𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤

❖

Let me tell you a story.

It’s a long one. Longer than I ever intended to tell. And like all long stories, it starts with something small—something that, at the time, felt like a reasonable decision under deeply questionable circumstances.

(My dear friend, it very much was not.)

When I graduated from university and landed my first job—a dubious affair involving spreadsheets and a boss who wore too much cologne—I was invited back to my old high school to give a talk. I didn’t want to do it, if I was being honest. The whole idea of droning on about my life to a bunch of bored teenagers made me queasy. But my mother called it an honour, my father called it good networking, and before I knew it—despite me calling it a colossal waste of time—there I was.

It was, I supposed, a flattering invitation—though I never shook off the feeling I was only there because they’d run out of alumni with actual accomplishments. At the time, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to talk about. “Share your experiences,” they said. Sure. Because my vast, life-altering experiences of working an entry-level job and eating instant noodles for dinner almost every night were going to blow their minds. So, I did what anyone would do—I faked it. Got up there and rattled off the things adults were supposed to say to kids. Hard work. Determination. Sticking to your goals. All the greatest hits. It was all so nauseatingly sincere I almost believed myself.

And you know what? They ate it up. Mostly. The teachers nodded and smiled like I’d cracked the code of life or something. The students? They barely noticed. One kid in the back was either asleep or dead. Honestly, I envied him.

But here’s the thing. That was before I died.

If I had to do it again, I’d have real advice to give. Life-changing advice. Like: don’t perform weird cult rituals with your friends, no matter how funny it sounds at the time. You’d think that wouldn’t need saying, but you’d be surprised. Peer pressure at 2 a.m. does terrible things to a person’s judgment. Throw in a full moon and someone’s cousin waving around a half-baked summoning spell they found on a sketchy internet forum and suddenly you’re chanting in Latin over a chalk circle in Todd’s basement.

Todd, for the record, was the kind of guy who thought everything was funny. He laughed at everything—and I mean everything. Like, when someone spilled milk at lunch in high school, Todd laughed for twenty minutes straight. I should’ve known better than to follow him into something ridiculous.

Not that I was complaining too much about how things turned out for me.

Sure, we didn’t exactly summon what we were aiming for—probably a good thing, considering we could have accidentally opened a portal to Hell and invited a few demons over for tea—but the ritual wasn’t a total bust. It gave me this miraculous second life. A chance to live again, or whatever you wanted to call it.

As for the others?

Well, I had no idea what happened to them. For all I knew, Todd and the gang were still dead—and I was pretty sure they were dead. I mean, anyone who thought they could’ve survived something as violent and fiery as the explosion we triggered with our little basement ritual had to be in some kind of denial. But unlike me, they might still be out there, floating around in the ether somewhere, just waiting for me to screw up and join them. Or maybe they were gone for good. At that point, I wasn’t sure of anything.

So no, I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s the sensible, rational thing to say. But then again, given the way I turned out, maybe recommending it wouldn’t be the worst thing either. Well, not recommending, exactly, but… maybe cautioning? A gentle nudge toward not doing it—with an asterisk.

Yeah, that sounded more reasonable.

Let’s face it: who was I to tell anyone not to take a little gamble with the universe? Even if it was accidental, I took my shot, didn’t I? And look where it got me—living a second life, of all things. Maybe they’d thank me for it later. Or maybe they’d just show up at the foot of my bed one night, gurgling their complaints about how I led them into oblivion.

Of course, none of it really matters, does it? Not beyond the empty thoughts of a man already lost to his former life. How could it? That life, those people, the whole goddamn circus—I left it all behind, and I mean literally left it behind. The world I’d known came to an end, and now, here I was, somewhere else. A new world. A new reality. A different part of the wide, chaotic omniverse, to be precise.

Yes, omniverse. Not multiverse. Because, frankly, I don’t think the Wizarding World of Harry Potter—yes, that one, I’m sure you’ve heard of it—was ever part of my original multiversal cluster.

Funny what you learn when you die, huh? Little secrets about the cosmos—answers to questions you never expected to have answered. Sure, plenty of people spend their lives pondering the big stuff—what holds it all together, what’s out there beyond what we see—but those questions always seemed too big to touch. You know, the kind of mysteries that sit in the back of your mind like a half-finished thought, too slippery to hold onto for long. And yet, there I was, handed some of the answers like they were an afterthought.

