Zarek lay in the darkness, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum.
"Do it," he had said.
And the world didn't change. There were no celestial lights, no angelic choirs, no floating status window with broken stats. Just the cold silence of his room and the smell of old furs.
Great, Zarek thought, staring at the wooden ceiling. Is that it? Where is my magical transformation? In anime, this is the moment where the protagonist glows like a lightbulb and gets a ridiculous power-up. I still just feel cold and have the urge to pee.
[Request confirmed.]
Cenit's voice cut through his sarcastic thoughts like a guillotine. It had no tone, no emotion. It was the definition of absolute efficiency.
[To merge your two conflicting energy cores (Human Spiritual and Garou Demonic), it is necessary to create a customized cultivation technique. And I have no information in my database that is suitable for your unique physiology.]
Zarek blinked. Wait. Customized technique? You aren't going to give me the "Divine Art of the Dragon God" or something you found in an ancient library?
[Negative. Your body is an anomaly. It requires an anomalous solution. To create this technique, I must understand you at a fundamental level. The process will require your cooperation.]
"What... what do I have to do?" Zarek whispered, suddenly feeling like a patient about to undergo surgery without anesthesia.
[Nothing. Just observe. I will activate my primary functions.] [Cognitive Acceleration: Increases your speed of perception and thought.] [Deep Analysis: Deconstruction of unknown phenomena and objects.] [Parallel Processing: Allows me to perform complex calculations using your mind as a platform.]
Using my mind? That sounds like you're going to use my brain as an external hard drive.
[You do not have to understand it, Host. Just endure it. Initiating calculation for the "Core Harmonization Technique".] [Ready to begin?]
Zarek swallowed hard. He gripped the fur sheets with his small hands. Here comes the training arc. I hope there's no musical montage.
"Do it!"
[Initiating Cognitive Acceleration: Factor x1000.]
For an instant, the universe broke.
There was no pain at first. There was only... too much.
It was as if someone had taken the remote control of reality and pressed the "fast forward" button on the world, while his mind was stuck in high-definition "super slow motion."
Zarek saw a speck of dust fall. It took an eternity. He could see the irregularities on the surface of the dust, how it spun, how it caught a ray of nonexistent moonlight.
He could hear the creaking of the building's wood settling from the cold, but it wasn't a sound; it was a tectonic symphony.
He could smell the trail of smoke still lingering from his own ethereal fire in the courtyard, and he could distinguish what kind of wood had been burned, the age of the tree, and the direction of the wind that brought the scent.
And then, the pain arrived.
It was as if a thousand red-hot ice needles were simultaneously driven into his cerebral cortex. His six-year-old brain, biologically immature, screamed. It wasn't built to process the universe in 4K Ultra HD at a thousand frames per second.
AAAAHHH! Turn it off! My brain is going to melt! This isn't a power, it's torture!
Inside his mind, an image formed by force. It was a three-dimensional model of his own body, glowing and transparent, floating in the void of his consciousness.
There was the problem.
He could see two lights swirling in his center, just below the navel, in what cultivation novels would call the Dantian.
One was a bright blue flame, calm but stubborn (Human Spiritual Energy). The other was a storm of silver light, violent and predatory (Garou Demonic Energy).
They didn't flow. They clashed. They rammed into each other over and over like two rams on a narrow bridge, creating microscopic explosions of chaotic energy that then leaked through his pores as the famous ethereal flames.
So... that's my body. Zarek watched the civil war with horrified fascination. Basically, I'm a leaking nuclear reactor. No wonder people look at me like I'm a time bomb.
[Alert! Structural failure detected.] [The Host's current physical state (6 years old) cannot support a Cognitive Acceleration of factor x1000. Neuronal stress is critical. Risk of cerebral overload: 99%.]
Overload?! Slow it down, damn it! I don't want to be the world's most tragic transmigrator!
[Reducing factor. Cognitive Acceleration: x500.]
...It still hurts. I feel like my temples are being drilled.
[...Stress unsustainable.]
[Reducing factor. Cognitive Acceleration: x100.]
Better, but I still feel like I just downed ten liters of espresso in one go.
[...Stress unsustainable.]
[Reducing factor. Cognitive Acceleration: x20.]
The sharp pain vanished, leaving only a dull hum, like a mild hangover.
The sensation of divine omniscience faded. The world became "blurry" compared to the clarity from before, but it was still much sharper than normal. Time flowed slowly, lazily.
[Analysis: The Host can withstand this limit. Processing will be slower, but the integrity of your brain is maintained.]
Zarek let out a mental sigh. Factor x20. That's my limit.
He felt a pang of bitter self-criticism. In the novels he read in his past life, the protagonist always started with an iron will and an indestructible body. He had the will of a tired office worker and the body of a kindergartner.
My body is too weak. I need to train, urgently.
[Your body is not weak, Host. It is underdeveloped. There is a difference. Calculation continues.]
Zarek watched, fascinated, as Cenit ran millions of simulations on the 3D model of his body. He saw threads of light attempting to unite the two energies.
