Konosuba Infinite Mana - Dark -

Don't trust the Clown, for the Blossoms will fall to Ruin.

Studying magic in a world where there is no such thing, was a horrible idea. That is what Jack thought anyways, not knowing if he would be reincarnated into another world once more. With all of the information from his past life fresh in his brain, even fifteen years after the fact, he continued his studies. Experiments were useless, they gave nothing more than more gateways to near meaningless pondering.

Had there ever been magic in this world? He didn't know, and there was no way to look back and figure it out. Either way, he knew though, he was human this time around. A weak creature, but adaptable nonetheless.

People had simple hair colors, natural anyway. Brown, black, white, blonde but there were no blues or greens without the use of dyes. Using such methods damaged one's hair.

Reborn and birthed in England, his parents moved to Japan shortly after due to business opportunities opening up for English-Japanese speakers. Luckily his first language was Japanese in the first place, and his father was three quarters.

Those fifteen years after his first reincarnation flew by quickly, as he wrote his notes down and continued to manufacture his own homebrew grimoire which would have no use in the world that he now resided in. It held details memories, the inner workings of spells, Jack left nothing out.

People saw him as strange, others an eccentric and another a Chuunibyou even though he didn't openly try to cast spells. Many times he had been solicited into the Occult Club, the Dungeons and Dragons Club, and various other roleplaying groups.

He simply carried his Grimoire wherever he went like a blanket of sorts, claiming it to be a family heirloom, though his parents deny it adamantly. It was there for him, fearing that one day he would forget his previous life, but that never happened.

So he continued to yearn for it, and the embrace of those who he had left behind.

It was a few weeks from summer break, the cicadas were singing and the heat of the sun was raining down upon the top of his head as he stepped off of the public transport bus.

A light sigh escaped from the teenager's lips, already missing the air conditioning of the bus as well as the ability to cool himself down. The young man was dressed in a black high school uniform, a turquoise satchel slung over his shoulder and a pair of converse sneakers.

After watching as the bus hissed and released its air breaks, before driving off, his gaze fell upon a fellow passenger who kept her eyes glued to her phone. The boy simply shook his head at this.

Jack then turned on his heel and went on casually strolling down the side of the road, walking passed some guy dressed in a green tracksuit with a backpack. Raising a brow slightly, he turned his head to look at the male.

"Didn't I go to school with that guy...?" He'd ask himself curiously before shrugging, blowing it off as he then faced forward.

Beside him was the girl in a dark blue school uniform, talking on her aesthetic pink flip phone, who had gotten off the bus with him at relatively the same time. This person also went to school with him, but he never actually learned her name. She had long black hair, big brown eyes, and sunburnt rosy skin and puffy cheeks.

Jack's own verdant green eyes watched the girl as she was moving ahead of him, towards a three-way intersection. He could tell immediately that she wasn't paying much attention.

"You really should stay still if you're on that cellular device..."

She didn't hear him, she seemed too engulfed in the phone.

Squinting at the back of her head which was bobbing up and down with her petite height, before his gaze flickered over to a semi coming from the street on the right. "There's a truck coming," he didn't raise his voice, but he had a stern one at that.

She still didn't react, her eyes glued to her phone.

"Seriously...?" Jack picked up the pace, he was only fifteen and he stood about five foot eleven inches. According to his father, that was as far as he was going to grow.

The Semi wasn't slowing down enough to stop, it was planning on turning immediately on the empty road.

"Yo!" He'd growl as he clenched his jaw, watching as she crossed the line and into the street. The large vehicle, by his visual calculations, would hit her within the next few seconds. Without a second thought, despite her ignorance, he charged forward and not a second too soon dug his elbow into her back slamming his central mass into her.

The girl went flying a couple of feet, landing on the sidewalk as the horn sounded.

Jack didn't have enough time to even turn his head or jump forward himself. The next thing he felt was the hard metal of the eighteen wheeler's tractor slamming into the side of his face. He felt as his body was almost quite literally torn apart, how his arm became imbedded within the front of the truck, and his legs were pulled under.

He was like a deer that was thrown on the side of the road, mutilated and broken. He lay there as he could just hardly hear the girl screaming in terror. She had blood splattered over her shoes, and soon enough he was greeted by the silence of death for a second time that he could remember.

Opening his eyes after being greeted by the light, he focused forward. Jack felt different than he had been just moments ago. The pain was gone, yet he remembered everything, every gruesome detail up until his body no longer functioned.

The searing pain, the sheer helplessness, and the ignorant child he sacrificed himself to protect crying over the corpse or presumably over the blood that had ruined her shoes.

He took in a deep sharp breath as he leaned back into what appeared to be a dark wooden chair. In front of his seat was another white throne with golden trim. Beside it was a small stand, a bag of chips settled upon it along with a book.

