Aiden lay flat on his back, staring at nothing.
His eyes were open, but his thoughts felt scraped raw-like someone had reached inside his skull and wiped it clean with frostbitten hands. No panic. No clarity. Just a hollow, ringing quiet that swallowed even the echo of his own breathing.
He exhaled slowly.
Even in this world… I'm still the same.
A beat passed in the dark.
No. Not the same.
Heavier.
The silence in the chamber pressed down on him. The ceiling arched high above, carved with constellations that shifted faintly as if the room itself breathed with the cosmos. Beyond the vast windows was not sky - but space.
Endless. Depthless. Starless in places, glittering in others. A void so complete it erased any sense of day or night.
Right.
The system.
Show me what level I am.
The thought formed with sharp intent.
A sky-blue translucent panel materialized before him, humming softly as if tuned to the frequency of his soul. It hovered midair-dim, dignified, absolute.
|| 🖥 SYSTEM STATUS INTERFACE
[SYSTEM STATUS:] ACTIVE / TRANSCENDENT ||
[NAME:] Aiden Cromwell
[TITLE:] Emperor of the Cromwell Dominion
[LEVEL:] 69 - SSS Tier Supreme
[NOTE:] Skills, domains, and talents ranked A–Z. A = lowest. Z = highest.
The display showed only a fraction of his full status. No skill list. No bloodlines. Just the surface.
A preview.
Aiden blinked.
Then a quiet laugh slipped from him.
"Holy shit.!!"
His lips curved into a crooked grin.
"I'm that overpowered?.."
The titles alone sounded mythic. Emperor. Dominion. Transcendent. Words that belonged in legends told across dying galaxies.
"No wonder I survived those upper-realm…"
The grin faded as quickly as it came.
The weight of it settled in.
"But this is… exhausting."
He turned his head slightly into the pillow, eyes tracing the faint cosmic glow from the windows.
Where do I even start?
I'm an emperor. A world lord. My territories are being invaded. Enemies move across space like wolves circling a throne. And I don't even know where the edges of my empire begin or end.
The thoughts accelerated.
I'll let Charles manage the empire for now.
I need to enter the game.
A hundred worlds conquered there. Creatures erased from existence before they were ever given names. Civilizations reduced to ash.
A pause.
That wasn't my work.
That was the previous Aiden.
His jaw tightened.
But I'm Aiden now.
Our souls fused.
He could feel it - like two oceans colliding beneath the surface of his mind. Memories not his own surfaced in fragments. Wars fought in dimensions he didn't remember entering. Betrayals he didn't emotionally recall, yet somehow understood. Techniques his body knew instinctively but his consciousness had never practiced.
The synchronization is still ongoing…
And when it finishes A faint, dangerous smile touched his lips.
Two bloodlines. A transcendent physique. SSS-tier talents.
Everything will evolve.
He shut his eyes.
I'm literally becoming more overpowered as time passes.
A breathless chuckle escaped him.
"This is insane…"
Plans. Responsibilities. War fronts. Political unrest. The mysterious game realm. Bloodlines waiting to awaken. Territories to reclaim. Enemies who dared trespass.
The pressure inside his mind coiled tighter and tighter - Until exhaustion swallowed him whole.
And without realizing it - He fell asleep.
"..."
When Aiden woke up, the room was darker.
Not night.
Not day.
Just space.
An endless void beyond the windows. No sun. No moon. No horizon to measure time against. It made the concept of hours feel meaningless.
He stared at it, momentarily disoriented.
Knock. Knock.
His head turned.
A calm voice came from beyond the door.
"Your Majesty, your dinner has been prepared."
He blinked, grounding himself.
"Oh… right."
Titles. Servants. Authority.
All of it still felt like clothing that didn't quite fit.
"Wait outside. I'll come in a few minutes."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
He rose from the bed. The floor beneath his feet shimmered faintly, reacting to his presence like living crystal. The chamber itself was vast - too vast. Bookshelves that stretched upward into shadow. Doors leading to unknown wings of the palace. Structures that looked both ancient and hyper-advanced, like technology woven into myth.
He didn't explore.
He wasn't ready.
The bath chamber responded to his approach, lights igniting softly. Water descended from nowhere, perfectly warm. The shower washed away more than fatigue - it dulled the lingering echo of that internal pressure.
When he finished, he stood before the wardrobe.
Row upon row of garments awaited him. Regal attire embroidered with constellations. Armor forged from unknown alloys. Robes that radiated subtle power.
He chose the simplest.
A black suit - sharp and precise. A long matching coat with clean lines. On the shoulder, a silver-white emblem shaped like a fractured star.
Calm.
Controlled.
Authority without theatrics.
When he stepped out, the attendant bowed and led the way.
The corridors seemed endless. Walls etched with history. Murals depicting wars across galaxies. Races kneeling. Armies clashing beneath shattered suns.
A slight distortion rippled in the air - And suddenly, they were elsewhere.
Teleportation.
He barely reacted.
The dining hall was enormous. A table long enough to seat a battalion stretched across polished obsidian flooring. Dishes of exotic cuisine filled its length - foods from worlds he couldn't name, prepared for him alone.
