If Momo was going to make such a life-altering decision as ascending to godhood, she knew she would have to make sacrifices in the process.

Sacrifices like… reading books. Non-fiction ones. On purpose.

A great ordeal indeed.

“This way, your grace,” Viktor said, only the light of his torch visible as they meandered through the dark hallways below the city. “I have emptied the library of all my students, as you requested. My skeletal librarians will remain to help you with your search for tomes.”

“Thank you, Viktor,” she said quietly, as two golden doors swung open before them.

And—oh. The library was brilliant. Brilliantly dark, that was.

“The chicken electricity lines still remain unrepaired this far underground, I fear,” Viktor said nervously, already taking his leave. “But a candle will do just fine, I’m sure. It’s the right way to read books, the old fashioned way. Anyway, I have business to attend to, as an important man of my esteem often does. I will be on my way.”

Momo shook her head as he dashed back toward the corridor, escaping responsibility.

I should have known there’d be a catch.

Despite the fact that she could only see a few inches in front of her, even with her candle lit, the library was still brilliant nonetheless. Stacked pristinely on sky-high bookshelves, Viktor had amassed quite a collection of tomes on various subjects at his underground bunker-library, a place that had remained remarkably untouched during the Husk’s ascent.

But as expansive as the library was—or as she assumed it to be, not that she could really see it—the type of book Momo was searching for wouldn’t exactly be convenient to come by.

Since very few mortals had ever been given the opportunity to ascend to godship, there weren’t many how-to books on the subject. No Subdomains for Dummies, or Ascending to The Nether In 10 Easy Steps.

However, many pious mortals throughout Aloisian history had, on occasion, forged cozy relationships with the Lesser Gods, and written down little tidbits about their interactions with them. Momo figured that reading these testimonies would give her hints about how the Lesser Gods operated, and what they looked like. Details that the courier had conveniently left out.

It’s not like I can just call Valerica up and ask her if this transformation will turn me into the literal personification of the grim reaper or not, so.

Momo frowned.

Not that she’d tell me either way.

So Momo resorted to reading.

After inquiring the help of the librarians to navigate herself around, Momo sank into a velvety armchair in the corner of the room, placing her lit candle on the small end table beside her. The overall absence of light made her feel like a tiny speck of dust in a large sea of black, entrenched completely by pillars of oak and dusty pages.

To most people, this gigantic, endlessly dark labyrinth of books would be something straight out of a nightmare. It was impossible to see, impossibly silent, and most of all, impossible to find your way out of. But Momo didn’t mind. She always found herself lost and confused pretty much anywhere, even with a map, so a little dark made no difference. What was important was that it was cold. Even Jarva’s godly sunrays couldn’t pierce this deep into the city’s sediment.

She carefully opened the leatherbound book in her lap.

Personal Testament of an Undead Maintainer

It was a book written by a fellow named Aeron Veritus, which she thought was an unduly impressive name for a janitor. Then again, Momo wasn’t much of a name for a queen of the undead, so she was in no place to cast judgements.

The book detailed Aeron’s ascension from regular school janitor, the kind that built outhouses and then quickly regretted it after he realized he had to maintain them, to janitor of the undead, which seemed a much more appealing job—far less bodily fluids.

He was a pupil of Morgana, and was responsible for finding skeletons that seemed to be lacking masters, and knocking them on the head with a shovel until their soul flew back to the Nether. After he had done this a spectacular number of times, he began reporting to a lesser god who would reward him everytime he found a necromancer’s unemployed cadaver.

Veritus’s testament mimicked exactly the description of the Subdomain of Undead Maintenance from Momo’s courier. The assignment for this domain was simple and understandable: make sure the number of borrowed souls in Alois didn’t exceed the number of ones being returned.

It seemed like a very cushy subdomain indeed—the godly equivalent of a number-punching government job that didn’t require activating too many brain cells. It didn’t deal with much drama at all, it could even be worked remotely. She could probably perform all the necessary tasks of skeletal accounting from Sumire’s apartment kitchen if she wanted to.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

To sweeten the deal even further, Veritus mentioned that the lesser god he interacted with took the form of a regular human—sure, one that looked and smelled like the dead—but that was nothing Momo couldn’t repair with a little perfume.

It seemed like a perfect job for Momo.

And yet.

She felt no… spark.

Goddamn it. She internally chastised herself. When had she ever concerned herself with feeling a spark for her work? If it wasn’t for Valerica, Momo would have been completely content to choose something so perfectly lazy. But no. Now she was cursed with a desire to do more with herself than the bare minimum.

She placed the book on the ground and groaned.

She read several more personal accounts of mortals dealing with various lesser gods, and the more she read, the clearer the answer to one of her more pressing questions became: it appeared that over the course of many centuries, subdomains traded hands regularly between lesser gods. Mortals would describe a consistent physical appearance, but the personality of the god would differ frequently over time in the anecdotes she’d read.

