The shot rang out, briefly silencing the chatter of the crowd. Soon after, panic broke out as people rushed to find safety. None of that mattered to Jack though. The only thing that mattered to him was trying to stem the blood flowing freely from the wound in his chest. 

Was this it? All the work his life had come to? All the political campaigns he'd run to get people in office. All the events he'd organized. Holding both hands to the wound, he gazed towards where the shot had been fired from. He saw a flash from the rifle as it fired again, and then nothing.

And then, something? Jack looked around, finding himself inside of a void. Numerous dots of light littered the dark void around him, reminding him of the night sky. 

Funny. I remember several people I had to reassure under a night sky that looked just like that. There was Rob. He was running for the mayoral seat for that one town. If I remember correctly, there was a big pesticide company funding his rival's campaign so they could open up a plant there. The pollution it would have caused would have killed off all the fish is the rivers over there. Damn. That company had put millions of dollars into that campaign and Rob was just a local guy that didn't want that. He told me that night that there was no way he could beat them with all the smear campaigns they'd run on him. None of that info was true of course, but after a good pep talk that night, he did his speech and won the election. Well, that and all the town hall meetings I'd put together, the billboards and other things. The fact that he sued the company in a massive defamation lawsuit and won was just icing on the cake to be honest.

Then there was Debby. I think she was running for city council. That's right, there was a railroad company that wanted to build track right through the center of town, and they had paid off several of the council members to get it done. Unfortunately, she didn't win the seat. That being said, the campaign I ran for her did get the people of the town aware of what was going on, so the whole project of the railroad company got derailed for a bit, the police got involved, and several of those scum got charged with counts of accepting bribery. In the end, the railroad company just paid a fine. I think they still ended building the track, but it had to go around the town. Unfortunately, I couldn't win all of them.

Ha! And then there was Sarah. She was running for governor! That one was great! Her whole reason for running was that several large companies were just dumping waste into the ocean. There were laws against it of course, but the fines for breaking those laws were established 50 years ago and the lawmakers back then never took inflation into account, so paying the fine if they were caught was cheaper than paying for proper disposal. Those companies also ran a massive smear campaign against her, saying that her claims were baseless, she just hated the companies and the people that worked for them, etc. The looks on the faces of the company executives when I came out with advertisements for her campaign showing video evidence of what they were doing was priceless. They tried to deny it of course, but the evidence was just damning. So of course, they flooded the TV, continuing the smear campaign against her. I had to set up so many town hall meetings. There were so many phone calls I made for that one. It was really tough to get the ball rolling, but once it got rolling, it really rolled. Sarah got elected, and that company went out of business.

I guess I can understand why I got shot. All those bigshots I was upsetting. Well... now that I got my thoughts a bit more in order, where exactly am I? This isn't quite what I expected the afterlife to be like...

Looking around, Jack still saw the void and all the dots of light around him. Looking down, he noticed that he was still wearing the suit he had on during the rally he'd been holding. Kinda weird, but honestly, he was dead. With no knowledge of what was going on, who was he to decide what was weird in the first place?

Suddenly, he felt himself being pulled in a direction, and he was being pulled very quickly. With a flash of light, he found himself before a very large skeleton with glowing eyes and dressed in ornate robes with skull decorations galore.

"Greetings mortal! I am Necrovalis! God of Undeath on the world of Gyra! And you are going to be my champion in the oncoming fight against the Demonic invasion in one year's time! And after that, you will show the world that I am truly worthy of their faith!"

"Okay... Necrovalis... right? My name is Jack. Can we just start from the beginning here? I'm a little bit confused here..."

"The insolence! If I could summon another then I swear..."

"Calm down boss. I'm not trying to be rude here. If I don't understand what your goals are and what we're dealing with, I'm not going to be much help at all here. From what you just said, I'm the only option you got here... I think... so let's sit down and talk about this."

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"Hmm... Unfortunately, you are correct about the fact that you are my only option. And I suppose that you indeed will be more useful if you know what is going on. Very well. We shall... talk about this."

"Okay. First things first. You talked about summoning me here. Can you elaborate on what that means and why I was summoned?"

"Of course. As insolent as you are, daring to ask questions of me, the mighty god of undeath, Necrovalis! I shall answer this! A demonic invasion of the world is set to occur in one year on the world of Gyra. As such, we, the ten gods of the world have deemed that such a threat world cannot be dealt with as the world currently stands. The solution we came up with was to put aside our differences and to each summon a hero at random from your world of Eerth. Summoning such people gives them immense power. Enough to stand against this demonic force!"