He sat.
Moments later, Charles entered.
They began to eat.
Charles spoke steadily at first, voice professional.
Reports of invaded territories. Border breaches in outer systems. Lost supply routes. Political instability among allied races. Internal factions testing the empire's strength. Casualty estimates. Strategic retreats.
Aiden listened.
Too quietly.
Then - It happened.
A shift.
Something within him leaked outward.
Not emotion.
Not quite.
An absence of warmth.
The air thickened. The lights dimmed imperceptibly. The temperature dropped - not physically, but spiritually. As if existence itself recoiled.
His eyes changed.
Still.
Frozen.
Hard.
Charles' voice trembled mid-sentence.
The fork in his hand clattered against porcelain.
A killing intent radiated from Aiden - not explosive, not dramatic. It was silent. Absolute. The kind that erased civilizations without announcing itself.
They invaded my domain.
They dared!!.
Madness flickered behind his gaze - not wild, but ancient. Territorial. Sovereign.
Charles felt it first in his spine. Then in his lungs. His knees buckled before his mind processed the command.
He fell to one knee.
Sweat drenched him instantly.
Aiden didn't notice.
He was too deep inside the rage.
He wasn't just a man.
He was the symbol of the realm. The axis of its power. The promise of protection. The embodiment of dominance.
And someone had stepped on that symbol.
Silence stretched.
Finally - Aiden exhaled.
The pressure snapped away like a severed thread.
Charles nearly collapsed completely, catching himself with trembling hands. His breathing came in ragged pulls as if he had just survived suffocation.
Aiden dragged a hand down his face.
"What the hell is happening to me…??"
He whispered it.
Not to Charles.
Not to the attendants.
To himself.
Because for the first time - He didn't know if that fury had been his.
Or the other Aiden's.
And he didn't know which one was slowly taking control.
He glanced at Charles.
Unconscious.
Aiden sighed.
He called for the attendant waiting outside.
When the man entered, he looked half-dead - pale, shaking, eyes wide with residual terror. The echo of that pressure still lingered like invisible poison in the room.
"Take care of him," Aiden said calmly.
The attendant bowed too quickly and rushed to Charles' side.
But Aiden wasn't watching.
His gaze drifted back toward the distant window, toward the endless void beyond.
Something is wrong with me.
And I don't have time to fix it.
Because emperors don't get to break.
Not when the universe is watching.
Time was a luxury he no longer possessed.
Every second he spent hesitating was another second his enemies were calculating, mobilizing, consolidating power. Wars were not won by strength alone - they were won by information.
So he returned to his chamber and went straight to the library.
He needed context.
History.
Era classification.
Cosmic structure.
Political hierarchies.
Species distribution.
Realm boundaries.
Ancient treaties.
Upper Realm doctrines.
Everything.
The library was not a room in the traditional sense. It was a sphere of layered knowledge suspended in controlled gravity. Data-crystals floated in concentric rings. When he stepped inside, they aligned to him like iron filings to a magnet.
Outside the vessel - The Cromwell flagship cut through the void.
It was not merely large.
It was continental.
Over a hundred thousand kilometers in both length and width, its structure resembled a metallic world folded inward upon itself. Entire ecosystems, military sectors, manufacturing cores, and residential civilizations existed within its layered hull.
It moved at a speed that mocked conventional physics:
Fifty light-years per hour.
Their destination was over two thousand light-years away.
Forty hours of travel.
He would not waste them.
He reached for the nearest crystal.
The moment his fingers touched it, information flooded his consciousness.
Not painfully.
Not forcefully.
Effortlessly.
One hour passed.
He absorbed thousands of years of recorded history.
The formation of the Cromwell Dominion.
The rise of bloodline-based civilizations.
The fragmentation of the Nine Grand Realms.
The Upper Realm's doctrine of "Genetic Supremacy Control."
The sealing of dangerous bloodlines to prevent cosmic imbalance.
He read about Star Domains - clusters of thousands of star systems governed under a unified spiritual authority.
He read about Reality Anchors - artifacts that stabilized laws of physics within contested space.
He read about Void Currents - natural cosmic streams that allowed ships like his to exceed light without tearing causality.
The knowledge did not feel new.
It felt remembered.
As if the previous Aiden had left a perfectly cataloged archive inside his soul, and all he was doing now was unlocking access permissions.
Vivid. Precise. Structured.
His intelligence wasn't just high.
It was transcendent-level cognitive assimilation.
He could read an entire civilization's history and immediately understand its weak points.
He could memorize stellar cartography down to gravitational anomalies without effort.
After the hour ended, he did not feel tired.
He felt calibrated.
He left the library and wandered into a chamber he had not entered before.
The walls were lined with seamless black panels. No visible technology. No controls.
He sat on a couch made of a material softer than memory itself - lightweight, cloud-like, yet supportive.
"Show me the situation outside."
The walls dissolved.
Not into screens.
Into space.
The illusion was not visual - it was environmental simulation at a quantum scale. The chamber projected a full-spectrum cosmic feed directly into his sensory field. It synchronized with external sensors positioned across the hull.
