a microsecond. The wolf was dead before its feet even left the ground. Its massive carcass slammed into the earth, smoke billowing from its charred head. In the sudden silence of the forest, only the scent of burnt flesh and Akira's heavy, rhythmic breathing remained.
There was no smile of victory, no expression of shock. Only the void. A bottomless, obsidian emptiness. There was only him, and the cataclysmic powers that now obeyed his every whim. Nothing else mattered.
Akira walked toward the wolf's remains. Now, it was time to test the extent of his arsenal. He focused his mind, calling upon the moisture suspended in the air and binding it with a freezing mana. In his palm, a blade of ice manifested—bluish, translucent, and harder than diamond, with an edge sharper than any surgical steel.
With the hands of an eight-year-old, he skillfully wielded the [Glacial Blade] to skin the wolf's massive hide. This visceral, bloody act tore away the final remnants of the civilized consciousness from his past life. He butchered the wolf's meat with surgical precision. Then, with a simple flick of a basic fire spell, he ignited a blaze and roasted the flesh. He was famished, yet he possessed no appetite. He chewed and swallowed mechanically, fueled only by the need to keep this cursed vessel alive and to accumulate the strength required to slaughter the Inquisition knights. He cleaned the silvery pelt, setting it aside for an experiment.
Life was no longer a journey; it had become a cold simulation of survival and power progression.
When night fell, he sat by the dying embers of the fire, staring at the wolf's hide as he pieced together the complex magical theories in his mind. [Transmutation] and [Structural Shaping]. He gripped the pelt, allowing his mana to flow into the very fibers of the leather, visualizing a garment straight out of the high-fantasy games of his old world—durable, light, and unhindered.
The wolf's pelt began to vibrate violently in Akira's hands.
[Skill Activated: Elemental Alteration & Structural Shaping]
Under the influence of his mana, the silver fur twisted, its color shifting as it merged into the very weave of the fabric. Within seconds, the gargantuan hide transformed into a silver-grey tunic and trousers, detailed with leather and fur accents, perfectly tailored to Akira's eight-year-old frame.
It worked, he thought coldly. He would no longer have to wear the blood-stained, tattered linen of his former self.
Months bled into one another in this fashion. The forest became both his sanctuary and his killing floor. Akira hunted apex predators, consumed their strength, and used [Transmutation] to forge their hides into increasingly durable and functional gear. By night, he practiced the mana circulation techniques from the grimoire, learning to tame the gargantuan Level 129 force surging within his veins. The black, necrotic veins had slowly faded from his skin, but the obsidian void in his eyes only deepened with each passing day.
He was no longer a child; he was a ghost of the woods—an emotionless predator draped in silver-grey, gliding through the shadows of the trees.
However, one morning upon waking, he realized the forest had nothing left to teach him. His mana was stable, his body was forged in iron, and the embers of revenge burned like a sun in his heart. The silence of the forest no longer brought him peace; it brought only impatience.
It was time to leave.
He turned his steps toward the direction he had avoided for months: his incinerated village. As he emerged from the dense forest into the valley that once echoed with joyful laughter and the scent of fresh buns, Akira came to a dead stop.
The sight before him was the remains of a guttered hell.
Nothing but ruins remained of the village. The houses, the shops, Lilia's father's bakery... all had been reduced to charred, skeletal husks of blackened wood. The earth was a dead, dark brown—a morbid slurry of ash and dried blood. As the wind whistled through the collapsed walls, it carried an ominous wail, as if bearing the screams of those slaughtered that day. There was not a single sign of life, not a shred of hope... only destruction, silence, and eternal mourning.
Akira stood motionless upon the ash-covered ground, draped in his silver-grey furs. His gaze locked onto the pile of debris that was once his home. His mother's final breath, his father's mountain-like frame, Lilia's dull green eyes... they were all buried beneath these ruins.
The cold, stoic mask on his face hardened even further. At the sight of this devastation, the pure hatred within him transformed into a staggering, tectonic force, ready to erupt like a volcano.
"I have returned," Akira whispered, his voice echoing through the ruins. "And I swear... I shall forge a new world upon these ashes, written in your blood."
He was no longer an eight-year-old child standing atop the cinders of his home; he was a true demon manifested upon the earth, ready to burn the world for his revenge.
Akira stood like a statue amidst the pitch-black wreckage, the wind whipping ash against his face. His hollow, dark eyes were fixed on the ground. Amidst the burn scars where the village and the bakery once stood, deep ruts of wagon wheels and heavy hoofprints stretched out—marks that were still relatively fresh.
These were the signatures of the Royal Inquisition, those silver-armored death machines that had brutally dismantled his life only months ago.
At the sight of these tracks, the edges of his mind began to fray with rage. A wave of pure, seething hatred tightened his chest. He could no longer remain in this forest, this silent place of mourning. His vow of revenge burned like a live coal in his heart, and there was only one direction to go: where these tracks ended. A city. That putrid nest of civilization where the butchers hid.
Akira took a deep breath. His frail legs had been tempered into steel through months of grueling training. He turned his back on the ruins and began to track the bloody trail left by the Inquisition.
This journey would not be a comfortable one. He would walk. With his small, fragile eight-year-old body, he would traverse a path spanning hundreds of kilometers, crossing mountains and rivers. It could take days, weeks, or months, but the fire of hatred within him was an inexhaustible fuel, propelling him forward with every step. By day, he tracked his prey; by night, he slept in makeshift shelters fashioned from hides using [Transmutation]. For sustenance, he swallowed the raw meat of the animals he hunted, gulping it down along with the dark void consuming his soul.
On the eighteenth day of his journey, as the sun dipped toward the horizon, the dense thicket on either side of the path fell into a sudden, profound silence. The birds went mute; the wind died. Akira's internal alarms instantly hit RED ALERT. This silence was the herald of a high-tier threat.
Just then, a colossal silhouette emerged from the thick veil of mist. Toppling trees like mere matchsticks, the creature that stepped onto the path was a nightmare vomited from the deepest layer of hell. Its massive, muscular frame was covered in obsidian, scale-like skin. But the true horror was its face. Eight blood-red eyes scattered across its visage spun frantically before locking onto Akira. Its mouth split open into a twisted, psychopathic grin that stretched from ear to ear, saliva dripping from its fangs and sizzling as it melted the soil.
"Heeeee... Heeeeeee... A tiny little human..." The creature's voice was a grating, disgusting screech, sounding like a thousand shards of glass grinding together.
Akira did not recoil. The hatred festering within him had long since swallowed any trace of fear. He gathered his gargantuan [Level 129 Mana] into his palms, visualizing the cataclysmic strike that had reduced the silver wolf to ash months ago. He raised his right hand, his fingers curling as if gripping the shaft of an invisible javelin. A bone-shaking crack resonated through the air, and within his palm, a massive spear of roaring flame—composed of pure, pressurized plasma in hues of blood-red and sun-gold—flickered into existence. The unfathomable heat radiating from the weapon began to scorch the surrounding trees instantly.
