The Strongest Demon Lord Reincarnated as a Commoner

[Location: The Throne of Absolute Desolation | Time: An Age Ago]

Silence.

It was not the absence of sound, but the presence of it. A silence so profound, so absolute, that it was a physical weight pressing down on reality itself. It was the silence of a universe holding its breath, terrified to exhale.

At its epicenter, upon a throne carved from a single, obsidian star, sat Azeros, the Demon Lord of Absolute Desolation.

His chin rested on a closed fist, his eyes, burning nebulae of golden light, stared into the endless void of his grand hall. The hall itself was a pocket dimension of his own making, a gallery of conquered realities—frozen moments of cosmic triumph that now served only as monuments to his own crushing, soul-devouring boredom.

He had unmade gods with a thought. He had collapsed timelines with a whisper. His power was not merely grand; it was the very definition of omnipotence. There were no more challenges to overcome, no more enemies to conquer, no more knowledge to obtain. He had reached the absolute, final, and most miserable state of existence: completion.

A sigh, the first sound in a thousand years, echoed in the hall. It was a sound that could shatter mountains, yet here it was just a puff of air laced with infinite ennui.

"It's all so... pointless," Azeros mused, his voice a low rumble that vibrated outside the confines of space and time.

He had lived for eons, felt everything, and now felt nothing. Victory was hollow. Power was a cage. He yearned for something—anything—unpredictable. A moment of genuine surprise. The sting of failure. The thrill of a true struggle.

An idea, a final, desperate gambit, bloomed in the void of his mind.

Azeros slowly lifted his other hand. Reality warped around his fingers as he began to weave the threads of causality itself. He was not destroying his soul, but untethering it, preparing it for a journey. A complex, forbidden spell of reincarnation, one that would strip him of his memories, his name, his very identity, and cast him into the distant future as a blank slate.

A mortal. A commoner. A nobody.

The ultimate handicap. The ultimate gamble.

"Perhaps," he whispered, a faint, almost forgotten smile touching his lips as the spell reached its cataclysmic crescendo, "in utter powerlessness, I will find something of worth."

The golden light of his eyes flared, consuming the throne, the hall, and the countless realities it held.

Then, there was only silence once more. But this time, it was a true and empty silence. The Demon Lord was gone.

[Location: A Carriage on the King's Road | Present Day]

Clack. Jolt. Rattle.

Leo Vance let out a long, put-upon sigh.

The symphony of a poorly-maintained carriage axle was, in his current estimation, one of the most profoundly irritating sounds in existence. Every bump in the dirt road sent a jarring shudder through the cramped wooden box, threatening to dislodge his very spine.

He was slouched in the corner, his head leaning against the vibrating wall. His messy, dark brown hair fell over his eyes, which were half-closed in a state of perpetual listlessness. He wore a simple, slightly worn tunic and trousers—the practical attire of a commoner who couldn't afford the enchantments of comfort that the wealthy took for granted. The only thing remotely remarkable about him was his face, which held a sharp, handsome quality that was utterly wasted by his lazy, uninterested expression.

"Can you believe it?! We're finally here! Aethelgard Royal Magic Academy!" a young man opposite him chirped, practically bouncing in his seat.

"The greatest academy on the continent!" another added, his face pressed against the small window. "Look at the spires! They pierce the heavens!"

Leo risked a glance. Through the grimy glass, he could indeed see impossibly tall, alabaster towers scraping a sky of brilliant blue. Floating crystals drifted between them like lazy birds, casting prismatic rainbows onto the manicured grounds below. It was a scene of breathtaking magic and opulence.

So noisy, was Leo's only thought. His soul, the ancient, slumbering core of Azeros, found the youthful exuberance grating. Yet, this was what he had wanted, wasn't it? The mundane, the trivial, the annoying. It was a novel kind of suffering, at least.

The carriage shuddered to a halt before a gargantuan gate flanked by statues of legendary mages. The door was opened, and the students, buzzing with excitement, spilled out into the sunlight. Leo was the last to emerge, stretching with the lethargic grace of a cat that had just been woken from a nap.

He clutched the single, precious document in his hand: an admission letter to Aethelgard. A fluke, the village elder had called it. A miracle. Leo knew it was just an inevitable consequence of a system designed to detect magical talent, no matter how deeply one tried to hide it.

The new students were being herded into a long line leading towards a large, open-air pavilion. At its center stood a raised dais where a stern-faced instructor oversaw the final entrance assessment: the Mana Aptitude Test.

"Hah! Look at this one," a sneering voice cut through the air.

Leo turned his head slightly. A young man with slicked-back blond hair and an ostentatiously embroidered uniform stood with his arms crossed, flanked by two sycophants. His eyes were locked onto Leo's simple clothes with undisguised contempt.

"Did a peasant wander in from the fields by mistake?" the noble, whose name was probably something pompous and forgettable, continued. "This is Aethelgard, not a soup kitchen. How did scum like you even get a letter?"

Leo didn't respond. He simply stared back, his expression flat and unchanging. Engaging would be a waste of energy.

The noble's face reddened at being ignored. "Are you deaf, commoner? Or just stupid?"

Before he could continue his tirade, a cold, sharp voice sliced through the tension.

"Marcus, your braying is unbecoming of a son of House von Adler. Cease embarrassing your family name."

