Darkness.

On the very moment Arthur knew he had breathed out his last, he had been greeted by an all-consuming darkness.

For a brief moment, the young man expected to feel nothing. After all, with him having heard throughout most of his short life that death signaled the end of everything, it wasn’t too hard for someone like him that death equated to nothingness.

To emptiness.

Yet, contrary to his expectations, a myriad of sensations assaulted the young man’s body after being consumed by this darkness. On one side, he felt like he was falling down an unending abyss. On the other, he felt like he was floating on top of invisible clouds.

Some sides of his body experienced a level of heat that went beyond what he felt on a hot summer day, while some experienced a biting cold that reminded him of the time he had been accidentally locked in the freezer room in the place he worked at.

There were also times where he felt a sticky yet slippery object squirm and wriggle all throughout his body, only for the sensation to be quickly replaced by a surface that felt similar to low grit sandpaper.

At this point, his earlier notions of the darkness leading to nothing had more or less disappeared, with the sensations he was being plunged into instead causing a question to surface in his mind.

‘I still have my body?’ asked Arthur to himself, unsure as to whether or not that was the case.

With no way for him to find out as he was still stuck in this ever-present darkness, the young man soon shifted his thoughts elsewhere, eventually recalling all of the things he had done throughout the 22 years he had lived.

Of course, Arthur found it surprising that he could recall all of his memories with great clarity, including the ones that he thought he had forgotten ever since he was a child. However, thanks to how clear his memories were, he was once again reminded of the realization he had discovered a long time ago.

He had lived an incredibly boring life.

Sure, if he were to scour through his earlier memories in greater detail, it could be said that his life was far from mundane. Though, with almost all of those memories reminding him of painful sensations he had long forgotten, he skipped over all of those.

Instead, he focused on the memories that had transpired after that, showing Arthur just how much he had transformed his life into a massive checklist.

From putting all of his efforts into studying to graduating college with an above average grade, to getting a couple of part-time jobs to make ends meet as he stayed in an apartment he did not own, Arthur had been given a more than perfect view of his uneventful life by the darkness, causing a bitter smile to creep up onto his lips at some point.

“At the very least, if there’s ever a hell, I wouldn’t be heading there,” said Arthur to himself, faintly chuckling as he consoled himself.

“Though, I guess if there’s a heaven, I wouldn’t be heading there either.”

With him going through the memories making up his life over and over again in his mind, Arthur continued to let himself be swayed by the darkness, slowly ignoring all of the sensations that bombarded his senses as he gradually became numb.

However, all of that changed when a flash of bright light appeared in front of his presumed vision all of a sudden, forcing the young man to squint his eyes as he swiftly brought his mind away from the rabbit hole he had gotten into.

“What…”

Focusing his attention on this bright light, Arthur watched the light gradually replace the darkness surrounding him, making the sensations that had tormented him so far gradually disappear. Not long after, he felt his senses gradually return to what they were before his untimely death, prompting the gears in his mind to whir once more as he tried to piece what was going on.

In the end, he could not deduce a smidgen of a clue even after regaining the entire sensation of his body once more, allowing the light to envelop his body as his senses became muted once more.

Then again, unlike the darkness that enveloped him, his senses did not take long to return after becoming acquainted by the light, beginning to feel a few material objects around his current vicinity after some time. After giving his sight some more time to gradually recover, he soon found himself seated at the center of what looked to be a spacious yet modern-looking office, facing opposite a desk that reminded him of his brief stint as a call center agent.

“Where… am I?” Arthur muttered to himself as he began to look around now that his senses had fully recovered. Though the space he was currently in reminded him of a time before his death, the sight behind him reminded the young man that he had truly proceeded into the afterlife.

After all, how would one even begin to explain the vast yet barren landscape in front of them where even the sky was an ashy dark gray?

“Ahem.” Before Arthur had even begun to blankly stare at the desolate landscape behind him, the young man’s attention was brought back to his front as he heard a light cough come from behind the desk. Leaning a bit to see who was seated behind the monitor, the young man was a bit surprised to see a woman that looked to be around his age.

Then again, from the feeling he was getting from her, Arthur felt that the woman behind the desk was possibly older than him. Nevertheless, that did not stop him from admiring the woman’s otherworldly appearance as her pitch-black hair tied into a neat ponytail, forming a stark contrast to her modern business suit that seemed to repel dust.

“Arthur James Marshall… is that correct?” Ignoring the fact that Arthur was unabashedly staring at her, the woman’s voice began to reverberate throughout the space, accompanying the brief yet purposeful taps on the keyboard attached to her monitor.

Hearing his name being called, it was only then did the young man realize what he was doing, feeling a hint of red color appear on his cheeks as he nodded in response to the question. Seeing that the woman had continued to tap away on her keyboard after that, Arthur decided to muster up his courage, asking her a question of his own in the hopes he’d be understood.

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“Where… where am I exactly?”

Looking at Arthur for a bit, the woman soon returned her attention to the monitor as she replied, “You’re currently within the First Blank Citadel, located in the heart of Purgatory.”

“Purgatory, huh.” At those words, Arthur wryly smiled as he nodded in understanding, finding it slightly ironic that his words from earlier were actually close to the current truth.

Then again, with how his actions throughout his life had been mostly neutral, his current location made quite a lot of sense. He hadn’t really done a lot of good deeds before his untimely death, causing him to not be sent to Heaven. At the same time, he had not committed any sort of crime to be worthy of being sent down to Hell.

