The dream was one of those that leave behind a sense of grandeur that clings to your ribs, completely devoid of the usual stupid haze 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 within the absolute void of space. Around him, hundreds of figures surrounded him in a silence that imposed an almost fanatical and suffocating respect. They did not resemble the typical horned demons or angels with dove wings; they radiated a heavy aura, the kind of presence possessed only by veteran killers, mad scholars, and kings who had watched the entire world burn and spat upon its ashes.
At the end of that assembly of hardened individuals stood a throne carved from what appeared to be solidified moonlight and gleaming quartz. And upon it rested a woman.
To say she was beautiful would be an understatement; her beauty was so ridiculously perfect that it seemed to defy the laws of physics and biology. Her slender and curvaceous figure was barely covered by a tattered blue toga that left little to the imagination. Her hair, as dark as the night sky, cascaded over her shoulders. But it was her gray eyes that left one paralyzed; eyes shedding silver tears as they looked upon him with the overwhelming warmth of a devoted mother gazing at her most cherished creation.
Suddenly, the hundreds of hooded figures knelt in unison. The echo of their joints striking the ground resounded like cosmic thunder. Then, with a single voice that made him tremble down to the deepest 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 piercing his newly formed retinas. The sterile smell of hospital alcohol and chlorine, along with the hysterical cries of other babies, drilled into his eardrums.
"What...? Where the hell am I?" thought the newborn, with an inner voice carrying the cynicism and maturity of a jaded veteran, now trapped inside a ridiculous body that weighed only a few kilograms.
He tried to organize his thoughts, but his head was chaos. His last clear memory was falling into an immense river of viscous magma in hell, moments away from burning for eternity. And now... he was in a hospital crib? He remembered nothing. Only fire, emptiness, and then that gray ceiling.
"Alright, let's recap. I fell into a sea of lava. Imminent death. And now I'm drooling in a crib. I've definitely reincarnated," he quickly deduced. "Great. Typical isekai. But... where's my status window? Where's the shiny blue interface telling me I have infinite magic? Nothing. Damn isekai scam."
He tried to move, but his limbs were useless cylinders of fat that refused to respond to his complex commands.
"At least that dream was... intense. That woman on the throne was something extraordinary. If everyone in this new world looks like that, maybe this won't be as pathetic as it seems."
His false optimism lasted exactly three seconds. A nurse with dark circles that practically reached her chin peered over the transparent plastic rails of the crib and awkwardly picked him up as if she were collecting a poorly wrapped package.
"Hey, be careful with my neck, you animal! I'm a baby, ergonomics at this age are a myth!" he complained inwardly as his head bounced comically backward before the woman finally bothered to support it.
As he was wheeled through the gray, monotonous, and depressing hospital hallways, the baby analyzed his situation. They arrived at a private room, and the nurse opened the door with her hip. There they were. His new "parents."
If the young man had expected the typical heartwarming scene of a mother crying with love and a father swearing to protect him from all harm, reality delivered a crushing blow.
The father leaned against the far wall. He wore a several-day beard, greasy hair, and an expression combining a monumental hangover with chronic resentment toward life itself. The mother, lying in the hospital bed, looked no better. She was gaunt, with smeared makeup and a tired, vacant stare.
"Here's the little one, ma'am," said the nurse, forcing a professional smile so fake it was embarrassing as she attempted to hand the crying bundle to the woman.
Instead of receiving him with open arms, the mother recoiled on the bed with such visible and visceral disgust that it looked as though she had been offered a dead rat soaked in acid.
"Leave it there," the woman snapped in a hoarse voice, pointing toward the edge of the bed. "Don't even look at me, you damn parasite. I got fired because of you."
The father snorted from his corner.
"Because of him, and because you're a useless drunk who's been drinking since noon, Rika. Great. Another damn mouth to feed in the hole we call home."
The baby stared at them both with narrowed eyes.
"Oh, wonderful. I got the premium package of human scum," he analyzed with complete indifference. Curiously, he felt no emotional pain from the rejection. After everything he had endured in purgatory, the unjustified hatred of two failures did not move him in the slightest.
"If I could raise my middle finger right now, I'd shove it into both your eyes. Idiots."
But despite his pride and cynicism, the newborn's stomach roared with undeniable biological fury. With a sigh of disgust and frustration, the mother finally grabbed him roughly, clutching him awkwardly, and shoved the bottle's nipple directly into his mouth. The little one swallowed his pride—and the formula that tasted like liquid chalk—because survival instinct dictated that hunger spared no one, not even the reincarnated.
The hospital discharge process was quick. They stepped outside, where the cold, polluted city wind struck his little face while his apathetic father carried him carelessly in his arms.
They arrived at an apartment complex that looked ready to collapse. The hallway smelled of dampness, stale tobacco, and pure misery. Upon entering, the father crossed the filthy, cluttered common room, stepping around takeout containers and empty bottles, and dropped him into a rickety crib as though throwing away a garbage bag.
The impact of his tiny back against the thin mattress knocked the air out of him.
"Be more careful, you brutes! I'm a baby, damn it!" the child complained in his mind, feeling his delicate vertebrae protest the rough treatment.
Almost immediately, without even bothering to tuck him in, his parents began screaming at one another. They argued over money, blamed each other for their miserable lives, and lamented not having gone through with an abortion. The volume of the insults was unbearable. The baby could only close his eyes and pray for patience—or temporary deafness.
Two days passed. Two damn humiliating days.
The routine became a monotonous nightmare. His parents would return from outside, scream at each other until they were hoarse, drink until they passed out, and fall asleep, leaving him completely ignored in his dusty corner. They only gave him a cold bottle whenever his crying threatened to alert the neighbors or social services.
