In a small fast food franchise near a hospital, a young man stared at his hamburger with a pensive and dismayed expression.
"Should I really devour this hamburger and go back to work? After witnessing so many shocking scenes, I don't think I can stomach meat anymore," the young man sighed, lowering the hamburger and looking around for the attendant.
After a few minutes, he left the store carrying a package of vegan burgers, hurrying towards the hospital while grumbling.
"Darn it! I should have thought twice before qualifying as a surgeon and, even more, before applying for this assistant position... Sigh! Who am I kidding? It was the only available position," the young man, after a few minutes of walking, arrived at the hospital with a melancholic look.
Graduated from a public university and buried in debt, like so many other recent graduates, he desperately needed money to pay off student loans. Colleges, especially medical ones, aren't cheap.
After going through the sanitation procedures and dressing appropriately, the young man faced another long day of work, including assisting in unpleasant surgeries.
"Well! Surgeries weren't meant to be pleasant," the young man thought as he helped the surgeons sedate a patient with a broken arm and an exposed fracture of the humerus.
Finally, at the end of the shift, the young man, completely exhausted, sat in a chair on the terrace, alongside his fellow interns. Conversations about various topics, but especially about the nurses, filled the air.
"Believe me, I'll take down whoever said that every hospital has attractive nurses!" exclaimed the third intern.
"Count me in. We only have old or plain-looking ones here, and the few young ones aren't even that pretty!" added the second.
"Guys, calm down! We just need to survive this probation period, and then we can choose hospitals with amazing nurses!" concluded the first, keeping hope alive.
While the three of them argued, the young man continued to stare blankly at the horizon, as if questioning the meaning of life. Sensing the state of their colleague, the three stopped arguing and began to bother him.
"Hey, dude, what are you staring at? It's just buildings and more buildings, nothing special!" said the second.
The young man squinted a bit as he continued to gaze at the horizon and said mysteriously, "There's a black spot on the horizon, and it's getting bigger!"
After hearing this, the three also began to look at the horizon and finally realized what the young man was talking about.
"It must be just a plane or maybe some drone. Nothing to worry about!" said the third.
"Indeed! Stop panicking; you must have stayed up all night reading to be like this!" said the first teasingly.
The surprised young man looked at the first and said, "How did you guess?" with a tone of poorly feigned disbelief.
A few moments later, they all started laughing uncontrollably.
"Idiot! You're a surgical assistant and still stay up all night reading?!" the first young man said jokingly.
As they laughed and teased each other, they noticed a bright flash hitting the side of their faces, and as they looked to see what it was, they were met with a huge mushroom cloud forming not too far away.
Completely shocked, they rubbed their eyes and asked, "Guys, is it just me or is there a huge mushroom cloud forming over there?" the second asked incredulously.
"If you're hallucinating, then I must be too, because I see it too!" replied the third, his voice trembling and unwilling to accept the reality in front of him.
After a few seconds, it finally sunk in, with everyone screaming and running back into the hospital
"Damn it!" exclaimed the young man.
"My God! This can't be happening, it can't!" shouted the first.
The third and the second also shouted something, but it was drowned out by the thunderous and long sound of the monstrously hot shockwave. Moments later, the young man, now covered in dirt, full of burns, cuts, and bruises, looked with his one remaining eye at the sky, now partly occupied by the mushroom cloud.
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"If I knew I would die today, I would have at least said goodbye to my parents and my sister! Mom, Dad, Sister, I'm sorry, I won't be able to come home, I hope you live well and take care of Garfield for me!" the young man thought as he gasped for air, his vision slowly darkening.
In a dark and chaotic place, a small ball of light wandered aimlessly, completely confused by the environment around it.
"Who am I?" the ball of light wondered, only to receive the cold and lonely silence.
"Where am I? Where did I come from? I..."
Countless questions, but no answers, the ball of light continued to wander and question. No one knows for how long or how far it went until it finally arrived at a place. A huge stone plaque was now in front of the ball of light; it didn't know what it was for, but it was the only thing it saw beyond the darkness after so long.
"Who am I?" Once again, it questioned, but this time there was an answer.
"You are currently a disembodied soul. Your previous identity was a 23-year-old human named Adam Hellsing."
Surprised by the answer, the ball of light continued to question.
"Where did I come from?"
"Planet X96592 of the NER2 solar system, Galaxy GF2n, located in the seed universe 000053, but you probably know your planet as Teia!"
Confused by all that information and numbers, the ball of light quieted down and began to try to remember its life before everything. Little by little, memories of a distant past began to appear. The first time he walked, got hurt, the time he went to the park with his parents, the day his sister was born... finally reaching his last memory, the painful death due to a nuclear bomb dropped on his city.
Anger, confusion, remorse, sadness... countless emotions passed through the ball of light, until finally reaching a cold and poignant loneliness. Looking at the stone plaque, the ball of light, once known as Adam, finally asked.
"Where am I going?" with a mixture of fear and anticipation.
The plaque began to vibrate wildly, various images and colors appeared quickly and explosively. Eventually, an image finally appeared on the stone.