However, even after coming to terms with all of this, the thing that surprised him the most was the fact that he continued to stay calm even after this realization. He was certain that any other person in his shoes would begin to panic or repent for their sins in the hopes of being sent upward.

Yet for him, he felt nothing.

With that, he remained silent as he heard the woman continue typing away on her keyboard without a care in the world, deciding to pass the time by taking another look at his surroundings for the meantime.

By the time around ten minutes had passed since Arthur’s question, it was only then did the woman stop typing, moving her chair to the side to get an unobstructed view of the young man before her.

“Though I’ve already asked this before, it won’t hurt to ask again,” said the woman, picking up a few documents on her desk. “Your name is Arthur James Marshall. Is that correct?”

“Correct.” Arthur nodded at first, only to speak after noticing a slight frown appear on the woman’s face.

“It would be highly preferred if you were to give me a vocal response for every question I ask you,” said the woman, to which Arthur kept in mind as he nodded back.

“Your parents are Thomas Marshall and Cynthia Delane. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Before your death, you had reached 22 years of age. Is that correct?”

“Correct.”

“Alright.”

Nodding in slight satisfaction after seeing Arthur cooperate with her, the woman returned her chair back to the desk before beginning to type a few things on the keyboard once more. Though, not even a minute later, she stopped typing once more, noticing the slight discomfort that had appeared on his face.

“You must be wondering why I’m asking you all of this, right?” The woman looked at him with a calm expression.

In response, Arthur went silent for a while before eventually nodding. “Is it to judge whether I’d be sent to Heaven or Hell?”

“If you had accrued a lot of good karma before your death, then there would have been the possibility to send you to the Firmament,” said the woman in response. “The same applies with bad karma, where you would have been sent to the Underworld.”

Not long after, the woman slowly shook her head. “However, you have not accrued a lot of either of the two, hence that won’t be happening.”

“Instead, you would be directed to the path of reincarnation.”

At the very moment the word ‘reincarnation’ was mentioned, Arthur’s eyes widened in interest. After all, who wouldn’t want to get a second shot at life? Especially one where it seemed like there was the possibility of him keeping his current memories intact?

However, just as he was about to ask the woman before him for more information, the former continued where she had left off, each statement dampening more and more of his excitement.

“I don’t know if you know of this, but there are a total of six paths one could possibly take on the path of reincarnation,” said the woman. “With the amount of good and bad karma you’ve accrued being more or less balanced, you would be sent through the path of humanity, allowing you to reincarnate as a human once more.”

She then let out a sigh. “However, with how balanced your good and bad karma is, there’s a high chance that your reincarnation would just result in you living out your current life once again. If it was skewed even a little bit towards good karma, then your reincarnation would have been more comfortable, but alas.”

Hearing how he would be reincarnated just to live yet another mundane life again, Arthur slightly frowned. Though he found it somewhat odd that the woman before him decided to utter out his future reincarnation just like that, he had a feeling that the woman had done so as a way to look out for him.

With that in mind, he asked, “Is there a way to possibly change that?”

“Unfortunately, there is none.” The woman slightly shook her head, leading Arthur’s expression to turn glum.

“However, there is a path you could take that’s better than reincarnation.”

At those words, the young man quickly showed his interest, causing the woman to inwardly smile as she maintained her composure.

Inwardly taking in a deep breath, she then gave the young man a faint smile as she introduced herself. “Before I talk about that, let me introduce myself to you.”

“My name is Theresa Grayheart.” The woman gave him a slight bow. “At least, that’s what I usually call myself since my true name is incredibly difficult to pronounce.”

“I am what you would call a Goddess of Reincarnation,” she continued, eliciting a look of surprise to appear on Arthur’s face. “To be more specific, I’m a Lesser Goddess of Reincarnation, but a Goddess of Reincarnation nevertheless.”

“Now how about I talk about that other path I mentioned earlier?” asked Theresa after that, forcing Arthur to snap out of his brief daze as he nodded in response.

“Now, this path is better than reincarnation in some aspects, while it’s worse in other aspects,” said the woman as she began to explain. “For one, you would be forced to reincarnate as an inanimate object, though that’s something that could be adjusted if you were to ever choose the path.”

Listening to her words, Arthur slightly frowned. “Would it be possible to become a human or take on a human form after the reincarnation?”

In response, Theresa nodded. “It would. And that brings me to one of the aspects that makes this path better than normal reincarnation.”

“If you were to choose this path, you would be given an apparatus that would aid you in your journey, allowing you to incrementally improve your power without facing setbacks while at the same time guaranteeing your chances of taking on a human form.”

Noticing the slight confusion on the young man’s face, Theresa went silent for a bit before rephrasing her earlier statement. “In other words, you’d be given a system that would help you get stronger.”

“A system…” parroted Arthur, his eyes glistening in excitement.

Though he barely had any time to go through the specific literature that went into great detail about it in the past, the young man was familiar with what a system entailed. After all, who wouldn’t want an assistant of sorts that would help you rise to the top with ease?

With that, thoughts regarding the normal path of reincarnation had more or less disappeared from the young man’s mind. Instead, his thoughts now leaned towards choosing the path Theresa had given him, making it more than obvious to her with the expression that he currently showed on his face.

“I’m guessing you’ve decided to choose this new path, then?” asked Theresa with a chuckle, obtaining a firm nod from Arthur in response.

“Well, since that’s the case…”

“I wholeheartedly welcome you as an official member of the New Cosmos Project.”