"Die, you wretched filth!" Akira roared, hurling the spear of fire directly toward the eight-eyed monstrosity's heart.
Fwoosh! BOOM!
The spear sliced through the atmosphere like a concentrated laser, leaving a crimson trail in its wake before detonating against the creature's chest. A massive explosion followed, enveloping the area in a thick shroud of smoke and roiling flames.
It worked, Akira thought, his arrogant inner voice sneering at the easy victory.
But as the smoke cleared, Akira's eyes widened in sheer shock. The monster stood exactly where it had been. On its chest, where the spear had struck, there was nothing but a faint, superficial scorch mark. Every single one of those eight eyes stared at Akira with mocking disappointment. Its psychopathic grin widened even further.
"Heeeee... Warm..."
Fire had no effect on this denizen of hell.
Before Akira could even process the failure, the monster's massive, scale-covered fist tore through the air toward him. The speed was so blinding that Akira didn't even have time to blink, let alone react.
CRASH!
The blow slammed into Akira's small ribcage. He felt his internal organs shift violently. As blood erupted from his mouth, his body was hurled backward like a discarded ragdoll, flying for meters. After smashing through several trees, he slumped heavily onto the cold earth.
Thud!
An excruciating agony surged through his entire frame. He had heard the distinct, sickening snap of bone in his left arm.
"Damn it..." he groaned, his voice a raspy wheeze.
Despite his [Level 129 Power], his frail, eight-year-old vessel was still pathetically vulnerable to physical trauma. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, dead weight. Clutching the dirt with his right hand, he forced himself to stand, every cell in his body screaming in protest. He spat out a mouthful of blood, the obsidian void in his eyes deepening into a darker, more sinister shade.
The monster approached with slow, leisurely strides, its disgusting laughter echoing through the woods. "Run... little human... Run, so the fun may last..."
Akira reached for his sealed mana with his right hand, but the stabbing pain in his stomach shattered his focus. Magic... magic isn't working. Physical strength... I'm too frail. What do I do? As his mind spun frantically, he remembered the magic he had been using in the forest for months: [Transmutation and Structural Shaping]. He had only used it to craft clothes, but now...
As the monster closed the distance and raised its massive hand to deliver the final blow, Akira slammed his right palm against the earth. He funneled every ounce of his concentration into the ground directly beneath the creature. He invoked [Transmutation] to destabilize the soil's structure, severing the atomic bonds of the earth itself.
BOOM!
The ground the monster stood upon suddenly collapsed as if it had never existed. A massive pit, at least ten meters deep, yawned open. The creature's disgusting laughter was cut short as it tumbled into the darkness of the chasm in sheer bewilderment.
But that wasn't enough. Ignoring the agony in his broken left arm, Akira focused his right hand toward the bottom of the pit. He summoned the [Water Element], instantly flash-freezing it and weaving it with [Structural Shaping]. At the base of the hole, thousands of ice spikes manifested—each as long as a spear, as hard as diamond, and sharper than a razor.
SHING! SHING! SHING!
The monster's colossal frame slammed onto its back against the forest of jagged ice at the bottom. The spikes tore through its scale-covered hide, impaling flesh and vital organs alike. A savage, deafening shriek of agony shook the very trees of the forest.
With one final, desperate burst of effort, Akira called upon the last dregs of his mana. Over the mouth of the pit, he cast a flawless layer of [Illusion] magic, making it appear as if nothing were there—as if the path continued on, perfectly flat and undisturbed.
The monster at the bottom of the pit was not dead; it was roaring while impaled on those ice spikes, trying to shatter the ice with its scale-covered claws. But the ice it was impaled upon had been compressed with [Level 129 Mana]; it would not be easily broken. The monster's savage roars and the false silence created by the [Illusion] magic had granted Akira enough time to escape.
Akira stabilized his left arm inside his vest and clutched his aching ribs with his right hand. He took a deep breath and, without even looking back, began to run toward the depths of the forest with all his might, as if his legs were tearing apart. Adrenaline suppressed the pain, and the hatred within him propelled him forward. In those bottomless eyes, a fire of revenge burned, sharper than ever—this time not only against the Inquisition, but honed against every nightmare of this godforsaken world. He did not stop until he had covered his tracks, until the monster's roars could no longer be heard, and until he was lost within the darkness.
After running until his lungs felt as if they were tearing, when the last crumb of strength in his legs was exhausted, Akira threw himself between the roots of a massive, ancient oak tree. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, and the cold sweat trickling from his forehead mingled with his mother's dried blood. The moment the numbing effect of adrenaline began to recede from his veins, true pain came knocking in all its naked intensity.
He looked at his left arm. The bone between his elbow and wrist was bent at a nauseating angle, completely contrary to human anatomy. It was impossible for a frail eight-year-old body to endure this pain; indeed, his vision was darkening, and he felt himself on the verge of slipping into shock.
"Think..." he whispered to himself, gritting his teeth. The twenty-three-year-old adult mind within him struggled to push the pain aside and execute survival algorithms. "That secret book... Healing magic... Cellular regeneration and mana manipulation..."
He took a deep, shaky breath. He closed his eyes and reached into that gargantuan Level 129 mana pool. He tried to convert the mana into a pure, healing frequency, a soft green light. He gently placed his right hand over his broken left arm. In his mind, he visualized the correct alignment of the bones and the knitting together of torn muscle tissues.
A warm, green light seeped from his fingertips, enveloping the fracture. The bizarre, dull thuds and crunches of bones grinding back into place reached his ears. The pain evaporated in seconds. He moved his left arm slowly; it was flawless. Not a single scratch remained!
Just as a pale, relieved smile was about to form on his face...
SNAP!
The sound that tore through the silence of the forest didn't come from the outside; it came directly from his own body.
"AARRRGH!"
Akira collapsed into the dirt, screaming at the incomprehensible, blinding agony that stabbed into his right leg. His eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets. The shin bone of his right leg had suddenly snapped in half, as if struck by a massive, invisible sledgehammer!
Writhing in pain, gasping for breath, he realized the truth. Equivalent exchange... he thought, his brain throbbing with agony. Nothing can be created from nothing... The price required to repair the tissue and bone was exacted from my own body! This world wasn't the realm of fairies with cheerful, boundless healing powers like in the anime. This was a dark fantasy. Healing magic had a cost, and the system ruthlessly deducted this toll as an equivalent from elsewhere in the vessel. He had healed his arm, but sacrificed his leg in return.
