But alas, the dream was short. Almost at once she heard strange voices, coming from several different sources.

  The sounds were muffled, as if filtered through water. Stranger still was what she could see—her vision refused to focus. Only nearby things, no more than eight or ten inches away, appeared sharp. Everything else was blurred, and almost entirely black and white.

  And yet—one of the voices sounded familiar.

  In that instant, she remembered the goddess. And suddenly the truth struck her:

  “I’ve been reborn as a baby in a new world!”

  The voices went on, overlapping each other. But there were other sensations too—wood creaking beneath footsteps, the thick smell of straw, of blood, of sweat.

  And that familiar voice... it must be the voice of my new mother, thought Emilia, recalling various studies on how babies react to their mother's voice right after birth.

  She then began to examine her senses. To her dismay, newborns' perceptions were extremely weak, and they tired out very quickly. Emilia also started to feel exhausted, which periodically caused her to cry.

  As she struggled to explore the strange new world, pain came first—sharp then cutting. Then an older woman, gray-haired with a massive wart, wiped her carefully, wrapped her in a cloth, and passed her into the arms of a young, beautiful woman—most likely her mother.

  That woman pulled Emilia close with a tender embrace. Soon others arrived, adding more voices to the growing clamor. Emilia quickly tired of the noise, and of being passed from one pair of hands to another.

  And in that haze, for reasons she couldn’t explain, the goddess’s words returned to her:

  “Many wealthy citizens prayed to be reborn—even as peasants—in a world filled with magic, no matter how cruel.”

  “Could it be true? Does this world really have magic? And… is it truly… cruel?”

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  After things calmed down for a moment, Emilia noticed something strange—tiny blue particles drifting through the air. They glittered faintly, some darting quickly, others gliding lazily, carried along by unseen currents. They weren’t just in the air. She could see them inside objects, and even within people themselves!

  Perhaps because she came from a world without mana, her soul had a unique sensitivity to it here—especially in those first days. So it wasn’t all that surprising when, almost immediately, a strange blue box appeared before her eyes, its text looking like something straight out of Windows 98:

  “Congratulations, Emilia, you have unlocked the skill Mana Sense!

  Congratulations, Emilia, you have successfully been assimilated into the dominant human framework of this world—the Great System. If you have complaints, please direct them to any available administrator. The closest one is approximately 7,000 kilometers east-northeast.”

  For a brief instant, Emilia actually felt a strange tug—a sense of direction pointing her exactly that way. Then, another message popped up:

  “Assimilation has been sponsored by an independent third party. Due to a heightened risk of anomalies, certain skills may be modified or balanced at any time for this specific user.”

  The screens blinked out, and the voice faded. Emilia tried again and again to speak to it, but after ten minutes of effort, all she managed to figure out was how to send a kind of emotional intent that opened her personal status window:

  Name: Emilia

  Skills: Mana Sense

  “Great. I have a System—but no way to reach an administrator. And not a single explanation!” fumed the little reborn baby.

  She had been used to instant access to the internet, with helpful AI chat supports—though most of them were riddled with ads and designed more to profit than to serve. A changing world, one many people had wanted to avoid. Strangely, the thought reminded her of how critics of the goddess often quoted an ancient Chinese curse:

  “May you live in interesting times.”

  What Emilia didn’t yet know was that nearly all humans—and many other races on this planet—had access to what they called the Great System. It had been forged by a coalition of gods who rebelled against their predecessors, led by Prometheus himself.

  After centuries of brutal battles and the near destruction of the classical world, the rebels had finally triumphed, casting down their foes and sealing them deep within the depths of Tartarus.

  But gods do not perish easily. Imprisoned in the abyss, the defeated divinities have spent millennia preparing. They would one day rise again against the System.

  Prophets throughout the ages have warned of a grim day of reckoning, when the old gods would finally strike back.

  And so Emilia continued to experiment, straining to identify the mana around her and to nudge it, however slightly. But her body was frail, her strength fleeting. Exhaustion came quickly, and soon enough she sank into the heavy slumber of a newborn.