1 Prologue

"Fuck this game!"

A young man slumped in front of his computer, the room around him awash in darkness. His eyes locked onto the cracked monitor before him, its broken screen flashing a kaleidoscope of colors, but the bold letters that said 'DEFEAT' could still be seen on his screen.

Normally, he wouldn't have gotten angry over one game, considering the hundreds of hours he spent playing this dog shit game known as 'League of Legends'. 

It was a game filled with toxic players who loved to abuse others, using words so offensive that the author may be cancelled if they were written down. But who gives a fuck so here are some for example: : 'I hope your whole family burns in a hell, you dirty Ni... Neanderthal,' or another insult the young man personally experienced: '49% win rate, lol.'

Honestly, a 49% win rate wasn't bad. It was average.

What mattered was the context in which this so-called insult was said to the young man.

During a normal game of league, the young man encountered an Emerald rank player, and he was winning against him in the bot lane as ADC. This was when he was still unranked. Out of anger, the Emerald rank player started hurling insults, and '49% win rate' was one of them.

It was toxic, and a little... embarrassing.

So it goes without saying that after playing hundreds of hours of League of Legends, the young man had built a tolerance to toxic players and had also learned to defend himself at times. Of course, this was achieved by being toxic himself.

However, today was different... It was the final day of the season, and he was a single win away from achieving Challenger rank, four ranks higher than the Emerald player mentioned earlier. This was a feat he had never managed to achieve in five years of playing League of Legends, something he could brag about to his friends and make them jealous... or something they could use to make fun of him.

Of course, under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have had the leisure to chase this rank. He had school and other typical teenage activities to manage. But the pandemic had thrown the world into disarray, giving him ample time to waste.

He was so close to achieving Challenger rank, but in the last ranked game before the season ended, he encountered a troll—a big, fat, oily green troll living under a bridge and lost. He would have been okay if he had lost in the normal way, but when the jungler decided to choose Janna, a character meant primarily for support, and then chose to run it down the mid lane, it was no wonder he lost his mind.

At that moment, the young man wished the very worst upon the player controlling Janna. He wanted a Death Note to write the troll's name in it, imagining them dying in the worst possible way, such as being eaten alive by rats.

Sadly, this world wasn't an anime, and he could only let it go. 'Whatever, I'll just go to bed,' he said with a sigh.

Intent on forgetting, he planned to sleep off the anger. But when he saw an enemy player's spam message flashing across the screen—'GG EZ'—his eyes narrowed; his fist clenched. He moved without thinking. Unplugging the monitor, he lifted it and hurled it against the wall. Yet, he never anticipated that, in smashing the screen, a shard would fly back and sever his throat.

The young man held his neck, trying to stop the blood from rushing out. But it was to no avail, and soon his body lay limp on the ground, the life in his eyes disappearing.

***

"It's a boy!" The shout jerked him awake.

The young man opened his eyes and, with great difficulty, turned his head toward the voice. What greeted him was a blurry giant, which completely scared the shit out of him. 'Who are you? Where am I? What have you done to me?' he shouted frantically.

However, what came out of his mouth were the unrecognizable words of a baby.

Shocked, the young man's gaze wandered around the room in search of an answer. The hospital room was stark and sterile, with white walls and a faint antiseptic smell hanging in the air. Fluorescent lights flickered softly overhead, casting a clinical glow over the sparse furnishings—a small bedside table, a couple of chairs, and the constant beep of a heart monitor. He noticed the people around him, in their various shades of blue and white hospital attire, before struggling to look down at himself.

Another wave of emotions washed over him upon seeing his body. 'I remember getting my throat slit, but what is happening to me? I've become a baby! How is this possible?

He did not want to believe it, but he had reincarnated. 'What the fuck!' he complained, and, overwhelmed by the surprise, he lost consciousness a second later.

The next time he woke up, he had been cleaned up and was wrapped in a cozy white blanket. His new situation was still shocking and absurd to him, but at least he wasn't on the verge of fainting from shock again.