"To summarize what you are saying, I'm being summoned here to help fight off a demonic invasion, and the reason I was summoned was because the summoning process gives the summoned a large amount of power that can be used to fight off this demonic force. Correct?"

"Yes. That is correct... Mortal."

"Thank you. Now can you give me a brief overview of the world that I'm being sent into? Is there magic or anything like that?"

"Ah yes. The world of Gyra has a system put in place by the gods to help the people grow. You can think of it as similar to the video game leveling systems of your world Eerth. Of course, you can't view any stats or anything similar to that. We did try that out for a few brief centuries a few thousand years back. It turns out that if you show people their growth and how much experience they have left to reach that next level, they will do incredibly stupid things... So many people died thinking, the next level is only a few points away, I can keep going... Anyway. We took out the ability to view experience and just left it so people can see their mana and their skill levels. Anyway! Back on topic! To keep it short, if you do a task, you get experience in it. You get enough experience in it, and you level up the skill related to that task. Once you've leveled up the skill, you keep all the experience you put into it. If you slack off for a period of time without having leveled up the skill, the experience starts to fade away. There is a skill for basically every task, and some take longer amounts of time for the experience to fade, so I'm not going to describe all of that. But that, Mortal, is your explanation of the magic of the world."

"Okay, that answers so much while leaving so much unanswered... Anyway, moving on... I guess. You mentioned that you and the other gods had to put aside your differences and work together. You also mentioned that you wanted me to show the world that you were worthy of their faith. Can you explain to me your relationship with these other gods as well as why the world needs to be shown you are worthy of their faith?"

"Umm... well.... how to put this... Ahem! Well, Mortal! I will have you know, when we glorious gods put the system into place on this world, I deigned to put into the system my glorious gift of undeath! With which the great thinkers and philosophers could use to continue their contributions to this world! The great warriors could continue their battles! And furthermore, the mages could raise undead minions to perform tasks for the betterment of the world! I installed this into the system so deeply that no god, not even myself could change it! After all, every being on this world deserves the right to continue their goals after death!"

"Okay... So let me make sure I have this straight. You put undeath into the system so that good people could continue their goals after death, and you made it so that anyone can access this ability... Let me guess... The majority of people who use your... gift... probably have very bad intentions with the use of it. I'm going to further guess that said evil people used this ability for evil purposes and did a lot of harm to a lot of people leading to the whole thing being labeled as something only evil people use. Furthermore, since all their followers were pissed off about the whole thing, the other gods probably tried to do something about the undeath aspect you put into the system but could not. Due to this, the best option they had was to declare you as an evil god and put an extermination order on all the undead to discourage the misuse of what you put into the system. However, since this demonic invasion is going to happen, they've lifted the ban temporarily in order to fight this world ending threat?"

"That's almost exactly it! How did you discern that mortal?"

"Umm... Lucky guess. Anyway! Can you explain what my role in this is going to be?"

"You will be summoned with the other heroes as a skeletal mage! Able to summon armies of skeletal and ghostly minions to do with as you see fit! Once the invasion begins, these armies you summon will do battle with the demonic forces, and the people will see how amazing the gift I granted them truly is and I will gain several followers!"

"I'll be a skeleton?"

"Of course!"

"Okay... I guess I can deal with that. The armies I can summon. Will they be the skeletons of ghosts and people that lived in the world?"

"Do you want them to be?"

"Preferably not. I doubt that people seeing their dead relatives being raised up to fight would be very good for your image."

"Great! I was worried I would have to add a whole new set of skills to the system to allow that to be the case!"

"I thought you said that you couldn't change the way you put undeath into the system."

"Of course I cannot Mortal! Adding new things to the system is entirely possible though! To better explain it, when you summon a skeleton or other undead, it is spontaneously created underground and crawls its way out. Ghosts just appear there in the air with some cool fog effects I made."

"Okay. Got it. I can work with this."

"Do you believe you can help save the world Mortal?"

"Well, at the very least I have to try since otherwise everyone living on the world is going to die... or worse..."

"And do you think you can help me... gain followers"

"Oh that? Who do you think your talking to here? I'm going to be the best PR guy you've ever worked with. Now let's get this ball rolling!"