1 Reincarnation

Third person POV:

In a middle of a battle field, where the ear shattering gun shots and explosions could be heard from any corners , hundreds of fallen soldier corpses lying on the ground, steadily increased by every minute passed by, pillars of smoke from the damaged vehicles emitting to the sky which engulfed the surrounding of the ruined city where the conflict occured.

*COUGH COUGH COUGH*

The coughing sound informed the present of a survivor. A soldier crawled his way to the communication device stuck on his dead teammate's . Pressing the device's calling button, the soldier spat out in heavy breaths:

"Alpha this is Black Ops 5, ....require reinforcements in the south rear of the city, 1,2km away from the center, my team .....was completely wiped out by enemies, do you copy?..... Over."

Nothing but a depressing silence to respond him.

The soldier knew that his enemies were about to approach close to search for survivors.He picked up the communication device with a bag of grenades from his dead teammate and hid behind a nearby crashed wall

"God damn it! Alpha... do you copy? Over."

*BAAM!*

The soldier's position was noticed by a sniper as the bullet went through the wall and punctured the soldier's thigh. Clenching his teeth to stop his agonizing scream, the soldier rolled on the ground and switched to crawling, he didn't want to keep his head and upper body high enough for the sniper to turn him into a beehive.

*BAAM!!*

The second shot was delivered from the enemy, drilled a hole on the wall, shattered rocks and dust rained on the soldier.But lucky for him that he predicted correctly about the sniper's aim and remained unscratched....except for his thigh.

The soldier cut off a piece of his clothes with his knife to cover the wound. With sheer anger in his mind, he reloaded his sniper rilfe, prepared for his payback.

He pulled out a smoke grenade and threw it on the pathway that lead to a ruined building.

As a curtain of white smoke emitting from the ground, the foe's focus instantly glued on it, expecting his target would use the smoke to flee to the building.

On the other hand, our protagonist picked up a helmet from a corpse as he observed through the hole on the wall created by the sniper's shot earlier. He immediately threw the helmet at the smoke curtain.

*BAAM!*

The sniper instinctively reacted by firing at the helmet. The moment he realized that it was just a bait, the soldier had been able to see and locate the fire's light coming his gun's barrel or in another word: he had been spotted.

The soldier rushed into the building before the sniper could shoot him again due to delayed reaction with the bait.

He ran up to the rooftop and literally collapsed under a window due to the pain in his leg. Placing his rifle firmly in the position, he adjusted the scope and pointed it towards the tango.

"There you are ,son of the bitch."

The soldier muttered with joy, aimed right at the head of the sneaky sniper who failed to kill him.

"BAAM!*

The bullet flew with an unimaginable speed, pierced through the forehead of the enemy sniper. But as soon as the he was killed, the soldier's position was detected by the searching group due to the loud noise of the gun.

Hearing footsteps coming from outside, the soldier ran out of options, outnumbered, no contact with the headquarter, and ironically the option of running was impossible for him too as his wound was bleeding heavily due to his stubborness when pushing himself to kill the sniper out of disdain.

Was it a stupid decision made by him? That for a brief moment of satisfaction to kill an enemy lead to a much, much more worse result?

To himself, he couldn't be sure anymore. Or to be precise, he simply could care less.

Maybe, somehow if he had another chance for a second life, he would strive to live in a way without regrets, not like this..."life", the soldier spoke to himself.

For all of his existence, he could not get a chance to form any relationships. The words "family", "friends","loved ones" were something foreign to him. He could understand them in language and definition, but never truly experienced them.

He was sold to the military by his own parents when he was just a child, raised by the military and spent his life training, obeying orders, going to the battle fields, killing dozens of people. With the prize that he would get to survive for another day.....

The footsteps were coming closer and closer by each second. The soldier accepted his fate, knowing there are no more reasons to keep breathing on this world anymore because after all, when he died, no one would remember him.

The soldier's POV:

'Welp, guess this is the end.' I thought to myself before pulling out a grenade from the bag I picked up before which had 5 in total. Enough to put them down with me. A surge of emotions rising inside me, conflicting with each other, commitment, anger, the urge to kill those bastards before they could get me....and fear, mostly fear. The instinct of the fear of death screamed for me to stop this suicide. And the last one - either insanity or stupidity, said differently, urged me to accept my fate and of course, they helped the creativity of my brain to come out with an idea:

'If I'm going to descend and meet Satan himself, I will have to get myself some companions.'

Eventually, the fear depleted, I simply couldn't be afraid.

.....After all.....my whole life was nothing but a pathetic and meaningless mess....Was there even a point to try and push myself to survive this long? To hopelessly expect that my future will diverge to a different, better path one day?

