I was in an unfamiliar space and before me was a goddess. This wasn't a fact that had to be explained, it was something that I just instinctually knew. It wasn't just the halo floating over her head, the wings sprouting from her back, or the pure transcendent beauty. If it was just that it could be easily stocked up to special effects, drugs, or simple hallucinations. It was the aura she gave off, at least that was what my gut was telling me. Maybe it was the smug look she gave me that outdid any I had ever seen in my life. No one in history has ever been more sure of themselves than this girl was at that specific moment as she sat cross legged on a desk looking down at me through her square glasses.

She wore a sleeveless blue-trimmed white business suit along with a matching skirt. Her mint colored hair in a messy bob cut with three ahoge sticking out combined with her countenance gave me a feeling I knew exactly what kind of a person this deity was.

As if to confirm my suspicion she flipped the position of her legs, giving me a quick look at her childish tastes despite obviously being a full grown adult. While she pushed up her glasses she began her introduction.

"Welcome to afterlife my little lost lamb."

Specifically to give me a moment to be shocked and awed by the revelation she paused letting me have a chance to get my bearings. We were in the middle of a circular grassy field that was bisected by a meandering creek. The light gurgling as the water passed by the nearest bend was the only noise I could hear. A wall of pine trees touching a blue sky filled with wispy clouds circled us on all sides. I was sitting in a simple wooden chair in a perfect posture I didn’t remember taking. The girl in front of me had been growing more awkward the longer I waited. I took my time taking it all in and relax myself into the chair; more to see what her reaction would be than anything else. When it looked like she was about to break I finally addressed her.

"A lot more empty than I hoped. I guess you could have done worse. We could be sitting on top of clouds or be in an empty white room."

Excitement seemed to bubble over the goddess’ face like an optimistic salesman meeting their first client.

"OH I could change the setting if you'd like."

A panel of light appeared before her as she began to use it like a touchpad.

"We've got blank white space, blank black space, blank white room, deserted island…"

“Hold up”

With a disheveled sigh, I stopped her and looked around for show.

"Naw this is fine… Just do what you gotta do."

"Alright perfect."

She flashed a big careless smile before she vaulted from the desk giving me another look at her defenselessness. Despite not being arousing at all the first time it somehow felt like the effect wasn't even half of what I had gotten before. A mystery that only God himself could unravel.

"You seem to be taking this all pretty well huh?"

All I could do was give her an exasperated look while I placed my knuckle on my chin.

"If you wanted to surprise people you could at least go through the effort of making it a little less cliché."

"Hmmm… they don't really let us deviate from the script too much. No one wants to find themselves in the middle of a volcano or on top of a snowy mountain right after being brutally murdered. It's cliché for a reason."

"Right…"

Another awkward silence filled the meadow as the goddess stared blankly off into the distance almost blissfully happy. I looked off into the sky in deep thought.

Maybe all of the ills of the world really are just a result of poor management on the celestial level.

Unsure if I even wanted answers to my metaphysical questions I did my best to help her along.

"Well?"

"...Well what?"

"Well… first off I don't remember dying."

She banged her fist into the palm of her hand.

"Ahh that's probably a result of the suddenness of how you died. Short term memories don't normally get attached to the soul. It's easy for things like that to get misplaced by the secretaries."

"Okay…."

After another long moment of silence, I could almost see the lightbulb switch on in the middle of her halo.

"Ahh you want to know how you died."

"mmhmm"

"Uhhh, let's see."

The goddess(title-now-tentative) pulled a large 3 ringed binder out of thin air with the word "Titus" printed on the cover in thick Roman letters. Loose papers that seemed to have been stuffed into every spot they could fit were nearly falling out as she flipped to the first page.

"Let's see here… cause of death… brain aneurysm caused by… masturbation."

She casually threw the binder behind her with no regard for the pages flying everywhere. With a light shrug, she continued.

"There you have it. You died the way you lived. Jerking off in front of your computer. Beautifully poetic really."

"…Thanks…"

With a smile on her face that would make you think she was telling someone about her recent vacation to Hawaii. She moved on fully unconcerned with my feelings.

"How else were you going to go honestly? You were 30 and never left the house or did anything even remotely risky. It was either going to be that or dying on the toilet while pushing out a fat one. So if you have no other questions we can move on to the reason why you're here."

"Besides being dead."

"Right! BECAUSE you're dead we can now send you off on your special mission."