Roulette of the vast omniversal expansion
Options: Known Worlds, Unknown Worlds...
Seeing the options, the ball of light decided to play it safe and chose known worlds. After that, a large roulette appeared. Looking at the wheel, the ball of light came to a few conclusions. First, he was dead, but not for long, probably. Second, this plaque seems to be able to connect to other worlds, universes, and places; as for where he will be transported or something like that, he's still not sure, but he still thinks it's better to take the risk than to stay there forever.
"God, Buddha, Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Odin, Emperor Jade, any being who doesn't need my soul or something like that, please, let me go to a good place," praying, the ball of light finally spun the wheel.
Several names began to appear, and at the same time, an arrow appeared above the wheel. The names included Boku no Hero, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, Berserk... Seeing this, the ball of light wasn't happy at all, but rather extremely scared.
"Please! Please! Let it land on some world like Pokémon, without wars or crazy guys wanting to kill or destroy everything, but above all, don't let it land on Berserk!" The ball of light became desperate every time a dangerous world passed by the arrow, and even more so when a peaceful world compared to the others didn't stop.
The ball of light seemed like it was going to have a heart attack at any moment, although it didn't have a heart, let alone a body for it. Moments later, the roulette started to slow down until it finally stopped. Seeing this, the ball looked at the name that landed on the arrow. Although he wasn't very happy, since it's not a peaceful world, it was still better than worlds like Berserk or Dragon Ball
Kimetsu No Yaiba
"Not so bad, I just have to fight against a bunch of quasi-immortal beings and a crazy Michael Jackson impersonator sun-crazed!," the ball said with a tone of self-mockery, mockery, and a little bit of discouragement.
"Come on, it could be worse. At least if I'm not born in Japan, I won't have to face them, I guess, or maybe I'll be transmigrated to events after the main story. Let's not lose hope!" The ball continued to convince itself until it remembered that it barely watched the work, let alone read it. He had only watched the first season and as for the things that happened afterward, he only knew some information due to his friends' spoilers.
Indifferent to the crisis and panic of the ball, the wheel on the plaque disappeared and then two sections appeared in its place.
Blessing: Equipment:
Observing the events, the ball forced itself to calm down.
"Apparently, I won't go completely unprepared to the world of Kimetsu!" The ball said as it looked at the two options and finally decided to try asking the plaque about them.
"What are these two options and what do they do?" the ball asked with curiosity and fear.
"To increase your chances of survival, we will give you two options with blessings, abilities, equipment, etc. They come from the world you are going to travel to!" The plaque replied coldly and robotically.
"We who? What are you?" the ball asked with curiosity and fear.
"The answer to both questions is: Akashic Records!"
"Akashic Records? I've heard that name somewhere before, but I can't remember where!" The ball thought.
Questions after questions were asked by the ball; in the end, it managed to compile the information into a few things. First, there is some intention behind the goodwill of these beings, but apparently it is to obtain something called the world source. Second, he is neither the first nor the last to go through this. Third, the world options depend on the type of world.
After deeply thinking about the information obtained, the ball of light finally pressed the blessing option.
Blessing:
-Super smell
-Super hearing
-Wisdom
-Fool's ignorance
…
-Sun's child
The list was extremely long and had various things that really seemed like powerful blessings, while others..
"Seriously?! How can there be so many weird blessings? There's even one called Fool's Ignorance, how can that be a blessing?" Dismayed by the wide range of options and with no details besides their names, the ball of light finally chose the one that guaranteed its survival the most in its opinion, the blessing of the Sun's Child.
As far as he remembered, in the work, anything related to the sun is something powerful, be it the protagonist or even the ancestor of the sun breathing which he didn't know the name. Of course, he chose this blessing because there was nothing that directly guaranteed immortality, at most super regeneration, which wasn't very useful, since even beings with super regeneration, like the onis, die easily in this world.
After choosing the blessing, the image on the stone quickly changed to the equipment tab with a list of tens, if not hundreds, of times larger than that of the blessings.
Equipment:
- Nichirin sword
- Bazooka
- Car
- X-ray glasses
- Amaterasu tea pack
- Demon serum made from spider lily
- Ancestral solar sword
- Gold bar
- Noah's staff
- Spear soaked in holy blood
- Holy Grail
- Gungnir
- Celestial peach
...
The ball almost felt dizzy after seeing so many options, but soon recovered and began to seriously research them.
An indefinite amount of time later...
"Okay! I think I understand more or less how this equipment list works. But since I don't see any items from other works that I know, all these equipment probably exist in the world of Kimetsu!"
After careful consideration, the ball decided to choose the demon serum, as survival was the priority. Becoming a quasi-immortal demon not under Muzan's control seemed like the most reliable option than some super powerful weapon that he didn't know how to use. Although he didn't know much about Kimetsu, at least he knew some important things, like how Muzan became the first of the onis, which was through a serum made from spider lilies.
Upon finishing his selection, the ball of light noticed that everything had started to distort, and millions to trillions of colors began to appear all over the void.
"Initiating crossing. We hope you have a good trip!" said the Akashic Records.
Some time later, only the plaque remained still and lonely in that empty space.