Somehow, for the very last moments of my life, I remembered what's the date today. It's 20th of December.

Yikes, no presents from Santa Claus then.

I cracked a terrible and stupid joke without audiences.

As an armed squad assaulted in the room, I threw the grenade along wih the bag right at their faces. I yelled as loud as possible with the last of my breath in sheer terror mixed with madness: "MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS, MOTHERFUCKER----

*BOOOOOOM!*

Third person's POV:

The whole floor of the building collapsed rapidly due to the explosion. Until the smoke and fire depleted sightly, there was nothing left but ruins and dead corpses. About 10 minutes later, a group of military men came to survey the battlefield, they moved to the destroyed building where the man who has sacrificed his life with his last breath to kill his enemies. One member of the group found a corpse which had different uniform than others, he spotted  a name tag necklace with the identity of its owner: Erik Johnson

________________________________________

Erik Johnson 's POV:

Despite experiencing the feeling of dying in the matter of seconds, I felt the excruciating burning pain by the grenades inflicted on my fac---Aaaaaand wait a minute.....

'Why am I still monologuing in my head?'

I felt something was CLEARLY wrong. For a split moment, I was 99 percent sure that my consciousness disconnected as its source: my brain had been fried by the explosion.

'Yet, here I am....thinking.....,being aware of my consciousness still existing....,being....."the opposite of dying".'

Everything around me was so dark that I couldn't know the difference when I was opening and closing my eyes. However, I could feel the movement of my body which was free from the wounds. Yet I was disabled to move any parts of it, my arms, my legs, my head, I lost control to all of them. Another strange thing was my feet not touching the ground, I was floating the entire time!!

"Greetings, human Erik.", a strange voice got my attention.

"Who's there?! Where am I?!!", I asked in shocked.

"Be not panic. To answer your question in regards to our current location, we are apparently in the Void.", the silvery voice sent a slight chill to my spine...which I couldn't feel it right now....The voice seemed to bear the similarity of a male human, yet it was so alien.

"The Void? You mean the thing that literally stands for nothingness, only the gap of eternal black ?"

"Oh, interesting, so that's must be the certain theoretical knowledge of humanity about the Void."

The voice spoke with a flat tone.

"Let just say that you were partly correct Erik since it's not my duty to explain you about the Void's concept so let's get right to the main purpose shall we?"

Suddenly, a bright light shone in front of my view, making me instantly cover my eyes. From that light, appeared a shape of a round portal with pure white color. Floating out of the portal, a humanoid figure confronted me, as I observed "him" carefully. The figure had the body of a muscular grown man, his skin was light grey. He wore medieval steel boots along with fore arm's armors and a long torned dark red loincloth. On his face, there was no nose nor mouth but only a glowing purple gem that I considered to be his "eye". Two black horns potruded from his temples, behind his back were giant dark black mixed purple feather wings. The figure was holding a staff with an arc shape spear head.

"I am Azrael, Archangel of Death, the one responsible for transporting the souls of the deceased under the will of my creator: the almighty God. Right now, we are in one of the Void passages, which are the bridges that connected between border of life and death."

I was dumbstruck, unable to express any thing with my tone. Hesitating for about a minute, I calmed myself down to ask him:"So is this all real? I thought Gods and angels are just mythology."

"No, human Erik ,we have existed since the dawn of this universe's life. Billions of events on billion different worlds were interfered because of confidential reasons by us, the Gods and their apostles: angels or demigods themselves. Thus, many of our actions were spotted by the inhabitants of those worlds, take your human race on Earth for examples, they have been memorizing and writing down stories, myths and legends about us for millenniums. But as time goes, we were ordered to minimize interventions to your planet as much as possible due to again, confidential reasons by God, hence, the situations that we were sighted by humans are just barely happened now.", Azrael

"Welp....drug is hell of a thing....hahahahaha...haaaah.", I painfully laughed at my own pathetic joke, closed my eyes to refuse seeing and talking to the self-claimed holy angel in those christian bibles thingy, hoping that whatever made me high enough to get into this REALLY crazy ass dream would soon diminish and thus my body would wake bac---

"This is not a dream if you are wondering Erik. The final battle you went through. The final decision you took to commit suicide. Your final moment on Earth. They are real. They happened. And they ended, Erik, as well as your life."

"...Thanks for the confirmation...", I snapped back to....reality. Looking on "my body" thanks to the light source created by Azrael's bright portal.

There was no body of mine left, only a translucent shape resembling a vagie humanoid figure of my past self filled with emptiness that now called "soul".