Clutching his broken leg, Akira leaned against the trunk of the tree. He spat the blood oozing from his lips. He couldn't escape those monsters like this. He couldn't take his revenge on those knights. He had to find a solution.
Right at that moment, a faint rustling came from the bushes just a few meters away.
Akira's dull, predatory eyes instantly locked onto the direction. A plump, greyish-brown wild forest rabbit was sniffing around, wandering among the dry leaves.
His dark mind, kneaded with pure hatred and ready to do absolutely anything to survive, was suddenly illuminated by a demonic idea. If the system demands a price from me... why should I be the one to pay it?
He twitched the fingers of his right hand slightly. He focused a much smaller, micro-version of the [Transmutation] spell he had used to fell that eight-eyed monster. The soil right where the rabbit was about to step suddenly collapsed into a small pit. As the rabbit fell in, thrashing about, Akira ignored his pain, dragged himself over, and grabbed the animal by its ears.
The rabbit kicked in terror. On Akira's face, however, there was not a single crumb of emotion.
He placed his left hand on his broken right leg. With his right hand, he firmly gripped the struggling rabbit. He summoned that green, healing mana in his mind once more. But this time, he altered the formula. He ripped the heavy toll of the healing, that "recoil" damage, away from his own body and redirected it through his right hand into the rabbit's body.
"Give me your strength," he whispered in an ice-cold voice.
The green light flared, this time mingled with a dark, sickly black. As the broken bone in Akira's right leg rapidly fused back together, the body of the rabbit he held in his right hand began to violently tremble.
From the rabbit tore the most horrific, shrill cry of agony an animal could produce. As the gruesome price for healing Akira's leg, the poor creature's tiny bones began to snap and shatter from the inside out, one by one. Within seconds, while Akira's leg was completely and flawlessly restored, the rabbit's body had been reduced to a mangled, gelatinous heap.
Akira stood up. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his leg. He had just invented a flawless, terrifying dark healing technique: [Damage Transfer].
He looked down at the rabbit agonizingly taking its last breaths on the dirt. His eyes held neither mercy nor sadism. There was only absolute, chilling pragmatism.
"There is no need for you to suffer. You have sacrificed your life for my revenge," he said softly.
Manifesting a tiny blade of ice, he ended the rabbit's pain with a single, precise strike. He roasted and ate its meat, spending that night hidden safely among the high branches of the oak tree.
Time flowed on, governed only by the ruthless and silent laws of the forest.
Exactly one month had passed.
The tracks of the Inquisition's armored wagons were now like a map he had etched into his very brain. Over the course of that month, Akira had changed drastically. His eight-year-old body had tanned and toughened under the harsh wear of the sun and the wilderness. His gaze had shifted; it no longer belonged to a human child, but to a feral, apex predator. The silver wolf-pelt garments he had tailored with his [Transmutation] magic now fit his hardened frame perfectly, granting him the appearance of a dangerous phantom torn straight from the dark heart of nature.
He had ruthlessly vanquished every monster, large and small, that dared cross his path, utilizing his newly invented dark healing technique and his lethal, devastating spell combinations.
And finally, at the end of that grueling month, the dense canopy of the forest gradually began to thin out.
As Akira climbed the final, steep incline and reached the edge of a massive cliff, a strong gust of wind caught his silver wolf-pelt cloak, making it billow wildly behind him. The sight stretching out below the precipice brought his steady steps to a halt.
Where the forest ended, right in the center of a vast plain spanning for miles, stood a colossal human settlement. It was a fortress-city boasting massive stone walls that pierced the sky, towering iron gates, and—fluttering proudly from its highest spires—those godforsaken, blood-red flags of the Royal Inquisition.
The tracks he had followed for a month stretched out like a long, damning scar directly toward those impenetrable gates.
As the freezing silence of the forest—smelling of moss and rotting leaves—was left behind, the hateful tracks carved into the dirt by the Inquisition's wagons stretched toward the colossal stone walls rising on the horizon—toward the Capital, that putrid nest of civilization where the Royal banners fluttered. For months, Akira had lived like a phantom in the embrace of the wild, clad in his silver-grey wolf pelt. His frail, eight-year-old body had hardened like steel, and the bottomless dark in his eyes had deepened with each passing day. It was his turn to hunt.
Just as he stepped out onto the open plain and began to make his way down the path, the wind suddenly shifted, carrying the vile, sour stench of sweat and rotting meat to his nose.
Grak! Grrr... Hahaha!
From the tall, yellow grass on either side of the road, a pack of at least ten goblins burst forth—green-skinned, pointy-eared, their eyes gleaming with avarice. Clanging their rusted daggers and clubs together, they surrounded Akira. A small, frail human pup... to them, he was nothing but an easy, delectable dinner.
Akira paused. Without breaking his pale, kuudere expression, he slowly raised his right hand. He gathered his savage, Level 129 mana at his fingertips. In his mind, he visualized the [Chain Lightning] spell he had been refining for months. Reducing these green creatures to ash in a single second would be mere child's play for him.
Just as he was about to release the mana and bring hell down upon the path, a feral battle cry erupted from the forest.
"STAY BACK! [Monster Reinforcement: Bull's Strength]!"
Before Akira could even process what was happening, a massive sword swung past him like a gale. A man as imposing as a bear, clad in crude leather armor, charged into the center of the goblin pack, cleaving two of them in half with a single swing of his colossal blade. Close behind him emerged a young woman in a blue robe, and another slender man wielding a bow.
"[Ice Arrow]!" / "[Multi-Shot]!"
As a rain of magic and arrows pelted the goblin pack, the robed woman swiftly threw herself in front of Akira, spreading her arms wide as if to shield him.
"Don't be afraid, little boy!" the woman cried out, her voice tender yet frantic. She was taken aback by Akira's hollow, dead stare, but she attributed it to him being paralyzed by fear. "We are here! Adventurers never abandon those in need!"
Akira slowly lowered his raised right hand. Seriously? his arrogant otaku mind sighed inwardly. I'm the main character of my own anime, so why am I suddenly being rescued like some low-budget side-story NPC? I would have fried these green shits in seconds! However, logic quickly took over. If he, a frail eight-year-old boy, single-handedly slaughtered a pack of goblins in the middle of this wild forest, these vigilant adventurers would immediately realize he was no ordinary child; they might even hand him over to the Inquisition.
He had to play the part. The role he knew best... the role of a helpless child.
He intentionally watered his eyes, made his lower lip quiver, and clung to the hem of the woman's robe, trembling as if terrified.
"B-Big sister! I was so scared! Please save me!"
The skirmish was brief. The imposing warrior dispatched the remaining goblins with crude but effective strikes. As the dust of battle settled, the three adventurers gathered around Akira. The warrior wiped his sword clean and sheathed it on his back, casting sharp, suspicious glances at the boy.
