The dream was one of those that leaves you with a feeling of grandeur clinging to your ribs, completely devoid of the usual stupid fog that clouds the human mind.
The young man stood, or at least his consciousness floated, in the center of an immense hall that seemed to exist in the absolute void of space. Around him, hundreds of figures surrounded him in a silence that commanded an almost fanatical and suffocating respect. They didn't look like the typical horned demons or angels with dove wings; they radiated a heavy aura, the kind of presence only veteran assassins, mad scholars, and kings who have watched the entire world burn and spat on its ashes possess.s y reyes que han visto arder el mundo entero y escupido sobre sus cenizas.
At the end of that assembly of tough guys, stood a throne carved from what appeared to be pure solidified moonlight and gleaming quartz. And on it, a woman rested.
To say she was beautiful would be the understatement of the millennium; Her beauty was so ridiculously perfect it seemed an insult to the laws of physics and biology. Her slender, curvaceous figure was barely covered by a tattered blue toga that left little to the imagination. Her hair, as dark as the night sky itself, cascaded over her shoulders. But it was her gray eyes that pinned you to the ground; eyes that wept silver tears, gazing at him with the overwhelming warmth of a devoted mother beholding her ultimate creation.
Suddenly, the hundreds of hooded figures knelt in unison. The echo of their joints striking the ground resonated like cosmic thunder. And then, with a single voice that made him vibrate to the very core of his being, they recited a mantra:
"Enjoy your new life, my lord."
A blink.
The cosmic majesty was brutally replaced by a cheap, fluorescent white light that drilled into his newly formed retinas. The sterile smell of hospital alcohol and chlorine, along with the hysterical cries of other babies, pierced his eardrums.
"What...? Where the hell am I?" the newborn thought, his inner voice sounding with the cynicism and maturity of a jaded veteran, now trapped in a ridiculous body weighing barely a few pounds.
He tried to organize his thoughts, but his head was a jumble of chaos. His last clear memory was falling into an immense river of viscous magma in Hell, about to be roasted for all eternity. And now... was he in a hospital crib? He remembered nothing. Only fire, emptiness, and then this gray ceiling.
"Okay, let's recap. Fall into a sea of lava. Imminent death. And now I'm drooling in a crib. I've definitely been reincarnated," he quickly deduced. "Great. Standard Isekai. But... where's my status window? Where's the bright blue interface that tells me I have infinite magic? Nothing. Fucking Isekai scam."
He tried to move, but his limbs were useless cylinders of fat that wouldn't respond to his complex commands.
"At least that dream was... intense. That woman on the throne was something else. If everyone in this new world looks like that, maybe this isn't as pathetic as it seems."
His false optimism lasted exactly three seconds. A nurse with dark circles under her eyes that reached almost to her chin peered through the clear plastic bars of his crib and lifted him awkwardly, as if she were picking up a poorly wrapped package.
"Hey, be gentle with my neck, you animal! I'm a baby, ergonomics at this age is a myth!" he complained internally as his head bounced comically backward before the woman deigned to hold him.
As they wheeled him through the gray, monotonous, and depressing hospital corridors, the baby analyzed his situation. They arrived at a private room, and the nurse pushed the door open with her hip. There they were. His new "parents."
If the young man was expecting the typical heartwarming scene with a mother weeping with love and a father vowing to protect him from all harm, reality delivered a knockout blow.
The father was leaning against the far wall. He sported a several-day-old stubble, greasy hair, and an expression that blended a monumental hangover with a chronic resentment of life itself. The mother, lying in the hospital bed, was in no better condition. She was haggard, her makeup smeared, and her eyes empty and weary.
"Here's the little one, ma'am," said the nurse, forcing a professional smile so fake it was cringeworthy, as she tried to hand the crying bundle to the woman.
Instead of welcoming him with open arms, the mother recoiled on the stretcher with such visible and visceral disgust that it looked as if she were being offered a dead rat drenched in acid.
"Leave him there," the woman spat, her voice hoarse, pointing at the edge of the bed. "Don't you dare look at me, you damned parasite. I got fired because of you."
The father snorted from his corner. "Because of her, and because you're a useless woman who's been drinking since noon, Rika. Great. Another damn mouth to feed in that hole we call home."
