Adrian took in a bit of the fresh morning air. It was the day after his arrival in this world as an alternative version of himself. In just one day, he had experienced an ebb and flow of emotions and experiences so new that he no longer knew where to put his head, only his firm sense of unreality kept him relatively functional.
But he had an entire night to reflect on, well, everything. Reflecting for so long caused certain ideas to sprout in his mind like vines slowly eroding the rock that represented his convictions.
However, like everything in this life, he first had to be very sure about many things, especially the supernatural or the non-human. The thing was, he simply did not know where to start without looking like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
So, like the great and almighty Daemon he is, he decided to act with the caution of a chimpanzee with a loaded machine gun as was common to see in so many modern isekai fantasy stories. He would do this while looking and acting like the cold, feelingless edge-lord who slaughtered his enemies (see: other male characters) while claiming the female characters as if they were Pokemon. And let us not forget the pets that evolve into beautiful virgin maidens despite acting like sluts in bed, or the so-called jade beauties, and breaking the dantians of other immortal cultivators.
Now, leaving the jokes about the definition of a Chinese xianxia young master aside, he decided to act with some caution toward anything strange in this world. This led him to an intensive internet search regarding supernatural phenomena, extraterrestrials, government conspiracies, recent historical events, important companies, and any thread of information that would increase his contextual knowledge to feed his Great Analyst skill.
But as he filled his history with the garbage content of a deluded conspiracy theorist (or perhaps not so deluded), certain patterns began to emerge thanks to his improved analytical capacity. With that, he discarded the things that were obviously nonsense from people with too much free time for their own good from the few things that could be considered a "maybe." With luck, that "maybe" would be true or not, but nobody could say he did not put effort into searching for the supernatural on the internet without knowing a damn thing about this aspect of the new world.
Now things were a bit messed up for him, though not in the sense of fear but rather a great sensation of cringe or disgust as well as a mocking, self-critical laugh about his situation, because the damn town was called Forks. Truthfully, he does not know how he overlooked that information when he had lived here for so long. He could only attribute it to having so many things in his head that he missed such obvious details.
Yes, that one with the constipated vampires, wolf-men who are not werewolves, and he would have laughed at the situation if not for the other articles in the USA alone with two red flags such as damn Derry with its frankly macro-verse or the damn Stephen King thing, as well as the connection with that Dark Tower multiverse of which he remembers little because he never read the books. He only knows that, well, this universe is doomed, which depending on how you look at it may or may not be an opportunity as a demon. Then there was Oregon, Gravity Falls, with a potential rift toward things just as strange and dangerous as the overly powerful flying dorito whose name he will not mention because he is not going to tempt his luck by testing extra-dimensional beings. He might qualify as one, but he has not reached the point of knowing when someone calls or uses his "name," which potentially gives the power to enter that reality. No, he is not going to find out if that theory about the flying dorito is true.
Hell, I could not even dig deeper into the rabbit hole regarding the human parts of the matter because, out of the impulse to know more, I almost wrote the name of a little person very much wanted by the FBI, the DEA, and other counter-intelligence agencies of this reality. Yes, the guy with six fingers and a toxic ex like a cartoonish Lovecraftian god.
Not to mention that damn superheroes are a real thing in this damn reality quite possibly abandoned by God (is that good or bad?). I hope so. Yes, yes, whatever. Seeing the Teen Team in the headlines of cities like Chicago was not a good sign for his health, let alone finding things like the Lizard League, Omni-man, or the Guardians of the Globe, who frankly are just an imitation of the Justice League. Dammit, he was screwed in more than one way.
I had to leave the computer for a while and decide it was enough to know that the scale of this universe in terms of supernatural beings and supers was very unbalanced. What comes next? DC comics? WORM? Supernatural? Lovecraft? Daemons of Warhammer 40k or Age of Sigmar? Thinking about it, he would get along well with Chaos Undivided. They might confuse him with a greater demon of the faction of the thirsty one or one of the sorcerers of that mad god of the crossroads.
"Yep, I am not planning to deal with this," I thought out loud while the now ordered wine bottles looked so appetizing. It was like the inconceivable whispers of pleasure about how to use tortured mortal souls to squeeze every last drop of flavor from a much better elixir, how to slowly heat the fire of negative emotions to give a more refined touch to the mixture, how to slice the tender meat of unborn bodies into an appetizer of soft red meats accompanied by cheese made from the white fluid dripping from a woman's breasts, how to twist the bones of men into bottles for such an elixir sealed with corks made from the tongues of their lovers in an eternal dance of suffering and pleasure.
Oh, it seemed that the line of who Adrian Vance really was became more blurred every time, but that was fine. That way there would be no identity conflicts. It does not matter who he was. Was he the one who died and was in a dreamlike slumber, or was he the one who sank into alcoholism when he lost his family? Or was he just a Daemon who believed himself to be the union of these two? In the end, none of that mattered. Whether he was one or the other or neither, they would only be the faces that make up the die that is him. It was simple.
Then he looked with some disgust at the crimson color of the wine and certainly found himself very tempted to immerse himself in it only if the wine were of better quality, but this was not the case. So he only sighed to himself, ending that train of thoughts clearly over-stimulated by the momentary emotion of incredulity and sarcasm in his heart toward this new reality.
"But I cannot just stay here doing nothing either. If I only hide, then what would I be? I would be a pathetic being who is not even capable of trying. That is what I would end up becoming," was what he said after getting up from his desk, but not before deleting his history to pass himself off as just another conspiracy theorist and not enter the lists of the GDA or some stupidity like that. "And I will be anything but an insect waiting for the not-so-metaphorical boot of fate to crush me." He sighed while his fingers rubbed his eyes with some irritation while he looked for the positive side of everything, and believe me, there were many good things he had in his favor.
Like having his own dimension where he could have orgies or lock someone up without a chance of survival? Yes, he takes it. Magic that breaks the meta of the narrative if used correctly? Easy, just a bit of pain but manageable. His own doomsday prophecy like every great supernatural demon must have? Check. Some form of quasi-immortality more conceptual than anything else? Yes, but whatever, if he only faced mortal beings nothing would happen to him. A low profile of a guy shattered by misfortune? And a lot of damn insurance money to throw around as if it were gasoline on a fire and still be fine? Of course.
Now he only needed white hair, a couple of bitches on his arms, and some impractical weapon that looks "Cool," or failing that, a swimmer's body that is not too muscular but not too skinny, a childhood friend whose constant displays of affection he would reject for the female protagonist, or a harem to complete the generic isekai set.
Yes, he can work with that. It is simply more than what many people can ask for when reincarnating, and of course he will take it. At least he is not an orphan on the street without money and with a sad story of being mistreated in his past life so that a random omnipotent being would give him a second life where he asked for the most depraved wishes possible without any consequence just because "he suffered so much." Fuck off. Long live the damn [Voice of the World] and long live damn Veldanava.
Of all the above, he was only an orphan, and that is debatable in many philosophical factors depending on who judges, but hey, that is how things are in this damn world.