But the worst part wasn't the constant growling of his empty stomach. It was the crude, disgusting, and inevitable reality of infant biology. A newborn's body has no control over its bowels or bladder.
Lying in the dim room, the young man stared at the water stains on the ceiling with sunken eyes.
"Damn it... I'm starving."
He tried to move his legs, but the cold, revolting dampness against his sensitive skin stopped him. A shiver of pure disgust ran down his spine.
"I can't move... I can't even go to the damn bathroom by myself. I shit myself. I pissed myself."
The smell in the crib was unbearable.
"What a miserable life... Am I really going to die like this? Starve to death, ignored by two useless alcoholics, rotting in my own filth? Pathetic. Just pathetic."
He had spent nearly the entire first day crying inconsolably, setting aside his adult pride to rely on the only basic instinct he had left: drawing attention. But now he no longer had a voice. His tiny throat was dry and sore, producing only weak hisses and pitiful whimpers. Nobody was coming. Nobody was going to pay attention to him.
That was when a spark of pure, primordial, absolute rage began to burn in his chest. He had not escaped the sea of fire in hell only to die in such an absurdly insulting manner. The very idea of perishing drowned in filth ignited a hidden and powerful mechanism deep within his being. Something in his soul—a defensive trait that vehemently rejected a death devoid of pride—activated.
"No. I don't want to die. And I certainly won't die smelling like this. I refuse."
Clenching his toothless gums with fierce determination, the baby awkwardly rolled over. The pain and exhaustion in his underdeveloped muscles were overwhelming, but he dragged his stained little body across the mattress toward the thick wooden bars of the crib. He gripped them with his chubby, trembling hands.
He tried to push them apart. It was useless. He was an undernourished baby barely a few days old.
"Move... move, damn it..." he demanded mentally, straining every fiber of his being. He was at his limit. His tiny reserve of biological strength was rapidly running out, but his stubbornness refused to yield.
And at that moment of total collapse, when everything seemed lost, something inside him short-circuited. An invisible seal that had kept the anomaly lodged within his soul dormant shattered into pieces.
Involuntarily, without knowing how or why, his dull brown eyes underwent an immediate and brutal mutation. His irises turned blood-red, bright, intense, and terrifying. It was the color of pure violence, of unleashed power.
The change was instantaneous. The weakness paralyzing him vanished like vapor under the sun. His tiny arms filled with an unusual physical strength that defied all anatomical logic. When he tried to grip the bars for support, he merely applied slight pressure.
CRACK!
The sturdy wooden rails exploded apart. They shattered into dozens of splinters and fragments as though made of wet rice paper, flying across the room.
"Huh?" was all the young man could manage in his mind, his crimson eyes wide with bewilderment.
But before he could marvel at his newfound Herculean strength, relentless physics played a cruel trick on him. Losing the support of the railing he had been leaning against, his heavy baby body, unbalanced by its enormous head, toppled forward. He fell from the crib and crashed headfirst onto the hard, filthy wooden floor of the apartment.
It was a powerful, violent impact that would have fractured the skull or broken the neck of any normal baby.
Absolute silence flooded the room.
The baby blinked. He moved one foot. Then one chubby hand. Awkwardly, he pushed himself upright until he was sitting on his dirty diaper.
"Uh... I'm still alive," he thought, bringing his hands to his head, expecting to find blood or brain matter.
There was no blood. Not a single fracture. He didn't even feel pain; the only real discomfort was the emptiness in his stomach. His physical durability and toughness had automatically adjusted themselves to absurd levels in order to withstand the impact of his new strength.
A sudden realization shook his adult mind. He looked at his tiny intact hands and then raised his gaze toward the ceiling.
"Don't tell me... That dream..."
The kneeling figures worshipping his arrival. The moon goddess of unreal beauty seated upon the quartz throne. The chant promising him a new life. It all made sense. It wasn't just a hallucination caused by the postmortem trauma of death.
A gigantic smile, somewhat disturbing and absolutely unsettling, spread from ear to ear across the face of a filthy 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 sigh of relief, feeling adrenaline course through his veins. He had an absurd advantage, a hidden power within his own eyes. He squeezed his eyelids shut, instinctively searching for that unnatural connection that had just awakened, delving into his soul to activate the switch.
He concentrated, deliberately directing that strange warm energy toward his pupils. When he opened them again, the crimson red of destruction had disappeared. Now his irises glowed in the darkness with a hypnotic, brilliant, and mysterious purple.
He visualized a half-empty water bottle resting atop a pile of old magazines on a nearby piece of furniture a few meters away. He raised his tiny hand toward the object, extending his chubby fingers.
The bottle vibrated atop the magazines. Then, completely defying 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 widened so much that his cheeks almost hurt. Magic! Mental powers! Survival guaranteed! He was going to summon the water, quench his thirst, and then use that same bottle to smack his useless parents over the head until they woke up and cleaned him.
However, at the very peak of his divine ecstasy, a sharp and mundane pang of hunger stabbed through his stomach with such force that it made him cry out, breaking his fragile concentration for barely a millisecond.
The purple aura in his eyes flickered.
The plastic bottle lost its invisible support in the air, tilted sharply downward, and crashed onto the floor like a stone. The cap, carelessly screwed on by his drunken father, shot off from the impact, and the water spilled out, soaking the filthy carpet just centimeters from his face.
The baby stared silently at the useless puddle while a few droplets splashed onto his nose. His glowing violet eyes slowly dimmed, losing the connection and returning to their usual dull brown color.
He flopped onto his back on the cold wooden floor and let out a deep sigh as his stomach began growling once more.
"...Damn it. 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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