Her empty eyes flicked from the now-pristine ceiling back to me. A tiny crease formed between her perfect brows. "Oh… I definitely sensed something there. Was it a miss?"
The words were murmured, almost to herself. She looked at her own slender fingers, turning her hand over as if checking for a flaw in her technique. Then she let out a soft sigh, a whisper of disappointment.
My mind raced. Sensed what? What had she been aiming for? Not me, clearly. Something invisible. Something she thought was clinging to the ceiling above my crib. The mysterious book-giver? The "System" itself? A spy from another house? The possibilities were a terrifying swirl.
I had to react. The reflexive dodge had been a mistake. I needed to be a baby, not a trained operative. I screwed up my face, let the adrenaline-fueled fear in my veins translate into a pathetic, open-mouthed wail. I started crying 'uwahhh uwahhh'. I need to be as careful as possible. The crying had to be my primary language, my mask.
There's no way she would kill me … right? The thought was a desperate plea. Her actions suggested otherwise, but her target hadn't been my body.
Then, the shift. Her cold, polished-stone expression melted. The emptiness in her eyes filled with a sudden, startling warmth. She clapped her hands together, a girlish gesture utterly at odds with the woman who'd just thrown a magical weapon.
"Awww, you are so cute while crying!!"
What?. What did she say?? The cognitive whiplash was so severe my cries hitched for a half-second. I was utterly shocked because of the change of her cold nature. It was like watching a sword transform into a ribbon.
Does she like babies?... It was the only explanation that fit the bizarre behavior. A dangerous, powerful woman with a disturbing soft spot for infants. A predator who found prey "cute." It was not comforting.
I have to keep crying. Uwahh Uwahhh… I redoubled my efforts, letting tears (a skill I'd perfected) stream down my cheeks.
She approached the crib, and this time her movements were gentle. She reached in and gathered me up, cradling me against her chest. Her gown was soft silk, and she smelled of frost and night-blooming flowers. She cuddles me in her arms. Her touch was careful, even tender. She rocked slightly, humming a tuneless snippet of a melody. Oh…
The intimacy was more terrifying than the throwing star. This was the true madness of the family. The seamless pivot from lethal intent to cloying affection. Which was the act? Or were both equally, horrifyingly genuine?
After a few minutes she puts me in the crib and goes. She gave me one last, fond pat on the head, her smile benign, and then drifted out of the room as silently as she'd entered.
I lay there, the echoes of my fake cries fading in the silent room. Oh, I was scared for nothing… But that was a lie I told myself to calm my racing heart. The fear had been for something far more complex than a simple attack.
But what was the thing that she attacked? She said she sensed something… is someone watching me?. I stared at the ceiling. Had there been an invisible observer all this time? The entity that provided the book? Or was it something else—a scrying spell from a rival, a monitoring charm placed by my father? Damn, what is even happening?? So many mysterious things occur around me…
The door opened again. Soon the 3rd entered. A younger woman, perhaps in her late teens. Her name was Elara. She had the same golden hair, but her demeanor was subdued. She didn't scan the room. She simply walked to the crib and looked down at me. Her expression was… neutral. Then, slowly, a small, genuine smile touched her lips. It was shy, unpracticed. She looked at me and smiled.
Ahh! Finally a member of this family who's not a lunatic!! The relief was profound. Here was someone who seemed normal, perhaps even kind. Her visit was brief. She said nothing, just smiled, reached in to gently adjust my blanket, and then left with a quiet nod to the maid. After that it was quick. The fourth, fifth, and sixth children visited in turn—a bored scholar, a preening youth, a silent warrior—each offering their own brand of perfunctory inspection. And soon it came to an end.
The routine starts over again. But it was a routine now stained with new knowledge. I was being watched, by my family and possibly by unseen forces. My training was no longer just for an abstract future threat; it was for survival in a house where even the ceiling might be an enemy. I started training regularly and faster. My growth rate was exceptionally fast. Paranoia was a potent fuel.
---
Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into months, then 2 years passed.
Time, in the unchanging bubble of the nursery, was both swift and agonizingly slow. The twin moons cycled. Seasons changed beyond the window, the silver-blue forests flushing with violet blooms, then shedding crystalline frost. I marked time by the hardening of my muscles, the expansion of my understanding.
I was 3. My body was still small, but it was dense, coordinated. The soft baby fat had given way to lean, defined muscle. I could move with a silence and precision that would astonish any Earth-born child.
