Yami woke up in a start, eyes snapping open to a vast expanse of stars. His head reeled, split in his past reality and staggering at the dreamlike nature of… plummeting? It wasn't plummeting—he was… hovering?
"Ugh…" Yami graoned, sitting upright as a blinding pain throbbed in his head. His body felt strange and unusual—it felt like he had no weight at all, and yet he thought he could move a whole structure without exerting himself at all. Looking around, he saw he wasn't somewhere he knew—a barren, rocky expanse opened out before him, dotted at irregular distances by jagged rock thrust out of the ground.
"Is this…death?" he asked, straggling to wrap his head around it. He'd had a relatively boring life, if perhaps a little too boring—he'd just barely had time to start making some progress on his bucket list before being… killed in a freak accident when a dropped chandelier fell on top of him.
But now? He wasn't dead. The only thing he could really say out of place was the cold in the air, as if there was some evil presence in the back of his head whispering about dying.
A voice thundered in his brain, sudden and foreboding, and shook him to his very core.
"You are selected."
"Chosen? For what!" winced Yami, but he could not interrupt before he had finished.
"You have bequeathed upon yourself. The energy of Death-god belongs to you."
Yami blinked, trying to keep up. "Wait, what? The god of death?" He glanced around. "I don't even have gods in here. What in hell is going on?"
The voice guffawed—a rich, cavernous sound as if it had risen up out of the ground below.
"Your body is host to mine power now. To be strong, kill. Your path is possible if there is death. Your path is to dungeons, wherein there are beasts in them who are strong. Clear them and beget yet more power and open yet more of mine."
Yami stood and shook out his clothes and noticed to his surprise they fit like a second layer and as black as coal. It felt odd. It wasn't physically strong, no. It felt different. It felt… darker. He could have sworn he felt like he could sense the presence in him, a chill, foreign presence encircling his soul.
"Well, that's odd." Yami yawned and cracked his neck. "But hey, not the weirdest thing ever to occur to me. Monster slaying and dungeon clearing? That I can be for."
His thoughts were interrupted as deafening noise cracked open in front of him. A grotesque being emerged out of the opening—a monstrosity in reptilike, gigantic form, glowing eyes, and fangs as gigantic as to be able to pass right through a tree. It let out deafening thunder and shook the ground as it charged at him at surprising speed.
"Okay, that's just odd," Yami complained, but there was a queasy sheen in his eyes. The god of death had spoken about murder. And mononoke… mononoke could be killed.
Yami raised his hand and felt the chill energy flow down his arm. The odd energy in his hand wrapped and took form in his hand and formed as a deadly scythe-like form, and in it there ran a sheen of divine essence for death.
"Heh, so this is his wish." Yami grinned. "We shall just have to see if this monster enjoys dying."
With a flash, he drew out his just-forged scythe. The scythe swept across space and came crashing down upon the monster in a force explosion. The monster let out a scream, its vast mass crashing as if massless.
It didn't take long for mononofu to dissolve to a cloud of inky black mist and a glowing sphere is left. Yami blinks in confusion. "I have… dropped something."
The orb hovered in mid-air before him, pulsed with evil energy. "Now what?"
"Your first kill is complete." The voice in his head thundered out. "You have opened up some of my power. You are a Reaper. The next dungeon is available."
Yami scratched his head. "Dungeons, okay sure thing? Sounds like some grindfest or another, but hey, could use the power-up."
Before he could take another step, scenery before him changed. A stone gate in distant background came in sight, and he felt irresistibly drawn towards it.
"Well, if there is, suppose I will go." Cracking his knuckles, he shifted in his seat. "But before that, though, I have to know about leveling up. Because sure as heck as I'm gonna need as much power as humanly possible if I'm gonna be able to finish clearing out these dungeons. The last thing in the whole entire world I want is to be killed once again, and I'm not dying without some serious muscle." With that, he went towards the entrance to the dungeon, anticipating whatever creatures would be in there. He had no idea if he would be able to keep up in this reality, but at least he knew for sure he would have plenty of fun killing things.