Ceres’s reputation in this household was apparently even worse than he had managed to piece together from the boy’s scattered memories.
He cleared his throat, suppressing a dry laugh.
“A paper towel?” Asterius repeated, raising an eyebrow.
“Is that what you thought of me?”
“Yes!” she said frankly, gesturing wildly toward his broad chest and posture.
“You were pale, fragile, and you looked like you’d disintegrate if you got caught in the rain!
Now your skin actually has color, your arms are almost twice the size they were last month, and you’re sitting there looking like…
I don’t know, like some retired martial master who just woke up from a nap!
What did you do?
Did you steal Mom’s saving money and buy illegal black-market strength steroids?”
Asterius chuckled, the sound deep and dry.
“I assure you, no illegal substances were involved.
And I certainly didn’t touch Mom’s savings.”
“Then what is this?” she demanded, her sharp senses refusing to let the matter drop.
Asterius looked at her with genuine, quiet appreciation.
Ceres’s sister possessed an extraordinary level of sharp intuition and raw, unpolished talent.
Her potential far eclipsed what the original owner of this body had been born with.
It made sense that her senses were keen enough to pick up on his physical evolution, even if she couldn’t possibly guess the truth of his reincarnation.
“I’ve just been training properly,” Asterius said softly, his dry smile settling into a calm, steady expression.
“And spending actual time out in the wilderness changes a person.
You grow up fast when you realize how quickly things can end.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, suspicion lingering, but the sheer weight of his presence couldn’t be denied.
He didn’t just *look* physically stronger—he carried the faint, unmistakable aura of someone who had walked through real danger, looked death in the eye, and walked away unscathed.
Asterius’s smile faded completely, replaced by a grave, quiet seriousness.
He looked at his younger sister, recognizing the ambition burning behind her sharp eyes.
With her impressive talent and rapid progress through the Body Building stages, it wouldn’t be long before she, too, began looking toward the mystical planes, eager to test her limits and seek the fortune and status that came with hunting magical beasts.
“Listen to me carefully,” Asterius said.
His voice dropped an octave, carrying an underlying resonance of authority that made his sister’s banter freeze in her throat.
She instinctively straightened her back, caught off guard by the sheer weight of his tone.
“You’re growing strong, and your talent is undeniable,” he continued, holding her gaze firmly.
“Breaking through to the Fifth Stage at your age is something to be proud of.
But do not let quick progress make you arrogant.
The mystical planes…
they aren’t a game.
They aren’t like the VR pods upstairs where you hit a button, reset your stats, and laugh off a mistake.”
“It is a world where human technology is stripped away from you,” Asterius said, his voice crisp and measured.
“The moment you step through a teleporter into those planes, your electrical devices are dead.
Your firearms, your nuclear tech, your emergency distress beacons—none of it works.
You are left with cold weapons, your own body, and whatever martial arts you’ve managed to forge into your muscle memory.”
He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees.
“Out there, the creatures are categorized from ordinary to extraordinary, rare, epic, and unique.
Even an ordinary beast in the wild doesn’t play by the rules of a training dummy.
They don’t tire, they don’t feel pity, and they will tear you to pieces for a fraction of an essence point.
You can spend an entire day hunting devouring beasts, feeling like a genius warrior, only to make one minor misstep in the brush and end up as food before you even hear the monotonous voice in your head telling you what killed you.”
He paused, letting the heavy weight of his words settle into the room.
The ambient hum of the television felt distant and irrelevant now.
“And the monsters aren’t even the most dangerous thing in those planes,” Asterius added, a darker, colder edge entering his voice—a remnant of a former life spent watching alliances crumble over power.
“When a high-grade beast falls, or when a rare soul armament manifests, the most lethal threat isn’t the dying monster bleeding out on the grass.
It’s the human standing right beside you.
Out there, without laws, surveillance, or technology to keep people in check, ambition makes humans far more monstrous than any beast born in the wilderness.”
His sister stared at him in complete silence.
The sarcastic, nonchalant teenage girl was entirely gone.
In her place sat a young martial artist who was listening to a lesson that sounded less like advice from an older brother and more like a warning carved into stone by someone who had survived the end of the world.
She swallowed hard, her mind racing as she tried to reconcile the fragile, quiet brother she had grown up with, with the imposing, icy figure sitting across from her right now.
