02. Death God Assistant

You know what they say about the Other Side.

Well, I didn't believe in any of that.

Yes, I do swear with the words 'Hell' and 'Heaven' but I do not hold a strong acknowledgement of their existence.

I didn't believe that we, humans, would simply die and go somewhere, either to frolic or gnash our teeth for all eternity; both the righteous and the damned, each to their own place.

I was more of a rinse-and-repeat guy. 

Perhaps, that was why the concept of reincarnation was much more appealing, and made much more sense, to me.

A vicious cycle of life, death and rebirth was more enticing to me.

But who am I to decide which one it was?

It was not like I was a god or some supernatural being with unfathomable powers to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

I was but a measly human being who had just been coldly murdered by the person he once held a great sense of admiration for.

Remembering the tragic nature of my final moment in the Land of the Living, anger coursed through me.

Clap~!!!

A thunderous clap echoed throughout the space where I found myself, almost shaking the very depth of its foundation.

The sound of the clap snapped me out of my angry, vengeful thoughts for a moment and back into the reality that faced me.

'Huh?'

I looked around and was utterly befuddled. 

For the first time since I arrived here, I realised that nothing about this place that I was in should be real.

Looking down first, I shuddered and tripped and began to shout, thinking I would fall.

Thud~!

However, and quite surprisingly, my buttocks hit the floor that was formed by the clouds and sky underneath my feet. 

My eyes gaped in shock once I discovered that the clouds were solid enough to hold my mass.

The clouds? Solid?

The very same clouds I looked up to were now underneath my feet like a footstool.

What the hell is even this place?

I looked around and nothing but light fell on my face. 

The light's intensity had the potential to be hurty blinding but I didn't seem to feel even an itch from it.

My eyes were well adjusted to the intensity and I could see through it.

This was something that shocked me because I had instinctively placed my arm over my eyes to protect my vision.

"Welcome!" a voice thundered, following the unnaturally loud clap.

I turned around in a full circular motion but I couldn't trace the source of the voice.

"Who are you?" I asked after a few seconds of confusion.

Snap~!

The sound of fingers snapping reached my ears and simultaneously with that, the cloudy environment transformed.

Within a second after hearing the snapping of fingers, I was ushered into an incomprehensibly ginormous hall.

I couldn't logically fathom the size of this hall. 

Not the width nor the height that it reached made sense to me. 

It was extraordinarily large… too large to even be called a hall.

Hell, this place was many times bigger than a stadium, if I recall correctly.

I stood like a little boy in the middle of a vast ocean but instead of water, it was land.

"Welcome," the voice from earlier echoed again. 

"I welcome you poor souls to the realm of the God of Death. Welcome to the Realm of Mortalis."

This time around, the voice was more soft-spoken and less intimidating.

Looking forward while searching for the source, I managed to put a face to the voice as I noticed a figure seated several hundred metres in front of me.

This figure was that of a beautiful teenager. A female whose facial features and figure would place her somewhere between the ages of fifteen to seventeen years.

She had blue hair and eyes that were bluer than the seas.

This girl was seated very far away and yet I could still see her clearly like she was close to me.

What kind of sorcery was this?

This place… umm, this Mortalis place was like a page out of a fantasy novel. 

Nothing made logical sense about it.

First, the floor formed by solid clouds and sky. 

Then, this hall I was standing in. 

And now, this young girl whose voice, ordinarily, I shouldn't be able to hear over such a long distance yet I easily heard every single word she said.

My head churned from trying to process many different pieces of information at the same time.

'Wait… did she say the God of Death just now?'

That title 'God of Death' seemed to have breezed past my hearing but I certainly heard something like that.

Clap~!!

That thunderclap of a clap again!

My head banged and almost imploded as I fell to my knees.

I couldn't resist it.

It felt like she had clapped right inside my eardrums with the intensity and loudness of a thousand drums and burst the membrane in my ears.

"What the fuck! Stupid little bi—"

For some reason, I couldn't complete my words.

I was struck dumb in an instant and when I looked forward again, I didn't need a soothsayer to tell me that she was responsible.

"Shh," she hushed me with a finger placed over her lips.

While I still struggled with my voiceless self, several others appeared inside the room and stood as far away from her as I was.

We were lined up like soldiers in a parade.

The details of these figures were not revealed to me. 

There were several hundred of us and I couldn't make out the details of even one person other than myself.

Certainly, they were intentionally concealed.

They all stood and shone with the different colours of the rainbow.

The beautiful, blue-eyed teenager cleared her throat and finally addressed us. 

"I am Avante, the God Assistant to the God of Death, Nathos-sama," she announced.

'God Assistant? God of Death?' I could sense a tinge of lust in her voice as she mentioned the name of this Death God.

Ewww, cringy!

It dawned on me that I was truly dead and this was that place that was foretold… the Other Side or something similar.

The Land of the Dead.

"What are we doing here!" one person from the hundreds of us shouted.

The girl, who had introduced herself as a Death God Assistant, smirked and pointed at us, running her finger side to side as if making a head count to reach every row and column that was formed.

"You are here to play a game. A game of luck." she said with an ominous-looking smile.

…"A game that gives you a shot at a second chance," she revealed further, the tone of voice exposing the excitement that was gradually welling up inside of her.

"What is this game then?" another dead soul asked.

"Are we truly dead?" one muttered to his neighbour.

"I am afraid."

"So that fucking bitch poisoned my tea. All for my inheritance? You will die a pig's death, Celina!"

Another heaved a relieving sigh as he said with happiness. "I hope you continue to live on with daddy's heart, Lucy, knowing that daddy  loved you until the end."

"Who is going to take care of my wife and daughters?"

"I thought I was cumming but I was indeed going. Hahaha! What a crazy way to die! I'm definitely not making it into Heaven.'

As if a second wave of realisation hit us, we started to complain about our different problems. 

Each person lamented the manner of their death and laid out their different concerns.

Clap~!!

No! Not that clap again.

Fuck!

What the hell!

Serenity returned to the hall in an instant.

"This game is called the Death Pick and it will be based on your Karma Score. Your Karma Score is the total Karma you gathered while you were alive."

'Karma, huh? The sum total of a person's actions while they were still alive.' 

Instinctively, I looked inward and judged myself after hearing the first condition of this strange game. 

Perhaps, I was starting to feel the fear of damnation.

The blue-eyed God Assistant continued. "The rules are simple. Those of you who have a Karma Score of at least 70, will be allowed into the Heavenly Domain of the Gods and Goddesses for your eternal rest and those with a score of 50 and below. Well, you go straight to the Dark Pits of the Abyss. Sorry about that."

'The damned and the righteous,' I thought to myself on hearing what she had said.

I felt a cold crawl over my skin. 

'That's scary.'