It seemed to be around night when I had returned, I now had a rough idea that time passed almost the same between the worlds, but I would just have to be sure. I realized that I still needed to eat my food, only through the fact that my stomach felt like dying. I headed downstairs, where my mother and father were having a conversation. They never were completely involved in my life but that was my fault as well. I chose this for the relationship I had with them. I said hello to them and asked them what they were talking about after I grabbed my dinner from my kitchen. My mom answered first and said "The UN meeting to decide what to do now is happening right now, we were just thinking about what we are going to do" I sat down and started to eat before saying "Oh, we might as well wait for them to make a decision cause this could go anyway. More importantly, were you both able to get into the world?" They both nodded their heads but my dad added "Yeah, but its hard for us to get to that state. We didn't even do much in the world before heading out. We did find out that you don't need to sleep once you enter the world it pretty much acts as sleeping, and that eating inside in the dream feeds you in real life as well and you don't feel hungry." Oh, I hadn't thought about that but that was pretty cool. It might have meant that if people wanted to they could live their entire lives in that world without having to worry about losing their life in this world.
Remembering that I had also found out some information I asked them "Were you able to get the mind device?" They shook their heads realizing their mistake. I told them about how they could get their device and walked them through the process I went through to get the device. At the same time, I told them more about all the information I had learned about the world in the library. Before finally going back up, I had finished my dinner by this point, I reminded them to give me their code once they got their device so we could communicate in the world itself. I went back to my room and thought a bit about my school situation. I really didn't wanna waste time going to school. I knew this world would be the future and I was hoping the announcement the government is making tomorrow would get me out of school. I did decently, but I never found myself being passionate of what I was learning, that's also why I wanted to get out of school. I hit the bed before deciding that I wouldn't need to worry about this for now. I had spent the entirety of today in bed in the world but I was still getting a bit tired. It was quite confusing since I hadn't actually done anything physically. But whatever. I did the procedure again and entered the world. Today was the day I would start my plan to win the upcoming tournament. I was planning to spend most of my time preparing for the tournament, so I could be ahead of the rest of the people that would enter this world eventually. I used the search widget to look up what the best way to level up my arts and attributes were. A bunch of recommendations showed up, with a couple video feeds of live levelling. None of this mattered to me since I didn't even understand the basic method of levelling in the first place.
Did I have to kill monsters? Did I have to complete quests? I had no idea what I had to do, where I had to go or what this world even was. This was the first time I got to think about the scale of what was actually happening. This feeling of having to face things too large for my eyes to see, too broad for my fingers to feel and too strange for my mind to comprehend creeped into my veins. That feeling made its way back to my heart and just as my heart pumped it out again... The rhythm came again. I was smiling. My blood was burning, my heart ached as if it wanted to burst forth and set out on the journey for me. It ached so much I hit my chest to numb the pain. The right hand struck the left breast and the left hand struck the right. The pain was forced away and as the rhythm picked up again I felt...clarity. My mind became that of a trained swordsman in the 1000th bout against the tatami mat. It became that of a painter letting his creativity flow through his hands that expressed his vision using techniques that he had burned into his fingertips. All was removed from my stream of thought except that of the sound of the stream itself. That sound manifested itself as the rhythm that my heart made with my hands. The same sound that was now making me want to dance until the heat between the soles of my foot and the ground burned my feet, and even then to dance until they wouldn't work anymore. And so I did. Du Du Du DUDU Du DUDU Du DUDU Du my hands beat as my feet joined their song scraping on the ground as they moved.
I was never good at dancing but suddenly I was, just fine. But I wasn't doing any dance I had seen before. I was moving my body along to the strings of another man... a much greater man. As if I was imitating a master craftsman with the best of forges whereas I held but a small flame. The dance was rough around the edges and I made mistakes that I couldn't cover up. Still, it was mesmerizing. The movements were meaningful and I would move each time I felt the blood moving away from my heart, giving the entire dance this tempo that really nothing else had. It wasn't long but it felt like ages as a couple minutes went by and I ended the dance in a strong posture. My right leg stood firmly planted in the ground bending at the knee where as my left leg went over it to the right, my knee flaring up to my waist. My right hand was facing straight forward with an open palm and the left hand was right under it point downward with a relaxed hand. The rhythm left my being and I was left with this feeling of accomplishment unlike any other I had felt before. I looked around and noticed a group of individuals standing and watching, entranced by the 'show' I had put on. I realized what I must have looked like to them and quickly straightened up my posture and bowed to show apology. "So-" as I was about to apologize, a clapping rose from one of the entranced individuals and so the rest joined. This went on for a short while before some of them came up to me and gave me a small pebble looking object and the crowd dissipated.