Rather, he was filled with worry, as there were still many things he was unsure of.

This situation reminded him of those run-of-the-mill reincarnation stories, and it still had him wondering if he was the main character. After all, such 'experiences' were popular tropes in novels and cartoons.

He was concerned about stories like these. It was quite common for the world to be underdeveloped and based in a medieval aristocratic society. If one were not born into royalty or nobility, life was bound to be miserable.

"It's no use thinking about this now."

What was more important for the moment was figuring out where he had reincarnated. He needed to understand the kind of world he was living in, and thanks to his surroundings, he already had an idea.

The aesthetic of the room he was in had a retro look, reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution era, mixed with modern and fantasy elements. It was beautiful and pleasing to the eye.

Unless his parents in this life were historically themed enthusiasts, it was clear to him that this world was no longer the Earth he used to know. Although he wanted to panic and scream as loud as he could, he knew now was not the time for that.

He slowly turned to the beautiful woman carrying him, a beauty who looked to be of Asian descent. She had shoulder-length black hair and sharp, luminous black eyes and above them were implausibly artistic black eyebrows, while beneath them was an elegant straight nose and syrup sweet lips.

All of these characteristics were contained within a graceful, youthful face.

He tried to decipher the foreign language she was speaking but could not understand any of it. It was a language he had never heard before.

However, from simple observation of the way she looked at him, he guessed the woman was most likely his new mother in this new life.

'Will I grow up to be handsome in the future?' he was secretly delighted with his mother's appearance, considering he had a higher chance of being good-looking in the future. This was a dream any average-looking person, such as himself, hoped to achieve in his previous life.

His first smile ever in this world found its way to his face, something that did not go unnoticed by the woman. 'Oh, you're awake,' she said softly, her voice reminiscent of an angel's. 'Darling, come! Art is awake. Look, he's smiling.'

The door to the room immediately opened the moment the woman finished speaking. A man entered, and upon seeing him for the first time, he could not help but nod in approval. Well, at least he tried to. His chubby baby head and weak neck muscles made it difficult to do anything besides turning his head.

Anyway, the man who had just walked in could only be his new father, and, just like his new mother, he was also extremely good-looking. He had cornflower blue eyes and dark blonde hair, and he possessed the kind of face that could stop you in your tracks.

"This confirms it, I'm definitely going to be handsome in the future," he said out loud, knowing his parents wouldn't understand a single word he was saying. He was right, but in turn, caused his mother and father to misunderstand him.

"Our child must be hungry," his mother said as she started to disrobe.

It was at this moment that his father said something that would leave him traumatized for the rest of his second life, 'Yeah, but save some for me later.'

He was left speechless. "…"

***

In the following days, he finally learned his name from his parents; it was Art. It was short but it sounded somewhat unique.

This was all he could gather. After all, he was in a baby's body. He had no responsibilities and couldn't move on his own. His days were filled with eating, sleeping, pooping, and the occasional baby noise or finger-grabbing routine.

This left him with all the time he needed to think about his future.

Art was determined that he had two priorities: first, he needed to gather more information about the kind of world he was living in. Second, learn their language. All babies are expected to learn their native language and have only so much time before being considered special needs, so slacking off was not an option.

So whenever he was in the presence of other people, although he did not understand the language yet, he would try to listen to their conversation. He paid close attention, trying to figure out common words or patterns.

Eventually, after a few months passed, Art was able to learn quite a lot of things, one of the most important that gave him the biggest surprise of all was the world he reincarnated in. He discovered that he had been reincarnated in Runeterra, the fantasy world of sword and magic that housed many of his favourite yet hated video game characters.

After learning this, Art was able to pinpoint where exactly he had been born.

Nestled at the heart of the continent, Piltover, which stands on the precipice of progress, was where he was born to two wealthy parents: Lilah Truefall and Zalie Truefall.

