Chapter – 1: Pursuit begins – Part 1

[Third person POV]

Blankness, total and complete blankness is what he feels at the moment. Forget smell, see or touch, he can't seem to even feel if his body exists.

Some time or a long time later, as he couldn't make sense of time here, a thought suddenly appears in his mind.

"Who or what am I?"

Like an ember that has transformed to an all-devouring blaze, an intense hunger to know what his existence is and what its meaning for existing starts to burn within him through and through.

Abruptly, it all comes back to him. His name was Aston Carter. Yes, in the past tense, Aston knew he was already dead.

Also, it's Dr. Aston Carter to be more specific. He was a biochemist and one of the top researchers working on gene-editing technology. It should have been one of the breakthroughs of the century in the field of medical science [AN: if u guys want, google it, they won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2020 for this, also I didn't steal one of their names, don't worry]. With this technology, they could treat even genetic diseases but just editing them out of the patient's genes with healthy ones. This technology could have gone so far that it could have resulted in human beings evolving as a species into something greater.

All of this has nothing to do with him now that he is dead. Still, there is this void that's still inside of him that wanted to watch their work come to fruition.

He still remembers that inferno that consumed him whole. That was a memory he really wishes to forget but never can. He still trembles whenever it comes back to him.

He doesn't know how long it's been; he continues to mull over his past. There wasn't that much to remember, but one plus point is, he seems to recall every single event in extreme detail. His parents, his first roommate, his first crush, and many more.

After some time or a long time, he gets bored and irritated. But he couldn't do anything other than thinking.

Then, he remembers, he had one hobby when he was a teenager. That was he loved watching anime. His favorite was *drumroll* "Naruto." The main reason he still remembers is because of the infinite possibilities these new and fantasy worlds contained. Later, when he finished some good ones, he felt empty and started binge reading some fantasy novels. He was into them so much that they even started to affect his grades.

But reality did get to him eventually and he realized that "It will not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

So, back to the void. As he was watching his favorite anime in his mind, there was a change.

He abruptly finds himself sitting behind a desk. In front of him, on the other end of the desk, he finds a man who looked almost exactly like Agent Smith from The Matrix. He curiously looks at the man in Infront of him, he could guess he should have been here after his death because of this man.

'Was I really in the Matrix before? Why is Agent Smith here?' Aston wonders.

"Ah, Matrix, one of the most wonderful ideas of your world, don't you agree? But no, you are wrong. You are here because the Almighty's Will brought you here to make a deal." said the man.

"So, what do we have here. Mr. Aston Carter, biochemist, and researcher from world 257487892. That's new, long time since I saw one from your world." The judge continues, "Well well, you have an impressing achievement here. Your karma points will be huge I believe, I can see why you got sent here!"

Aston could guess that he might be in the presence of some higher being just from how he was brought here still, curious to know, "Armm" makes a sound to draw attention and asks, "I am sorry, but I am confused. Who are you? And what do you mean by an impressive achievement? Also, why would it be that no one from my world came here in a long time?"

"Ah! Rude of me not to introduce myself. You can call me Sophos." says Sophos, "I am an Eight-Winged Angel with Level 4 authorization. Only those that have high karma points will be sent to me to deals. Except for those freaks of nature that go higher of course."

"Level-4? What's that? And How many such levels are there? Also, what are these karma points you are talking about?" asks Aston curiously.

"There are five levels normally, Two-Winged is Leve-1, Four-Winged, etc. up to Ten-Winged which is Level-5. But I heard a rumor that a soul was brought to an Archangel himself a few days ago. This is a very special case, you could consider that Level-6," Although Sophos's hid it well on his face, Aston could still notice the envy in his voice. Aston just wasn't sure if the envy was for the soul or for the Archangel. "And as for Karma Points, every action in life that you take will have corresponding karma associated with it. Karma points that we use here are actually the numerical representation of how impactful these Karma are on the scale of the world itself. In your case, your research on gene editing became a seed that your colleagues continued to develop that impacted the entire human civilization. Too bad, if you had completed it, you might have been sent to Level 5 instead."

"You don't have to rub it in, you know? What are these Levels for anyway?"

"It's simple actually, the Levels determine what the Angel can offer you for your next life. The higher the level, the more and better the things up for deals," says Sophos, "Now, let us first look how many Karma Points you have."

Then, Sophos takes a pen-looking thing and makes a tapping motion towards Aston. Then a globe that was glowing with white light appeared out of nowhere Infront of him.

"Place your right hand on the globe," says Sophos.

As soon as he places his hand on it, a pale blue hexagon-shaped tile appears on top of his head like some fantasy game with a huge number [187,656,342].

"Wow, that's huge!"