Ren became the village pariah. He was the "Mud-Blood," the "Crystal Breaker." Even the lowest indentured servants of the village elder sneered at him when he walked past. His siblings, once protective, now ignored him, embarrassed by his very existence.
He was six years old, trapped in a frail body, surrounded by people who saw him as less than nothing.
System. Status.
[Host Name: Shinra Ren. Age: 6. Physical Condition: Weakened by mana pressure. Active Powers: None. Available Mana: 0 (Sealed: Infinite).]
He couldn't stay. If he stayed, he would die a hoe-wielding peasant, despised by everyone. The negotiator in him knew that when the table is rigged against you, you flip the table.
"If I can't awaken my power here safely," Ren whispered to the darkness of the hut one night, listening to his family snoring, "then I have to force it awake."
He slipped out from under his thin blanket. Under his tunic, he had hidden a rusty paring knife he’d stolen from the kitchen—a pathetic weapon, barely sharp enough to cut a turnip.
He crept out of the hut into the cool night. He didn't look back. He headed straight for the forbidden treeline to the north.
There was a "Dungeon" there. The villagers called it the Goblin's Maw. It was the lowest ranking dungeon possible, an F-Rank fissure that occasionally spat out weak goblins that the village militia would easily dispatch. It was forbidden for children, a death sentence for the unawakened.
It was perfect.
It took him an hour to reach the cave entrance, a jagged tear in a rocky hillside that smelled of sulfur and rotting meat. His small heart hammered against his ribs, but his mind was cold, calculating ice.
System. Probability of survival?
[Without access to sealed powers: 0.04%.]
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I like those odds, Ren thought grimly. It means there's a chance.
He gripped the rusty knife in his sweating palm and stepped into the darkness.
The air inside was thick and humid. He couldn't see five feet in front of him. He walked for ten minutes, the silence only broken by the drip of water and his own shallow breathing.
Then, he heard a scuffle behind him. A nasty, chittering giggle.
Ren froze. He turned slowly.
Glowing yellow eyes stared back at him from the shadows. It was small, green-skinned, and holding a jagged stone club. A goblin runt. The weakest monster in existence.
And it was twice the size of Ren.
The goblin shrieked and charged.
Ren tried to dodge, but his six-year-old legs were too slow. The stone club slammed into his side, snapping ribs. He went flying, crashing into the cave wall, dropping his knife. Pain, white-hot and blinding, exploded in his chest.
He gasped for air, coughing up blood. The goblin loomed over him, raising the club for a finishing blow, drool dripping from its tusked mouth.
So this is it, Ren thought, his vision blurring. Reincarnated just to die in a cave, killed by a runt.
[CRITICAL ALERT.] The system voice blared in his skull, louder than ever before. [HOST LIFE SIGNS FAILING. EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.]
The goblin brought the club down.
[WARNING: THE SOUL IS REJECTING DEATH. SEALS ARE DESTABILIZING.]
Ren's eyes snapped open. The blue eye that the Saint would one day possess flickered with light. The red eye of the Villain sparked with embers.
[FORCED ACTIVATION: UNSEALING 0.001% OF SEAT 1: THE DEMON LORD OF PRIDE, LUCIFER.]
Time seemed to stop. The stone club was an inch from his face.
A voice that was not the System, a voice ancient with arrogance and power, whispered in Ren’s mind.
“A pathetic green rat dares to strike ME?”
Ren didn’t mean to speak. His mouth moved on its own, his childlike voice overlaid with a terrifying, resonating baritone that shook the cavern.
"Kneel."
The goblin didn't just stop. The sheer pressure of the command crushed its mind. Its eyes rolled back into its head, foam burst from its mouth, and it collapsed face-first onto the stone floor, dead before it hit the ground. It hadn't been physically touched. It had simply been ordered to cease existing by a superior being.
Ren gasped, the crushing pressure vanishing as quickly as it appeared. The red light faded from his eye. He stared at the dead goblin, then at his own small, trembling hands.
[System Alert: Emergency Unsealing Successful. Resealing initiated... Error. Seal compromised. Trickle of demonic mana detected.]
Ren dragged himself to his feet, clutching his broken ribs. The pain was excruciating, but he was alive. And he had felt it. For just a fraction of a second, he had felt the power to crack the world in half.
He looked more closely into the dungeon's darkness. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his bloodied, childlike face.
"Okay," Ren whispered. "Let's negotiate."
The Villainous Saint!
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