"Speak up, little rascal," the man said, his voice booming and authoritative. "What business does a milk-scented child like you have on this dangerous path to the Capital, let alone at the edge of a monster-infested forest? Where is your family?"
Akira swallowed. He couldn't tell the truth. If he said, "My family was slaughtered, and I'm heading to the Capital to take my revenge with my Level 129 mana," these people would either lock him in an asylum thinking he was mad, or execute him on the spot as a potential threat.
He immediately fired up the lie factory in his mind. "I-I..." Akira said, fixing his eyes on the ground and scuffing the tips of his shoes in the dirt like a shy child. "I actually live in the Capital. My father is a merchant... I was really curious about the outside, about the forests beyond the walls. I snuck out this morning while everyone was sleeping. But... but I lost my way. I was so scared."
The adventurers looked at each other. The story made sense. Rich kids in the Capital often did stupid things like this. The imposing warrior let out a deep sigh, the hard expression on his face softening slightly.
"So you're a merchant's son looking for an adventure," the man said, chuckling softly. "You're lucky we ran into those goblins; you were almost dinner. Well, we can't leave you here like this. We've already completed our quest anyway, so we're heading back to the Capital. We'll take you with us and hand you over to your family. But no causing trouble on the way, understood?"
Akira jumped up with childish glee. "Yay! Thank you, mister! Thank you, miss!" Inwardly, however, he offered a cold, kuudere smirk. Heh... Free transport and a hassle-free entry into the city. Just as I wanted. However, Akira hadn't yet realized that this lie would back him into an even tighter corner, and that upon arriving at the Capital, he would have to explain exactly where his "family" was.
The hours-long journey came to an end just as the evening sun began to set, right before the colossal, sky-piercing walls of the Capital. As the iron gates of the city groaned open, the hum of the human crowds inside, the clatter of wagon wheels, and the stench of that putrid civilization hit Akira's face. This was where his revenge would begin.
Seeing the well-known adventurer party and the small child with them, the guards at the gate let them in without any trouble. As they walked down the city's main avenue, the imposing warrior grabbed Akira by the shoulder and stopped him.
"Alright, 'Little Adventurer', we've made it to the city," the man said, his eyes scanning the street. "What was your name again? And exactly where is your father's shop? Let's take you there right away."
Akira's heart began to pound against his ribs like a drum. His adult mind frantically searched for a solution. A name... a name... What can I say?
"My name... My name is Akira!" he blurted out. He had decided to use the name from his old world as a symbol of his revenge in this rotten city. "My father's shop... is right over there, just behind that alleyway!"
"Akira? That's an odd name," the blue-robed woman said, raising an eyebrow. "Anyway, come on, take us to your father."
Akira led the adventurers toward a crowded alleyway right next to the walls. A frantic plan was taking shape in his head. He had no other choice. If they couldn't find his family, the adventurers would hand him over to an orphanage or the guards.
He tapped into his Level 129 mana. This time, instead of a destructive spell, he called upon one of the fields he had mastered most: [High-Tier Illusion and Hologram] magic. With the twenty-three-year-old adult consciousness in his mind, he orchestrated a flawless scenario.
"There! There they are!" Akira shouted, pointing at two figures standing in the dim light at the end of the alleyway.
It was a false hologram shaped by his mana, shimmering slightly in the meager light leaking from the windows, yet appearing entirely real to mortal eyes. A middle-aged man and woman in clean clothes were looking around frantically, as if searching for someone.
Under the bewildered gazes of the adventurers, Akira threw his arms wide and began running toward the holograms. "Mother! Father! I'm right here!"
Upon Akira's mental command, the false illusions suddenly turned toward him. Expressions of pure relief and joy blossomed on their faces. The adventurers were moved by the sight. The imposing warrior smiled.
"Looks like our job here is done. His family found him."
The moment Akira dove into that dim corner where the holograms were, he abruptly severed his mana. The illusions drifted like stardust caught in the wind, fading into nothingness within seconds. In the darkness of the alley, only Akira and the noise of that putrid civilization remained.
He turned around and waved to the adventurers standing at the entrance of the alley.
"Thank you for everything! My father is waiting at the shop, my mother and I are heading there now!"
The adventurers, assuming Akira had disappeared into the darkness with his (nonexistent) mother and father, continued on their way with peace of mind.
Akira was left all alone in the dim corner, within the darkness. The bottomless darkness in his eyes had deepened even further, in defiance of the Capital's artificial lights. An adult soul filled with pure hatred, cursed by the Goddess, trapped inside the body of an eight-year-old child...
"I have entered the city," Akira whispered, his voice echoing against the walls where the blood-red flags of the Inquisition fluttered. "Prepare yourselves... Because my revenge will scorch every single soul within these walls with the agony they endure."
Thus began the first night in the Capital for a true demon descended upon the earth, gliding through the dark streets of civilization in his silver-grey wolf-pelt garments.
As he slipped from the shadows of the dark alley where the adventurer party had left him and stepped onto the Capital's main avenue, Akira's eyes involuntarily widened at the splendor of this new world. This place was nothing like the freezing silence of that silver-grey forest or the poor, soot-covered village that the Inquisition had brutally reduced to ruins months ago.
He was surrounded by massive stone buildings adorned with intricate carvings, rising as if attempting to pierce the sky. The avenues churned with a chaotic hum: the scents of exotic spices, the rhythmic hammer strikes of blacksmiths forging iron, the heroic ballads sung by bards accompanied by lyres, and the bustle of nobles, merchants, and demi-humans in vibrantly colored robes. There were no artificial neon lights, but the mana-fueled crystal lamps glowing at every street corner imbued the city with an enchanting, anime-esque atmosphere.
The vibrancy of this putrid civilization only deepened the bottomless darkness within Akira. As he swept his abyssal eyes across the avenue, a yellowed piece of paper caught in the wind landed right at the tips of his toes. Akira leaned down and picked up the paper without breaking his pale expression. The moment he read the words written upon it, his frail eight-year-old body trembled in shock; his fingers clenched so hard they nearly tore the paper.
It was an official Proclamation of Celebration bearing the seal of the Royal Inquisition.
The public, on this exact day, was celebrating the "cleansing of demons" from that poor village months ago. That bloody day when Zephyro's mountain-like body was pierced by spears, when Elysia drew her last breath with the cry "Live...", when Lilia's cheerful green eyes grew dull beneath the hooves of horses... It was being celebrated as a festival in this rotten city.
He began to claw at the walls of his mind in the face of this humiliation. A wave of pure, focused hatred constricted his chest. At that moment, he wanted to burn all these soulless people walking the street, those celebrating nobles, the flags of the Inquisition... reduce them all to ash with that pitch-black hellfire. As the wind whipped his golden hair across his face, the bottomless darkness in his eyes deepened enough to swallow everything.
