🙡 CHAPTER 1.1 🙣

The gift of life

My heart sank—or its soul equivalent—I was betrayed. By a demon, at the gates of hell!

Why in the fucking hell am I surprised!? Most likely a sign of things to come—constant playing with my mind, showing a light of hope, just so that the darkness of despair would hurt more... I wanted to cry, but it was so hot my tears just evaporated.

In front of me was a mass of scorched flesh and bone. Its... eyelid...? I guess? slightly opened, revealing a massive round eye, gleaming with intelligence, and a constant pain the creature seemingly accepted by now. Immediately after, black pus started pouring from under its eyelids, its tear ducts, and even seeping through the eye itself, boiling from the hellish heat. It’s irises shrunk in pain—it had three of them—It groaned, opening a foul thing I can only assume to be a mouth, full of sharp obsidian-like, pitch black teeth—no way to know if they were always this way, or if they crystalised over millennia of constant heat.

I was terrified. I did not want to speak, my heart broken. I was in hell, even speech might be a trap! But my memories of man, living a corporate rat race, pushed me to speak—the main survival tool of both medical and rodent trade...

“Pardon me, Sir.. Or madam, but I believe I lost my way. I believe I was supposed to reincarnate, and it seems, by an unfortunate mistake, I was put in hell instead?”

Silence… if you ignore the screams and sobbing in the distance. The eye, closed shut by the now hardened tar like black pus, facing me. It alone was a few times my height.

Air came out of its mouth and it tried speaking, the sound wave powerful enough for me to feel it… and yet, no sound came.

It tried again, and again. Thanks to the skin constantly burning through and regenerating, I could see its muscles twisting in frustration, as it somehow sensed It was not reaching me…

But then, I heard a faint whisper “Give him... The contract…”

“What contract?”

Suddenly, the body froze.

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“Can .. you.. hear?”

A raspy voice asked. “Yes?” I answered, trying to be as firm-handshake as possible. The old adages are true—first impressions matter, especially when dealing with contracts. Looking into the eye part was a bit hard to do, not least because I found the sight repulsive (and that’s speaking from the perspective of a person that was a surgeon at one point… my memories are hazy on the details). Its very presence was just... wrong.

The huge body turned around, not completely, as a flowing flame, much like magma, seemed to keep the creature restrained, obstructing its ability to show me its back. But even from the side I could see half of another face—except this one was even more damaged and burned… while the front one seemed like a still living flesh, this was but a skull, with many deformities and signs of old gangrene. Even an atheist doctor like me…—Well... Ex-atheist, now that I’m in hell, I suppose...—had experiences of going into a patient's room and just knowing, seemingly supernaturally, they passed away. The thing in front of me was no longer alive, but a corpse. Yet it was also part of the seemingly alive creature.

“Hahaha…. Yes… I suppose... dead souls… would.. hear..”

“Don’t worry… you shall leave this place… Yes.. We NEED you to leave... You came here… because your body… was ours… and that gift… has a… price”

Its voice, though unnerving and tired, carried an ethereal charm that made it impossible for me to interject, I felt the urge to just listen intently, almost as if deep inside I knew it was something beyond me.

“We just needed you… to come here... to take over a certain job we did… A contract… that has to always be done… even in death…. Haha… Unless you wish to be punished… ha!.. But there shall be… reward… a nice... reward.. ha!”

Still standing and listening, like a child hearing old grandpa tell important stories, I instinctively nodded. A fool! An Idiot! Always read contracts before agreeing to anything! Always get your obligations in writing! Your boss is not your family, they want you to earn them money! And yet, I was surprised, when, as it spoke its last laugh, it spouted pus and blood out of its skull-mouth... all over me!

And it was alive! Guided by its own instincts, or the will of the monster in front of me, it covered my whole ethereal body! I tried to stop myself from screaming as the liquid creature was trying to force itself into my mouth- but when it started burning, I could no longer hold the scream. Even through my closed eyelids, I was blinded by the flames scorching my skin, while feeling as if my very soul was being set ablaze!

FIRE! LIGHT! FIRE! PAIN!

❂

“ARUUUUU!” - I could hear something howling in the distance… and only a moment later did I realise that something was me.

Expectedly, as apparently one can get used even to death and reincarnation, the curtain opened again on a new act on an idyllic scenery.

Soft breeze whispered to me, a scent of forest and ground in the air. Rising sun reflected on the droplets of morning dew around me, and on me.. Though they suddenly disappeared! The damp feeling on my body, going inside.. I drank it instinctively.

It dawned on me that I.. I am!

I am again! The world shall tremble before my mighty feet! I shall conquer this fantasy world, using the power bestowed in me…

I just have to find my feet first…

Wait! What the hell?! Why am I covered in some weird jello? And half buried in the ground?

In panic, I tried digging myself up... only to see hundred small vines hitting the ground instead.

… I stopped trying to move my hands, they stopped moving. I tried moving my arm—they moved. They, because there were dozens of them…

The flowing water in the stream next to me was singing its soothing song, insects were buzzing, and my head was empty.

Yep. I was never told what I would reincarnate as, was I?

But then what the hell am I? And as I was thinking that, a window appeared.