Room No. 128, Pineview Maternity Hospital.
Slowly, my eyes opened, and despite my blurry vision, I realized that I had once again experienced reincarnation.
There was no doubt. The memory of death was too vivid in my heart.
'Looks like... I got... another... chance...'
Yet, despite grasping this 'special' reality, I couldn't articulate my thoughts further. My body, in its infancy, was just too underdeveloped, sensitive, and weak.
No matter how absurd reincarnation was, it was biologically impossible for a newborn baby like me to recognize my parents, think about my situation, and plan for the future.
On the contrary, my thoughts were dull, as if people were forcing me to sleep, saying that it was still too much to stay awake.
'Uh...'
To put it simply, I, with the body of a newborn baby, was no different from an animal—eating, sleeping, and excreting according to instinct.
Sometimes, I tried to do something called 'thinking', but my head wouldn't follow me.
Fortunately, because I was in my second reincarnation, it only took me a few months to adapt to my new body.
Finally able to think clearly and keep my ears open, I realized that everyone around me, including my parents, was speaking English.
'My name in this life too is Lunar. Coincidence?'
I shook my head. I didn't know the answer.
Furthermore, as a baby who was always under supervision and was not exposed to much outside information, I had little knowledge of my situation.
In these few months, the most I learned was that my house was in Evergreen Town, Colorado, USA.
…
Time passed quickly, and it had already been more than a year since my rebirth in this world.
During this time, with the fragments of knowledge I gathered and pieced together, I discovered that my parents were both ordinary humans.
My mother was a supply chain manager, and my father was a chartered accountant in a guild known as Silver Fire.
The familiar term 'guild' led me to subconsciously believe that I was still in the world of Swordcraft. However, it didn't take long for me to realize the incorrectness of that assumption.
Occasionally overhearing conversations about 'Heroes,' 'Hero Academy,' 'Magic,' and 'Aura,' along with my name, Lunar, not only made me realize that this was not the world of Swordcraft, but also made me have a hunch about the identity of this world I was in.
'No! That's impossible!'
Nevertheless, because it was such an absurd possibility, I instinctively tried to deny it at first, but the notion of "what if" didn't let me ignore it.
'Information, I need more information.'
The uncertainty gnawed at my heart, prompting me to crazily start gathering information.
It didn't matter if the information came from a newspaper, magazine, or rumor; I noted down everything and finally grasped the truth.
'Reincarnated Goddess's Path to Immortality. It really is the world of your novel, Kaori.'
Lying in my crib, I gazed at the ornate blue ceiling, my scarlet eyes carrying a nostalgic gleam as I finally concluded that the world I now inhabited was none other than the setting of the novel written by my girlfriend on Earth in my first life.
However, the complex emotions were fleeting.
My eyes soon recovered their eerie calmness, and my mind raced, retrieving all the information about the novel.
'Reincarnated Goddess's Path to Immortality' was a modern fantasy web novel with a female protagonist set against the backdrop of a parallel Earth called 'Blue Pearl,' transformed by the reemergence of magic.
However, the modern fantasy settings were merely the prelude to the novel, because in later stages, I didn't know what happened to my girlfriend—she abruptly introduced a bunch of nonsense ideas, plunged the whole world into the 'Abyss,' and initiated the survival mode of humanity alongside dragons, elves, and other such races.
'Truly, a world with a bleak future.'
Nonetheless, I had not the slightest fear.
My previous world, the world of Swordcraft, was a low-level modern-fantasy world, and no matter how hard I worked, I knew it was close to impossible for me to fulfill my grand ambitions in that world.
This world, however, was different.
In this world, the power ceiling, especially in the late stage, was so high that for certain beings, destroying galaxies was as simple as a fleeting thought.
'Hahaha.'
Recalling the storyline, I couldn't help but chuckle greedily in my heart. But then I took a deep breath and calmed down as the subject of my identity in this world came to mind.
'A third-rate villain named Lunar, nicknamed Night Reaper.'
This was my current identity.
…
In the novel, on the day the character Lunar turned four years old, his family fell victim to an attack by unknown assailants. His hypocritical mother, who was in an extramarital affair with the mastermind of the incident, sold her son to a slave dealer to be with her lover.
Through the slave trader, Lunar found himself sold to a criminal organization, which was also the beginning of his descent onto a path of damnation.
Lunar would be beaten by older slaves as a punching bag to vent their anger in the morning, and in the evening, he would be subjected to inhumane torture and experiments by the researchers in white coats.
His life was a wretched existence, worse than death.
Yet he lived because he was lucky, naturally awakened his mana at the age of ten, and did not die somehow.
Nonetheless, this nightmarish life of his lasted for an entire decade until, one fateful day, the facility where he was imprisoned was accidentally destroyed because of a monster tide.
Thanks to that, he was finally able to escape out of that hell, was rescued by a team of heroes who were coincidentally hunting nearby, and was sent to a nearby treatment center.
In fact, at that juncture, if he had wanted, he could have chosen to forget the past and lead a normal life from then on because, even with below-average talent, he was much stronger than an ordinary human, and earning a decent wage wasn't a big deal for him.
Unfortunately, the haunting memories of his wretched upbringing were unforgettable. The endless anger, despair, and thirst for revenge had already bred within him a deep hatred for humanity.
His goal became their destruction, but even though his ambitions were big, reality was harsh, as he was just a malnourished teenage boy with below-average talent and no combat training or experience.
Fortunately, he possessed a rare gift—Psychokinesis, a unique characteristic that allowed him to influence or manipulate objects, events, or physical processes with his mind, devoid of any known physical interaction.
This bizarre ability was tailor-made for him, as its power was directly proportional to 'Spirit' and had nothing to do with 'Mana' or any other stat.
With Psychokinesis at his disposal, Lunar embarked on a ruthless path, assassinating and murdering countless people, founding a gang with like-minded individuals, and delving into a life of darkness.
In the process, the shadows he cast deepened, and he was nicknamed the 'Night Reaper' as his Psychokinesis silently harvested lives, akin to a reaper in the night.
Sadly, despite all his struggle, in the grand scheme of things, he was just a little villain.
Fueled by deep malice and burdened by feelings of inferiority, he clashed with the protagonist, whose life was the polar opposite of his own.
Ultimately, he met his demise with a simple swing of her sword, disappearing from the storyline.
His destiny amounted to nothing more than being a stepping stone for the protagonist.
It was such a trash and pitiful character.
'But now that character is me.'
'Why?'