Maybe I’d write about it one day. Some absurd commentary on alternate realities and the sheer nonsense of existence. Bestseller material, obviously. I could see it already—the packed book signings, people clutching their overpriced hardcovers, leaning in with that awestruck look and asking: “How did you come up with such a brilliant idea?”

Simple. I died.

That’s all it takes, apparently.

Now, the rebirth part? That’s where things got... interesting. I didn’t first wake up in a nursery, screaming my lungs out while some doctor slapped my ass. Oh, no. I was initially reborn—or spawned, maybe—into a place of nothing. Not just any nothing, though. It was a deluxe, full-service nothingness. A five-star void. No light, no sound, no taste, no smell. No space. No time. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I had a body anymore. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. That’s how thorough this nothing was. It was black, endless, and uncomfortably intimate, like the universe had taken one long, hard look at me and decided to swallow me whole.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. Peaceful, even. No thoughts. No feelings. Just a clean, empty slate. I was suspended in a kind of timeless limbo, and I had to admit, I didn’t hate it. I’d always assumed that if the universe ever got quiet enough to hear itself think, it would just start screaming. But this? This was silence. Pure, perfect silence.

And then, just as I started to think, Hey, maybe this is it. Maybe I’ve reached enlightenment or ascended or whatever the hell comes next, the universe changed its mind.

It hit me. All of it. Everything. Everywhere. All at once.

Just like that, the serene, eternal nothingness I’d been enjoying so thoroughly decided it was bored with me. A flood of sound rushed in, ripping through the quiet like a jackhammer through fresh pavement. First came the heartbeat—mine, presumably—which thudded so loudly in my ears I was sure it was trying to escape. Then came the breathing. That was a surprise. Each breath whooshed in and out like a goddamn steam engine, and for a minute there, I thought someone else was doing it for me.

And then I realized: this wasn’t serene, and it sure as hell wasn’t eternal. I was alive. Again.

Suddenly, I could feel everything. Every single nerve in my body snapped to attention like they’d been waiting for the moment I showed up. My skin crawled with sensation—an itchy, prickling rush, where a thousand tiny spiders had all decided to throw a rave on my body at the exact same time. I could feel the weight of myself—the solid heft of my arms, the pull of my legs, the gravity dragging me down like it had something to prove. Even my lips got in on the action, pressing together as though they were trying to hold back some horrible confession.

And the smells. Oh, God, the smells. They hit me in waves, one after another, like some overachieving perfumer was trying to cram every scent in the world up my nose. First, there was metal—a sharp, tangy sort of smell that made me think of old pennies and regret. Then there was something sweet. Too sweet. As if someone had spilled an entire bottle of rosewater onto a bucket of cotton candy.

That wasn’t all, of course. There was also the distinct, unmistakable aroma of sweat. Human sweat. It slapped me across the face, and not in a good way. I thought I might pass out again, but instead, I just laid there, drowning in the stench of what I could only assume was my brand-new body struggling to keep itself together.

Everything was too much. The noise. The feeling. The smells. The absolute wetness of it all. I wanted to tell the world to slow the hell down, but when I tried to scream, all that came out was this awful, shrill noise. It sounded like a fire alarm. Or maybe a banshee. Something terrible, anyway.

And then I heard laughter.

That’s when it hit me. Not metaphorically—again, literally. A giant pair of hands grabbed me, flipping me upside down like I was a pancake that hadn’t cooked all the way through. The next thing I knew, someone smacked me on the ass.

I don’t know how much anyone really understands about being born, but let me tell you—if you’ve been sold this idea that it’s all soft lighting, angelic choirs, and some grand moment of transcendence, well, you’ve been lied to. It’s loud. It’s wet. And, I swear, there’s an absurd amount of slapping going on. I get it—maybe it’s some biological thing, making sure you can take your first breath, something like that. But would it kill someone to give a little warning first? A quick heads-up before they yank you into existence and start whacking your naked, shivering form like you’re a sauce bottle they’re trying to empty?

I wanted to tell them off, to explain, as politely as possible, that this wasn’t the kind of welcome I’d hoped for. Something along the lines of, “Hey, do you mind? I just got here!” But instead of words, what came out of me was... well, not a protest. More like a cross between a car alarm and a very angry goose. It wasn’t the kind of sound you want to lead with when you’re making a first impression.

Naturally, everyone around me laughed again.