However, his ruthless, adult mind trapped his emotions beneath a block of ice. He gritted his teeth until they bled, forcibly suppressing the trembling in his body. 'Not now,' he commanded himself. 'Vomiting your rage in the middle of the city will only bring your end. Revenge is a dish best served cold.' Crushing the paper in his palm, he tossed it aside and continued down the avenue, gliding through the crowd like a silver-grey phantom.
His steps brought him before a massive building on the west side of the city. Above the door of this imposing structure made of stone and iron, its towers reaching for the sky, hung that familiar crest of two crossed swords: The Adventurer's Guild.
This was the path to power, the source of the money and information required for his revenge. Akira took a deep breath and pushed open the heavy, ornate oak doors to enter. The interior of the Guild hall was even more chaotic than the avenue outside. The stench of alcohol, sweat, and monster blood hung thick in the air. Hundreds of adventurers wearing colorful, complex armor and carrying massive axes and staves sat around the tables, roaring with laughter and sharing tales of battle.
The moment Akira entered the hall in his silver-grey wolf pelt garments, the entire hum of the room was cut like a knife. Hundreds of pairs of eyes locked onto the frail eight-year-old boy with the bottomless, dark gaze. While some smirked mockingly, others began to whisper in bewilderment. An eight-year-old child—especially a phantom torn straight from such a dangerous forest—had no business being here.
Ignoring these stares, Akira began walking toward the reception desk at the far end of the hall, maintaining a pale, kuudere expression. He had sealed his Level 129 mana deep within his body; from the outside, he was nothing but a frail orphan.
Just a few steps away from the reception, a massive shadow loomed before him, halting his advance. When Akira looked up, his eyes narrowed.
It was the imposing, bear-like adventurer who had "saved" him from the goblins in the forest just hours ago and smuggled him into the city. Beside him stood the blue-robed woman and the archer.
"Still looking for an adventure, 'Little Rascal'?" the warrior said, his voice echoing through the hall. He leaned his massive frame over Akira, the previous tender expression on his face replaced by a mocking seriousness.
The blue-robed woman crossed her arms over her chest. "You need to be at least 16 years old to register here, sweetie. A child barely as tall as my leg has no place in the world of swords and magic. Go carry flour sacks in your father's shop."
The archer smirked. "Or did the thought of becoming goblin dinner not seem that scary to you? Run along now, go home!"
The warrior grabbed Akira by the shoulder with his giant hand and shoved him roughly toward the door. "You're kicked out, kid! This isn't your playground!"
As Akira was thrown out of the Guild hall into the dim street at the base of the walls, a massive wave of disappointment and rage surged within him. 'Was I not even going to be able to become a mage? Or an adventurer? Was I supposed to earn the power and money needed for my revenge by baking bread in ovens?!' This was absolute nonsense for a demon with a Level 129 mana pool! The System had placed yet another insurmountable obstacle in his path.
He slumped down in desperation next to a pile of garbage at the corner of the street. His adult mind frantically searched for a solution.
'Wait a minute...' he thought to himself. The rusty gears in his brain suddenly accelerated. 'Illusion... Image manipulation... I tricked these adventurers, and even the Inquisitors, with those holograms!'
His genius otaku consciousness lit up with a demonic idea.
'If I can create fake people with illusion magic... why don't I use this spell on myself? Why don't I disguise myself as a fake adult?'
He immediately decided to test it. He closed his eyes, pouring his Level 129 mana onto the surface of his body, into the very texture of his skin and clothes. In his mind, he constructed the image of an adult—one who didn't fit into the rotten order of this world, yet commanded respect. As a reference, he used his own exhausted, twenty-three-year-old former body, the one that had rotted away signing debt notes amidst grey concrete.
Average height, black, slightly messy hair, a face carrying all the exhaustion of life yet possessing an equally razor-sharp gaze... Under the effect of the illusion, his silver-grey wolf pelt garments took on the appearance of high-quality, worn leather armor and a cloak, as if they had been worn on battlefields for years.
His mana shimmered like an ethereal wave of light over his frail eight-year-old body, taking shape. When Akira opened his eyes, he was no longer that frail orphan.
From the dim corner of the street rose the silhouette of a determined and dangerous twenty-three-year-old man. His eight-year-old body stood like a core at the center of this massive hologram, but from the outside, he was a perfect, flawless adult.
"Kukuku..." The voice of twenty-three-year-old Akira spilled from his lips with a cold, demonic timbre.
With the fake yet magnificent adult body created by the illusion, he began to walk toward the doors of the Adventurer's Guild, his steps carrying years of experience and hatred. The guards at the door stepped aside with respect this time. Akira returned to the chaotic noise of the Guild hall with a brand-new identity and that bottomless hatred, ready to turn the world to ash. Gliding like a phantom past the bewildered gazes of the warrior party that had just kicked him out, he headed straight for the receptionist's desk.
He narrowed his eyes and fixed them on the receptionist.
Splitting the heavy, sweat- and blood-scented air of the Guild, the twenty-three-year-old fake, mysterious silhouette walked directly up to the reception desk. Behind the counter stood a young receptionist who looked like she had stepped straight out of a classic fantasy anime, complete with a neat uniform, glasses, and her hair pulled back into a tight bun.
The girl's shoulders tensed involuntarily against the heavy, dark aura Akira was radiating. She swallowed hard but forced the professional, optimistic smile required by her profession onto her face.
"W-Welcome, sir," the receptionist said, trying to hide the slight tremor in her voice. "You must be new here? I've never seen you before. Do you happen to have your Adventurer License with you?"
Akira fixed his hollow, emotionless gaze onto the girl's eyes. "No," he said in a short, frigid tone. "I don't."
The girl smiled slightly, seemingly relieved. "I understand! Then we need to create one for you right away!" she chirped.
As she searched for something in her drawer, the bankrupt, penniless twenty-three-year-old adult inside Akira suddenly panicked. He knew this world wasn't free.
"Do I need to..." Akira interjected, adding a fake depth to his voice, "...pay a fee for this?"
The receptionist waved her hands dismissively and replied cheerfully, "Oh, no, no! Registration is completely free! However..." The sweet smile on the girl's face suddenly shifted into the cunning smirk of a merchant. "...Per Guild regulations, you are required to give us a certain percentage of the rewards you receive from completed quests as a commission."
Externally, Akira's face didn't twitch, but his inner spirit had fallen to its knees and raised the flags of rebellion. A commission?! Damn it! I've lived two lives, I've come back from the dead, but I still haven't escaped tax deductions! Why should I give the money I earn with my own blood to this rotten guild?! Even though he was crying on the inside, he had to join this system for his revenge. He let out a deep sigh and nodded in agreement. "Proceed."
