Inside of a court-like room, 7 figures devided in three groups stood. Each one of them glaring at each other.

"Alright guys, as the goddess of light, I cannot take non-human servants anyway, so I'm going to be the judge here. Objections?" There were none. As the goddess of light, and by association also justice and life, she was more often then not appointed as the judge.

"Good. Now, since the start of this whole waste of time, we have come to three conclusions. We can keep the soul and make a servant, just drop it in the reincarnation cycle or destroy it." 

A man dressed in black robes with equally black hair and a face that shouted 'I'm an emo kid' called up "Destroying it? Pfft, don't make me laugh. You may be able to destroy a normal human's soul, but that thing? You couldn't even kill it when it was already half-dead, how do you expect to be able to hurt it's soul?" He said, clearly not amused.

The light goddess' face crunched up and as she was about to speak again, the man next to the emo guy spoke up "Kekeke, it seems that little Light and little Dark want to fight... I have a proposal..." He said, eyeing the nearby gods.

Since this evil-sounding man rarely, if ever, spoke up, nobody objected. "We could hold a tournament, and by choosing a person each, we can then make them fight to the death and give all rights on the soul to the winner... Kekeke, of course, we can set rules and whatnot..." He trailed off, laughing evilly at his idea.

Light's already crunched up face turned into a full-blown frown, but was stopped by the other god "I agree with his proposal. Who else is with it?"

As two men and one women nodded and only a girl seemed unsure, Dark smiled "Alright... Fire, Wind and water are with me. Death's with me, right?" He turned to the evil-looking guy: Death.

"Kekeke, of course. I suggested it after all..."

Smiling sadly, the unsure woman, Earth, looked back at Light and whispered in her ear "Don't bother yourselves with these maniacs, just make sure to win and help that poor soul..."

Nodding, Light reminisced the first time they had met the soul. When they first found this world, they had unconsciously ignited it's mana, sparking a revolution of life. Right as they were leaving, the ground had split open and a huge dragon rose up. 

She had talked to him about this and that, explaining some things. They then had to leave, and only returned when they heard that the planet had finally given birth to humans. 

Imagine her suprise when she discovered that once young and innocent dragon, now turned senile and filled with tremendous injuries, albeit hidden. He had told a tale that even they, as ancient gods, listened with bright eyes to. 

Although a soul in one life could be the exact opposite on the other, she still thought that if she birthed the dragon's soul in a human, an A+ priest could be born, orr at the very least, a B+ priest. (Ranks go from F to X with X only being gods and blablabla... You should know this stuff really if you read like, what? Any of the novels on this site?)

Unfortunately, nobody saw the huge grin on Death's face, otherwise, they would have thought otherwise about this whole tournament.

But, alas, as fate (The author) wills it, the plot must continue moving. Each of the gods picked a hero from one of their followers and pit them against one another. 

The reason for Death's grin was made painfully obvious when a giant xenomorph specimen appeared as his chosen. And despite all the protests from Light, the xenomorph brutally massacred all the other heroes. It wasn't much of a wonder why, as a human, no matter how strong, is still just a human. It could never beat a being armed with all sorts of natural and magical weapons from tail to teeth.

Of course, the only human in the fight was Light's chosen. Other then that, there was a fishman (Water), a demon (Darkness), Avian (Air), a beastman (Earth) and a Drakekin (Fire). 

Since Death's worshippers were, essentially, all the monsters in the world, he could, according to the agreement, choose any one of them. Therefore, the xenomorph was technically speaking, allowed. 

Still, Light made it pretty clear point that she was not at all happy at what happened, but she couldn't go back on her words. Like this, the dragon soul was given to Death, and the other gods could only wait and see what sort of things he would do with the soul. 

As for Death, he was elated beyond words. That xenomorph specimen was a monster that, oddly enough, had fallen from space and landed there. He had found it and healed it for the fight, knowing that the thing's lifespan was only a couple years anyway. And this was Death's real problem.

All of his worshippers, monstrous or not, either lacked intelligence, tolerable lifespans or decent reasoning. Sure, they could be used in wars across the mortal realm, but they were painfully hard to control, and he couldn't even intervene himself since no God could interfere with mortals.

However, now, he had a solution to this problem. No longer would he be left out of the big game. Although he could use this soul to make an extremely powerful monster, even capable of rivaling himself, he opted not to, but rather, he figured that he would leave things to fate and only give some basic requirements.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

There was a method which allowed a soul to be directly incarnated without the need of parents. As long as enough mana was nearby, the soul could take the perfect shape for itself.

However, this carried three major problems. One, the perfect shape of a soul is not truly perfect. It's not 'perfect' as in 'invincible', it's 'perfect' as in 'the perfect body for the soul to reside in'. The second glaring problem was that the soul needed to be really, but really fucking strong to survive the attempt. And the third problem, also the most obvious, was the necessity of an extreme amount of mana. Death could provide the latter with some effort.