I didn’t know what was so funny. Was it the noise? My face? The whole spectacle of me, writhing and wailing like some poorly rehearsed stage play? Whatever it was, they found it hilarious. I didn’t. In fact, if I’d had any sense of dignity left, I might’ve been embarrassed.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, dignity’s hard to come by when you’ve just been born.

Things turned fuzzy after that. The world became a swirling mess of shapes and sounds, none of it making any sense. I couldn’t keep track of what was happening, let alone why it was happening. It was all too much, too fast—a whirlwind of confusion and exhaustion and this underlying hum of panic I couldn’t quite shake.

The voices, though—those stuck with me. They weren’t clear, mind you. Not a single word registered. They could’ve been arguing about geopolitics or debating the merits of canned soup for all I knew. But there was something about the way they spoke, the rhythm of it, the gentle rise and fall of their tones, like they were trying to convince me everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, obviously—at that point, I had no idea where I was or what the hell was going on—but their voices didn’t care. They just kept murmuring, like they were in on some grand, cosmic joke I wasn’t privy to.

Then there were the hands. Warm hands. Too many of them, honestly—cradling me, passing me around, like I was some kind of prize turkey at a family dinner. It should’ve been unsettling, but it wasn’t. The hands were steady, firm, reassuring in a way I couldn’t explain. They made me feel... safe. Like I didn’t need to worry about a thing.

And the milk. God, the milk. Sweet, creamy, and just this side of cloying. Someone offered it to me, and I drank it down without a second thought. No questions. No hesitation. It was instinct—pure and simple. Hunger hit, and I answered. That was all there was to it.

Aside from that, everything else was just a blur.

Exhaustion gripped me so tightly that my body moved without my permission, like a car locked in autopilot, steering itself down a road I couldn’t see. I wasn’t thinking—didn’t need to think. I was just... there, floating through the motions, letting whatever was happening unfold around me. It wasn’t that I surrendered control exactly—it was more like my body had claimed it, slipping effortlessly into some primal rhythm, some instinct I hadn’t even known I had. It felt as though some ancient, buried part of me understood what came next: the next breath, the next blink, the next flutter of movement.

Maybe that’s what being born was—your body takes over while you catch up. You don’t have to decide anything. It just happens.

Eventually, everything began to dim. The noise softened into a dull murmur, the warmth receded like a tide drawing back to the sea, and the darkness pressed closer—slow, heavy, and impossible to resist. It didn’t so much creep in as weigh me down, smothering me with a strange, gentle finality. Sleep clung to me, dragging me under like an anchor, and I didn’t fight it. I couldn’t. My limbs felt heavy, my thoughts sluggish, and the world around me blurred into something distant and unreal.

And then, just like that, I was gone—slipping into a deep, dreamless sleep before I even realised it was happening.

From that point on, the first few days of my new life unfolded in much the same vein: a slow-motion plunge into something resembling a swamp—heavy, murky, and wholly inflexible. I existed in a kind of stupor, my tiny body—fragile, soft, squishy in all the wrong ways—pressed under the crushing weight of mere survival. Every breath was an ordeal. Every blink, a triumph. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been that exhausted. Every little movement—the intake of air, the twitching of a finger, the blinking of my eyes—felt like I was fighting against the universe and my own body just to exist. Honestly, I began to wonder if that was how it was for everyone. Maybe being reborn as a baby was just one long, painful slog of mind-numbing effort, an endless tug-of-war with the simple fact of being.

And yet, even in the midst of all that oppressive fatigue, one thing rose above it all—the gnawing, relentless hunger. It wasn’t the delicate kind you got when you missed lunch. No, it was the kind of hunger that hit with the force of a battering ram. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t considerate. When it came, it came like a freight train, demanding to be answered, as if the very act of feeding was a life-or-death matter. It clawed at me, scratched at my insides, made itself known in the loudest possible way. No delicacy. No polite tapping on the shoulder. It was an emergency broadcast, a fire drill blaring in the middle of a nap.

Then, of course, there was the other thing—the unmistakable pressure in my lower regions. My bladder. It wasn’t as urgent, not quite as dramatic, but it was no less insistent. A quiet yet unavoidable demand, nudging me with a kind of finality. A reminder that there were now rules to follow, needs to address, and I—whether I liked it or not—was bound to obey them.

Each crisis was thankfully met with its simple solution—first hunger, which was satisfied with milk; then the need to void, addressed by the inevitable process; and always, sleep, which arrived uninvited but never unwelcome. It was so straightforward, you could almost hear the ticking of an invisible clock, marking off each action like an unremarkable ritual. And once I’d attended to one, another would take its place, pushing me back into that strange half-sleep, half-conscious limbo. Truly, I was caught in a cycle—a hamster wheel of basic needs that left me with precious little room to consider anything else.