The baby looked at them both with narrowed eyes. "Oh, wonderful. I got the premium package of human scum," he analyzed, looking at them with complete apathy. Curiously, he felt no emotional pain from the rejection. After everything he'd been through in purgatory, the unjustified hatred of two failures didn't stir a single fiber in his being.
"If I could raise my middle finger right now, I'd shove it up both their eyes. Pair of idiots."
But, despite his pride and cynicism, the newborn's stomach growled with undeniable biological fury. With a sigh of disgust and frustration, the mother finally grabbed him roughly, squeezing him awkwardly, and shoved the nipple of a formula bottle directly into his mouth. The young boy swallowed his pride—and the formula that tasted like liquefied chalk—because the instinct for survival dictated that hunger spares no one, not even the reincarnated.
The hospital discharge was a swift process. They went out onto the street, where the cold, polluted city wind whipped at his tiny face as he was carried carelessly by his apathetic father.
They arrived at an apartment complex that looked like it was just a sneeze away from collapsing on its foundations. The hallway smelled of dampness, stale tobacco, and pure misery. Upon entering, the father crossed the dirty, cluttered common room, dodging takeout boxes and empty bottles, and dropped him into a shabby crib as if he were tossing out a bag of trash.
The impact of his small back against the thin mattress knocked the wind out of him. "Be more careful, you brutes! I'm a baby, damn it!" the young boy complained in his head, feeling his delicate vertebrae protest the rough treatment.
Almost instantly, without even bothering to tuck him in, his parents began shouting at each other. They argued about the lack of money, blaming each other for their miserable existences and complaining about the mistake of not having an abortion sooner. The volume of the insults was unbearable. The baby could only close his eyes, praying for patience or temporary deafness.
Two days passed. Two damned, humiliating days.
The routine became a monotonous nightmare. His parents would come in from the street, shout at each other until they were hoarse, drink themselves into stupor, and fall asleep, leaving him completely ignored in his dusty corner. They only put a cold bottle in his mouth when his cries threatened to alert the neighbors or social services.
But the worst part wasn't the constant growling of his empty stomach. It was the raw, disgusting, and unavoidable reality of infant biology. A newborn's body has no bowel or bladder control.
Lying in the dim light of the room, the young man stared at the damp patches on the ceiling with sunken eyes. "Damn... I'm starving to death."
He tried to move his legs, but the icy, repulsive dampness against his sensitive skin prevented him. A shiver of pure disgust ran down his spine.
"I can't move... I can't go to the damn bathroom on my own. I shit myself. I peed myself." The smell in the crib was unbearable. "What a miserable life... Am I really going to die like this?" "Starving to death, ignored by two useless alcoholics, and rotting in my own filth? Pathetic. Just pathetic."
He'd spent almost the entire first day sobbing his heart out, discarding his adult pride to use the only basic instinct he had left to get attention, but now he had no voice left. His tiny throat was dry and sore, producing only sharp hisses and pathetic grunts. No one was going to come. No one was going to pay him any attention.
It was then that a spark of pure, primal, and absolute rage began to burn in his chest. He hadn't escaped the sea of fire in hell to die in such an absurdly insulting way. The mere thought of perishing drowned in filth ignited a hidden and powerful mechanism deep within him. Something in his soul, a defensive trait that vehemently rejected a death devoid of pride, was activated.
"No. I don't want to die. And I definitely won't do it smelling like this." "I refuse."
Clenching his toothless gums with fierce determination, the baby rolled over clumsily. The pain and fatigue in his underdeveloped muscles were overwhelming, but he dragged his small, stained body across the mattress to the thick wooden rails of the crib. He clung to the bars with his chubby, trembling little hands.
He tried to push them off. Useless. He was a malnourished baby, only a few days old.
"Move... move, damn it..." he demanded mentally, straining every microscopic fiber of his being. He was at his absolute limit. His small reserve of biological strength was rapidly depleting, but his stubbornness refused to yield.
And in that instant of utter collapse, when all seemed lost, something inside him short-circuited. An invisible seal that had kept the anomaly lodged in his soul dormant shattered.
Involuntarily, without him knowing how or why, his dull brown eyes underwent an immediate and brutal mutation. The irises turned a blood red, bright, intense, and terrifying. It was the color of pure violence, of unleashed force.