Nothing much happened in those two years. It was just training and training. The visits from my siblings became rare, formal events. My father appeared only on the anniversaries of my Naming, his smile unchanged, his eyes always that brief, chilling assessment. The second sister, Lyra, never visited again, but I often felt a strange, prickling sensation on the back of my neck, as if that melted star in the ceiling was still there, watching, feeling.
I could now do 300 punches, 300 kicks, and 300 push-ups. My limits were no longer strength, but endurance and the need to conceal the full extent of my capabilities. I practiced control above all—the ability to make a punch look like a clumsy swing, to move with a toddler's gait when observed.
I had also worked on another skill. I have trained my vocal cords. In the silent hours, I would practice forming the complex syllables of the Aethelgardian language, whispering them into my pillow. I worked on tone, on pitch, moving from infantile babble to clear, deliberate articulation. I could finally speak. Not just understand, but produce.
This opened a new possibility. The one cheat, the one tool from the "isekai" template I had been desperately waiting for.
Now it's time to call the system!
In all the stories, the reincarnated one gained a status window. Stats, skills, a quantifiable measure of their progression. I had assumed my infancy, my lack of speech, had locked it away. In that time I just trained, ate and slept and repeated the same things again and again.
Hope, that treacherous thing, had nestled in my heart. The "Extreme Nightmare" would be balanced by a game-like interface. A way to see my Strength, Agility, to identify skills like [Photographic Memory] or [Body Conditioning]. To see the levels of my enemies. It would make the nightmare manageable, a grim grind instead of a blind walk through a minefield.
First, I thought because I was very young that's why the status window was not coming. I had tried, mentally, countless times. Status. Menu. Open. Interface. Nothing.
But it didn't come even though I was 3… Doubt had been creeping in, but I crushed it. The system was just waiting for the correct trigger. Verbal activation.
Is it necessary to say the word 'Status' aloud? I waited for a moment when the maid had stepped out on an errand. The room was silent, bathed in the pale dual-moonlight.
I took a breath, my small chest swelling. I spoke clearly, in the language of this world, then in Japanese from my past life for good measure.
"Status Window."
The words hung in the air. The room remained a room. No blue transparency. No soft chime. No list of attributes.
Nothing happened.
A cold trickle started in my stomach. I repeated again. "Status. Open Status. Display."
But still nothing happened.
The silence of the room became accusatory. The magnificent, empty silence of a universe that did not care about my conventions, my expectations.
Huh, why is the status window not coming?? Panic, sharp and acrid, began to rise. Isn't this something like an isekai!? I had clung to that narrative. The reincarnated hero with advantages. The game-like system.
Shit!! This is crazy. Without the status window, I cannot track my progress or view others' progress. My entire mental framework for understanding this world—as a difficult but quantifiable game—began to crack and crumble. How would I know if I was strong enough? How would I identify threats? How would I know what "level" my father was?
Isn't this because of the difficulty? The thought was a cold slap. Extreme Nightmare. Of course. In a true nightmare, there are no convenient menus. No floating numbers to tell you how doomed you are. No cheat skills granted by a benevolent goddess. The "System" from the white chamber had been just that—an administrative terminal for soul relocation. It wasn't part of the world itself. It was the installer, not the software.
Isn't this like a manga or anime! I had been a fool. A desperate, hopeful fool. I had used my knowledge of stories as a crutch, and the crutch had just snapped.
That means this is total reality! The final, devastating truth settled into my bones, heavier than any weight I'd ever lifted. This wasn't a story with rules I understood. This was a universe, with its own physics, its own politics, its own brutal, unfeeling logic. There were no tutorials. No respawns. No glowing quest markers.
I have to live without any cheat or any information about others or anything? My photographic memory, my trained body—these were not "cheats" granted by a system. They were innate traits of this body, honed by effort. They were all I had. There would be no [Appraise] skill to see my sister's level. No [Identify] to know what that black star was. No stat points to allocate on my birthday.
The sheer, naked vulnerability of it was suffocating. I had been playing a game of chess thinking I could see all the pieces, only to realize I was standing on the board myself, blindfolded, and the other players could change the rules at will.
I am doomed. The despair was a black hole, threatening to swallow the discipline I'd built over three years.
Is this what it means by extreme nightmare?
Total reality?
I stood in the middle of my luxurious prison, the beautiful, alien moonlight painting the floor. The silence wasn't just the absence of sound. It was the absence of framework.