I was about to look into what they had given me, and then try to figure out what had made me dance in the first place but the system had different ideas. The voice picked back up in my ears demanding my attention as it spoke. "You have performed dance of the gods adequately and earned Lord Shiva's acknowledgement. He would like to speak to you." I had no time to think as suddenly beneath me there was divine, above me there was divine and as I looked everything around me was divine. I felt lost in an expanse of virtue and felt so out of place as the only sinner in this infinity. This series of strange events and the constant barrage of emotions on my mind was about to outweigh my rationality. Just before I gave in to the divinity, a voice I cannot describe started to speak. The only way I can put it is, it couldn't be more unique but it also could not have fit into the world more. It was perfectly in existence, while at the same time perfectly in the void. There but not. But as I was saying, the voice started to say "Calm down, there is nothing of danger here. I'm sure you sense that." I chose not to reply, following my own advice of only reacting in an unknown situation. He seemed to have... laughed for a short moment before saying "You are like the rock standing arrogantly before the seas believing in its own strength as it withstands the waves for years. But when the time comes and dust is all that remains you shall see how long your belief lasts."
Something clicked in my mind. Something fleeting, something with an end yet no goodbye and something without a meaning. Then the gears moved once again to be misaligned no longer working in harmony and the moment left quick as it came. "Seems you have understood. Good I will be able to get my point across quickly." Worrying about what would happen if I chose not to reply again I said "Who are you?" "Shiva, I think you call me." he said almost too calmly for me to understand the scale of what that meant. "You do not have much time so allow me to speak. You are my disciple. That doesn't mean that I am better than you and you are worse than me of course. We are simply individuals at different stages in our lives in this unlimited. To answer your questions from earlier, it is not necessary for you to kill anything, and it is not necessary for you to do any quests to 'level up'. Your goal is to be divine in your actions. Whatever that be through. The levels are simply a way for you to understand that." "I think I understand, but what does it mean for me to be YOUR disciple and what would it mean for me to be more divine." He thought for a little before speak "The second question it is up to you to figure out, the first however I can answer. Notice the dance you performed earlier, that dance is a crude version of the dance I perform. The other attributes and skills you have are based of things I can perform. The way you advance further into this path, will be to achieve more in whatever path you wish to take." I noticed something in the sentence and asked him further "Whatever path? So I could be a cruel dictator and it would be ok?" I felt an immense pressure befall me. The voice was unchanged in tone but the words he said still had more weight than earlier.
He said speaking slowly "Do you want to be that?" I shook my head not finding it in my lungs to squeeze air out to speak a word. The pressure left and he spoke "A mighty number of people chose me you know. I chose only you. You always think you don't have anything to make you more than average. No good friends, never had a passion, never felt like you deserved what you had. But that's exactly what I need from my disciple. Someone with no surface level dreams. All that you want to do is to crawl forward everyday in effort to becoming a better man. That's the only thing you need. Move forward with confidence in that. Let the rhythm guide you, I will leave you now."
And so I was rudely returned to the park bench I was sitting on. I did nothing as time passed, the occasional person walking by. I closed my eyes, but still I felt awake. I had woken up. So long, has the senses of my mind been shut off from reality. My mind colored the reality with its own fears and created a universe of safety for my weak soul. Now I had been hit with water and no dreams remained.
I stood up confidently, and started walking to settle my thoughts. I opened up an app called Player which I guessed was the YouTube of this world. I realized that the number one thing I could do was help the people in one or the other way. You see, Shiva was part of a group of 3 gods in the Hindu religion. Shiva's role in this trinity, was destruction. He would destroy the universe, in order for Vishnu, another one of the three gods, to be able to recreate it with lesser issues. So I thought the right path for me would be to end the things that were harming this world. Well it was a start. Following this train of thought, I looked up a news channel on the player app hoping to find what the major issues in this world were. For the next hour or so, I watched videos that the major news had published regarding unresolved issues in the world.
Sitting back at the bench I was at originally I had settled down on and written the issues I thought I could tackle in a list. Though they were quite diverse, they all stemmed from the one major issues this world had. The problem was the recent war that they had started with another race in the same system. See, unlike Earth this system had a variety of planets in the hospitable zone. Each of these planets had a major race, some of these races were allied and some weren't (these alliances are separate from the large universal alliance). Recently, there had been a meteorite that had entered the space system, that the opposing race had taken for themselves, without involving the human race. This had incited a conflict when human representatives had left to visit their world. Some of them had been killed by the opposing race and thus a war had started. Though the war had not fully escalated in size, due to the threats of other races intervening, it was quickly becoming a major issue.
Namely, the other race, was the Colossal race. As the name implied, they were 10-15 meters tall with a body that looked like marble, but felt like skin. They had a monarchy, where the previous king in power had been overthrown by a lowly soldier that had supposedly acquired a strange power. Seemed like I was not the only interesting person around here. In battle, they were towering individuals that had immense physical strength and were adept wielders of weapons. A war with them would mean inevitable destruction of innocent lives. Thus, the humans were trying their best to keep them at bay without risking such casualties. For now, they were holding but the future was unsure.
And it was this conflict that a lot of the issues I could potentially assist in came up. There were three major things that were needed. Recently, a Commander General of the human fleet had been killed in battle, and there were no suitable replacements. There was also the issue of talks with other races to help the human cause and most importantly to somehow get the Colossal race to compromise for a peace agreement.
These steps were quite well arranged for me actually. If I followed that order of steps, I was sure to be a contender in the tournament later on. Together with the Commander General role that would fetch me quite a bit of divinity I guessed.
Thus, a plan was hatched and I headed to the military building in the city using the GPS in the device.,