"So...now's the time for you fancy feather wings to judge whether my soul is suitable to join with your maker on the heaven or get thrown down to the bottom of Satan's shit hole right? And of course, if you knew who I was and what I did back in Earth, you wouldn't expect me to be shocked when I hear my result.", I said sarcastically. Today was a long day, and I lost my mind already.

"That was initially my duty, correct. However, I came to you with a different purpose, human Erik. Congratulation, you have been chosen by God.", Azrael as if simply didn't care about my insolence and sass.

"Wait, chosen?"

Azrael summoned an opened book in his left hand and read it out loud:

"Erik Johnson, born in ##, ##, Earth year ####. Spent whole life dedicating to national military services. Family: biological parents sold him to military when he was 4 year-old, no relatives, no friends, no extra relationships. Died at the age of 27. Cause of death: suicide by grenades to kill his enemies."

I felt nothing to be proud after hearing him read the brief summary of my whole previous life. It was really nothing but pain, suffer and loneliness. But welp, I was used with it to accept a long time ago.

Azrael then closed the book and continued:

"Your biography shows that you have experienced such a life that had nothing but suffer and pain . Fortunately, you should feel honor that God has observed you and his decision was to offer you a second chance, human Erik."

"A second chance as iiiiin?"

"A new life. A new beginning. An opportunity for you to redo, to change yourself, to experience things life offers in a more optimistic way that your former one didn't get to."

"Pffft, save it for another one then, don't waste it on me and just flick me down to hell.", I denied out of annoyance and weariness.

"I'm done. I swam faster and beat millions of other sperms of my deadbeat father. I kicked myself out of my deadbeat mother's vagina to enter the cruel unforgiving world. I breathed, ate, shat, drank, learned, killed to desperately NOT DIE. Repeated for countless of times and guess what? F*cking died, that's it! Life's quite overrated for me, one eyed flying man. And trust me, I'm totally deserved a place "deep down there".", I rolled my eyes downwards, referring to hell obviously.

"No Erik, what you telling was not life. It was a misfortune which you tried your best to prolong it as long as you survived from series of tragedies. I sympathize and understand you. But "Life" is a precious gift that God has given to the worlds. Everyone should be able to experience it fully, if they couldn't in their first time living due to their misfortune, then let they do in their nexts.", Azrael, with an unchanged tone, lacked of aggressive emotions towards my altitude.

"You expect even the lowest and shittest type of human beings like me to learn how appreciate life? You are either blindly altruistic or delusional enough for such unrealistic idea. ", I stated out loud in an impudent tone.

"It was God's teaching, and God does not expect outcomes, he always knows how it will happen and how it will end, human Erik. Everyone changes eventually, And he sees a good, promising potential in you.", Azrael responded as he continued to explain:

"Perhaps now it's not the right moment for you to realize and understand. Your mind may remain stubborn and cling to the suffering in your past as the sole base to be scornful towards the experience to live. But, you will eventually change to be a better person, when you have meaningful reasons to do so.

Now, does the name"The beginning after the end" sounds familiar to you?"

'!!!!!!', a wave of nostalgia hit me the moment he said it. Back when I was in military dormitory, one of my hobbies to kill time was reading a lot of books, novels, especially adventure, fantasy genres online. And "The beginning after the end" was one of those which I enjoyed.

"It's a novel I read. Quite an entertaining and unique one to be honest, totally recommend it if you have interest in our "human literatures". What does a digital novel have anything to do with me?"

"You shall be reincarnated to the world of "The beginning after the end" or to be accurate, the world number ####. In order to prevent its total destruction beyond saving as the result of a mass scaled war between the creatures known as Asuras in the continent Epheotus and dwellers in 2 continents Dicathen and Alacrya."

"Say waaaae?!"

It felt like my head was struck by lightning. The existence of a fictional world from a story I read was claimed by Jesus and angels to be real. The information about the names of the continents as well as the on going situation between Asuras and the others was just like in the novel as well. And who the hell even "numbered" it???

"How is it possible? All the events, all the characters, existing in a parallel timeline as I was... literally reading about them?? And most of all, you SPOILED the goddamn ending!!!!", I said with the mixed reaction of baffle and slight irritation since he just revealed how things went down in that world: a bad ending.

"All shall be answered when the time comes. Right now, you should focus on how your plan to save this world."

"Again, out of all the people and you specifically chose me? I hope that you will be incredibly disappointed when I waste my life again as well as I simply don't care for your "mission".", I snorted sardonically.

