Being engulfed in pitch darkness, I couldn't figure out exactly what was going on. By now, I would usually already be reincarnated to another world and birth as a baby. Yet, right now, I could still feel my original body. How? From the intense pain that was washing over my body. It felt as if I had swallowed fire, or perhaps I had fallen to hell.
Was this the doing of the strange voice? Was it even a voice? It felt more like captions on a screen. The real question though, was what it meant by saying I had died a hundred times. It felt more than just a hundred.
My whole body felt like it was burning inside out. Bitter fumes swirled around my face like milk in a cup of coffee. The fires of hell, or purgatory, or whatever state I was in, were definitely doing a good job torturing me. However, it was a few moments before I realized the pain was numbing down, slowly but surely.
After a long while, the pain suddenly spiked one last pang of agony before vanishing entirely. In that same instant, my vision unexpectedly returned as I gasped.
The blue expanse of the sky stretched out over me with several pillars of dark smoke rising toward it. The state I was in wasn't hell after all. It was the Felagan State.
I looked around at my surroundings in confusion. Rows and rows of crumbling and burnt buildings, some even still smoking, stretched for quite a distance. I myself was lying in what I assumed had been a burnt house, surrounded by rubble.
The landscape was different, but it was definitely familiar... Yes there was no doubt about it. I was in my parent's estate. And this was the town of Wruens- or what was left of it. I almost couldn't recognize it. For miles, I saw nothing but smoking ruins.
The Lwich had been true to their word. Everything in the entire town had been razed to the ground, and the people were no exception. Around me, the streets were littered with piles of corpses everywhere. I shivered to think that I was the sole survivor.
It took me a good while to understand and accept that this was reality. I was still alive. Still, it was almost unbelievable. A slice through the head and the chest was not something you would survive from.
As it turned out, I was right. As I sat up, trying to support myself with my numb arms, flecks of soot and char that had piled up on top of me sifted through my body. That was when I realized that my arms were now nothing more than the burnt bones of a skeleton.
Shocked and repulsed, I got up quickly until I caught sight of my reflection in a shard of broken glass. It wasn't just my hands that had been vaporized. My entire body had been reduced to a blackened skeleton.
I had no idea how I was still moving, but I just dusted the soot off my bones. I could see the mark of the blow that had killed me: a large crack tracing from my skull, straight across my splintered ribs, and ending on my arm. I was also still producing smoke from little tiny embers on my arm here and there, but other than a slight twinge, I felt no pain.
Beep. [ Soul Sanity Levels Stabilized ]
Beep. [ Calibrating Host's Status . . . ]
'It's those captions again.' I thought, looking at my body in bewilderment as another loading symbol popped up in my mind.
Beep. [ Adding Status to Soul . . . ]
I hadn't realized it before, but I suddenly noticed a pitch-black flame suspended in the air inside my ribs. It flickered with each beep, seeming to get stronger as I watched.
Beep. [ Status has been confirmed ]
Beep. [ You may now use the Commander's System ]
'Eh- What?' I thought blankly, my mind still processing the words. 'System? Status? This can't be right... I thought those didn't exist in this world?'
The word caught my attention instantly. It wasn't just the word itself, however. I had seen quite a few worlds that ran on game-like systems. However, this design and the dialogue styles made me recall a memory of a world I was very familiar with before. 'Could it be-?'
I raised my hand slightly so that it was level with my vision, as I always had done. 'What's my status?' I thought, trembling a little.
The response was immediate. There was another beep, which was starting to get annoying, and several panels filled with text and symbols materialized in my mind. Each panel displayed different details and information about me.
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[ System Host: Arius Scerriton ]
[ Race: Skeletal Undead ]
[ Rank 1: Rookie Recruit ]
[ Soul Stones: 0 ]
[ Authority Level: 1 ]
[ Soul Level: 100 ]
[ Soul Health: 7 ]
[ Soul Mana: 21 ]
[ Skills: Enlist Undead ]
[ Troops under command: None ]
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The familiar way it popped up in my head, the annoying beeps before every sentence, the sickeningly excessive use of square brackets that made it hard to read. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely the same system I was used to- The Adventurer's System.
