Chapter 1: The Cold Reality

  The sound was the first thing to die.

  Beep... beep... beep...

  The rhythmic, electronic pulse of the heart monitor the soundtrack of my existence for twenty years in a sterile Tokyo hospital room faded into a chaotic static.

  Then came the cold.

  It wasn't the polite, air-conditioned chill of the ICU, regulated by thermostats and nurses with soft voices. This was a wet, biting cold that soaked straight into the marrow of the bones. It smelled different, too. Not the scent of antiseptic, latex, and rubbing alcohol, but something raw.

  Iron. Blood. Sweat. And the faint, acrid smoke of burning animal fat.

  "Push! My Lady, you must push! The head is crowning!"

  A voice. Rough. Urgent.

  I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt heavy, sealed shut by a sticky fluid. I tried to speak to ask the nurse if my vitals were dropping again, or if the experimental surgery had finally failed but only a gurgled, wet cry tore from my throat.

  ‘What is this? Did the anesthesia fail? Did I flatline?’

  Panic flared the sharp, jagged instinct of a man who had lived two very different lives, both defined by a desperate struggle against death.

  In my first life, I was Minato, a prisoner of my own biology. Born with a failing heart and lungs made of wet tissue paper, I spent my youth staring out of a window, reading manga and dreaming of running, of fighting, of simply being without pain. I died weak, regretting that I never truly lived.

  In my second life, I was thrown into the Murim. I thought it was a gift. I thought it would be a fun adventure like the stories I read.

  I was wrong.

  The Murim was a slaughterhouse. To survive, I had to discard my humanity. I clawed my way up from a nameless orphan starving in a ditch to the Heavenly Demon, the Sovereign of the Celestial Sect. I killed thousands. I burned Orthodox Sects to the ground. I became a monster so that no one could ever look down on me again.

  I had finally conquered the world. I had reached the apex.

  And now?

  "It's out! The shoulders are out!"

  I felt a rough pair of hands grab me. These weren't the gloved, gentle hands of a Japanese surgeon. They were calloused, large, and slippery with warm fluids.

  Smack!

  A stinging pain shot across my buttocks.

  "Waaah!"

  The cry escaped me before I could suppress it. The humiliation was instant. I, the man who had stared down the Ten Great Sects and the Shaolin Alliance without blinking... was screaming like a newborn piglet?

  ‘Who hit me?’ I thought, my mind racing with cold, murderous logic even as my body convulsed. ‘That angle of impact... open palm strike. Low killing intent, but high disrespect. I will remember this hand. I will break it later.’

  "It is a boy, Baron! A healthy boy!"

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  My vision finally cleared, the blurriness resolving into shapes and shadows.

  I wasn't in a hospital. I wasn't in my meditation cave atop the Demonic Peak.

  I was in a room made of rough-hewn stone and dark timber. The light came from flickering tallow candles that smelled of grease, casting long, dancing shadows on damp walls that leaked moisture.

  A woman lay on the bed, her face pale and drenched in sweat, her hair matted to her forehead. She looked exhausted, her chest heaving with every ragged breath. She was beautiful, in a fragile, tragic sort of way, but clearly malnourished.

  Standing over her was a man. He wore leather armor that looked worn at the edges not the shiny, ceremonial armor of a storybook knight, but the scratched, dull gear of a man who actually fought for a living. I could smell the distinct odor of rust oil and dried goblin blood on him.

  He didn't smile instantly. He looked at the woman first, checking her chest to ensure she was still breathing. Only after he saw her nod did he look at me.

  "He's... quiet," the man rumbled, his voice rough with fatigue. "He stopped crying already."

  The midwife, an older woman with missing teeth and a stained apron, wiped me down with a cloth that felt like sandpaper. Her eyes darted to the silver coins resting on the bedside table, her greed palpable.

  "Strong lungs, though. Look at his eyes, My Lord. He isn't looking around like a confused pup. He's... staring."

  I was staring. I was analyzing the tactical situation.

  ‘Stone walls. Primitive technology. The man has a sword at his hip a longsword, heavily used, slightly chipped near the guard. The woman is weak, barely conscious. The midwife is distracted and physically unfit. Threat level: Low. Nudity level: Concerning.’

  I tried to circulate my Qi. I reached for the Dantian the energy center near the navel.

  ‘...Nothing?’

  I pushed harder. In my past life, my Dantian was a raging ocean of Demonic Qi, enough to swallow a mountain. Here, it was dry. Barren. A desert.

  But worse than that... I couldn't feel the natural energy of the world entering me.

  ‘Wait. The pores are open. The meridians are there. Why isn't the energy flowing?’

  I concentrated, ignoring the giants looking down at me. I sensed the air.

  There was energy here. But it wasn't Qi. It was... wild. Chaotic. Vibrant. It buzzed with a chaotic frequency that irritated my senses. Mana.

  And my body was completely rejecting it. It was like trying to breathe water. My pores clamped shut against it.

  "Let's check the core," the Baron said, reaching out a calloused finger.

  A faint, wobbly blue light glowed on his fingertip. It was a pathetic display of energy control wobbly, unfocused, leaking power everywhere but it was clearly magic. He pressed it gently against my small chest.

  A moment of silence stretched in the room. Even the rain hitting the window seemed to stop.

  The blue light flickered, tried to enter my skin, and then... dissipated. It simply slid off me like water off a duck's back.

  The Baron’s face fell. The hope in his eyes died, replaced by a heavy, crushing weight. He pulled his hand back as if he had been burned.

  "Arthur?" the woman whispered weakly from the bed. "Is he...?"

  The Baron turned away, walking to the window to look out at the dark, oppressive forest beyond. His shoulders slumped, the weight of the world seemingly crashing down on his armored back.

  "He has no reaction," the Baron said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "No Core. Not even a spark. It’s a Mana Void."

  The midwife froze. She looked at me, then at the silver coins, and I saw the sneer curl on her lip.

  In this world, I realized instantly, a noble without mana was less than a peasant. A defect. A broken tool.

  "A Mana Void..." the mother whispered, tears welling in her eyes. "Oh, my poor baby. How will he survive? He... he is cursed."

  I looked at them.

  I saw the pity in the mother’s eyes. I saw the crushing disappointment in the father’s silence. I saw the midwife’s hidden disgust, as if she was holding a piece of rotting fruit.

  ‘They think I am broken,’ I thought, a cold, internal smirk forming behind my toothless mouth.

  They didn't understand.

  Mana takes up space. It clogs the veins. It makes the body dependent on the outside world. It is a crutch. If you rely on the energy of the world, you are a slave to the world.

  But my body? It was empty. It was pure. It was a blank canvas, completely free of this world's "Mana" pollution.

  In the Murim, we call this the "Primordial Physique."

  It was a body type that appeared once every thousand years. A vessel so empty, it could hold the ocean. A vessel that didn't borrow power from nature, but devoured it.

  ‘Good. Let them pity me. Let them ignore me. While you play with your little magic tricks... I will paint the Heavenly Demon Art onto this perfect canvas.’

  I took a deep breath, pulling the tiny, fading trace of "Pre-natal Essence" the energy a baby has before it is contaminated by the world into my dry Dantian.

  Life number three had begun. And this time, I started with a clean slate.

  ‘First order of business,’ I thought, my eyes drifting shut as exhaustion took over. ‘Sleep. And plan how to fire that midwife. She wiped my face with a dirty rag. Unacceptable. I will have her exiled by Tuesday.’