"This isn't going to be like my isekai stories is it?"

"Actually, lucky for you, it's going to be EXACTLY like those. You see your soul is very special. Despite doing literally nothing of importance during your last reincarnation your soul is VERY old. Well over 2000 years in fact."

At some point she had switched into a somewhat unconvincing "teacher mode" but I felt too tired to bother stopping her while she was having fun.

"That by itself wouldn't make you particularly special, BUT you are an interesting case when it comes to the creation of new souls. You see when a child is first conceived the first thing we do is throw whatever wandering soul that is available into the body. If there isn't one around we peel off a piece of both parents’ souls and smash them together to provide the material to make the new one. You follow?"

While only interested in the end of this explanation I slowly nodded up and down.

"Now this soul power is basically meaningless in your world. But in the universe I'm sending you, you can think of soul size as determining someone's max mana pool."

At the mention of what has to be magic, I perked up my ears a bit. Not wanting to appear too interested in case I was wrong.

"And mine is relatively large?"

"Right. In fact, it's the biggest.”

She spread her arms as wide as she could.

“As proof, experiences get inscribed onto the soul through dreams and get read out as dreams when there isn’t anything else to do."

She looked at me expectantly for a moment to see if I understood as I motioned her to keep going.

"Have you ever noticed that despite looking at porn nearly every day and jerking off an average of…"

One of the papers now strewn about the clearing flew into her hand. Adjusting her glasses she read from it.

"2.68 times a day since you were seven years old you have never dreamed about having sex ever."

"It's crossed my mind... I mean I usually wake up when I get to that point."

"EXACTLY that isn't normal at all! Just waking up because you looked a girl in the face or held her hand? That just doesn’t happen. There just aren’t any experiences for your soul to draw from so all it can do is wake you up."

"I don't think I follow."

"Noooo I think you do."

Jumping up onto the desk, my schoolmaster spun around and pointed at me with the smuggest look she's had so far.

"You're a VIRGIN! Despite reincarnating 92 times you have never had sex once in over 2000 years! Not even with men! It's amazing!"

What the fuck do you mean “amazing”?

She placed her hands together and looked up to the sky with a reverenced smile.

"A true holy existence that will never be topped until the end of human civilization."

This bitch...

"The funny thing is it isn't even really your fault. Here let me show you."

Appearing next to me with her arm draped over my shoulders she waved her hand causing my vision to get filled with magical screens each showing various battlefields.

"You see, in all of your reincarnations one of a few things ends up happening. Most of the time you get conscripted into an army and die in your first battle."

She began to point to various screens and began to excitedly explain some of them.

"Here's where you were killed at the battle of 300 when you got pushed into the shield wall by the guy that owed you money. And over here you were trampled to death by one of Pyrrhus' elephants. OOH in this one you were a fresh guard when Rome got sacked by barbarians. Do you see how that guy is literally eating the brains right out of your head? Isn't it hilarious?"

"...Yeah... apparently my very existence is the peak of comedy…"

She looked around almost amazed.

"It's like a list of the greatest military defeats in history. This one where you are being burned alive is my favorite, you were just hired as a junior secretary under Oda Nobunaga the day he was betrayed! WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? You were a sworn pacifist and so you weren't even going to wield a weapon in that life."

While pointing at the final one on the bottom right it seemed like she was finally burning through her enthusiasm.

"That one has to be the most tragic. It was near the end of the Vietnam War."

On the screen was a bird's eye view of a troop of marines walking down a trail with a handful of Viet Cong hiding just off the side.

"See that's you in that hole covered in your own shit. You were going to go back to your village and get married to a beautiful refugee girl the very next day but…"

Right at that moment the man jumps out of the hole only for the whole scene to suddenly get engulfed in fire.

"Confused American pilots decided to firebomb their own soldiers taking you along with them. Tsk tsk tsk..."

Shaking her head in disappointment she finally slipped away from me.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"One time you actually managed to live until you were 40 years old as a warrior… but… well...you were castrated in the very first battle anyways…."

"That's... unfortunate"

"It was. The rest of the reincarnations where you didn't die as a child or on the battlefield you either became a monk or a recluse like in your last life."

Seeming to be at the end of her history lesson she pointed to two screens that showed a monk and an old man living in a cabin by himself. I tried my best to put an end to the topic.

"So I have a big mana pool"

"No, you have THE BIGGEST mana pool."