Asterius held her gaze for a few seconds longer, ensuring the lesson had taken root in her mind.
Then, like ice melting under a warm sun, the heavy, suffocating aura surrounding him vanished in an instant.
He leaned back comfortably against the couch cushions, the grave warrior expression melting back into a relaxed, slightly amused grin.
He rubbed his stomach, which let out a loud, timely rumble.
“Anyway,” Asterius said with a bright chuckle, breaking the tension into pieces.
“That’s my deep, profound wisdom for the day.
Now, address the far more urgent crisis at hand: since Mom is at the restaurant holding down the family economy, what are we doing for dinner?
Because if it relies on my cooking, we’re going to experience a life-threatening danger right here in the kitchen.”
His sister blinked once.
Then twice.
She took a long, deep breath to process the absurdly rapid shift from terrifying, existential wilderness warnings back to mundane domestic house problems.
A small, quiet huff escaped her nose, and a faint smirk slowly returned to her lips, though her eyes still held a new level of respect as she picked up the TV remote from the coffee table.
“You’re paying for takeout,” she said flatly, turning her attention back to the screen, though her shoulders were distinctly less tense than before.
“And don’t think you’re getting out of explaining how you built all that muscle without me noticing, paper towel.”
The world outside might be full of deadly mystical planes, cutthroat martial artists, and brutal beast hierarchies, but for now, navigating dinner with his sharp-tongued sister was a battle he was more than happy to enjoy.
“So, what are we ordering?” Asterius asked, pulling out his smartphone to check his digital wallet, making a mental note to check his remaining funds from Ceres’s sparse savings and the credits he won from those arrogant so called martial arts experts after beating them up.
“Spicy beef noodles from the shop down the street,” she replied without missing a beat, clearly having had her order pre-planned the moment she realized their mother wasn’t cooking tonight.
“And extra fried dumplings.
Since you’re suddenly a ‘changed man’ with unlimited energy, you can afford to feed your genius sister.”
“Genius sister, huh?” Asterius raised an eyebrow, scrolling through the delivery app.
“Fair enough,” Asterius admitted with a dry smile, placing the order and tossing the phone onto the cushion beside him.
“The noodles will be here in twenty minutes.”
He looked back toward the quiet kitchen, the warm atmosphere of the house sinking in.
In his past life, Asterius had known grand halls, ancient sects, and high-stakes battles that decided the fate of territories, but he had rarely known quiet moments like this—sitting in a simple room, exchanging dry banter with family.
Ceres’s life might have been mediocre and filled with struggle, but it possessed a quiet peace that Asterius found himself wanting to protect.
“Hey, Ceres,” his sister spoke up after a moment, her voice dropping its sarcastic edge, turning surprisingly quiet.
“Yeah?”
“You’re really going back out there, aren’t you?
To the planes.”
Asterius looked at her.
Her gaze was still fixed on the TV, but her fingers were lightly pinching the fabric of her oversized hoodie.
“I am,” Asterius replied honestly.
“The Star Origin Fort is just the beginning.
If I want to get stronger—if I want to build a foundation that actually matters—I can’t stay within the safe zones.”
She was quiet for a long second, processing his answer.
“Just…
don’t be stupid,” she said softly, turning her head to give him a brief, serious look.
“You might look a little less like a paper towel now, but you’re still my brother.
If you go and get yourself eaten by some ugly monster because you got arrogant, I’ll never forgive you.”
Asterius’s expression softened into a genuine, warm smile.
He nodded slowly, acknowledging the unspoken care behind her blunt words.
“Understood,” Asterius said softly.
“I have no intention of dying twice.”
She raised an eyebrow at the strange phrasing—*dying twice*—but before she could question it, the doorbell chimed, signaling the arrival of their dinner.
“Food’s here,” Asterius said, standing up smoothly from the couch with a fluid agility that didn’t go unnoticed by his sister.
“Let’s eat before you collapse from Fifth Stage starvation.”
“I’m a growing martial artist,” she retorted, scrambling off the sofa.
“I require sustenance.”
As they set the table together in the dimming light of the evening, Asterius felt a rare sense of deep contentment.
The road ahead of him in this new life would undoubtedly be paved with blood, dangerous mystical realms, and fierce competition, but standing here in this small house, he knew exactly what he was fighting for.