"What is this place?" Zack asked with a slightly open mouth as the self-acclaimed god of timelines smiled.
Both of them were currently standing in a darkened room and the only source of light was a green pyramid-like structure with neon-colored lines floating in the middle of the place.
"Well, that's probably not the best way to describe the timelines," Kai muttered as he touched the pyramid with his fingers and the entire thing spread open.
"Imagine this was the starting point," The black-haired man said as he placed his finger on a single bright green dot. "Now imagine that this was a multiple-choice question with four options."
The dot suddenly got four lines extending from the bottom and converted into fours dot. One of them was in a straight line with the first dot while the others were beside that dot.
"One of them was the choice that was chosen and it continued with many more choices. However, if another choice was chosen, it would become something else and the future choices would differ. And that would extend into a huge number of choices."
The man slowly explained as the lines and dots started to increase. Within a few seconds, thousands of dots and lines were visible in front of Zack and each of them represented a choice.
However, there was a straight line that connected a middle choice to the first one.
"Is that the choice that was chosen every time?" The black-haired teenager guessed as Kai nodded before the entire thing vanished and they returned back to the heaven-like place.
"That was just an example of a timeline that I showed you. I can see the timelines of every single living being with my powers and let me tell you, there are way too many of these things to look at." The god said with a sigh before he looked at Gugnir.
The blue lance was still in the teenager's hands and it felt the same it had during his previous life. But the major difference was that he was seeing it in real life.
The concept of a god doing things with a legendary weapon was not easy to believe for a normal person. But Zack had reincarnated into the past and the one who had done that was none other than the person who was in front of him.
"Can I ask a question?"
"Go ahead."
"Can you tell me how you sent me to the past?"
"Oh that. It was an almost impossible task to do and I would have never been able to do that if not for the lance in your hand. Gugnir connected your soul with me and I could see everything in your timeline in detail though because of some restrictions on my powers, I could only see up to the point where you got your sister cured.
I then searched for the best possible timeline and found three points where I could try sending your soul to. That was why I said that it would be random since you could have been reincarnated in any of these points.
But after it was done, I left everything on you and you did better than I expected." The man finished with a smile as Zack took a deep breath.
"What's your motive behind doing all of this though?" He asked as the man stared up in the sky.
"I am a god but a chained one. In the past, I could manipulate timelines with Gugnir and change some of the past decisions that many people made. However, my weapon was taken and well, I lost my powers. Now you are with that weapon and I am gonna cry if a teenager like you gets my powers.
"You sound less like a god and more like a middle-aged man ranting about his job."
"I don't think you know any middle-aged men who sent you back in time."
"Fair point."
Zack then glanced at the lance with narrowed eyes as he wondered what powers it could give him. But his imagination was cut short by the god.
"Don't expect too much. I am not the god of superpowers or anime so the best you should get is above average strength and stuff. That is unless fate decides to slap me and give you something else."
"We will see about that but you still haven't told me about the game and your goal."
Kai then stared into Zack's eyes as his expression turned serious.
"My goal is to get my powers back and have my weapon back but that won't be possible until the person who did this to me is killed. And since you are powerful in Hikari, I want you to kill a god."
"Not seeing how absurd that sounds, what does being strong in a game means in the real life?"
"What you think is the real world is not the only real-world kid. Hikari is a combination of worlds, slaved worlds. The NPCs were the people of those worlds but their souls are now gone.
They are just there to make sure that the gods have a good chuckle before they decide that your world is getting too bored and the same thing happens to Earth. Your world will be added to Hikari too and you will move to another world. So you have to prevent that too."
Zack wanted to speak something but he was left stunned by the sheer amount of information that had been dropped on his head by Kai.
Some of the things hadn't made sense to him unless he had thought about them. He remembered the times when an author would drop a long chapter with important information and readers would call it an info dump.
But those readers never knew how important that 'info dump' was. If only some people had patience.
"Now I have somehow been handed with the responsibility of saving 2.1 billion lives which I am the least bit interested in." The black-haired boy muttered as Kai shook his head.
"You are saving your life and the lives of those who you love. You just have to get stronger in-game and I will find a way to do something in real life. Though remember, both the game and the real world have things that you are not aware of."
Zack's body suddenly started flickering as Kai sighed.
"My time with you is over for now. I hope I will see you soon and explain some more things then." He said one last time before a confused-looking Zack appeared back at the hospital.
And he was still holding the lance in his hand.
[ Say inventory. ] Kai's voice resounded in his ear as the teenager did as told. An inventory screen similar to the one in Hikari opened in front of him.
The only difference was that all of the boxes, except one of them, were empty.
'Is that the memory ball?' He thought with narrowed eyes as he brought the lance closer to one of the inventory boxes and put it there.
It vanished into the box and the icon of the lance appeared on the box. He then closed this 'inventory' before sitting down and rubbing his forehead.
'What the fuck just happened.' The teenager had acted extremely calm but now that he was somewhat alone, his mind exploded.
It felt as though someone had cut his head off, drilled his brain thrice, add some salt in it, and sealed it again.
There were a lot of things that he had been bombarded with and half of them didn't even make sense.
'But for now, let's just wait till Mia is cured. I will have many sleepless nights to think about this stuff anyways.'