All eyes turned. Standing a short distance away was a girl whose presence demanded attention. She had a cascade of fiery red hair tied back in a high ponytail, and her emerald eyes were as sharp and unforgiving as cut glass. Her uniform was immaculate, adorned with the crest of a ducal house. This was Elara von Valerius, a name whispered with both respect and fear among the new students.

She gave Marcus a look of withering disdain before her gaze swept over Leo. It lingered for a fraction of a second, a flicker of disgust crossing her features, before she dismissed him as something utterly beneath her notice. She despised loud-mouthed fools like Marcus, but she despised low-born trash even more.

Marcus scowled but wisely shut his mouth. He shot Leo one last hateful glare before turning his attention back to the front of the line.

Leo let out another internal sigh. Nobles. Always the same.

Finally, it was Marcus's turn at the dais. The test was simple: place your hand on the large, crystalline orb and channel your mana. The orb would glow with a color and intensity corresponding to your aptitude.

"Marcus von Adler!" the proctor called out.

Marcus strode forward with a smug grin. He placed his hand on the orb. A moment later, it erupted in a brilliant cerulean light, bright enough to make the students in the front row squint.

"Grade 7 Aptitude - Cerulean Blue! Excellent!" the proctor announced, a hint of surprise in his voice.

A wave of murmurs rippled through the crowd. Grade 7 was exceptionally high for a first-year. Marcus puffed out his chest, soaking in the admiration and envy. He shot a triumphant look towards Elara, who merely offered a small, unimpressed sniff before turning away.

A few more students went, achieving mediocre yellows and greens. Then, the proctor's bored voice called out the next name.

"Leo Vance."

A hush fell over the crowd as Leo ambled forward. All eyes were on the commoner who had dared to stand up to Marcus by... well, by doing nothing at all. They expected a spectacular failure.

Leo placed his hand on the smooth, cool surface of the crystal orb.

His mind, the mind of Azeros, raced for a nanosecond. How does one appear average? This mortal body restricts the absolute, but the soul's essence is still infinite. If I release 0.0000001% of my true nature, I'll likely atomize this entire mountain range. So... let's try to leak just the most insignificant, infinitesimal wisp. A single quantum of magical energy. That should be low enough.

He focused, suppressing the universe of power within him, and allowed a sliver of energy, smaller than a grain of dust in a hurricane, to flow into the orb.

For a moment, nothing happened. The orb remained clear.

The crowd began to snicker. Marcus let out a triumphant laugh. "Hah! What did I tell you? Zero aptitude! Not even a flicker!"

Elara rolled her eyes. What a waste of time.

But then, something strange occurred.

Crr-ack.

A tiny, hairline fracture appeared on the surface of the orb, right under Leo's palm. It was almost invisible, but the proctor, standing right there, saw it. His eyes widened.

CRA-ACK!

The sound was sharp, like ice breaking. The single fracture spiderwebbed across the entire crystal in an instant. The students gasped, their mockery dying in their throats.

Before anyone could fully process what was happening, the intricate network of cracks glowed with a blinding, pure white light for a fraction of a second.

And then, the orb disintegrated.

It didn't explode. It didn't shatter. It simply... collapsed into a shower of sparkling, inert dust that cascaded onto the dais, leaving a shimmering pile where a priceless magical artifact had been just a moment before.

Dead silence.

The wind whistled through the pavilion, carrying away the last of the glittering dust. Hundreds of students, the proctor, Marcus, Elara—everyone stared, their mouths agape, at the spot where the orb had been.

Leo slowly lifted his hand, a look of mild annoyance on his face. He had miscalculated. He hadn't accounted for the sheer fragility of mortal constructs when faced with a power that transcended their very design. The orb hadn't measured his power; his power had erased the concept of the orb.

The silence was finally broken by Marcus's incredulous, roaring laughter.

"He broke it! The clumsy oaf broke the orb! He has so little magic he short-circuited it! What a pathetic failure!"

The crowd, needing a plausible explanation, immediately seized upon this one. Laughter and jeers erupted. He was a laughingstock. A commoner so inept he destroyed the testing equipment.

The proctor, pale and sweating, scrambled to make sense of it. "Faulty equipment... Yes, must be a faulty artifact..." he stammered, scribbling furiously on his clipboard. "Leo Vance. Mana Aptitude: Undetermined. Potential... Zero."

It was the perfect cover. Leo had succeeded in appearing unremarkable, albeit in the most remarkable way possible.

He just sighed, the sound lost in the din of ridicule, and turned to walk away from the dais, his goal of a peaceful, unnoticed academy life already in shambles.

He didn't see Elara von Valerius watching his retreating back, her brow furrowed not with disdain, but with a flicker of deep, unsettling confusion.

And far, far above, in the highest spire of the academy, an ancient being sat in quiet meditation. Her name was Headmistress Seraphiel Lux, and her senses extended through every stone and blade of grass of her domain. She had not seen the event, but she had felt it.

It was not a surge of magic. It was a tremor in the very foundation of existence. An infinitesimal ripple, so subtle that no one else in the world could have possibly detected it. A signature of power so ancient, so absolute, it made her own centuries-old soul feel like that of a newborn.

Her ethereal, silver eyes, which had seen the rise and fall of empires, snapped open.

They were filled with a sudden, sharp light of profound shock and suspicion. Her gaze pierced through stone and sky, focusing on the distant, insignificant figure of a brown-haired boy walking away from the testing pavilion.

"That feeling..." she whispered, her voice a rustle of ancient leaves. "...It cannot be."