The 'original' Rias was born with a cursed body.
Even after he managed to awaken his mana for the very first time and officially became a Bronze-rank awakener, he was still pitifully weak. A normal, unawakened commoner working in the capital's markets could lift heavier boxes and run faster than the son of the great Duke.
Because of that inherent flaw, he was constantly reprimanded. The Duke ignored him. His siblings openly mocked him. The visiting nobles whispered cruel jokes behind their fans whenever he walked into a room.
He had no friends to play with. He had no companions to share his sadness.
He simply got used to the cold, suffocating feeling of being completely alone. He got used to people looking down on him as if he were a piece of dirt stuck to the bottom of their expensive boots.
But the 'original' Rias didn't just sit still and cry. He didn't blame the world and give up.
To stop the insults, to earn just a single nod of approval from his father, he trained like a madman.
Every day and every night, he booked a secluded, dusty corner of the estate's training grounds.
He swung a heavy wooden sword that was far beyond his physical capabilities. He swung it until his palms blistered, popped, and bled over the hilt. He ran daily around the dirt track for miles. Even when his lungs burned and he collapsed into the mud, gasping desperately for air, he forced himself to stand back up. He never stopped.
Even the working maids, who had watched him grow up from a frail child, showed him pity. They would leave extra bandages by his door or look at his bruised arms with sad, teary eyes.
Rias hated that.
He absolutely hated their pity.
If they had insulted him to his face, he wouldn't have minded. Insults meant they viewed him as a person. But seeing their pity made him feel severely depressed. Pity meant they looked at him and saw a hopeless, broken animal.
His training became more brutal day after day. But the world didn't throw him a single bone. It didn't offer him a single bite of sugar while he was drowning in his own sea of bitterness.
Instead, it gave him the knights.
The elite guards who were entirely loyal to his older siblings—especially the knights serving under Lucien—found a new source of entertainment. They started forcing Rias into daily sparring matches under the disguise of "special training."
They didn't teach him. They beat him half-dead.
They used real steel against his wooden practice sword. They bruised his ribs, fractured his wrists, and mocked his footwork.
Even Duke Reinhard knew his knights were using his youngest son as a literal punching bag for their own enjoyment. But the Duke didn't stop them. He didn't say a single word. Why would the strongest man in the empire interfere to protect a mistake? Why would he protect a stain on his family name?
When Rias turned ten years old, his birthday arrived in complete silence.
No one remembered. But honestly, forgetting wasn't the painful part. The real tragedy was that even if they had remembered, they wouldn't have cared.
A few years prior, the Duke's youngest legitimate son, Kael, was born on the exact same date.
When that day came around, Kael's birthday was celebrated in the grandest way possible. The estate was decorated with floating magical lights. Nobles from across the empire brought chests of gold and rare artifacts. There was music, laughter, and an enormous feast for the legitimate heir.
But for Rias? On his birthday, he got dragged into the training yard.
The knights beat him so severely that he spent his entire birthday lying on a cold, hard hospital bed in the estate's medical wing.
He was living a life far worse than death.
Eventually, the abuse reached its peak. One afternoon, the knights beat him so hard that he didn't wake up. His frail body simply gave out. He was completely bedridden, drifting in and out of consciousness for an entire day.
No one cared if he lived or died. The estate healers did their basic, required work and immediately left him alone in the dark.
And in that dark, lonely room, the original Rias quietly passed away.
The very next morning, a completely new soul awakened inside that battered body. That person was the 'current' Rias, the author who transmigrated into his own novel, changing the destiny of the weakest piece on the board forever.
***
Rias paced back and forth across the luxurious carpet of his room. His expression was tight with stress.
It had been three full weeks since the Royal Dinner. Three weeks since Emperor Valerius had trapped him into entering the Imperial Tournament.
The tournament was now only a few days away.
He had spent the entire time locked in his room, cultivating his mana and practicing his footwork. But cultivation without a proper teacher or rare resources was an incredibly slow process.
He was still stuck at the very peak of the Silver tier. The invisible wall blocking his path to the Gold tier refused to budge.
'I need a breakthrough,' Rias thought, running a hand through his blonde hair. 'If I enter that arena at my current rank, the noble heirs are going to target me instantly. They are all trained by Imperial masters. Some of them are already in the Gold tier. I will get humiliated, or worse, killed.'
He desperately needed the System to give him a good quest. He needed a massive influx of EXP to force the bottleneck open. But the System had been completely silent for three weeks.
Just as his anxiety reached its peak, a familiar, beautiful sound echoed in his mind.
[Ding!]
Rias stopped pacing. A translucent blue screen materialized in the air right in front of him.
[Daily Quests Updated!]
Rias grinned. Finally! He eagerly read the glowing text, ready to do a thousand push-ups or run across the city if he had to.
But as his crimson eyes scanned the screen, his grin completely vanished.
[Objective 1: Squeeze your fiancée's cheeks for 5 continuous minutes.]
[Reward: 2,000 EXP, +10 Stats to all attributes, 1x Random Footwork Skill.]