The couch disappeared from sight.
Yet he could still feel it beneath him.
He was floating in the abyss.
Not a romanticized version of space.
Not the cinematic kind.
Real space.
Endless darkness broken only by distant radiation signatures and faint stellar flares. No comforting nebula colors. No aesthetic symmetry.
Just void.
Vast.
Oppressive.
Terrifying in its indifference.
Stars flickered like dying embers in an infinite graveyard.
He stared.
And his thoughts began spiraling.
Is space infinite?
Or is infinity just a word civilizations invented to cope with scale?
Does it have an edge? A boundary membrane? A structural limit?
Was it truly born from something like the Big Bang?
He almost laughed.
Humans, on a fragile planet orbiting a mediocre star, speaking with certainty about cosmic origins.
About singularities.
About dark matter.
About gravity as if they had dissected it.
How do they know?
Were they present when the first expansion occurred?
Or are they building models from shadows and calling them truth?
But then - Here he was.
Transmigrated.
In a universe where gods walked, demons negotiated treaties, and bloodlines could rewrite physics.
In a reality where "system interfaces" quantified existence.
So who was ignorant?
The scientists bound by limited data?
Or him - who once believed such worlds were fiction?
A grin slowly formed on his face.
"This is… insane."
Excitement surged through him.
Gods.
Demons.
Extraterrestrials.
Systems.
Fate.
Protagonists. Villains. Chosen ones.
He wasn't written into this story.
He was an anomaly.
An outsider injected into a structure that assumed continuity.
That thrilled him.
But exhilaration faded quickly.
His situation was catastrophic.
The Upper Realm had declared the Cromwell bloodline a destabilizing variable.
They placed a universal bounty on the empire.
Charles, in absolute loyalty, had activated the Galaxy Artifact - a relic capable of mass-domain displacement.
Fifty entire Star Domains had been banished.
Not destroyed.
Relocated.
Folded through subspace and hidden within the capital's concealed realm.
A pocket dimension guarded by the Primordial Guardian.
A sanctuary containing over ten thousand Star Domains layered within compressed spatial matrices.
What remained behind - Was the Cromwell border station.
A fortress stationed at the outermost edge of the Dominion.
A decoy.
A shield.
A slaughter ground.
It was manned by legions whose bloodline abilities could manifest imagination into reality. Thought-to-form constructs. Summoned armies. Weaponized concepts.
Even the weakest commander could create battalions through willpower alone.
That was Cromwell blood.
He smirked faintly.
Wait for me.
I will return.
And I will repay what you did a billionfold.
Charles' voice echoed in memory.
The loyalty.
The sacrifice.
Something moved inside him.
Pride?
Instinct?
Inherited fury?
He couldn't separate his emotions from the previous Aiden's anymore.
But one fact remained undeniable:
The Cromwell birthrate was catastrophically low.
Power had a cost.
Their bloodline was so potent that reproduction frequently destabilized the offspring's genetic structure.
To prevent extinction through uncontrolled evolution, the Upper Realm and internal elders had sealed the bloodline at birth for generations.
Even his own.
And sealed - He was already SSS-tier Supreme.
What would happen if it were fully unlocked?
He clenched his fists.
Only 893 billion Cromwells remained.
Nearly 50 trillion had been exterminated.
Harvested for experimentation.
Used in gene-forging rituals.
Enslaved by war sects.
Tortured for research.
Displayed as trophies.
"Fuck…"
He drove his fist into his own temple.
"Stop repeating it."
He had already processed the data.
But his mind replayed the numbers.
Overthinking.
Recalculating casualty projections.
Imagining what those trillions of deaths looked like.
He was spiraling.
"Turn off."
The simulation collapsed.
The chamber returned to normal.
Panels. Lighting. Silence.
His breathing was uneven.
He returned to his room, drank cold water, and lay back on the bed.
Sleep resisted him at first.
His thoughts attempted to reignite.
But eventually - His consciousness sank.
Deep.
Calm.
Peaceful.
For the first time since arriving in this universe - There was no pressure.
No empire.
No bloodline.
No rage.
Just quiet.
Then…
Knock. Knock.
His eyes opened instantly.
Clear.
Focused.
The door slid open.
The attendant bowed deeply.
"My lord. We have arrived at the capital."
Aiden rose.
So fast.
Forty hours had passed.
Outside the windows, space no longer stretched infinitely. Instead, layered distortions shimmered - the boundary of the hidden realm.
A dimensional fold.
A compression field masking thousands of Star Domains inside a single concealed coordinate.
He stepped toward the corridor.
"Call Charles to dinner. Prepare breakfast. Summon the Commander, the General, and the Supreme Commander."
The attendant left without hesitation.
Aiden remained still for a moment.
His reflection stared back at him from the polished wall.
His eyes had changed.
Sharper.
Colder.
Measured.
The philosophical awe was gone.
The curiosity about the universe had quieted.
Now there was only structure.
War theory.
Retaliation planning.
Resource mobilization.
If the Upper Realm considered Cromwell a destabilizing factor - Then he would become one.
He exhaled slowly.
"I must take action now."