The receptionist nodded, pulled an item from beneath the desk, and placed it in front of Akira.
In that instant, Akira's breath caught in his throat. Beneath his false illusion, his entire body turned to ice.
The object sitting on the desk... It was the exact same pristine, rolled-up Awakening Parchment that had signed his family's death warrant in that godforsaken church months ago!
"Please place your hand here," the receptionist said, readying the quill in her hand. "Gently channel the mana within you. Your registration, level, and affinity will automatically be processed into our system, and your card will be printed."
Akira gritted his teeth. If a black and crimson flame erupts like it did in the church, I'm dead. I have to suppress my mana. Just a leak... I must only allow a tiny leak!
Taking a deep breath, he placed his illusion-draped right hand onto the ice-cold parchment. He forcibly clamped down on the wild, Level 129 ocean within his mind, like shutting the floodgates of a massive dam. He allowed only a thread-thin trickle of mana to flow into the parchment.
The parchment didn't create an explosion that shook the hall like it had that day. It merely vibrated faintly with a dim, dark grey light. The receptionist shuddered against this heavy, dark mana and took a step back. When the light faded, letters appeared on the parchment in black ink:
[NAME: AKIRA]
[AFFINITY: ?????????]
[POWER LEVEL: 130]
Akira's eyes locked onto that number. '130? That month I spent in the forest must have pushed my mana up a level, even if my body didn't grow. It means I can continue to grow stronger.'
However, the receptionist girl's eyes were wide as saucers. Adjusting her glasses, she stared in bewilderment at the ancient, angular runes on the parchment that resembled no earthly language. She had registered thousands of adventurers in her life: swordsmen, fire mages, healers... But this was the first time she had ever seen such meaningless, eerie runes appear in the Affinity slot.
"T-This... This affinity..." the girl stammered, her voice trembling. Then she shifted her gaze upward, to the name section. "And your name is... Akira—"
'Kuso! (Damn it!)' Akira thought to himself. If this girl read that name out loud, the adventurer party drinking beer at the back tables—the ones who had "saved" him—might hear it. It would raise heavy suspicion if this mysterious twenty-three-year-old man had the exact same name as the frail eight-year-old child!
Without letting the girl finish her sentence, Akira rapidly slammed his hand onto the counter. The sharp thud made the girl jump in her seat. Leaning forward slightly, Akira practically hypnotized her with his dangerous, abyssal gaze.
"I," he said in a near-whisper, utilizing a mysterious and authoritative tone, "come from far beyond this world, from a forgotten, distant eastern kingdom where even the maps end. Those runes are the ancient language of my homeland." He plastered a classic, wise anime character expression onto his face. "This affinity... comes from a rather common lineage in the lands I hail from. However, it doesn't surprise me that it appears rare in these barbaric lands and that you cannot read it. Let my name and my affinity remain strictly on paper. Understood?"
The girl was practically spellbound by the words of this heavy, charismatic, and dangerous man before her. Her face flushed slightly as she immediately nodded. "U-Understood, sir! Absolutely! I-I'm so sorry!"
She quickly pulled a small, copper-colored metal plate bearing the guild's crest from her drawer, touched it to the parchment, and sealed it. With trembling hands, she extended the card to Akira. "H-Here is your beginner-level Adventurer Card. You are starting as an F-Rank. You may select suitable quests from the quest board."
Akira took the card. The texture of the cold metal made him feel his first official step in this new world. He turned around and looked toward the noisy hall of the guild. In a corner against the wall stood a massive, wooden Quest Board covered in hundreds of papers.
A fake adult carrying the body of an eight-year-old child, possessing a power level of 130, burning with the fire of revenge. And now, he held an Adventurer Card in his hand.
Standing before the Adventurer's Guild's massive Quest Board—made of heavy oak, scarred with knife marks, and littered with hundreds of parchments—Akira let out a sigh of profound disappointment.
He carried a soul that possessed Level 130 mana, had reduced a monster straight out of hell to ash with a single spear, and had shattered and re-fused the bone in his own leg. Yet right now, because he was an F-Rank novice adventurer, the quests deemed worthy of him on the board were an absolute fiasco: "Gather ten Silver Leaves from the eastern forest," "Chase the wild boars away from the field outside town," "Find healing blue mushrooms..."
'Wonderful,' he thought to himself with his cynical mind. 'My journey of revenge begins as the gardener of a fantasy world. This system is definitely mocking me.'
However, he needed money for his revenge, and alongside that money, a higher status from which he could siphon information. As he continued to examine the quests, those demonic, pragmatic gears began to turn in his mind once again. If these quests were going to be boring, then he would finish them all at once, in a way no one would see! He tore down every single F-Rank herb-gathering, mushroom-foraging, and material-finding quest on the board that took place far from the crowds, deep in the forest, or on deserted mountain slopes—anything that "required no human interaction."
When he returned to the receptionist girl's desk with a stack of parchments in his hand that had nearly reached the thickness of a book, he dropped the papers onto the counter with a heavy thud. Smack!
The bespectacled receptionist girl's eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of their sockets as she stared at this mountain-like stack of quests. She raised her head and looked at the cold and mysterious twenty-three-year-old Akira created by the illusion. Her voice cracked with high-pitched bewilderment.
"A-Are you sure, sir?! These are all grunt work... I mean, highly time-consuming, low-level gathering quests! It would take a person weeks to finish these alone!"
Akira placed an incredibly arrogant, self-assured smirk at the corner of his lips. Giving his cloak a slight twirl as he turned his back, he said in a deep voice, "I am absolutely sure," and walked out the door amidst the bewildered stares of the guild.
When he reached that deep forested and rocky terrain miles outside the Capital where no one ever visited, there was no sound around other than the rustling of the wind. After Akira scanned the area and made absolutely sure he was alone, he put his genius plan into action.
Since he could bend the light and mana around him with illusion magic, couldn't he take it a step further and solidify the mana? Just like the legendary cloning techniques of those famous ninjas from his old world!
He closed his eyes. In addition to the "Adult Man" illusion he was already maintaining over himself, he spewed his mana outward. "One... two... three... four!"
However, the second he tried to force the fourth clone into a physical form, attempting to grant it the ability to touch and interact...
"AARRRGH!"
Akira fell to his knees, clutching his head tightly with his hands. A horrific, unbearable pain pierced right into the center of his brain, as if a red-hot nail were being driven into it. His vision blurred, his stomach churned. The simultaneous visual, auditory, and tactile data streaming from different bodies had practically launched an assault on his brain's information processing center.
Gasping for breath, he instantly canceled the fourth hologram. When the headache subsided, he wiped the cold sweat dripping from his forehead. On his face was a smile full of pain, yet accepting of reality.