The change was instantaneous. The weakness that paralyzed him vanished like vapor in the sun. His small arms filled with an aberrant physical strength that defied all anatomical logic. When he tried to grip the bars for support, he simply applied a little pressure.
CRACK!
The solid wooden railings exploded outward. They shattered into dozens of splinters and pieces as if they were made of wet rice paper, flying across the room.
"Aw?" was all the young man could manage to stammer in his mind, his crimson eyes wide with bewilderment.
But before he could marvel at his newfound Herculean strength, unforgiving physics played a cruel trick on him. Losing the support of the railings he'd been leaning against, his heavy baby body, unbalanced by his enormous head, tumbled forward. He plummeted from the crib and crashed headfirst onto the hard, dirty wooden floor of the apartment.
It was a sharp, violent impact that would have fractured the skull or broken the neck of any normal infant.
Absolute silence filled the room.
The baby blinked. Moved a foot. Then a chubby little hand. With a bit of clumsiness, he slowly pushed himself up until he was sitting on his soiled diaper.
"Uh... I'm still alive," he thought, putting his hands to his head, expecting to find blood or brain matter.
There was no blood. No fracture. He didn't even feel pain; the only real discomfort remained the black hole in his stomach. His physical stamina and toughness had automatically adjusted to ridiculous levels to withstand the impact of his newfound strength.
A sudden epiphany struck his adult mind. He looked at his small, undamaged hands and then looked up at the ceiling.
"Don't tell me... That dream..."
The kneeling figures revering his arrival. The moon goddess of unreal beauty on the quartz throne. The chant promising him a new life. It all made sense. It wasn't just a hallucination brought on by the post-traumatic stress of death.
A gigantic, somewhat deranged, and utterly disturbing grin spread from ear to ear on the face of a grimy baby.
"If what I'm thinking is real... then... I'm a damn pocket monster. I have a broken power. Goodbye, generic isekai, hello easy mode."
He let out a long, heavy sigh of relief, feeling the adrenaline rush through his veins. He had an absurd advantage, a power hidden in his own eyes. He squeezed his eyelids shut, instinctively searching for that unnatural connection he had just awakened, delving into his soul to flip the switch.
He concentrated, deliberately guiding that strange, warm energy into his pupils this time. When he opened them again, the crimson red of destruction was gone. Now, his irises glowed in the darkness with a hypnotic, brilliant, and mysterious purple.
He visualized a half-empty water bottle resting on a stack of old magazines on a nearby piece of furniture, a few feet away. He raised his tiny hand toward the object, extending his chubby fingers.
The bottle vibrated above the magazines. Then, completely defying the law of gravity, it began to rise into the air. It floated slowly toward him, crossing the room guided solely by his telekinetic will.
The young man was ecstatic. His smile grew so wide that his childish cheeks almost hurt. Magic! Mental powers! Survival assured! He was going to summon the water, quench his thirst, and then use that same bottle to whack his useless parents over the head until they woke up and cleaned him up.
However, right at the peak of his divine excitement, a sharp, mundane hunger pang shot through his stomach with such force that it brought a tear to his eye, breaking his fragile concentration for a mere millisecond.
The purple aura in his eyes flickered. The plastic bottle lost its invisible support in midair, tilted sharply downward, and crashed to the floor like a stone. The cap, carelessly placed by his drunken father, flew off upon impact, and the water spilled out, soaking the dirty carpet just inches from his face.
The baby stared at the useless puddle in complete silence, a couple of drops of water splattering his nose. His bright purple eyes slowly dimmed, losing their connection and reverting to their usual dull brown.
He slumped back onto the cold wooden floor, sighing heavily as his stomach growled again.
"...Damn. This isn't going to be easy."
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Data Board:
Ability: Celestial Eyes
Active Abilities:
CELESTIAL IRIS:Celestial Eyes tint the irises of the eyes with different colors, each granting specific abilities. When using their maximum power, the user's hair color also changes, marking their peak power state:
Red: Specialized for combat, it increases the user's strength, stamina, energy, toughness, and speed up to a certain limit, depending on their condition.
Purple: This color grants the ability of telekinesis.
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Well, I apologize for my absence, but I've been busy, not to mention addicted, to my other fanfic. Anyway, here's the chapter, and yes, the MC is overpowered, but I won't have him solve everything. With that said, see you in the next chapter. See you.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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