[Objective 2: Slap Crown Prince Karlos across the face!]
[Reward: 5,000 EXP, +50 Stats to all attributes.]
[Objective 3: Assassinate Emperor Valerius!]
[Reward: 50,000 EXP, +100 Stats to all attributes.]
[Warning!: Failure to complete AT LEAST ONE of the above quests within 24 hours will result in a penalty.
Penalty: Demotion of 1 Major Rank!]
Rias stared at the floating blue text. He didn't blink. He completely forgot how to breathe.
"Damn it!" Rias finally exploded, throwing his hands up in the air.
"What kind of absurd garbage quests is this?! How the hell am I supposed to complete any of these?!"
He pointed an angry finger at the holographic screen.
"Every single one of these options leads straight to hell! If I try to assassinate the Emperor, his royal guards will instantly capture me, and the executioners will torture me to death for a hundred years!"
He paced furiously, his calm Overlord persona shattering under the sheer stress of the System's trolling.
"If I walk up to the Inferno Diver and slap the Crown Prince across the face, he will literally melt my arms off! He dives into volcanoes for fun!"
Rias stopped, taking a deep, panicked breath as he looked at the very first objective.
"...And if I walk up to the Blood Princess and casually squeeze Amyra's cheeks for five whole minutes..."
*Hiccup!*
Rias actually let out a stress-induced hiccup.
"...She will burn me to ash on the spot. I won't even leave a corpse behind. She already wants to murder me for just breathing the same air as her!"
He collapsed onto the edge of his massive bed, burying his face in his hands.
"Damn it," he groaned.
"And if I refuse to do them, the System will drag me all the way back down to the Bronze tier. All my hard work will be erased! What kind of sick, twisted joke is this? What's next? Are you going to generate a quest telling me to kiss her?"
The room went completely silent.
[Ding!]
Rias froze.
[System is processing the Host's thoughts...]
[The System likes the Host's idea!]
"Wait. No. Stop," Rias said out loud, his eyes widening in horror.
[Ding!]
[Additional Secret Quest Generated!]
[Objective: Kiss your fiancée on the lips.]
[Reward: 20,000 EXP, 1x God-Tier Skill.]
Rias stared at the new prompt with an absolutely shocked expression. His jaw actually dropped.
"Are you joking?" Rias whispered. "Seriously? You actually generated that?"
He was ready to scream at the blue screen again, but his eyes suddenly caught the reward section. His angry expression instantly went completely blank.
'...A God-Tier Skill?' Rias thought, his mind racing.
'Am I hallucinating? How does that rank even exist? Did I mess up my own world-building?'
In the novel he wrote, the power system was very strict and clear. The mortal realms went from Bronze, to Silver, to Gold, to Platinum, to Diamond.
Above the mortals were the legendary realms. The Saint tier. The Ascendant tier. And finally, the absolute peak of the universe: the Mythic tier.
There was absolutely no mention of a "God-Tier" anywhere in his notes or his published chapters. Was the world's ranking system wrong?
He didn't have to wait long for an answer.
[Ding!]
[The System is analyzing the Host's questions...]
[Clarification: The Host's current universe operates on a strictly limited power scale. Compared to the vastness of the Multiverse, the Host's world is considered to be one of the lowest-level dimensions in existence. Out of the known dimensions, your universe ranks around nine hundred billionth in power.]
Rias felt a cold chill run down his spine.
Nine hundred billionth?
[Even a single, average being from the higher realms of the Multiverse could wipe out your entire universe with a casual wave of their hand.]
[The 'God-Tier' classification does not belong to your world. It originates from one of the peak rank of the Multiverse. Possessing a God-Tier skill makes an individual strong enough to bend the very laws of reality and face such cosmic beings.]
Rias sat perfectly still on the edge of his bed.
The scale of the world had just shattered. He thought Duke Reinhard and Emperor Valerius were the absolute pinnacle of danger. But according to the System, they were just big fish swimming in a microscopic, muddy puddle.
[Ding!]
[Warning: Getting a God-Tier skill does not mean the Host will instantly become invincible. The Host's physical vessel is still incredibly weak. If you attempt to use a God-Tier skill with your current foundation, your body will instantly explode. In order to use the skill with its full, unsuppressed power, the Host will eventually have to ascend to the God-Tier rank yourself.]
[But in order to claim the skill, the Host first has to complete the quest...]
[...And stay alive afterward.]
The blue screens slowly faded away, leaving Rias alone in the quiet bedroom.
He stared at the empty space where the text had been.
'Of course,' Rias thought, a dry, hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. 'Even if I somehow manage to catch her off guard and complete the quest... there is a low-to-zero chance that I will remain alive after doing that. She will instantly summon her fire magic and turn this entire palace wing into a crater just to kill me.'
He fell backward onto his pillows, staring blankly at the ceiling.
'Why do I have to face these bizarre, life-threatening crises every single day?' Rias sighed deeply, throwing an arm over his eyes.
'I have to kiss the villainess to save my rank. My destiny is truly in the gutter.'