1 Game over

[Game over]

That was what the boy in front of him saw, he knew he was dead, he died, but what surprised him was that this screen was like the end of a video game. He was looking at it for a while before looking around, he could only see darkness everywhere he looked. He looked at his hands to see that he didn't have any hands, he was confused but calm.

He didn't know why he was so calm, but he was, he could only look back at the screen in front of him to see new words written on the game-like screen in front of him.

[Start the game]

[Yes] [No]

Was this some sort of test before going to the afterlife? Or was this a chance to live his life again? The soul was wondering what to do in this situation but soon, made a decision and wanted to select his answer, but to his surprise, the answer was selected just as he thought about it.

[Yes] [No]

And the moment this choice was made, the soul was transported to a new place in a blink. The soul was now in a white room filled with different screens that had different options on them. He looked at every one of them carefully, and the options were like in a video game he could select, how a character would look like, and his abilities.

The soul of the boy started floating to every option and looked at them carefully, before deciding what kind of character he wanted to make. He created an oni with crimson dark red hair that reached the middle of his back, he had long black horns sticking out of his forehead. His eyes were gold, with slit-like pupils, the oni on the screen was good-looking, tall, and muscular.

The soul would be nodding if it had a head, but the soul was just a ball of light, but the soul was not just one color, it had three main colors swirling inside it. The most prominent was blood red taking half of the space, while the other two colors had one-quarter of the space each. These colors were night black, and sweet pink.

The soul didn't realize how different it looked compared to a normal soul who had a single color, which was either yellow or white. The soul continued to select skills and abilities while floating around the room, after all, he could choose only one ability or skill per screen panel. There were some hard choices to make, the abilities offered were really good, most were offensive, some were defective but the soul would take its time looking through every skill carefully.

Soon the soul saw a panel with only three skills, he looked at the panel and saw that he could only choose one of them. This made the soul start looking at them, with more interest, after all, other panels would show more than twenty different ones, but this one was different.

[Devouring claim] - The bearer of this skill can eat anything, and everything, by devouring other creatures one becomes stronger.

[Mind dive] - The bearer of this skill can enter the minds of others, read their every thought, and manipulate them, but the one using the skill can't move while the skill is active.

[Kill steal] - The bearer of this skill will get to choose an ability or skill from the ones he killed. Every time the bearer of the skill kills, he/she will be given a choice of multiple skills the creature possessed before being killed.

The soul read through the skills multiple times before selecting [Kill steal], it seemed like the best choice. As the soul continued selecting skills or abilities on the different panels, it quickly finished up with them. The game character was finally ready and the soul decided that it was happy with his selections, before turning to the main screen that had the model of the character on screen.

[Create character]

[Yes] [No]

The soul mentally selected [Yes], and so as all of the screens started showing loading screens, as a blue-colored bar was moving forward with percentage on it. but as soon as the loading process was over, a dark blue portal opened behind it and sucked the soul right in. As the soul left, the room started crumbling into dust, and soon there was nothing left of it.

***************

Deep in a forest where a hidden village of oni resided, a baby boy was lying in a crib made from wood, and filled with soft fur blankets for the baby to sleep on. The baby opened its gold-colored eyes, and started looking around with interest. The baby in the crib examined everything around it, before starting to cry.

The baby cried out loudly, it was crying, not because it was hungry, but because the baby boy was the same three-colored soul, but just inside the body of a baby. The boy regained his memories just now and all of his previous life's emotions were overflowing, but soon the baby tired itself out and fell asleep once again.