Looking down at his pants, he narrowed his gaze.

No longer in his school uniform, Jack found himself wearing a black hakama rather than school regulated dress pants. Not only that, but he was wearing a full-blown kimono with a black and silver waist-length Haori. This kimono's Jacket was majestically decorated with threaded silver in almost regal linear designs. It was clear it was either personally tailored or wealthily commissioned.

What was most noticeable though was the two lotus mons over the breast regions. It was neatly worn over the top of an off-black silk outer layer and grey-brown fleece inner layer.

Between the Haori and outer later though was an additional vest, holding the same designs as the jacket. Though looking further down, rather than sandals like a samurai, he wore black hard toe Tabi-styled boots.

He recognized the clothes from his previous life, it was his everyday attire used in almost every occasion, though mostly when he traveled and stuck to the shadows.

He was no longer human, he felt... Like he was once before in a previous lifetime. An Oni, a being who was thought to be a masterful adept of Yin and Yang elements.

Resting propped up against his shin was a silver-trimmed black Jingasa with matching talismans lining the rim, the pattern of a white lotus painted on top of it.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he then reached into his kimono top, feeling its familiar silk, and animately pulled out a small leather book. It was his grimoire that had been tucked into his jacket pocket.

A small chuckle left his lips as his eyes traced over a metallic Oda Clan mon that had been embedded upon the front of it.

"At least this is--" He stopped talking as he heard movement.

Click, clack, click, clack. It sounded like shoes, someone who was all dressed up and ready to impress. Before long, a female form emerged into his peripheral vision. Blue hair, blue clothes. He was pretty sure she wasn't wearing any panties as seen through her translucent skirt.

"What in..."

"Jack Graham-san," the woman spoke as she took a seat on the throne ahead of him. She had a petite form, she had a youthful complexion and her hair was long enough to reach past her shoulders.

Jack couldn't call her beautiful, nor awe-inducing. A light frown formed over his lips seeing her, his eyes dropping to the tiled floor and into the pitch-black nothingness that surrounded them, then back to her.

She was definitely talking to him.

"Welcome to the afterlife," her hands rested on casually on the arms of her pearly throne, her gaze condescending and filled with obnoxious superiority.

He was sure she wouldn't remember him if he were to just up and disappear. He had the sense to believe she had the memory span of a goldfish with a single glance of his.

Raising a hand up without responding, he ran the hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead briefly. It was short, layered and black. His eyes, if they remembered, should be emerald green and have a faint glow to them.

"Unfortunately you have just passed away moments ago... Your life was a short one," she patted out her skirt as if to straighten it along her hips. "But you are in fact dead." She wore this deadpan expression that made him want to roll his eyes.

Not only did she not sound sympathetic, but she wasn't making the situation any better.

After a short period of time, she pursed her lips at his unresponsiveness.

"So you're supposed to be a God? Or are you a lowly Angel?" Not taking her seriously, he sounded callously sarcastic, as he was completely ignoring the floating pink cloth symbol of divinity which hovered behind her back.

"How rude!" The woman in blue slammed her hands down on the arms of the chair, "I am a Goddess! Can't you see? I am not a mere lowly angel!"

Jack didn't react, just stared coldly in her general direction.

A small grin of victory appeared across her lips, she was full of herself as she moved up onto her feet once more, taking a chip and proceeding to nibble. The crunching resonating in his ears annoyingly.

"My name is Aqua," she then maintained a friendly smile after finishing the chip, standing close to him as he remained seated. Her arms outstretched from her sides. "I am a Goddess who guides humans who die young, to the afterlife."

Grinning deviously as she had said she guided humans, he crossed his ankle over his knee. He had met with a God before, a faceless one. Now, he was meeting with a young one, and it seemed a smug one at that.

Jack was no human, not anymore. He could feel his horns hidden deep within.

"You have two choices," Her brow raised at the change of expression, "You can start from square one within new life..." She put a finger up as she began to inform him of his choices, "Or you can carry on like an old man in hea--"

"Reincarnation please, Heaven is boring." Jack already heard this bout before, so he chose to begin a new life again. Though he was sure, it wouldn't turn out like before.

Aqua grinned stupidly as he had caught her off guard, staring at him with her dark blue hues.

Clicking his tongue, Jack blatantly narrowed his gaze. "What's the matter, mortal catch your tongue? Don't like being interrupted?"

Aqua open to open her mouth as two horns began to protrude from Jack's forehead, glowing green in the process, just like his eyes which she had inherently missed at a first glance. "A demon!?" She sputtered and stumbled back, nearly tripping over her own feet and falling into her throne. "How did a demon infiltrate the heavens!?"