Art knew he had dodged a bullet and was grateful for this, as he had not been born in Zaun. From what he knew from the lore and the TV show known as 'Arcane,' Zaun was created as a result of the rich people of Piltover's greed. They had planned to destroy a portion of the isthmus connecting Valoran and the Southern Continent to allow safe sea passage between eastern and western Valoran.

The plan involved using thousands of chemtech bombs to crack open an area of the land so that a cavern could be created. However, the results were catastrophic. What seemed to be an accident triggered a series of earthquakes that completely destroyed the isthmus, sank large districts of Zaun along with thousands of its citizens, and released poisonous gas into the city's surviving areas.

Now, Zaun was a large undercity district lying in the deep canyons and valleys threading through Piltover. The only light that reached below was filtered through fumes leaking from the tangles of corroded pipework..

It was a place where the poor, the surviving citizens of the bombing, criminals, and inventors – those who did not want to be bound by the rules – gathered.

This resulted in the higher-ups of Piltover treating living in Zaun like trash.

The people were ignored and oppressed. Heck, from the TV show he had watched, Zaun wasn't even recognized as an independent nation. It wasn't even called Zaun and was called the undercity.

Coming from a world of peace, well, at least the part of the world he used to live in, Art sympathized with them, as no one should ever be treated like that.

However, although Art felt this way, he was no hero, and there was little chance he would go out of his way to interfere in the conflict. He would only be putting himself in harm's way, especially since he did was weak. He could barely protect himself, unlike an Iceborn who was naturally stronger than normal people, or a super-genius who could invent a powerful device to travel back in time. 

And in the first place, Art didn't even know which time period he was in. He didn't know whether he was at the stage where Zaun had gained its independence or if the uprising had occurred.

It was useless to think about any of these if he didn't know what time period he was in or what part of Piltover he was living.

Still, when Art thought about all of this, it led him to wonder: 'why wasn't I given any cheats?'

When he first woke up in this world, there was no system notification telling him 'Welcome to the world' or 'You have been chosen.' This made him think that maybe he was destined to live an ordinary life, a notion which Art refused to accept.

If he had no abilities to protect himself, how else would he be able to survive in the future?

This world was filled with many dangers, such as demonic beings who feed off people's lust and pain. After seducing their victims, they then brutally murder them in various twisted ways, usually as slowly and painfully as possible. Then there were the creatures of the Void, with a singular purpose: to usher in total oblivion across Runeterra.

He knew he would be in serious trouble if he ever encountered any of these Avengers-level threats. He was certain, a horny former teenager like him, couldn't resist Evelynn if she ever set her sights on him, and encountering Daddy Cho'Gath, who was the size of a mountain, if not bigger, meant certain death.

But this was Art getting ahead of himself; there were many dangers in his home turf he needed to first worry about, such as a crazy maniac who loved to wreak havoc without a care for the consequences, and a scientist who was kidnapping people for his experiments.

Art wanted to be able to protect himself. Thankfully, it seemed he was not completely abandoned.

Upon learning he had been reincarnated in Runeterra, the first thing Art added to the top of his priority list was to discover whether he had a talent for magic. He began imitating a certain wheelchair-bound bald old man, trying to lift objects around his room with his mind.

Fortunately, success arrived more quickly than Art had anticipated.

During the first week, Art felt a sudden icy chill cascade over him, as refreshing as a gulp of cold water.

Then, in the second week, this icy chill seemed to leave his body. It was as though an invisible thread had woven itself around one of the chew toys in his crib. The toy began to levitate. First by a mere ten inches, then twenty, and finally thirty, until it hung suspended in the air, as if held by unseen hands.

Witnessing his toy float in mid-air, propelled by magic he never dreamed he'd possess, left Art momentarily paralyzed with awe. But soon, he shook off the astonishment and erupted into jubilant baby sounds only he could comprehend. 

His elation was short-lived, though. 

Whether it was his infantile state or a limited reservoir of magical energy, the toy's levitation lasted mere seconds longer. And then, just as abruptly as his newfound power had manifested, it waned, and he slipped into unconsciousness.