But there was something different about it now. No, not something. Everything.
I had lost all my previous skills and items. My modifications to the system had vanished and my profile icon was nothing but a skull emoji. It was probably accurate but the lack of effort in my icon annoyed me.
All my stats from before had either reset or disappeared completely from the status. In place of them were new words I had never seen on any systems.
'Did a get a different system?' I wondered. Changing a system was possible, but it was only ever done if someone traded their system with another host. 'No, that's out of the question in a world that doesn't even use systems.'
The terms seemed more military-like than something from an RPG and were written in the Felgan tongue as if it had already adapted into this world. I had no idea why my stats were now 'Soul' based, or why I already had a hundred levels without doing anything, but I was more concerned about the frighteningly low numbers my health was in.
'Drop status.' I thought, and the panels folded up neatly before disappearing. My head was starting to hurt from this so I decided to worry about it later. Things would probably be clearer once I made sense of my current situation first.
A pillar of smoke larger than others in the distance had caught my attention and I wanted to see if there were any other survivors unlike me. But as I tried to move no further than a few steps, my whole body seemed to shudder unsteadily and almost fell apart.
Beep. [ Your soul condition is low causing unstable mana flow in current form ]
'Great. Daily life of a zombie,' I thought, already disliking my new circumstances. Even in death, my small body was still going to be a pain. 'I get to walk slower than the speed of moss spreading. How exciting.'
I picked a random soot-stained coat off the ground to cover my bare bones up and make myself look less threatening. It was the only thing I could find too since the Scerriton Estate was no more than a bloody marble floor. Everything had been razed to the ground, especially my room which had been entirely erased from existence. Perhaps keeping it of flammable books wasn't the smartest choice.
Stumbling slowly toward the pillar of smoke in a way that would've made zombie film directors back on Earth proud, I found myself reaching the square in the center of town. And reaching levels of bloodshed that shouldn't be possible.
A large bonfire was burning in the middle of the square, emitting the towering pillar of smoke I had seen from afar. I don't think I need to tell you what the fire was fueled by. There were probably over a few hundred dead in the fire alone, humans and horses alike.
"What an unnecessary bloodbath against people who can't even take up arms." I thought. I didn't feel sorry for them, such was the horrors of war. But the fact that someone would go out of their way just to devise an abomination like this disgusted me. "The Lwich soldiers really are animals... The place literally reeks to high heaven."
I was already losing hope that someone else would still be alive, but I decided to look around anyway. Body after body, rows of familiar faces of the townsfolk. But it wasn't until I spotted two bodies that I feared the most to find, that I lost hope.
"I already knew it would turn out this way... I just didn't believe... Sister, forgive me. I wasn't able to take care of them like I promised."
I watched the cold bodies of my parents from a distance. They were both face down and ridden with bullet wounds. Dried blood surrounded them with small red streams snaking through the gaps in the stone pavement. Just how long had they been dead?
"I'm the one who should be in their place. Why did they have to suffer too? Is this what happens after my death? Does it affect everyone around me? Did my misfortune cause all this?" So many questions of existential crisis swirled in my head as I looked emptily at the square.
'What have I done?' I thought, 'No one could've survived this atrocity...'
"BEGONE, MONSTER!"
There was a loud 'Plop' as a cutlass came out of nowhere and severed my neck. Everything seemed to happen in a rush. The system started beeping like crazy and the black flame jumped about my ribcage, trying to burn its way out, and I could see my skull bounce away over corpses from a third person's view.
'I take that back.' I thought as the rest of my body tumbled to the ground. Apparently, somebody was still alive. And this somebody still alive had quite probably destroyed my revived chance as an undead.
'Was I always cursed to die no matter what? Is that just a part of my existence now? How am I still able to think if my head is over there? And most importantly, when will this beeping system shut up?'
Beep. [ Body part has been detached. Adjusting host's soul to fit new form ]
Beep. [ Soul health is critically low. Host at risk of termination ]
Beep. [ New foe detected! Vanquish him to obtain exp and rewards! ]