Jack chortled at her reaction, it seemed she really had been entirely unaware of what he had been. "What kind of reaction is this...?"

Then she sprung up from her chair and with a somatic gesture of her hands expressed an incantation, "PURIFICATION!"

A beam of white light exploded from her hands and smashed into him, engulfing him entirely. And then as the attack came to an end, she was grinning in triumph, before gawking in horror.

Jack was still seated upon the chair, untouched and unfazed by the attack. There had been nothing to purify as he was no demon, but an Oni, an ogre of Japanese Folklore.

"Did you seriously just try to purify me?"

"How is this even possible!?"

A foreign noise, an explosion, reached Jack's ears. Immediately his eyes traveled to the side, but he refused to stand. There was no reason to do so, he had been the one who had been attacked, right?

Suddenly a light appeared cutting through the starless abyss above, a woman in a pink dress, short blonde hair and pale skin came levitating down from the light-filled circle.

"Aqua-sama! You are not supposed to attack those who you are to guide into the afterlife!" A sweet sing-song voice filled the otherwise tasteless void.

"I-I didn--"

"It has already been decided! This was the last straw... There was no excuse to do what you did... As punishment for attacking this pure soul, you will be sent down to the world under threat of the Demon King!" The woman with blonde hair had large wings sprouting out her back, a heavenly smile across her lips.

Seeing a splash of color from the corner of his eye, Jack turned his gaze to the Goddess. A brow raised then seeing a magic circle appearing, before a cylinder formed as walls around it.

"Noooooooooo! This can't be! You can't do this! I'll die!"

"We have already decided to cast you out, Aqua-sama. There is nothing I can do, but wish you luck." There was no apologetic tone hidden in that woman's voice, she was glad...

Jack wanted to laugh out loud but held himself back from doing just that.

Aqua was crying, pressing her face against the wall that kept her trapped. Surely, she was doomed. "But I don't have any offensive powers! I can heal, I can purify, that's it!"

"Useless..." Jack scoffed in a sneer as he stood from his seat, his arms crossed over his chest and his hands hiding within the open sleeves of his styled Haori. He then watched as the screaming Goddess protested against this, only to begin floating upward into the void. Shortly enough, he was greeted once more by the silence that had met with him mere minutes ago.

Turning his attention to the Angel, he smiled lightly. "Thank you," he bowed his head respectfully towards the blonde as his horns would retract back into his forehead.

"You are an interesting one..." The Angel huffed as she rested her feet upon the tiled grounds, making her way over to the throne before taking her rightful seat. "Your soul was not even human and yet here you are." Her eyes trailed over him, then over to the hat on the floor.

"As you've accepted reincarnation into another land, you will be granted a cheat item to aid you in your quest to save the people of another world being ravaged by the Demon King!" It was clear she was sending him into the same world that the Goddess had been sent to. There was however no response to that little tidbit of information. "Now, choose!"

Taking out a stack of papers from seemingly nowhere, she tossed them amongst the floor in front of his chair and at his feet. They lined up perfectly, all landing right-side up.

Without even going onto his knees, his eyes gazed over the items and skills in which were considered cheats by the Goddess. This was something that didn't happen in his last reincarnation. He was given the chance to retain his memories or to lose them. He had obviously kept them due to how precious they were.

Fixating his gaze upon a particular piece of paper, he placed his tabi-styled boot upon its edge. "Cursed Ring of Infinite Mana, it can only be used by the wielder, the perfect choice."

Angel blinked and nodded, it seemed this particular being already had a build in mind, there were very few who were reincarnated who had a plan of what kind of profession they'd follow. Then again, after looking over his attire as he leaned down to pick up his hat, he did look like a priest of some sort.

"It was a wise choice," the Angel stood up as the paper shifted into the ring as the others dissolved into the tiled ground.

As if called to his finger, the item flew from the ground and slipped into his sleeve, connecting with his finger. He could already feel the energy coursing through him, the infinite mana that kept his reserves filled to the gills.

Though hardly showing much of a visible reaction, he was surprised by the item's lone movement, and the feeling it granted him. Jack's eyes were resting on the woman still standing there with her wings outstretched.

A splash of color formed under his feet, much like when the Goddess was cast out. A callous gaze rested on the magic circle which then took its place and the cylindrical walls that surrounded him.

"Don't worry, young mortal. She won't be anywhere near you when you reach KonoSuba," the Angel seemed to be grinning as if she had done something unspeakable.

Jack was beginning to wonder just where this Angel had placed the Goddess. Was she within the supposed Demon King's Territory? The very prospect of being dropped into the grasps of demons and their king sounded horrible, maybe even painful.

A light snicker left his lips as he grasped his grimoire tight, his body lifting into the air. It was time to go to another world.