Let me start by asking a question that no one should ever have to answer: What does enlightenment smell like?
Apparently, it smells like pickled despair.
I know this because I woke up to find a sentient, slightly glowing turnip meditating three inches from my forehead while reciting the Echo Mantra in five overlapping voices.
"Rise, vessel. Destiny has brined your path."
My soul left my body. My body refused to reabsorb it.
"Spoon," I whispered hoarsely, eyes locked with the turnip's.
"Don't look at me," Spoon hissed from under the pillow. "I told you not to eat monastery soup after midnight."
"Why is it floating?"
"It's not. You are."
And he was right. I was floating two feet off the ground in the middle of the Echo Shrine dormitory common room. Someone had rearranged the furniture into a mandala. Mirielle was asleep in a teacup. Belladonna was glowing faintly purple and muttering, *"I am the wrath of ancestral seasoning."
Normal Tuesday.
The turnip introduced herself as High Mistress Skrell of the Brined Mind, Guardian of the Preserved Path, Prophet of the Fermentation Flame, and Assistant Manager of the Echo Shrine Cafeteria.
Her eyes were closed. I don't know how. She didn't have eyes.
"I have reviewed your file," Skrell intoned, spinning slowly in midair like a disapproving rotisserie.
"I never submitted a file."
"The Glitch submits you."
"Okay, that's terrifying."
"You have failed thirty-seven inner balance diagnostics, regurgitated two prophecy indexes, and kissed a soup construct in a state of magical delirium."
"It kissed me first."
"Irrelevant."
Belladonna groaned and rolled off the couch. "Is this the part where you finally get a mentor who isn't a sarcastic utensil?"
Spoon looked personally offended. "Excuse me, I trained this disaster into a functioning existential hazard."
"Exactly," she said, brushing ash from her hair. "Time for someone with actual pedagogy."
Lesson One: Fermentation is a Philosophy.
Skrell led us (by which I mean, hovered ominously ahead while chanting in a dead dialect of Soup Latin) into the Echo Shrine's underground fermentation chambers. They were dimly lit, humid, and smelled like someone had bottled existential regret and aged it for thirty years next to a sweating ogre.
"To ferment is to transform through patient decay," Skrell said. "It is the sacred waiting. The slow chaos."
"That's literally my entire personality," I said.
"Then you must be refined."
I was handed a vat of sentient miso. It gurgled threateningly. Spoon told me to sing to it. I sang "Oops, I Did It Again." It began to bubble with what I hoped was respect.
Meanwhile, Belladonna was forced to meditate inside a barrel of pickled fate-beets. Mirielle got stuck in a yogurt loop.
"What am I learning again?" I asked.
"Stillness. Rot. Enlightenment."
"Cool, but like, is there a certificate?"
"Only pain."
Classic.
Lesson Two: Pickle Your Trauma.
We sat in a circle of whispering brine jars. Each contained an echo fragment from failed Vessel candidates. One whispered, "I should have kissed him." Another murmured, "Tell Seraphina the cake was a lie."
I leaned into one. It whispered, "You are not him. You are the cracked glass. The false reflection."
Spoon immediately threw a curtain over it. "Nope. That one's too spicy for your mental state."
Skrell nodded. "Some truths ferment longer."
"Why is therapy here so weird?"
Belladonna, covered in beet juice, muttered, "Better than nobility. At least the vegetables are honest."
Lesson Three: The Trial of the Vinegar Storm.
Skrell declared my next step would be to survive the ancient rite of the Pickle Tempest—a magical brewing ritual in which the chosen must stir the Cauldron of Multisoups while navigating visions from the deepest root-memory.
I blacked out at step two.
When I woke up, I was in a dream made of kitchen utensils and parental disappointment. My childhood desk stared at me. So did a sentient spoon.
"Why did you come back?" asked Dream-Kael.
"Because I was glitched into this world against my will and now I'm responsible for five emotionally complicated women, an overpowered cat, a talking utensil, and the fate of two realms."
"Weak."
I hit him with a soup ladle.
Final Lesson: Let the Brine Choose.
At dawn, I was brought before the Sacred Barrel. Skrell chanted. Belladonna accidentally set a curtain on fire. Mirielle floated three inches off the ground. Fluffernox purred in the shape of a spiral.
The barrel opened.
Inside was a single, ancient scroll, soaked in vinegar and glowing with system script:
[NEW SYSTEM UPDATE AVAILABLE: ECHO PATH UNLOCKED - BRINED SOUL VARIANT]
"Oh no," I muttered.
Spoon sighed. "Oh yes."
My body shuddered. The glitchlight flared. Echo magic surged through me like boiling broth.
And in that moment, I saw it:
All my past selves.
All the mistakes.
All the futures I might still break.
And still—
I chose to be here.
I opened my eyes.
"I think I understand the philosophy now," I said.
Skrell rotated solemnly. "Then take this."
She handed me a small badge made of pickled radish.
"You are now an Apprentice of the Brined Path."
I pinned it to my shirt.
Belladonna smiled.
"Don't get cocky, radish boy."
I grinned. "Too late."
Next Time on Yes, I Was Reborn. No, I Don't Want a Harem. Stop Looking at Me Like That:
Chapter 84 – "You Are Now Legally a Pickle (And the System Has Questions)"
The System tries to process Kael's new Echo Variant. Belladonna challenges a bureaucracy golem. Fluffernox rewrites tax law. Spoon declares a theological war on pickles. And Kael? Kael just wants breakfast.