“What do you mean,” I replied with concern.
“I mean that I can send you back to your old world, with all of your memories intact, and let you get revenge.”
“Is… is that possible,” I said, quivering at the idea of going back.
“Yes, under one condition,” he said with importance and prestige. “You will go back with some sort of godlike powers to help you survive.”
“Is there a reason you want to do this for me?”
“I’m doing this for you because I, too, feel your pain and feel like I have many regrets unsolved.”
“What do you mean regrets?” I was confused by the idea of an omnipotent being like this to have any regrets in life.
“Not being able to kill all of those damn gods in my lifetime!” He was furious but relieved to get this topic off of his chest.
“You have a grudge against the gods of my world?” I never thought he would have an opponent that was impossible for him to defeat.
“Yes, because they are the ones that imprisoned me here in this awful place.”
“Why would the gods have a reason for doing such a thing to you, and how was it possible to imprison you.”
“It was because I became a threat to them.”
“Are you really that strong that you were able to overwhelm the gods and make them turn on you?”
“When I accepted the embrace of Death.
“So, did they think you were going down a demonic path or something?”
“In a way, but mainly they were jealous of me and wanted to either take my powers for themselves or get rid of me.”
“I assume they took the ladder then.”
“Correct,” he said with crippling disappointment. They set me up to fail.
“How? Please tell me if it isn’t too much to ask of you, the great guardian of the afterlife.”
Nusuma’s POV
“That one fateful day in the year 512KMT (Year of the Gods). The god of the seven seas, formally known as Ensui, sent me on a mission to take out some dirty pirates in the southern part of the Kagayaku ocean.”
“I didn’t think that there was any foul play in this operation because of how peaceful this world has become after the “war” ended, so only trivial things like pirate thievery would happen now.
“I was wrong.”
“When I got on a ship to sail through the Kagayaku ocean, I put some of my “celestial” powers on the back of the ship to make it sail at a much higher rate of speed.”
“Then I started sailing with a crew of 50 strong.” Some were men with long, thick beards, short stature, and a long history of alcohol problems.
Others were young unmarried women with long, crystalline hair that looked similar to Lady Kanpeki. These individuals also had such mysterious pointy ears and were often taken advantage of by the other brutes on the ship.
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Although we had such a “ragtag” group, we managed to make good time and get to the area of interest in a matter of days.
Once we got to this point of interest and found some good land to occupy our ship, we got out and explored the land.
It was a beautiful mountainside view with many different species of birds flying around, screeching in the air.
The terrain was rough, but not impossible for us to cross safely.
After we crossed the seemingly never-ending mountainside, we came to a stop and saw a beautiful tropical landscape.
“Is this like the one in the history books, the land of greed,” a man said from the crew of our ship.
“Yeah, it looks just like it,” a silver-haired woman standing next to him said, probably his wife.
“We’re all going to be rich after proving this discovery to the higher-ups.”
During the next 5 to 10 minutes there was lots of biccuring happening between the crew mates of our ship about how we're all going to become “incredibly wealthy”, and how we must tell the higher-ups about our discovery.
I wasn’t too excited because I’ve seen many mysteries of this world, and do not believe that Ensui would put us on such a daunting mission for measly pirates.
I would be mistaken.
After another half an hour or so of us discussing what would be the best strategy for going through the terrain, we still didn’t have a completely logical answer.
Would going straight through the center be the best, or would going left or right be safer and more efficient strategy.
We talked it over for long enough to get impatient and just decide on going through the center most area of the forest.
We finally started to enter the area and walk around. We would stare at the views of different animals, unknown to most and be amazed at how so many animals can live in one ecosystem.
We continued to walk for what felt like hours until we started to get fatigued.
We sat down at a nearby tree to rest, and for some to the quick lunch that they brought.
“Isn’t this great,” a hairy man said from behind.
“Well… it definitely is a new and very interesting experience for all of us,” a woman said while eating a packaged meal that she brought to eat.
“Well let’s just try to find those pirates first, then we can start exploring more of what this forest has to offer,” I said to the crew mates, waiting for an accepting smile from each of their faces.
It never happened.
“Yeah that’s great and all but… most of us have never been able to see anything like this before and want to enjoy it to the fullest.” The man said with a small, but noticeable smirk.
“Well… I guess if that is what the people want, then that’s what the people will get,” I said with a shallow smile.
“Agreeable captain,” a burly man from the back said.
After our short break, we began our trek towards the left side to see if we’ll find anything of value there.
We kept walking in an orderly, but seemingly casual way, as if we were just a bunch of grade schoolers on a field trip for school.
We sure acted like we were a bunch of grade schoolers trekking through the forest, because we were pointing out some of the most minute details of things, and objects we saw in the forest.
“Look there’s a monkey grabbing onto branches and swinging from them.”
“There’s a worm-like creature on this log.”
As the group walked over to this unidentified creature, I thought this creature could possible be dangerous, but kept it to myself.
Once the group were basically standing on top of this creature, someone stuck their hand out to feel the texture of its skin, but was rejected when this creature opened its mouth and proceeded to puncture the poor person with its fangs.
“Owww… it bit me,” she said with a scraggly voice, wincing in severe pain.
In less than a minute the victim, a young and beautiful woman, had been killed.
“What the hell just happened!”
“She’s… dead!”
“Captain what do we do, she doesn’t have a pulse!”
“Carry her in your arms,” I said angrily, sad that such a young and lively girl had to die.
“Yes sir,” the crew mate said as he saluted as a sign of respect.
“I think we should go back to our original objective now, soldiers.”
“Yes sir,” they all said in unison as they saluted.
After this horrific incident, the group, with me as their leader, began to return towards the center most area of the forest.
“So where do these pirates live sir,” a rightfully confused crew mate said to me with a low tone in his voice.
“Ensui said that the pirates should be living near the least inhabited area of the forest and should be protected and hiding right now.”
We continued back to the entrance, until we finally saw the mounside from the previous roadblock.
“We’re finally back to square one,” I said, happy that the rest of the crew wasn’t killed by a monster like that unidentified creature that killed that young girl.
“We should scout out the area and try to find any area where the inhabitants are low,” I said as an order to the crew mates.
They agreed and went back to the ship we sailed to this island with, to get binoculars.
Then the group of crew mates, half of them, begin to scan the area for less densely populated portions in the forest.
The other half of the crew mates began to look for berries and other assortments of nutrients we could find to ease our hunger, until we had finished our duty on this island.
After about a day or two the crew mates were starting to get tired of searching for the pirates, and started to get fatigued because of lack of food.
But this day was different.