"And God knows you won't, and he knows you will eventually dedicate yourself to succeed the mission, so as I have told you. The fact you did not entirely resist for this opportunity he bestowed on you showed that deep down inside, your hope for changing your life is still there.", Azrael as if he read my mind, which I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did, made me startled a bit.

"Nah, it's just my current situation that I have no way to protest your great Jesus' decisions to be honest. ", I straight up denied, didn't want to admit that he "saw through" me.

"Alright, fine. What else left do I have to lose anyway? It's not like I haven't died once just few minutes ago.", I rolled my eyes sarcastically, expecting this shit would not go well.

I attempted to question Azrael for more details such as how did Arthur Leywin, the protagonist fail to stop Agrona and Kezess but he refused to elaborate further. He explained briefly that the amount of my own knowledge towards this world by reading to the latest chapters of the unfinished book in Earth was adequate.

"It is crystal clear that to change the fate of this world, the demand for power is necessary. Therefore,I shall grant you some of God's blessings to aid your journey to fulfill this mission. A body capable of fast growth rate, top of physical state with excellent immunity and recovery as well as minimum fatigue.

Lastly, your body will be suitable for controlling all sources of magic energy existed in that world: the mana, the elements, the deviants, and the Aether."

"Woah holy craps. Isn't that like too much? Who knows, turning me into a literal demi-god like that might lead to some potential problems?"

"Worry not, everything is according to what God has forseen. Those are sufficient for you."

"Fine, you said it. By the way, can I like technically fuck up that world's magic system by forming both mana and aether cores in my body?", I questioned him with an idea I felt interesting since I read the novel.

"Yes."

"Sick. And is my body capable of drinking as much alcoholic things as I want without getting cancer or fatal diseases?"

"....Out of all the improvement anyone can wish for their physique to obtain and you---

"Yup. totally need it.", I interrupted him immediately.

".....Very well, anything else ?" Azrael asked as he wrote down all of the blessings into another book.

"Construct a good and usable brain for me, all of my knowledge from Earth, stay. Especially the science and technology shits that I learned from military school, they will come in handy. Make me learn, understand and memorize the insight to basically everything quickly and efficiently. And of course, give me an "easier start" than my previous life please, I don't wish to be born by pathetic bastards like "them" again.", I refered to my biological parents.

"Worry not about your last problem, God wants you to experience a true life as I told you.", Azrael assured.

"Yeah yeah yeah. Now about the time for my birth---

"Same year when Arthur Leywin - the individual with the most impact of the world, was born.", he interrupted me.

"Wait what? Isn't being born for many years sooner gives me more adequate time to prepare for the war?"

"Even the smallest things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. Once you got reborn, you would instantly alter the original timeline. Hence if you born before Arthur, there will be highly a chance that your existence and activities can end up either making Arthur Leywin not to born or making Grey reincarnated into a different body for examples. And not just the protagonist himself, the entire world might be altered as well, so it's best to be in the same timeline of the novel you are reading. And of course, the cooperation with Arthur Leywin is necessary if you wish to stand against the Asuras and Agrona."

"Ooooh, butterfly effect. Right, understood.", I realized and remembered about the chaos theory developed by Earth's scientist.

"Very well, if that was everything you need, then brace yourself now." , Azrael finished noting down into his book. He closed it and suddenly, the book began to float in front of him. Azrael then whispered an incantation via some kind of ancient language that I couldn't hear clearly. Glowing symbols and runes with a purple color similar to his face's gem forming from thin air around his right hand, they seemed to follow his command, moving like a herd of living creatures to rally to the center of Azrael's palm.

I observed the process with my non-existing jaw hung lose.

'Crossed fingers if I wake up in the next second and realize that all of this crazy ass shits were again just a really fucking high dream I got from... whatever cocaine or meth I was accidentally snorting at the base.', I crossed my non-existing fingers in hope.

Before I could even realise, Azrael appeared right at me and placed his palm on my forehead.

"AAAAAARGH!", a sudden pain went directly through my....non existing brain? as I screamed, trying to hold it back. I could sense the flow of that magic energy that I received from Azrael. It started at my brain and then spread to my entire body.

"From now on, you are no longer a mere mortal anymore, Erik. You are now blessed by a fraction of God's power. You shall use his power with one and only one purpose: to save this realm's fate from annihilation. You shall now be a loyal servant of him, serving under his will till the last breath of yours. I, Azrael, Archangel of Death, One Whom Lord Helps , protector of Heaven do hereby confer Erik Johnson, an emissary of God. May he guide you to the success of this holy mission."

Azrael finished his speech and my surroundings began to darken. The image of the archangel started to fade away from my vision until there was nothing but pitch black.