"Yeah… so in recompense for all of this, I get to go live a carefree life in another world?"

"Not… quite… what started all of this is that… well… I've started watching a lot of anime in the past few years.”

I reflexively winced at the thought of a god having such a frivolous hobby.

I wonder what the ethics are like for gods consuming paid content without a way to give money. I guess it isn’t a sin to pirate digital media in heaven.

She seemed a bit offended at the face I had been making.

“LOOK I like seeing all of the characters with my same job, OKAY?”

"...How colorful of you."

"ANYWAYS I had this great idea. What if I take one of the humans from your world; one who has been vetted to be intelligent, competent, moral, and creative; and send him over to this other one that is in desperate need of help? A real born leader who is skillful enough to bring peace to the war torn land."

"And that's me?"

"Pffffffft"

The goddess pointed and began to laugh at me hysterically. I had stopped finding anything this girl says or does amusing a long time ago. I did not laugh with her.

"God, you and your jokes. If there is one skill you've mastered in 2000 years it's comedy…"

"…No problem"

“Right, so I got this guy, sent him over, and he really did bring peace. He vanquished the evil lord, 'invented' tons of technology to help people, and unified all of the nations and different races. A true hero through and through."

Her smile began to waiver a bit

"But there was one problem. His aspirations were higher than that. In his travels, he learned of an ancient evil empire that ruled great swaths of space. Eventually, he went on spark an intergalactic-interdimensional war in the name of peace and justice."

"And that was a problem."

"No, he actually went on to win that war and defeat the evil overlord to conquer the galaxy. If that was all it was I would be able to pat myself on the back for a job well done. The problem stems from the billions of sentient souls being put in limbo. You see, we are in what you would call heaven can only process these people so fast. Our wells ended up at max capacity and it was only going to get worse. If things went on our only option would be to start destroying the life essence for billions of people."

"So you want me to suckle these disenfranchised souls with my giant mana tits while looking for foster homes for them?"

"You really don’t get how any of this works do you?"

I could do nothing but look at her in amazement at her stupidity after giving up trying to hide my irritation.

"Then let me finish. We have what you can think of as save points in time. It's a bit costly but we can roll back and do retries and change different variables each time. The two "saves" that we have access to that can be used to change the fate of this universe are

a) 35 years before our guy's birth and

b) 5 years after he is born."

"You have time control? You just stop him from being born?"

"It's not that simple. When the hero got moved through the planes of existence he passed through here when I talked to him to give him all of his blessings. Once that happened he was guaranteed to be reincarnated at a specific point in time. To some extent, we can control which womb he ends up in but it's limited to whichever open slots there are at the time in the region I first sent him. We've tried this rollback 24 times now but the same fate waited for the galaxy no matter what we changed.”

“So he’s invincible?”

“Basically…. One time I tried to make him the baby of an alcoholic to give him fetal alcohol syndrome but his immunity to disease prevented any damage. I've tried to send assassins at his mother before he's born but his immunity against bladed weapons passes to her while the umbilical cord is connected which prevents her from dying. Nothing works."

"And you can't just tell him not to make war with the entire galaxy?"

"I can only talk to him in churches dedicated to higher powers. Unfortunately, the first thing that happens in every timeline after his birth is a religion gets erected in his name that spreads faster than he can travel. I've tried sending people to talk to him but he just dismisses them as schizophrenics every time. The hero is a very self righteous fellow… really it's one of his only weaknesses."

"So my job is to go find and kill him then?"

With a loud snort, the goddess tried to hold back her laughter. It didn't work. With my disgust for her only growing since I first got here I finally began to think of what the consequences might be for physical violence against a deity. After a solid minute of hysterical convulsions, she wiped a tear from her eye and managed to calm down a bit.

"You are VERY good at the deadpan humor aren't you?"

"…"

"Anyways, the only thing you're good for is your soul size. Normally it would be meaningless if I sent someone like you down there BUT as it turns out there is one thing you CAN do. As surprising as it might be there is actually another person who is in a similar situation as you on this specific planet; a girl in fact. She's been growing her soul for nearly 2000 years. Your job, the ONLY thing you have to do, is to find her and make a baby. If you can do that I'll handle the rest."

After finally getting to the meat of the matter a sense of foreboding washed over me. Although it did sound simple enough I got the feeling this was going to be more difficult and painful than what was being presented. I didn’t have much experience with women in my last life and I was a kissless virgin for 2000 years after all. The goddess with a faux-sympathetic look on her face placed her hand on my shoulder.