Sleep, in particular, was a relentless companion, demanding far more of my time and energy than hunger ever did. Nevertheless, like a fool trying to hold back the tide with a broom, I fought it anyway. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was some misplaced desire for agency, but I fought. I clung to wakefulness as if it were a lifeline, some stubborn act of defiance against the fact that I had no real control over anything. I tried to keep my eyes open, tried to hold onto whatever fragile illusion of control I had, but of course, it was useless.

Resistance, I soon identified, was a futile exercise. My stubbornness against sleep was akin to fighting gravity or outrun time itself—utterly pointless. Sleep, it seemed, was inevitable; It came for me, one way or another, whether I liked it or not.

So, in the end, I surrendered. I stopped pretending I had any control over what came next and just allowed the rhythm of it all to sweep me along. Once I gave in, I learned quickly that my job—if such a thing existed in this strange, new post-death world—was to simply float along with it all, to drift in and out of awareness like a tired boat adrift on an unremarkable sea. My days were little more than brief interruptions of hunger and relief, punctuated by moments of fleeting clarity. And for the most part, I didn’t mind. The simplicity of it was strangely comforting. There was something almost charming about how little I had to do, about how the world was offering me this strange gift of inertia.

The best part was that, as far as my new parents were concerned, I was exactly what I was supposed to be—a quiet, unremarkable newborn, no different from any other.

That, I decided, was the best performance I could give them. No need to reveal the truth. I could let them think I was as blissfully unaware as every other baby. Let them assume that I was just another little creature lost to the absurdity of existence. Let them believe I had no concept of how utterly ridiculous it all was. It was, I realised, a much easier life if I kept up appearances.

It was better that way, after all.

As time churned along, however, the weight of my body’s sluggishness—its fragile, defeated weakness—mercifully began to fade.

Not in some gentle, gradual easing, mind you. More like an exclamation point, hanging in the air without explanation. One moment, I was just another useless, limp sack of infant flesh, drifting aimlessly through existence. The next, BAM!—there it was: awareness and control. Real, sharp, astonishing clarity. It was as if everything before had been some kind of warm-up, a vague prelude. And now? Now the show had finally begun.

How did it happen? I couldn’t say. Was it just my body figuring out the mechanics of itself? Some inevitable milestone of growth? Maybe. But I liked to think of it as a calibration, a necessary fine-tuning of the machinery of my rebirth. Whatever the cause, something had clicked. I was no longer a passive observer in this world—I was its active participant. Something deep inside had found its rhythm. It felt like the moment you finally understood how to play a game—when the rules, that were once a blurry, nonsensical mess, suddenly made perfect sense.

Can you imagine what that felt like? Drifting along, just following the motions as if on autopilot, and then—without warning—being handed the wheel? To realise, with a shock, that you were in control now? That the world no longer spun around you mindlessly; instead, you could reach out, shape it, turn it, twist it to your liking?

It was terrifying, of course. The weight of that realisation was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. The sheer force of being undeniably alive again was staggering, overwhelming. But, then again, what choice did I have? There was no going back. This was it—the hand I’d been dealt—and I had to play it.

So, without any real choice, I did.

From memory, my first conscious act—my first successful attempt at asserting agency—was to glare at the glowing blue screens that had barged into my fragile, newborn existence without so much as a knock. Or, at least, I tried to glare. As a baby, glaring wasn’t exactly in my repertoire. What I managed was probably more of a bewildered squint than anything resembling fury, but at the time, I felt sure I’d nailed it.

The screens never so much as flickered. They hung there, smug, and impervious, just above my bassinet, radiating an air of bureaucratic authority. Even now, I can’t tell if that smugness was real or just something I projected onto them in my annoyance. Either way, they seemed perfectly content to float there, glowing faintly and waiting for me to notice them properly.

The text stared at me with a curt, almost accusatory presence. It was the kind of look that suggested I was already behind on a deadline I didn’t know existed.

──────

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE...

LOADING UPDATE VERSION: 23.7.9…

ACCESSING AVAILABLE DATABASE...

▼

Welcome, New User!

