The first thing he felt wasn't pain. Not confusion. Not even fear.
It was warmth.
Sticky, wet warmth.
"…Did I pee myself?" Jaka thought grimly.
A soft hum echoed around him, muffled like it was wrapped in cotton. Then—bam!—a face appeared overhead. A woman with sun-kissed cheeks and dark, loving eyes, cooing in a language that tickled his brain with half-forgotten familiarity.
"Hello, little Jaka… oh, you're such a chubby one!"
Blink.
Blink blink.
Jaka's eyes fluttered. His limbs were short. Squishy. He tried to move his fingers. They jiggled uselessly like boiled sausages.
No. No no no. Don't tell me—this is the classic 'Truck-san Isekai'd me into a baby' plot?!
Let's rewind.
Jaka Adiwasesa was the lead game designer team of Warriors of the Archipelago—a breakout RPG hit that swept across Asia. It was what happened when you mixed Majapahit mythology with caffeine-fueled power fantasies, and people loved it.
So much, in fact, that fans from all corners of the continent started begging for downloadable content.
"Please make a DLC about Champa!"
"What about Pagan Kingdom? We'll fund it!"
"Do Srivijaya next, bro! I want to slap colonizers with spices!"
Jaka's inbox was an overflowing shrine of praise, petitions, and pleas. Forums lit up with theorycrafting. Reaction videos trended weekly.
And suddenly, he was no longer just an indie developer—he was a cultural ambassador juggling history, hype, and a headache that never quite went away.
He hadn't rested in months.
Patching bugs. Reviewing localization files. Fending off investors who smelled money. His friends called it success.
Jaka called it burnout in a batik wrapper.
And just when he thought, "Maybe I'll take a week off. Go offline. Touch grass or something..."
Truck-san.
The eternal enemy of pedestrians. Bringer of plot convenience. Harbinger of reincarnation.
"I WAITED FOR THE GREEN LIGHT, TRUCK-SAN! GREEN! LIME GREEN! VEGAN-APPROVED GREEN!"
Now he was here. In a wooden house on stilts. Surrounded by the scent of bamboo, firewood, and rustic despair. No Wi-Fi. No keyboard. No ramen. Just...
Diapers.
"Wirajaya, look! He smiled!"
Jaka's new father—a burly man with soot-streaked arms and a voice like a bear who moonlighted as a blacksmith—grinned down at him.
"Ha! That's my son, alright! Got the grip of a hammer already!" Wirajaya boomed, holding up one of Jaka's stubby arms like a victorious wrestler.
"Oh please," chuckled Sekar, his mother, as she adjusted her headscarf. "He probably thinks your nose is a melon."
I do think your nose is a melon, good sir.
His name remained Jaka. But now it was cooed by his mother and shouted by a man who could probably arm-wrestle a buffalo.
And yes.
He was definitely, irreversibly, humiliatingly... a baby.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE: Divine Path of Infinite Mystery (a.k.a DIPM)]
"…Oh no."
Oh yes.
The words glowed inside his head one night as he lay on a reed mat, half-asleep and fully existential. And not just because he was a floating baby brain.
Oh no no no! Not that stupid system name I wrote during my chuunibyou phase! I thought we deleted this! Why didn't anyone stop me?!
But the system responded smoothly, like a cruel reminder of past sins.
Name: Jaka Adiwasesa
Age: 0
Caste: Waisya
Familiar: None
Title: None
Core Attributes (Ranked I–S)
Strength: I (3/100)
Agility: I (0/100)
Dexterity: I (0/100)
Intellect: A (12/100)
Endurance: I (0/100)
Charisma: I (0/100)
Weapon Proficiency
Blunt: I (1/100)
Blade: I (0/100)
Polearm: I (0/100)
Throwing: I (0/100)
Bow: I (0/100)
Job Proficiency
Spoon Warrior: I (0/100)
Philosopher: A (1/100)
"I hate myself," Jaka muttered internally. "This system is working. My overly complicated nightmare of stats… it's real!"
He knew the rules.
