(Is this my end?)
*Drip
*Drop
The poor soul wondered in the seemingly never-ending abyss.
There was only the darkness that surrounds him, and the maddening of sound of a dripping noise coming from a nearby pipe.
The putrid smell of the musty sewage water slathering all over his skin.
*Munch
*Munch
And there was also the sickening munching noises made by the rats nibbling on his exposed flesh.
Along with the occasional feeling of creepy-crawlies wondering about his moist skin, sometimes even pricking him due to their sharp legs.
But fortunately, all of these were the mildest sensation he had, all due to his tactility sense being increasingly reduced by the death of his body.
(This is such a pathetic death, dying by falling into a manhole?...)
But deep inside, he was actually still determined to live. Even to the point of forcefully heaving his throat to breathe just to somehow keep his heart mechanically pumping.
"Oho? Resisting your fate? I like that"
After hearing that mysteriously echoey voice that seems to only come from inside his head, everything around him disappeared.
---•---
If earlier he could still quite feel things even without any light, now there was absolutely no more sensation.
No pain, no rancid sewer smell, no numbness, no nothing, absolute weightlessness.
It was as if he has been lifted from his body.
(Is this.... Is this the afterlife? It's not so bad)
He minutely celebrated.
(Wait... But I did hear a voic-)
"Tis me, God"
(Woah! G-God?! Wh-wha-)
"Okay, no more small talk, you'll be fully healed and will be transported to another universe, your mission is to spread my name there. But be original"
(Wha-)
But before he could even react, a mind-numbing searing pain deep within his soul's core erupted, sending him into a spiral beyond consciousness.
(AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)
And as he is plunged into a seemingly never-ending pain, even to the point of deafening God's voice in his head, he could vaguely hear God telling him-
"Oh and by the way, you will gain an ability"
The other words were so unintelligible, but he certainly heard that term.
---
"Ugh"
A blonde boy groaned in pain in the middle of a clearing surrounded by an evergreen forest.
He looked up to the cloudless night sky filled with stars shining like thousands of crystals.
But there was something amiss and different about the sky.
"I don't remember the sky having two galaxies, even being that visible... And there's no moon. How is the night this clear-looking?"
And after thinking for a while as he looked around, he started remembering everything.
"No way... Another universe?... Was that really God?"
Raymond looked up at the alien-looking sky.
But as he admired the beauty of the new sky he is seeing, flashbacks of his past life started showing up in his mind.
"My parents...Would they even find my body?... They probably would, but how would they take it?"
And then he looked at the distant sky, and saw that there was a huge tree canopy. He estimated that the diameter of that canopy must've been kilometers.
"What a menacingly huge tree, this must really be another universe since there's nothing like that in my previous world."
---
"KAGUYA!"
Otsutsuki Isshiki screamed as he struggled to crawl on the floor. Having no lower body at all, there was no choice but to wriggle his way to her. The pride of an apex alien species no longer being seen in this gory scene.
But as if he were just a bug, Otsutsuki Kaguya just looked at him with a face lacking any remorse with her ghastly Byakugan.
After a while, she flew away, leaving him to die.
"That bitch! She absorbed all of my chakra!! Now i can't even use my Daikokuten! and it will take a lot of time for me to replenish with this massive injury agh!!!"
He yelled in both pain and anger as he struggled, left to die in a battered landscape full of debris. Due to the look of destruction of his area, no one was curious and brave enough to eve dare wander in it, or atleast no one normal.
---
Raymond signed as he walked around within the clearing, only staying in the moonlit ground, away from the terrifying darkness of the forest that surrounds him.
"What to do now? I'm practically stuck in here since wandering in a forest in the middle of the night would be a terrible idea"
And as he analyzed his situation, he found it more helpless since he started thinking about how he will survive in this wilderness even in the daytime with his city boy skills.
(Damn I should've honed my boy Scout skills instead of trying to forget about it, but then again that happened)
The blonde boy thought helplessly as he shivered in the cold breeze.
Although useful for him, the lessons he learned in his boy Scout days as a pre-teen wasn't really his first priority back then since he was getting constantly bullied.
"Ugh, couldn't he had been more considerate of placing his Messiah somewhere ideal?-- Huh? Is that a light?"
That's when he spotted a light moving within the forest, it was pretty small, indicating that the thing or person holding it was still far away.
"Yes finally--"
But before he decided to call out for the person, he thought.
(Wait what if that's not a person, I mean I'm not really sure of what's gonna lurk in the forest of another world right? For all I know that could be a ghost or something--)
"Hey! Are you alright there?"
And that's when the person holding the lantern called out.
"Y-yeah--No actually! I'm a bit stuck.."
Raymond responded very meekly.
"Oh you must be wary of the forest since it's dark, but sir, how did you end up here anyways? "
The man responded as he finally showed his appearance from the dark, being illuminated first by his lantern and then finally being very visible under the moonlight.
A light-skinned man with black hair, he's wearing a traditional japanese attire while his head was shaved clean, except for a small patch of hair at the back forming his distinctive hairstyle, a ponytail.
(What? Japanese clothing? Surely an alternate universe Japanese person...This is unexpected... Wait how come we could talk to each other? -- wait...)
He wondered but he abruptly stopped all his train of thought.
"Oh... Uhh"
Mistaking his silence for awkwardness and shyness, the black-haired man smiled wryly to the blonde-haired boy.
"I apologize for my rudeness sir, in light of the awkwardness of this situation I think it's only polite to introduce myself, my name is Jigen, a Kurotsuchi Temple monk, What's your name sir?"
The man looked at Raymond with worry, as the latter looked blank, as if he has seen a ghost.