Simulation 1: The blue energy tried to eat the silver one. Result: Explosion.
Simulation 450: The silver energy crushed the blue one. Result: Meridian collapse.
Simulation 12,000: Trying to braid them. Result: Stagnation.
It was like watching a chess grandmaster play against himself at the speed of light.
It felt like hours of watching lights flicker and fail. Zarek felt bored. How much longer? If this were an anime, we would have already cut to the commercial break.
But in the real world, under x20 Acceleration, only a few minutes had passed.
[Calculation completed.] [Solution found.]
Zarek sat up mentally. Finally! What do we have? The War God Technique? The Lotus Heart Sutra?
[New skill created: "Core Harmonization Technique", Level 1.] [Effect: Allows the Host to safely merge his conflicting Human and Garou energies, converting them into a new neutral energy: Pure Ethereal Energy.]
A sigh of relief almost shook Zarek's small body on the bed. He had done it! He could control his flames! He could stop being the palace's accidental arsonist!
"Incredible, Cenit!" he whispered, excited. "Let's start! How do I do it? Do I sit in the lotus position under a waterfall? Do I absorb the energy of the sun and moon?"
[Negative. The "Core Harmonization Technique" is an internal fusion method.] [Due to your body's underdevelopment, your own cores are too volatile to mix on their own. They would explode. You need an external agent to buffer the reaction.] [To function, the technique requires two external components: a dense fuel and a safe biological catalyst.]
Zarek deflated. He knew there was a catch. There's always a catch. It's like those "Free to Play" games where you have to pay to advance.
"Oh. And... where do I get those? Thousand-year-old spiritual herbs? The heart of an ice dragon? Because I'm warning you, my allowance is zero gold coins."
[Searching immediate environment...] [Analysis results indicate that the fastest, safest, and most energetically dense source available to you... is the breast milk of your mother, the Sovereign Nyxia.]
The silence in Zarek's mind was absolute. Time, which was already moving slowly, seemed to stop completely.
"What?" he asked, hoping he had misheard. Maybe his reincarnation universal translator was glitching.
[The analysis is conclusive. Your mother is a Level 4 Grand Lord. Her milk is not common food; it is a concentrate of high-purity Garou vital energy, perfectly attuned to your blood. It will act as the fuel and catalyst for your Human Spiritual Energy to merge with it, rather than fighting against it.]
Zarek felt the blood rush to his face, a humiliation so deep, so visceral, that he wanted to dig a hole in the mattress and disappear.
The solution from his super-advanced system, his ultimate "Cheat Code"... was that he had to breastfeed?
Shit! This is a bad joke!
I have a mental age of thirty. I've paid taxes. I've had relationships. I've managed work teams.
And now you tell me that to save my life I have to behave like an infant!
It was the most infantilizing thing he could imagine. It was exactly what his mother had told him with that condescending smile: "you just have to eat and sleep."
Cenit was supposed to prove her wrong! It was supposed to prove that he was an independent genius, not a parasite who needed mommy!
"No!" Zarek hissed, gritting his teeth. "I refuse! Absolutely not! There has to be another way! Search for something else! Anything! I'll eat dirt if I have to!"
[There are other ways. Option B: Substitute it with elixirs created from the bile of 300-year-old Spirit Beasts. Requirements: Immense capital and a Grand Alchemist. You possess neither.] [Option C: Consume the raw core of an Ice Demon. Probability that your human side rejects the impurity and you die: 98%.] [The breast milk method is the fastest, safest, and most efficient solution, with a 100% success rate. Logic dictates that survival takes priority over social pride.] [This result is the best calculated solution, Host. Please, do not hesitate.]
Zarek lay still in the darkness. His humiliation was slowly being replaced by a cold anger. The anger of someone who knows they have lost the argument.
The universe was mocking him. It was the "Fallen Hero" trope taken to the extreme. His path to absolute power, his path to stop being seen as a baby... literally passed through being the best baby in the world.
It's the price, he thought, remembering the stories of cultivators who suffered a thousand cuts or bathed in poison to gain power. They suffered physical pain. I will suffer social shame.
If Han Xin could crawl between a thug's legs to later become a general, I can... do this.
As he lay there, trying to piece together his tattered dignity, he noticed something.
Although the Cognitive Acceleration was at x20, and the 3D model had faded, his perception hadn't returned to the boring normal from before.
He could feel something new.
He could feel Lyna's energy sleeping in the hallway, a small, warm orange flame like a fox's. He could feel the cold, metallic, latent power of Grak patrolling the outer courtyard. He could feel the flow of his own power, the two enemy lights, swirling in his stomach, awaiting the command.
Just like learning to swim, his body had remembered the instinct from the simulation. For the first time in his life, he had unlocked Spiritual Sense.
"Fine," Zarek said in the darkness, his voice trembling with a new, bitter determination. "If it's the only way... I'll do it."
He turned in bed, looking toward the window where the moon illuminated the ice.
Mother said that strong blood always wins. She's right.
But it won't be the Garou blood that wins. Nor the Human.
The one who will win... is me.