As for the second problem, he was confident in the dragon's strenght. After all, that thing at it's peak could even hold them all back if it wanted, and it could surely defeat one god, perhaps two. And although now injured, it's soul had already recovered when it died, leaving it nice and healthy.

Although Death was, by name, the god of Death, he was also known as the god of Monsters due to his church. He basically only accepted non-humanoids as servants, and more often then not, was also shunned and treated as the 'Evil God' by all other god's churches.

This was because of a single reason: He lacked any sort of power in the mortal world! Sure, his worshippers could wipe out a city, but to get that to happend, he would need to rally them. And how to do that, when they are constantly being suppressed by all the other churches and adventurers? Because the 'rightful' subjugation requests, his people were constantly either hiding or running. 

He didn't really care though, and neither did they. It's not like his followers could actually understand anything other then 'hungry' or 'kill that thing'. If his people were actually intelligent, he might actually actively help them, but as things stood, he had thrice the amount of followers of the other gods, albeit all of them idiots, weaklings or unfaithful. He could survive on that faith alone, so why bother?

Now, however, he could make himself a figurehead for his people. A chosen, so to speak. It wasn't uncommon for the other 6 gods to often pick chosen, and sometimes he did as well, but those died rather quickly due to the very limited protection. 

However, if his chosen was strong from the start, smart, well-taught and loyal, forget surviving, he could even go on the offensive! Although he and his siblings had good relationships, they still fought tooth and nail within the mortal world. Should one god's faith be completely elimited, he/she would just have to suck it up and enter deep sleep until all the others would choose to leave that particular world.

Grinning happily inside of his divine space, which although close, didn't quite resemble hell. A silence unbecoming of a place of torment for as long as one could see stood, and instead of being a burning hell, this was a cold, silent hell. This was Death in it's truest form: Cold and silent, all-embracing.

Death arrived inside of a completely black room with small candles on the walls, resembling very much a ritual room. Placing the bluish soul at the center of the room, he began flooding the surroundings with his mana, 

As time went on, the soul slowly started glowing more and more, absorbing the mana Death released. Then, all of a sudden, a transformation accoured.

The once blue ball that was the soul began to take shape, slowly forming into a strange, prolungated form. Death grinned happily, but that grin faded when the soul began screaming in pain. Yes, souls could scream, albeit only gods or exorcists could hear them.

Panicking, Death began releasing even more mana. However, the screams didn't stop, The soul looked as though it was getting weaker, making Death grit his teeth and whisper "cmon, you can do it... I believe in you..."

Then, as if it heard him, the soul suddently started regaining strenght, but this time, it wasn't concentrating in one location, no. It was actually in two locations.

As the two points grew and grew, the soul matter began disappearing. Death could only scratch his head in confusion, but didn't stop.

Finally, flesh slowly started appearing around the two parts of the soul. Flesh, blood, tissues and bones all formed and strengthened thanks to the pure mana Death released.

Finally, 10 hours later, the process was finally done. Death observed his creation as it slowly got up and looked around, confused.

Strangely enough, the soul had not become one body, but two. One was a beautiful girl that even by Death's standard, could be considered top-grade, albeit his tastes were strange. The other was a titanic snake that could rival the old dragon's size. 

The girl had long black hair and snake-like eyes, with her left eye being green and the other eye red. She was around 165cm tall, so not too tall nor too short. Her skin was extremely pale, as though it never saw the sun before.

And the snake looked even hotter in Death's opinion! A long serpentine body finishing with a mouth filled with very, very sharp teeth. It's underside was a copper-like red, whilst it's upper scaled were a beautiful green.

Looking at the two, God could feel their connection. They were one and they were the same, but they were different somehow, albeit he couldn't quite pinpoint how or what.

Then, the girl fell over. It was simply as though her legs gave out, and the snake's eyes opened wide too, however, it just rushed in another direction. Then another. And another. It was simply going around blindly, smashing into walls without care.

Death pursued his lips in confusion and spoke up "Hello, dear. Tell me, what do you remember?"

The girl looked at him and the snake stopped. Her legs were by her sides, and she didn't look like she wanted to move, nor could. Death sighed and walked towards the girl, who at first looked confused, then scared.

She tried backing away with only her hands, as her legs didn't seem to funtion very well. The snake once again began smashing randomly, albeit much more violently then before.

Death crouched down in front of the girl and slowly put his hand on her head, trying to calm her. She was obviously frantic, but after seeing his friendly intentions, she calmed down and so did the snake. 

"So, do you remember anything?" Death asked once again, only to be answered with a nod.

"That's good, what do you remember?" She nodded once again.

"That's not very helpeful. Seriously, what do you remember? Death asked once again, starting to get exasperated. She simply nodded again.

Death's eyes widened at an idea "You... You can't speak?" She nodded much more heavily then before.

"Well, fuck me. A paralized, mute girl and a blind snake. What more could I ever ask for?" Death asked to no one in particular, feeling a strange sort of deja vu. Fate was truly a bitch, but maybe karma would be nice to him? Wasn't it the other way around, though?