▼

— BASIC INFORMATION —

Name: Antares Orion Black

Sex: Male

Age: <1 year old

Race: Human (Variant: Magus)

▼

Level: 1

Experience: 0/3,000

Skill Points: 2

Perk Points: 1

HP: 100%

FP: 100%

Stamina: 100%

■

— ATTRIBUTE SCORES —

Strength (STR): 10

Dexterity (DEX): 10

Constitution (CON): 10

Intelligence (INT): 11

Wisdom (WIS): 11

Charisma (CHA): 10

Free Attribute Points: 2

■

— PERKS —

✧ New Perk Acquired ✧

Human Adaptability (Variant: Magus)

Racial Perk

•

Humans are famed throughout the omniverse for their extraordinary adaptability, thriving where others falter. As a Magus Variant, your innate connection to the mystical arts sets you apart, granting an enhanced understanding of magic's elusive nature.

Effects:

• Gain +1 Intelligence and +1 Wisdom.
• Earn +15% bonus Experience when training any magic-related Skill.
• Instantly acquire the «Magic Mastery» Skill, ignoring all prerequisites.

▼

✧ New Perk Acquired ✧

Reborn Soul

Player Background Perk

•

Whether by divine intervention or a quirk of fate, your soul has transcended death and been given a second chance at life. Retaining fragments of wisdom and knowledge from your previous existence, you possess an edge that sets you apart from others on their first journey.

Effects:

• Gain +2 free Attribute Points to distribute as you choose.
• Start with +1 additional Skill Point, granting an early boost to your potential.

▼

【 You have 1 unassigned Perk Point 】

■

— SKILLS —

✧ New Skill Learned ✧

Magic Mastery

Feat

Rank 1

•

Requires: 10 INT and 10 WIS

•

Magic is a force that weaves through the fabric of reality, but only those who possess both knowledge and discipline can channel its power. This foundational skill serves as the cornerstone of all magical abilities, enabling you to comprehend and manipulate reality with your will. Without this Skill, casting magic—whether Arcane, Divine, Primal, or any other discipline—remains beyond your reach.

Effects:

• Unlock the ability to learn and cast Spells across all magical disciplines.
• Enables interaction with and mastery over diverse magical systems.
• Grants a +1% bonus to all Spells per Rank in this Skill.

▼

【 You have 2 unassigned Skill Points 】

──────

I blinked back. Once. Twice. Surely the screens were just a cruel hallucination brought on by some latent trauma of my rebirth? But no. The holographic boxes didn’t waver. They just floated there, translucent, and bright, with all the patience of a Zen master waiting for me to catch up.

Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with LitRPGs or web novels could’ve pegged the blue boxes for what they were in an instant. Status Screens: the bread and butter of GameLit fiction. They were as ubiquitous as underdog protagonists, absurd power scaling, and quests that start out as simple errands and spiral into full-scale rebellions against tyrant gods. I’d spent enough hours binging novels to know their shape, their syntax, their presence. But knowing them on a screen, or a page of a book, and seeing them hover above my bassinet in real life were entirely different experiences.

They looked exactly as I’d imagined: faintly glowing, semi-transparent, packed with text that managed to look simultaneously futuristic and slightly dated. I stared, equal parts awestruck and annoyed.

Was this my System? Was I officially a statistic now? One more reincarnated soul on some cosmic spreadsheet, a tally mark on a list of the freshly transmigrated? If so, was this my cheat—the obligatory overpowered gift that turns unsuspecting office workers into world-shattering deities? Was this blue-boxed nuisance my ticket to greatness?

More pressingly, did this mean I was now an isekai protagonist?

The thought hit me like an electric jolt. Did that mean I was destined for greatness? For glory? For a harem of improbably attractive allies and an inventory bursting with ancient artifacts? Or would I be one of the duds—the reincarnations who scrape by on mediocrity before being unceremoniously eaten by a dragon in chapter two?

The possibilities were endless, and all of them were ridiculous—some even bordering on criminal. And yet, there the screens were; real, inescapable, and as intrusive as the aunt who wants to know when you’re finally getting married. I sighed—or at least made the approximation of one, which, in baby terms, probably sounded like a gurgle—and focused on the text again.

If that was the start of my new life, I knew I needed to figure out the rules. Otherwise, the screens—and whatever was behind them—would start playing by those rules without me. That wasn’t wisdom, not really. It was more like the faintest glimmer of instinct, that primal urge to understand before things went any further.

Looking back, I almost laugh at how naive I was to think that moment was inconsequential. At the time, I didn’t yet understand the stakes—or the absurdity of my own situation.