It wasn’t always that. Once, I lived in another world—one of cracked phone screens, steaming bowls of ramen at midnight, and soft voices behind paper-thin walls. I was just another nobody, floating in the lukewarm abyss of an unremarkable life. I remember the exact moment everything ended: the wet screech of tires, the hot rush of blood, the blinding glare of headlights.
Truck-kun. Classic.
Then—darkness.
But death didn’t hold me. It stretched… and bent… and broke. I woke up screaming in a sterile white room, wrapped in a cold metal crib under flickering lights. Fluorescent tubes buzzed like insects overhead. My new lungs burned, and a nurse in a pale green uniform flinched as I wailed.
I had been reborn. Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally. Reincarnated, just like in those light novels I used to binge.
The new body I inhabited was—strange.
Delicate. Smooth. Ethereal, even. Like porcelain carved by the obsessive hand of a god with too much time. Hair like drifting snow, eyes the color of crushed violets under moonlight.
They named me Kaede here, too.
By chance? Destiny? Cosmic laziness? I don’t know.
I had no parents. I saw them once—just once—through the plastic screen of the nursery. A woman in a hospital gown. A man with bloodshot eyes. They looked at me as if I were a bug in a jar, something wrong, alien. I remember the shiver in the man’s jaw before he turned away.
They left.
No names. No final words. No warmth. Just the cold emptiness of rejection before I’d even learned to walk.
They abandoned me.
I grew up in a crumbling orphanage at the edge of what people still called "the city," though nature was already retaking it. Broken glass was being swallowed by vines. Mushrooms with unnatural hues pulsed in the cracks of pavement. The sky turned odd colors at dusk—too purple, too green.
The other children called me a ghost.
Not because I was pale or soft-spoken. Not just that. They sensed something was wrong. Off.
I was wrong.
I remember the day it began to show.
I was six, watching one of the older boys, Vance, try to chop firewood. His axe kept bouncing off the thick log, barely denting it. The handle slipped in his sweaty hands.
I watched, and thought: I could do that. Easily.
Something inside me… clicked.
It felt like blinking. Like remembering something obvious.
I picked up a stick—just a brittle, barkless branch—and held it like a blade. Then I whispered under my breath:
“10,000x sword experience.”
My body flooded with heat. Knowledge that wasn’t mine screamed through my nerves. My stance shifted automatically. My fingers adjusted grip like I had been taught by ancient masters. Muscles I'd never used before coiled, timed perfectly.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I slashed the branch forward.
The air cracked.
The stick sliced cleanly through the log.
Vance dropped the axe. His mouth hung open.
So did mine.
From that day forward, I understood: I wasn’t normal.
I wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
There was a System inside me. Not the typical kind from games or cultivation novels. There were no screens, no level-ups, no quests. Just a voice—my voice—whispering truths.
Every concept, every talent, every attribute... I could multiply it.
Comprehension. Speed. Charm. Mana. Swordsmanship. Cooking. Agility. Healing.
As long as I understood the essence of what I wanted, I could whisper it. Ten thousand times better. Ten thousand times deeper.
I tested it in secret.
One night I whispered, “10,000x comprehension.” The world snapped into clarity. Suddenly, every book in the orphanage made sense. I could see through grammar, logic, math like I was unzipping a corpse and seeing how the organs fit.
Another time I whispered, “10,000x stealth.”
I walked straight past the matron's room while she was awake. I moved so silently I could hear her heartbeat from the hallway, but she never noticed me.
I began to change.
Not just in ability—physically.
My body became… refined. Ethereal. The mirror showed something that didn't quite match anyone in the world. Neither masculine nor feminine. Just—beautiful. Strange. Timeless.
The children hated me for it. Or feared me. Some cried when I entered the room.
Some tried to hurt me.
They couldn’t.
Not anymore.
I remember the first time someone tried to stab me.
Nico, one of the older boys, came at me with a shard of glass. His eyes were wild, desperate. I didn’t flinch. I simply whispered, “10,000x reflexes.”
The moment froze.
I saw everything. The tremble in his elbow. The misalignment in his step. The moment the glass caught the light. I didn’t dodge. I didn’t move.
I caught the shard between two fingers.
He screamed.
I let him go.
After that, no one came near me.
The world outside grew stranger with each year.
Adults vanished.
Cities emptied.
The sky sometimes blinked. Clouds formed in shapes that should not exist—squares, spirals, screaming mouths. The trees developed bioluminescence. Sometimes, at night, they whispered to each other.
Radiation, they said. Mutation. Fallout. But those were just words—scraps from the old world. No one really knew.
We weren’t on Earth anymore. Not really.
Something new was being born in its place.
When I turned ten, the orphanage was closed.
Too few adults left to care. The remaining children were dumped in automated shelters, weird bunkers with humming lights and nutrient paste dispensers. I left within a week. I couldn’t stand it.
I wandered.
The cities were dead.
The wilderness… was awakening.
Creatures emerged that defied logic—giant candy beasts, talking mushrooms, trees with eyes. But they didn’t attack me. Not often. Some watched me with vague curiosity, as though they sensed something ancient in me. Something chosen.
And I walked.
Every day, I trained. I whispered.
“10,000x stamina.”
“10,000x martial insight.”
“10,000x survival instinct.”
“10,000x mana perception.”
Until I could walk for days without tiring. Until I could sense ambient magic in the air. Until I could taste danger in the soil, hear lies in a heartbeat.
I became something more than human.
Something else.
Something… inevitable.
Sometimes I stood before a lake and stared at my reflection.
That face. Too perfect. Too soft. Violet eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight. Pale lips curved in a tired smile that rarely reached my eyes.
I didn’t know if I still counted as a boy. But I liked what I saw.
I liked me.
And that terrified me.
Because if I was a god now…
Why did I still feel so hollow?
Why did I still dream of that hospital crib?
Why did I still wake up sweating, hearing the sob of that man who couldn’t look at me?
I built a shelter in the ruins of an old museum, deep in a forest no map recorded. Statues and exhibits lay shattered around me. I slept beneath the broken wings of a giant sculpture—an angel that had lost its head.
Every night, I felt the pull.
Something deep in the world—older than war, older than magic—was rising. Magic wasn't being rediscovered. It was being reborn.
The Mushroom War had scorched the Earth, but in the ashes, something other had taken root.
Something that wanted me.
I didn’t know why. Not yet.
But I would find out.
My name is Kaede.
And I am not a hero.
I’m not here to save the world.
I was abandoned by it.
So I’ll reshape it.
10,000 times better.
Or worse.
We’ll see.
[End of Chapter 1]