Chương 5: [LD-1] 4. Initiation Chamber

IV Initiation Chamber When the world shattered, only the bedrock of the universe remained: a void where darkness was king. It took my mind a few seconds before I realised I was floating in that void, unable to move an inch of my body. My heart didn't suffer the same paralysis. Blood shot through the organ as its beating increased tenfold. I thought I knew what that darkness was supposed to look like…but I'd never seen shadows so absolute.

"Imagine it," I recalled myself saying during my seance.

"Your mind locked in the void for eternity, every thought a scream that travels through the vast nothingness." My thoughts raced through the abyss, crying for anyone but me to hear them. Just when the fear began creeping its way up from my heart and locking up my throat, there was as shift in the void. Shadows twisted and solidified into tiles that formed a giant chamber. There was no light in this place, yet the information entered my head as if I were seeing it normally. Initiation Chamber created.

The sudden voice in my head would've made me jump out of my skin if I could move at all. Analysing Neophyte's Magic Domain… Domain analysed. Neophyte's Magic Domain: Death. Determining Magic Proficiency… Something like a shiver passed through me, and the cold sensation that poked my insides. Magic proficiency determined! Proficiency Grade: Special. I blinked. Amongst the strangeness of the last few minutes, this statement was something regular—there was nothing else my domain was going to be.

But the 'special' was cause for pause. Magic proficiency was graded from F through S. Did the S stand for 'special?' Assigning highest-tier Initiate class: Reaper. The shiver going through me turned into a tidal wave that rocked my insides. Unable to sag to my knees or clutch my stomach, I screamed inside myself. The system didn't care and continued. Class assigned! Facilitating contact with tutelary deity. Please hold on… I mentally gasped for breath as the pain let up.

'What in the fuck is going on?!' No one ever said the awakening would be like this! A sudden lurch in my stomach cut off any further curses I wanted to sling. My sight shot down to find the floor rushing towards me at breakneck speed. It all happened so quick, the only thing I could do was close my eyes and hold my hands out in front of me… … One eye risked a peek. I was hovering an inch over the floor. An exhale.

"Thank god." I jerked. Wait. I can speak? Whatever was holding me above the floor chose that moment to vanish and let me fall on my head.

"Be a bit more gentle, asshole!" I yelled. Who was I yelling at, though? The system? A 'tutelary deity'? The intent to find out before I left this room hauled me to my feet. I paused in the middle of getting up. There was someone in the room with me. A man. Kneeling and with his eyes closed. His hair, which was wild as that of a beast, fell all the way to his butt and draped over the floor, covering his torso like a coat. He didn't wear anything besides a pair of trousers that could've been found in a thrift shop.

Hundreds of red ink marks covered his chest. I wanted to call them tattoos, but tattoos didn't writhe and move as if they had a mind of their own. Neither did they morph into different shapes between glances. His bare-chested nature gave me insight into another important factor: a blade was sticking through his chest. The massive, curved tooth of steel was attached to a handle as inky black as the surrounding void. Similar markings as the one on the man's body ran across the ridged shaft.

To top it all off, chains sprouted from thin nothingness to wrap the man's ankles, feet, and hands.

"…is he dead?" Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. The scythe entered where his heart should be and went out his back. A black substance that could be blood dripped from the wound, but the man didn't move. Not a muscle. If it wasn't for the blood, I would've thought him a life-like statue. My head spun around to find anything I'd missed.

"Uhm," I said.

"Are you supposed to be my 'tutelary deity'?" That's what the system said, right? No response. So I waited a few seconds for the system to come in and tell me what in the fuck was going on. It didn't say anything. I kicked the air.

"You were so talkative a moment ago!" With no better options, I stepped in the direction of the stranger, who grew taller the closer I got. He was way taller than me, despite kneeling.

'He's got to be over ten foot. Is he a giant of some kind?' He was a built giant, too, since his width was just as impressive as his height. I waited a safe distance away, which was close enough for a strange scent to waft up my nostrils. It was…weirdly sweet.

'Is that the blood I'm smelling?' After trying to strike up a conversation in various ways, and even screaming at him, I decided I would have to try a more direct approach at uncovering what was going on. Circling to his rear for safety purposes, I stuck out a foot and poked his lower back with the tip of my feet.

"Are you alive, Sir?" The man was not a statue. His flesh was soft. Still, there was no response. His lack of reaction made me more confident in closing the distance. I stepped over and underneath a few of the chains and ended up in front again. Then I poked his belly in the same manner. Nothing. Now, I was convinced that nothing I did would boast a response.

"Well, let's see if you're really dead." The old breathing trick should do. Problem was that he was too tall for me to put a palm under his nose, so I had to use his thighs as a prop.

