The transition was not a glorious ascension. It was a drowning.
The soul known as Asura, the Blood Sovereign—he who had sat upon a throne of ten thousand fused vertebrae, he whose slightest exhale could wither entire forests—was being squeezed through a cosmic straw.
There were no fires of the Netherrealm to greet him. There were no wailing valkyries singing of his final, glorious defeat against the Nine Celestial Sects. There was only cold, suffocating darkness. A sticky, viscous blackness that tasted of rust and regret.
Have I fallen so low?
His consciousness, vast as an ocean, was violently compressed. It felt like trying to shove a mountain into a teacup.
Then, the sensory assault began.
GASSSSSSP!
Air tore into his lungs. It wasn't clean, spiritual air. It was thick, humid, and smelled like mildew and chemical lemon cleaner.
His eyes snapped open. The light was blinding—a cheap, buzzing neon strip flickering overhead like a dying insect. It was an insult to eyes used to the soothing crimson glow of blood-magma pits.
He tried to sit up, to summon his World-Ending Aura and demand to know which lesser deity had dared to summon him.
Instead, he flopped sideways like a wet noodle. His arms were trembling twigs. His chest heaved, ribs visible through a threadbare t-shirt that smelled of nervous sweat.
"Where..." His voice cracked. It was a pathetic, reedy sound. A boy's voice. "Where is my throne?"
Asura tried to clench his fist. He looked down at the hand responding sluggishly to his command. It was pale, sickly, with wrists so thin he could snap them with two fingers. The knuckles were white, not from power, but from fear.
He was in a room the size of a closet. Peeling beige wallpaper curled at the corners. Stacks of cheap textbooks titled Dungeon Survival Basics and Mana Theory for Dummies leaned precariously against a particle-board desk. An empty, orange prescription bottle sat on the nightstand, its cap off.
A vessel, Asura realized, the reality settling over him like a suffocating blanket. My physical form was destroyed. My soul... migrated.
Suddenly, a searing white pain lanced through his skull. It felt like a railroad spike being driven into his frontal lobe.
"ARGH!"
He clutched his head, teeth gritted, as a deluge of foreign memories assaulted his mind. They weren't his glorious battles. They were pathetic, gray memories of a life lived in fear.
My name is Jacob Vance.
Eighteen years old.
Father died in the Second Dungeon Break. Mother works at the slime processing plant. Yesterday was the Awakening Ceremony.
The memory was so vivid it felt like Asura was reliving it. The giant crystal pedestal. The hopeful crowd. The moment Jacob placed his hand on the stone, praying for a B-Rank, maybe even an A-Rank warrior class so his mother could stop scrubbing vats of monster goo.
Then, the robotic, indifferent voice of the System announcer echoing in the stadium:
"Jacob Vance. Class Assessment: Civilian. Rank: F. Potential: Null."
The laughter of the classmates. The pitying look of the teacher. The crushing realization that in a world ruled by strength, he was officially designated as trash.
Then came the final memory. The bathroom. The stolen sleeping pills. The desire for the darkness to just make it stop.
The Demon Sovereign gasped, sweat dripping from his pale forehead as the integration finished. The boy, Jacob, was dead. His soul had shattered under the weight of mediocrity.
"Pathetic," Asura hissed, wiping cold sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. His red eyes gleamed with ancient contempt in the dim room. "You threw away your existence because a glowing rock told you you were weak? Mortal fragility is truly disgusting."
Ding!
A sharp, digital chime echoed directly inside his brain.
Hovering in the air in front of him, glowing with an irritating azure light, was a semi-transparent holographic panel.
[System Integration Complete.]
[Host Vital Signs Stabilized. Poison neutralized.]
[Welcome, Player Jacob.]
Asura stared at the interface. The "System." The omnipresent god that had descended upon this blue planet fifty years ago, turning reality into a game for its own amusement. It gave humans classes, skills, and levels to fight back against the Dungeon Gates that tore open the sky.
It was also the thing that killed the original Jacob.
He reached out a trembling finger and swiped through the holographic air.
[Status Window]
Name: Jacob Vance
Class: Civilian (F-Rank)
Level: 1
Strength: 3 (Average: 10)
Agility: 4
Stamina: 2
Mana: 0/10
Skills: None.
Asura let out a dry, rattling laugh that turned into a cough. "Strength of three? I've stepped on insects with higher stats."
He closed his eyes, attempting to perform an internal diagnostic. He tried to cycle his Qi, to locate his Dantian—the spiritual core near the stomach.
It was a disaster site. The boy's meridians—the energy highways of the body—were practically non-existent. They were withered, brittle, and clogged with the impurities of cheap, processed food and polluted city air. Trying to push mana through them would be like trying to force a river through a drinking straw. His veins would burst.
"A broken vessel," Asura sneered. "Back to zero. How... humiliating."
Click.