'I understand...' he whispered to himself. 'Even if my power and mana pool are at level 130... The hardware of this brain, my nervous system, still belongs to a frail eight-year-old child. I do not possess the mental endurance to run that many parallel processes simultaneously.'
He had learned his limit: Three solid clones capable of physical interaction. Moreover, counting his own body, this meant gathering herbs from four separate points!
Akira looked at the three tangible holograms standing before him, perfectly resembling himself (in his adult form). When he gave them a mental command, all three nodded simultaneously and rapidly dispersed like robots in three different directions into the forest. Sitting cross-legged in the shade of a tree, Akira enjoyed this absolute efficiency while watching the sensation of the herbs gathered, mushrooms dug, and insects caught by the clones in a corner of his mind. This was literally hacking the system!
The sun set, the sky turned purple, and then pitch black.
By the time midnight struck, the streets of the Capital had long since sunk into a deep silence. In the massive hall of the Adventurer's Guild, only a few drunk adventurers had passed out, and the fire in the hearth had grown faint. As the receptionist girl yawned and organized her paperwork, the heavy oak door creaked open.
When she saw the person walking in, the girl's sleepiness instantly vanished.
Akira was entering with that mysterious and weary adult silhouette. However, the truly shocking thing was the three massive sacks he was dragging behind him, filled to the brim with medicinal herbs, rare mushrooms, and quest items! When he piled the sacks like a mountain in front of the counter, the resulting noise even made a few sleeping adventurers jump in their seats.
"All done," Akira said, feigning breathlessness (in reality, his brain had turned to mush from controlling the clones).
The receptionist girl stared at the flawless quality of the materials inside the sacks, and then at the massive stack of quest parchments tossed onto the desk. Her glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose. Her jaw dropped. This was impossible! The work that would take a dozen novices a week to do, this mysterious man had finished in a single day!
Shaking off her shock, the girl tried to frame the situation logically. Finally, a slightly mocking, sweet smile appeared on her lips. Resting her elbows on the counter, she looked at Akira.
"You are incredible..." the girl chuckled. "But be honest, sir... Despite looking so powerful, did you really spend your entire day digging in the mud picking weeds and foraging for mushrooms? Didn't you get bored at all?"
Akira didn't break his cold expression. "A quest is a quest."
The girl smiled and shook her head. She quickly tallied up the sacks and placed pouches of copper and silver coins in front of Akira. Then, she took Akira's metal F-Rank card and stamped a glowing magic seal onto it. The card's color shifted from copper to a dark iron hue.
"Congratulations," the girl said, her voice now holding genuine respect as she handed the card back. "With the record numbers you've broken, you are now officially an E-Rank adventurer. You are no longer restricted to just herb gathering; you can now take on monster hunting and escort quests outside the city."
As Akira took his new rank and his first blood money, spinning around with a swish of his cloak, the dark sense of satisfaction within him smiled. He had climbed the first step.
When the heavy oak door of the Adventurer's Guild closed behind him with a solid thud, the cool night air of the Capital hit Akira's face (or rather, the face of the mysterious twenty-three-year-old illusion visible to the outside). In his hand, he held the heavy coin pouch he had earned for the first time in his life through his own sweat—or more accurately, through a magic cheat. The metallic clinking of the copper and silver coins rubbing against each other in the pouch sounded like the most beautiful symphony in the world to Akira, who came from a bankrupt, penniless past.
However, this sweet intoxication of victory had made him forget the most fundamental rule of the Capital's dangerous and rotten streets: Shadows always stalk their prey.
When he veered off the illuminated avenue of the guild and entered a dark, narrow alley to find a cheap inn for the night, he didn't even notice the two stealthy footsteps trailing him. The end of the alley led to a blind wall. Just as Akira moved to turn back, two dark figures appeared, blocking the entrance to the alley.
These were two crooked adventurers with rusted armor, their breath reeking of cheap wine and rotting teeth. They were clearly bottom-feeding scum who made a living out of drinking all day at the guild and extorting the earnings of rookies.
"Hey, novice..." the burly one said, threateningly brandishing his serrated dagger. "We heard a rookie like you walked out of the guild with a very heavy pouch in a single day. It's dangerous to walk around with that much coin at this hour, you know."
The other, a scrawny one, let out a disgusting laugh. "Slowly drop that pouch on the ground and walk away without looking back. Maybe then we'll spare your life instead of carving up that pretty face of yours, what do you say?"
Akira stood perfectly still in the darkness of that dim alley. He looked like prey cornered in a dead end, but the massive Level 130 monster within him was practically yawning at the pathetic threats of these wretches. In his past life, he had dealt plenty with the necktie-wearing versions of these types on the ruthless streets of the metropolis.
Akira slowly turned toward them. His dull, emotionless expression abruptly shattered, and a savage, dark, predatory smile—almost belonging to a psychopath—appeared at the corner of his lips.
"Is that so?" Akira whispered, his voice echoing against the cold cobblestones of the alley. "You're going to spare my life, you say..."
The burly one among the men was taken aback by this reaction, but he did not step back.
"What the hell are you babbling about—"
He couldn't finish his sentence.
Akira squeezed his right hand slightly. The moisture in the air suddenly condensed, and the temperature dropped to sub-zero levels. Within seconds, a thick set of ice brass knuckles formed over the knuckles of Akira's right hand—as hard as diamond, as sharp as a razor, and radiating a freezing vapor.
Before the adventurer could even raise his sword, Akira's body lunged forward in the darkness like a phantom. That frail eight-year-old body beneath the adult illusion reached its target with the inconceivable speed granted by mana, bringing his right fist down squarely in the middle of the man's forehead with the crushing hardness of the ice brass knuckles.
CRACK!
The sound of bones caving in filled the street with a sickening crunch. The burly man's eyes instantly rolled to the back of his head; spitting a bloody wad of saliva, he collapsed right where he stood onto the muddy ground of the alley, like a heavy sack. His skull had suffered severe trauma; he was breathing, but it was certain he wouldn't wake up for days.
Ignoring the blood dripping from his ice brass knuckles, Akira slowly turned his gaze to the other, scrawny adventurer. That savage smile still lingered on his face.
The scrawny man's legs began to tremble, and the dagger in his hand clattered to the ground, ringing out. The man standing before him wasn't a novice; he was a monster disguised as a human! Shrieking, he turned around and fled screaming into the darkness of the night, having wet his pants.
"Trash is trash in every world," Akira muttered, dispersing the ice on his hand into the air and making it vanish. Stepping over the man lying on the ground, he continued walking toward the exit of the alley.