"I know this sounds like a difficult task for a perma-virgin like you, but I have high hopes you can do it."

"And I'm guessing I have no choice in the matter?"

"You do…. But… if you decide not to complete your quest or even just fail then I WILL have to punish you."

After grabbing my hand she began to pull me along as if leading me somewhere. The scenery suddenly changed and I found myself in what could only be described as a blank black room with my feet touching a cliff overlooking a void.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing… This must be what the inside of a God's soul looks like."

Without batting an eye she pointed down. Following her finger, I began to get a mild sense of vertigo.

"Down there is a black hole. Besides, its physical effects like ripping apart all matter and time dilation it does something very peculiar to souls without vessels. If one is unfortunate enough to get caught up in one, it begins to get shredded apart piece by piece. It's a very painful process that for that one experiencing it will feel like an eternity. As the soul gets stretched out the pain, which would have been unbearable at the start, would only increase with each passing moment.

If there was ever an example of eternal damnation this would be it.

As her explanation continued what began as a simple feeling of not wanting to fall off grew. Panic was beginning to set in, all I wanted was to get away from the ledge. With each second I could feel her grip on my hand tightening. The more I felt like I needed to get away, the more I couldn't.

"Do you get the picture?"

As if snapping back to reality I found myself sitting in my chair in the meadow. The goddess stood in front of me leaning over with an innocent smile plastered on her face. The fear I had just felt had disappeared without me realizing it. She gave me a moment to collect myself before I responded.

"Cute trick. Was that part of the script too?"

She gave a quick wink.

"Just a slight deviation."

"Can you tell me about the girl I'm supposed to go find?"

"Nope, you're pretty much on your own. Can't be giving out personal information without authorization. Think of it like doctor patient confidentiality. You just have to trust me when I say that you'll know her when you see her."

"At least I'll have infinite chances with the whole time travel shtick…"

"Well…"

Oh no...

I was amazed that I hadn't reached the limit of my patience yet.

"So you heard me say we've redone this same period of time 24 times right? Every time that happens the paperwork involved for us up here increases exponentially. If I could restart infinitely I wouldn't need a complete incompetent like you for help."

"It's amazing you can say that to my face without a care. I do get cheat skills or something right??"

"Besides your mana pool? None, those are banned after what happened last time I passed them out."

"Hey, you're the one that needs my help. What's in it for me if I don't get to have a bit of fun?"

A broad smile appeared on her face as she slowly turned to look me in the eye.

"...I could always just throw you in to suffer enteral oblivion right now. There is a particular man who has been reincarnated as a monk for the past 700 years whose chances of eventually stopping the hero are only 1% lower than yours. He actually has a 94% better chance to get the girl to fall for him but the resulting child just wouldn't be nearly as strong."

I tried to match her smile.

"I can't wait to start my new life in service of the heavens."

"It seems we have an understanding."

Her smile softened and I noted that trying to blackmail a divine being is not a winning strategy. A low buzzing sound began to fill the space and a portal opened up. An annoyed looking man with wings and a full white suit stood on the other side. Behind him stretched an endless sea of cubicles and mountains of paper. The sound of phones ringing and as well as a hectic reverberating chatter began to flow from the opening. Dim fluorescent lights illuminated the area; some flickering and others hanging out of the ceiling by their wires. My thoughts escaped my lips.

"I guess I really did end up in hell."

The goddess suppressed a laugh as the new angel began to boil over in rage. In a flamboyant tone, he burst into a tirade.

"How the fuck are you still not done with this guy?! You're already over 5000 units behind! Do you have any idea how many problems you're causing?"

She turned back to me with the man still screaming through the portal.

"Looks like we're out of time. Remember if you need to talk to me just go sleep in a church

She pointed and wagged her finger at me with each word, as if she berating a child.

"ONE DEDICATED TO A HIGHER POWER. We don't need to send another guy on a divine quest that never talks to his benefactor. Got it?"

I stood up and gave her a salute.

"Understood boss lady."

The goddess’ smile changed one last time into one that made her seem truly satisfied. After a few moments of looking at each other and without a change in her expression, she gave me a light shove on the chest. A feeling of weightlessness overtook me, my vision turned completely black, and the sound faded off into the distance.

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