The sound of the front door unlocking froze him.
The Demon Sovereign's instincts flared. Ten thousand years of war had taught him that surprise visitors were assassins. His muscles, weak as they were, coiled to strike. He grabbed the empty pill bottle—a pathetic weapon, but better than nothing.
The bedroom door creaked open.
Asura prepared to lunge, to gouge out the eyes of the intruder—
But his body refused.
A wave of intense, paralyzing warmth washed over him, overriding his killing intent. His heart—Jacob's physical heart—clenched painfully in his chest.
A woman stood in the doorway.
She looked like she hadn't slept in a decade. Her hair, prematurely streaked with gray, was pulled back in a messy bun. She wore a thick, rubberized uniform smelling faintly of acidic chemicals—the uniform of a low-level dungeon cleaner. Her face was a road map of worry lines, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.
She was holding a plastic grocery bag containing a loaf of bread and a carton of eggs—the cheapest protein available.
When she saw Jacob sitting up on the bed, pale as a ghost but alive, the bag slipped from her numb fingers. It hit the floor with a dull thud. Eggs cracked, yellow yolks oozing onto the cheap linoleum.
"Jacob?" Her voice was a strangled whisper, thick with terrifying hope. "You're awake?"
She didn't know about the pills. The memories clarified it instantly: she thought he had collapsed from despair, from the shock of the F-Rank diagnosis. She had left him to sleep it off while she worked a double shift.
Asura stared at her. He should have despised this weak human woman. He was a Sovereign. He needed no mother.
But the residual emotions of the dead boy were overwhelming. This woman, Elena, was the only reason Jacob hadn't starved years ago. She sold her own blood plasma to buy him school shoes. She ate leftovers at the factory so he could have fresh vegetables.
She was the anchor keeping this pathetic body alive.
Elena rushed forward, tripping over the spilled eggs, and fell to her knees by the bed. Her rough hands, chapped from harsh cleaners, cupped his face. They were warm.
"Oh god, Jacob. I was so scared." Tears spilled down her cheeks. "I thought... when you didn't wake up this morning... I thought the shock..."
Asura found his internal monologue warring with his physical actions.
Do not touch me, mortal woman! his mind roared.
But his body leaned into her touch. It craved the comfort.
"I'm... I'm okay," he forced the words out. His voice felt alien.
Elena let out a shuddering sob and pulled him into a fierce hug. She smelled of industrial soap and exhaustion.
"Listen to me," she whispered fiercely into his shoulder. "Forget the F-Rank. Forget the Hunters. I don't care if you're a 'Civilian.' You're alive. I'll work triple shifts if I have to. We will survive this. You just have to stay alive for me. Promise me, Jacob."
Asura looked over her trembling shoulder at the peeling wallpaper.
He felt the pathetic weakness of his own arms. He felt the hollow ache of hunger in his gut. He looked at this woman, sacrificing her life force just to keep this useless vessel running for another day.
A strange sensation bubbled up inside the Demon Sovereign. It wasn't affection. It was debt.
He had taken this body. He was now responsible for its burdens.
"You won't have to work triple shifts," Jacob said. His voice was quiet, but for the first time, it held a sliver of the steely resonance of the Blood Sovereign.
Elena pulled back, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, offering him a watery, brave smile. "Hush now. I broke the eggs. I'm a mess. Let me... let me salvage what I can and make you something to eat."
She bustled out to the tiny kitchenette, radiating a desperate need to be useful.
Jacob slowly stood up. His legs wobbled dangerously, but he forced them to hold. He walked to the small, grimy window and looked out.
They lived in Sector 8—the slums surrounding the glorious Hunter City. Outside was a dense cluster of decaying apartment blocks and neon pawn shop signs.
But high above the squalor, dominating the night sky, was a massive, swirling vortex of purple and black energy.
A Dungeon Gate. An S-Rank Hazard Zone that had appeared five years ago, looming over the city like a god of destruction.
The humans were terrified of it. They called it the "Void Maw."
Jacob stared up at the swirling energy. His eyes narrowed.
He recognized the energy signature. The specific frequency of the dimensional tear.
"That's not a 'Maw'," Jacob whispered to the glass. A slow, terrifying smirk spread across his face, looking utterly unnatural on the boy's innocent features.
It was a dimensional stabilizer array. He knew, because he had built the original version four thousand years ago to guard his summer palace.
He pressed his hand against the cold glass. For a split second, his reflection in the window shifted.
The skinny, brown-haired boy vanished. In his place was a towering figure with flowing white hair, eyes glowing like coals, and complex, blood-red runic tattoos burning across his chest and neck.
The image lasted only a heartbeat, then the skinny teenager returned.
"System," Jacob said, his voice dripping with arrogant amusement.
[Yes, Player?]
"Keep your 'F-Rank' label. I'll show you what a real monster looks like soon enough."