A few streets later, he found a dilapidated inn that fit his budget, its highly aged wooden sign creaking in the wind. When he walked through the door, he noticed that the interior was completely empty, whereas it should have been bustling with adventurers at that hour. There was only a young girl with red hair standing at the reception counter; she looked quite exhausted, but her eyes lit up the moment she saw Akira.
"W-Welcome, sir!" the girl said, so attentive and excited that it was as if she were seeing a customer for the first time in months. She immediately held out a key. "Our best room is ready for you! You have hot water, too!"
Burdened by the massive mental exhaustion of controlling three separate clones simultaneously all day, Akira didn't inspect his surroundings much. He left the money on the desk, went up to his room, and, dispelling his illusion to return to his original eight-year-old body, collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, when he reapplied his illusion and came downstairs, the ground floor of the inn was still as silent as an abandoned ruin. He sat at one of the tables for breakfast. The red-haired girl came running with a bowl of hot soup and fresh bread in her hands.
As Akira took a sip of his soup, he looked at the empty chairs around him.
"Your food is good," he said in a cold voice. "But why is this place so deserted? The other inns in this part of the city were overflowing."
The cheerful, hospitable smile on the girl's face suddenly faded. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked at the floor, pressing the tray in her hands against her chest. In her eyes lay the sorrow of a deep, unhealed wound.
"Actually..." the girl said, her voice trembling. "Our family is not from the Capital, sir. We... came here years ago from far away, from a small forest village at the foot of the mountains."
The wooden spoon in Akira's hand hung suspended in the air.
"The name of our village wasn't very well known, but... months ago, something terrible happened," the girl continued, trying to hold back her tears. "The Royal Inquisition said that our village... was a demon's nest, that they had slaughtered the priests. They wiped the entire village, our relatives, our friends off the map. When this news reached the Capital, people found out that we were from that village too. Since that day... no one wants to stay at the inn of 'those descended from demons.' They despise us; they ostracize us."
At that moment, time inside the inn stood still for Akira.
A red-hot iron had been driven into his heart, into the wound that had begun to scab over months ago. His breath caught in his throat. Lilia's mangled body, Zephyro's impaled back, Elysia's bloody face... All of it resurfaced in his mind like a nightmare.
They hadn't just burned the village. The Inquisition continued to poison the memories of those innocent people, and even the lives of their relatives trying to survive in the Capital. That dark curse wasn't letting him go, even here.
Akira slowly bowed his head. The bottomless, black tempest of rage in his eyes was strong enough to make his physical body beneath the illusion tremble. But he restrained himself. He slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out nearly half of the silver coins he had earned, and dropped them onto the table with a solid thud.
The girl looked at the coins in astonishment. "S-Sir? This is too much..."
"I'm keeping my room," Akira said, his voice as hard and resolute as steel as he stood up from the table. "No matter how long it takes, I will be staying at this inn from now on. And I couldn't care less what the fools who believe the nonsense spoken about that village think."
As tears streamed from the girl's eyes, she bowed and thanked him with profound gratitude, but Akira wasn't even looking at her. With a swish of his cloak, he stepped out the inn's door and into the bright yet rotten streets of the Capital.
He was an E-Rank adventurer now. For his revenge, he needed to climb higher, to attain more power and information. He fixed his eyes toward the center of the city, in the direction of the Adventurer's Guild.
"Wait for me, Inquisition," he whispered against the wind. "That very fire you ignited is now blazing from the very heart of this city."
Striding through the cobblestone streets of the Capital, cutting through the misty and frigid morning air, Akira was impatient to reach his goal. The sorrowful tale of the inn had thrown another log onto the fire of his revenge, turning the bottomless darkness in his eyes into an absolute abyss.
When he entered through the heavy oak doors of the Adventurer's Guild for the second time, donning his fake, mysterious, and weathered twenty-three-year-old illusion body, his steps were much more confident than the day before. He headed straight for the Quest Board. He was an E-Rank adventurer now. In his mind, bloodthirsty gargantuan monsters, bandit camps, or dark cave expeditions materialized.
However, as he stood before the board, his cold and distant expression gave way to an involuntary sense of disappointment.
The parchments read: "Hunt the Horned Rabbits infesting Farmer Marlo's field," "Clear out the giant rats in the sewers," "Find a missing merchant's cat..."
Akira let out a deep sigh. Fitting for an anime aesthetic, as an imaginary gust of wind billowed his cloak, that classic anime 'stress vein' popped up on his forehead and began to twitch. 'I have Level 130 mana... I impaled that eight-eyed hellspawn monster on ice spikes. And this rotten system expects me to be a cat sitter or an exterminator?!' But the only way to beat the system was to turn its rules to his advantage. If these quests were nothing but a joke to his power, then he would turn this joke into a spectacle.
Without any hesitation, he tore down every single E-Rank monster hunting, clearing, and escort quest on the board, one by one, just like the day before. With another wad of parchments in his hand, he walked out of the guild.
That day was an absolute catastrophe for the plains and forested areas outside the Capital.
Once Akira was far enough from the city, he activated his genius "Three Physical Holograms" tactic once again. His mind was a bit more accustomed to the burden now. From four different directions, he descended upon those pathetic Horned Rabbits, giant rats, and low-level wild boars with the wrath of a Level 130 demon. Before the horned rabbits could even understand what was happening, they were vaporized by colossal ice spears or fireballs descending from the sky. It was like using a nuclear bomb to crush an ant, but Akira had no time to lose.
At midnight, as the full moon in the sky illuminated the Capital's massive walls, the door of the Adventurer's Guild creaked open once again, this time far more violently.
Inside, the same bespectacled receptionist girl left on the night shift was sipping her coffee in a half-asleep daze. When she saw Akira's silhouette and the four massive sacks he was dragging behind him—this time dripping with blood and overflowing with giant rat tails and horned rabbit ears... the coffee in the girl's mouth literally sprayed across the desk.
Akira dropped the sacks in front of the counter with a THUD! The (illusory) leather armor he wore was covered in monster blood. He was panting, but that dull expression on his face remained firmly in place. "E-Rank quests. All completed."
The receptionist girl's eyes widened like saucers. Her jaw trembled, and beads of sweat from her forehead dripped onto her glasses. Her right eyebrow began to twitch uncontrollably as if in shock.
"Y-You... T-This... Again?!" the girl squeaked, her voice echoing against the empty ceiling of the guild. With trembling hands, she inspected the evidence inside the sacks. Everything was flawless. It was as if he had practically torn right through the low-level monsters. This was a workload that would take an E-Rank adventurer months. The girl swallowed hard, pulled a heavy pouch stuffed with gold and silver from the safe under the desk, and placed it in front of Akira.
However, this time, the girl didn't just congratulate him. Adjusting her glasses, she took a deep, serious breath. The bewilderment on her face gave way to the professionalism of an institution official.