Momo imagined this was much like a bunch of actors trading parts—the costume stayed the same, but the performance was undoubtedly different each time.

So this likely meant that the subdomains she had been presented with were the only ones vacant at the moment. But it also meant she might be able to trade them later for others, or take on multiple at a time, allowing for the collection of many different powerful abilities.

But this is all assumptions. Who knows how long I might be stuck with the one I choose now.

So she kept reading.

Despite finding many reports encountering the Lesser Gods of Undead Maintenance, of Disease, of Nightmares, and a variety of others, none of the mortals seemed to meet the one role she was most interested in. It was as if the Lesser God of Safe Passage operated completely without interaction, seen and heard by no one. The reaper was a complete enigma.

An introvert’s dream job.

“Excuse me,” Momo spoke, raising her hand. She flagged down the attention of one of the skeletal librarians, who shifted his head one hundred eighty degrees to look at her. “I’m looking for personal testimonies of people who have met the… err… grim reaper. Do you have any?”

The skeleton stared at her for several seconds, processing.

“I can assemble all books written by dead authors, and all books involving death, although it will take several days, and require the dismantling of several bookcases. If that is what you wish—”

Momo blushed. “Ah! No, no. Sorry. I meant that… literally. Do you have any books of people who have met the literal grim reaper. Not metaphorically. The actual one.”

“The actual one?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “The Lesser God of Safe Passage? The person that greets you when you die? At least, I assume that’s how it goes. I haven’t had the honor of actually dying yet. Or, well, I did, but it didn’t last very long.”

All thanks to a certain someone.

The skeleton seemed stuck in a loop, staring at her blankly.

She held up her hand. “Nevermind, no worries…”

Just as she was about to look back at her lap, blue light flashed from the skeleton’s hands.

Momo followed the trail of cerulean magic as it zipped back and forth through the library like a charge of serpentine electricity, illuminating the bookstacks as it traveled.

Eventually, it paused, then skyrocketed upward like a ladder across a tall bookshelf before curling itself around a particular tome.

“I believe we have something of the sort,” the skeleton answered as the light darted back, the book coiled in it. “I hope it suits your needs.”

The blue streamer flashed into non-existence as the book planted itself at Momo’s feet.

He Who Strikes Fear: Encounters with Death Himself

Eyes wide, Momo picked up the book.

Unlike the others, which were handwritten diaries, this one was typed professionally on firm parchment. It seemed to be written by an academic, a member of the High Wizards Court that Viktor was always talking animatedly about—it was an institute that predated Jarva’s rule, a nonpartisan gathering of mages who sought to study the ins-and-outs of the Nether.

Paging through it, she quickly realized it was not the tale of one single author, but an anthology of moments throughout the ages. Moments where a mortal managed to lay eyes on—as one author describes—”one of the most elusive deities in all of creation.”

Unlike with the other gods, physical descriptions of the reaper were inconsistent at best. To some, it was an enormous raven. To others, it came to them as a tree with a thousand eyes. The disparities made Momo question if they were really encountering the same god at all. Even in a world with magic, people did still claim to see things they didn’t. Mortal memory was fallible on every planet.

Unless…

Does this god’s form involve shapeshifting?

It would make sense.

If Death was supposed to be something hidden in plain sight, it would only make sense for the Lesser God’s form to be something malleable. Something designed perfectly to fit the situation of the deceased, to make sure that they felt comfortable and relaxed as they passed.

Only, that wasn’t the reality reflected in the papers. Quite the contrary. These academic mages had not died themselves, obviously, but they had been at the site of someone else’s death and had sufficient mana sight to witness the Lesser God come to claim the soul. And what they described was universally disconcerting. No, it was beyond that—it made Momo’s heart wrench.

At the moment of death, creatures of The Dark become attracted to the soul, and immediately seek it out, clawing their way out of the Nether towards their ripe victim. The Reaper then shows himself soon after, following in hot pursuit, and slays these demons. The scene at the moment of death is an awful carnage, a hot and bloody thing.

Momo frowned deeply.

Those creatures of The Dark, as the mages put it—they had to be Nether Demons.

The courier Momo had received had discussed that the Reaper had to have battle experience for that exact reason, to fend the demons off from the late soul. But she hadn’t realized this was something the poor soul actually had to witness. To traumatize them like that at their last lively moment… that was just awful.

That’s not how it should be.

Adrenaline pumping through her, she snapped the book shut.

She had read enough.

Taking a deep breath in, she called over the librarian again, and gave him a tight smile.

“Thank you,” she said, lifting the pile of books up for him to claim. “I think my research is complete.”

“Anytime, your highness.”