Every stat required 100 points to rank up. Weapon proficiencies only grew with real training. Even using a spoon could technically increase Blunt… just at a glacial pace. And apparently, anything you did repeatedly could become a Job.
So when Jaka spent a week smacking pillows with wooden spoons, thinking it might raise Blunt proficiency...
And... it did.
"I coded this… why did I code this? Why couldn't I have made a simple farming sim?!"
But hope flickered.
Even spoon training worked.
So began: Baby Boot Camp.
"Sekar, is Jaka… lifting a rock?"
"I think so," Sekar said, equal parts horrified and impressed.
On the veranda, baby Jaka strained like a constipated monk, wobbling under the titanic weight of a potato-sized rock.
Strength +1
"Oh yeah, baby! Literally!"
He crawled laps around the porch. Did shaky push-ups on woven mats. Swung spoons like a chubby berserker. He even headbutted a bamboo pole.
"Dear, your son is trying to punch the air."
"He's just… energetic!" Wirajaya said proudly. "Maybe he'll be a warrior like Gajah Mada!"
"He's biting the broomstick, Wirajaya. That's not normal."
Jaka, meanwhile, was deep in training mode.
He flicked pebbles.
Throwing +1
He gripped sticks like polearms (still +0, but emotionally empowering). He chewed on spoons like a mad lad.
Blunt +1
"I am the chosen one," he whispered, drooling on a ladle.
At one point, Wirajaya found him trying to deadlift a clay jar.
"What… is my son doing?"
"Testing something," Jaka thought. "And regretting everything."
"Wirajaya, I think something's wrong with Jaka," Sekar whispered one night. "He stares at spoons. Like he's in love."
"Didn't your cousin have a son who tried to marry a banana tree with hole?"
"This is different. Jaka trains. He plans. He paces like a tiny general!"
Wira just rubbed his chin proudly. "He's just… intense. Like me."
"You cried when the goat stepped on your foot last week."
"It had sharp hooves!"
A few weeks in, Jaka had a full-blown training routine:
Morning: Spoon strikes.
Noon: Rock squats.
Evening: Crawling laps.
Night: Existential dread.
Every +1 stat boost felt like a divine blessing.
But something felt… off.
He didn't know when it started—the blur between reality and this strange new life. Maybe it was when he first saw Sekar's gentle smile. Or when Wira hoisted him onto his back like he was made of gold, not drool and chub.
They weren't just NPCs.
That thought haunted him.
The way Sekar carefully folded his tiny clothes, sang lullabies in soft Sundanese, or placed warm herbal cloths on his tummy when he fussed—it was too… human.
Wira's booming laugh. The way he told stories about ancient warriors while bouncing Jaka on his knee. His rough hands, always warm despite the soot and calluses.
They reminded him of… his real parents.
Not warriors.
Not programmers.
His mother worked in a convenience store and barely knew how to use email. His father drove an old delivery van and called every video game a "Nintendo."
But they believed in him.
When Jaka came home with puffy eyes and barely enough money to pay rent, they still welcomed him with smiles, rice, and home-cooked soup.
"You'll do better next time, kid," his mother would say.
"All big things start small," his father told him once. "Just don't forget to sleep."
They didn't understand lines of code, or asset pipelines, or burnout from launch crunch.
But they understood him.
They were proud of him—his studio, his janky RPG, his big dreams.
And now, here he was. Loved again.
By different hands, different hearts.
Sekar's, full of patient tenderness.
Wirajaya's, full of thundering pride.
They weren't copies.
They weren't code.
They were real. And they made him feel real again.
Jaka gripped his trusty wooden spoon like a sacred relic.
"I… I don't want to forget them," he thought.
Not his old parents.
Not these new ones.
But one question refused to leave.
If this world is just a game…
Why do the people in it feel more alive than the ones I left behind?
The trees whispered at night. The river hummed like it held secrets. Villagers laughed, bickered, prayed. They mourned. They danced. They lived.
This wasn't the published build.
This was something else.
And Jaka Adiwasesa— the game designer, spoon warrior, reincarnated baby—was about to find out what.