"No breathing…" I stared up at him.

"Are you really dead?" Then again, if my magic domain was 'Death' and he my tutelary deity, him being dead was not so strange. Holding on to his back with one arm, I cupped my chin in the other. Dead or alive, what exactly was I supposed to do here? Falling drops of black drew my sight. The pool of murky black ichor on the floor showed a reflection of me hanging onto the giant. There was nothing— I turned to the scythe.

"Would it really be that?" It was the only thing for me to interact with besides the man himself, the chains, and the blood. The chains were thicker than the man's own thighs, and unless I intended to lick up that blood like some vampire, there was no other option. Pulling the scythe out proved its own conundrum. The handle was aimed upwards, not down.

"I can't get a hold from down here." Which meant I needed to climb.

"Sorry in advance, but I'm trying to help here." I doubted my words would keep him from murdering me for the insolence if it came down to it, but it was worth a shot. My heel planted in his side, careful to avoid slipping on the blood. His shoulder was barely out of reach, leaving nothing but his hair or the weapon's handle to stabilise with. His hair, it turned out, was solid. Terrifyingly so. There was no moving it, no matter how hard I pulled. So I used them like vines.

Before long, I was seated on the giant's shoulders, feet draped around his neck. I wrapped my hands around the scythe's handle, finding that it was cool to the touch.

"Alright," I said.

"Here it goes, Sir…please don't kill me." Muscles straining, I hauled up and back, doing my best to respect the scythe's curved path. My head ballooned with air. My cheeks turned red. But there was movement—a wet squelch and an increase in the rhythm of falling blood let me know.

"Come on….!" I launched backwards as my hands slipped on the handle. My feet locking around the giant's neck was the only thing keeping me from falling. That, and my non-existent abs. A reflection in the corner of my sight made me turn. The tip of the scythe hovered beneath my skull.

'That…I'm not going to think about it.' Raising back into position, I decided to safeguard my life as much as possible and changed my approach. I was now reversed, legs locked around the back of the man's neck, so I was hanging in front of his face with my privates pushing against his throat.

"It's a very intimate position, I admit, Sir. But I don't think you care." Or even know. I locked my hands around the shaft again, which the inner child of me couldn't help but chuckle at.

'Not that kind of shaft, you mongrel.' This way of pulling put more burden on my core, but the advantage was that I could pull without fear of falling to my death. Also, the man's face was literally harder than a damned rock, so I could press against him with as much force as I could muster without moving. That did put my bust where it didn't belong, but I preferred not to think about that.

"Move, move…!" I groaned. My abs screamed so hard I had to let go lest they burn up and melt. Heaving, I clung onto the man's head for some rest. From an outside perspective, I must've appeared like a toddler clinging onto their father. I pulled back a little to see his face. With his eyes closed, his breathing non-existent, the giant appeared at a level of peace a Tibetan Monk would dream of reaching. My brows drooped.

"You're…you're supposed to be Death, aren't you?" He who guarded the beyond and shepherded the lost. The Reaper. The Harbinger. He Who Waits at the End. Or as the rest of the world called him: Lord Null. The negative connotations attached to His name were many. At the mere sound of it, people screamed at the top of their lungs, begging any god existing to keep Him at bay. I glanced at the scythe, which was now but a few inches away from exiting his chest.

"A scythe is a reaper's weapon." I thought back to my death. The curses the woman had flung at me as she stabbed me for reasons completely unjustified. Tentatively, I reached out and touched the man's cheeks. Unlike the scythe, he was warm.

"How much have they cursed you?" Perhaps enough for him to…I shook my head. I was reaching. I didn't know the faintest things about gods, and didn't imagine for a second that my experiences related to theirs as much as an ant compared itself to a mountain. Breathing in deep, I locked my hands around the scythe again.

"Last push." Pull, really. Though it was the last, it didn't require less effort. Thigh muscles wiring together, abdomen crunching and twisting more than I thought humanly possible, I screamed as the final inch of the blade pulled free, a trail of blood flying with it through the air. I clutched the handle with one arm as I held on to the deity's skull with the other.

"Thank…God…." My chin came to rest on the side of his head as I found my breath.

"Now—to get down." Leaning back, I looked at the floor, then to the scythe.

'Should I just throw it?' Climbing down with the weapon in hand was unnecessarily risky. I did exactly that and let the weapon clatter to the ground below. Then I unlocked my legs and began climbing down— It was when I brought my last leg around that I noticed a change in the giant's appearance. His eyelids were no longer closed, and two voids for pupils stared at me. The last clatters of the scythe faded out into the dark room.

"Uhm," I swallowed.

"Hi there?"