As a child, there was one book I loved. I don't remember how I got it, but...
I think the title was "3 Ways to Survive..." No, that's not right.
"6 Lessons to Help You Survive in an Alternative World."
That was the title.
…
'How happy it is to be dead!'
A moment stretching endlessly, and infinity ready to find its end in a single moment. Only darkness and silence.
Seconds or years? He didn't know how long it lasted, but one thing was clear.
In that endless moment, he was free.
'Ah... How blissful it is not to live'.
Free from desires. Free from ambitions. Free from attachments. Free from good and evil. Free from his name...
Free from a dream.
Free from what he had done. Free from the torments of his own conscience.
He became a nobody, and that was much more than such a person deserved. At least, that's how he would have seen it.
'Ah... How wonderful it is not to exist…'
As pleasant as the happiness of non-existence seemed, so terrifying did a distant life seem.
'Surely it would have been better not to be born at all... Unfortunately, I don't remember being given a choice back then.'
Strange as it may seem, it was this thought that disturbed the endless peace of the cradle of death.
"...But did that supreme being give me a choice now?"
His serene soul, woven from the deepest darkness, was so intoxicated with death that it forgot the recent conversation with that majestic being.
He remembered that he had been punished.
Punished with a new life.
"Your dream is over. It's time to wake up, my... Champion." That's how it called him after his death and, pulling him out of the nightmare of death, brought him to its domain.
Unfortunately, he was deprived of the happiness of prolonging the moment of deadly oblivion to infinity.
For he who dreamed of becoming a star cannot remain a mere black spot on the fabric of the world. Even if that spot is the darkest in the entire universe.
Lesson 1: be careful with your dreams.
…
"…Consider this a forced trial. You must escape from this place at any cost. Escape from the Pit… as soon as possible.
A second ago, he had no eyes, no mouth, no ears — no body at all. He was free…
And now he was a rotting corpse.
"…?!"
He had no mouth to scream, so he had to settle for the sensations of the wriggling maggots without any emotional commentary.
"…!!!"
Slippery creatures crawled in his eye sockets and tumbled right into his mouth, eating the remains of his tongue. But still, he came to the conclusion that most of the small creatures had gathered around the torn hole where his chest and heart used to be.
Had he really been brought back from the dead to be turned into a rotting corpse?
"Pff-pfaa..."
With twitching hands, he reached into his rotten face to somehow get rid of the unpleasant creatures.
It wasn't difficult to understand that sensation was returning to his fingertips, because when he touched the rotten flesh, a piercing burning sensation ran through them.
'Hurts! It hurts, hurts, hurts… It hurts so much!!!' In addition to the burns on his fingers, his whole body began to regain sensitivity.
Unfortunately, the newly regained sensations merged into a single piercing lump of pain, rolling over and over again throughout his body.
This further reinforced his thought that...
'How terribly painful it is to live!'
Soon he realized something strange — something was happening to his body. It didn't seem like he was undergoing a miraculous regeneration by God's will... Rather, this metamorphosis resembled the feeling of being burned alive.
And although he had never experienced such horror himself, he knew that over time, the fire would consume even the nerve endings and the pain would begin to subside... Unfortunately, in his case, the opposite was true, and with each passing second, the pain only intensified.
This went on for a couple of minutes until...
"Damn it! To hell with all this!" he shouted, spitting out dozens of larvae crushed to a pulp by his teeth.
His roar echoed everywhere, but everything was still dark before his eyes.
Blood rushed through his body with panic and painful burning sensations.
What could be worse than finding yourself in an unknown world, in the body of a rotten corpse, surrounded by vile creatures? Realizing all this in complete darkness.
He rubbed and rubbed his eye sockets until finally his left eye began to see.
"...Huh?"
The first thing that caught his blurry gaze were his legs stretched out in front of him. He was lying down.
The second thing was a piece torn out, as if bitten off, in the middle of his chest.
And in real time, he saw his heart growing back in that hole, along with his bones and the rest of his flesh.
He saw his own heart and his insides. It was literally maddening.
Strangely, the bitten organ, which was crimson in color, was shrouded in a thin layer of white and blue, reminiscent of stars.
It wasn't that surprising, because the majestic being that had revived him appeared in a similar...
"Damn maggots!" he growled hatefully, clenching his teeth.
Then his trembling hand reached for the hole in his chest and tried to shake off the hundreds of larvae that had attached themselves to it. Surely this burning light could have done the job itself... Unfortunately, he was simply unable to sit idly by.
Needless to say, such a rash act was terribly painful.
…
'Hahaha!'
'Dad, what's so funny?!'
'No, no, it's not funny, it's just... Repeat that, son, what's your dream?'
'I want to be a star! The brightest star in the night sky!'
"Aaaaaaaaaah!"
Beads of sweat ran down his face and palms. He clutched his head with his hands as if trying to hold something there, but it was all in vain.
Memories of his past life were rapidly fading from his mind. Even the happiest and brightest ones did not escape.
Only the most recent ones remained hanging over him like a cross. The most painful and shameful ones.
In despair, he slammed his fist hard into the loose ground. He felt his own ragged breathing, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and his teeth clenched so hard it hurt.
The painful regeneration of his body was coming to an end. Only through his clothes, torn to shreds, could he see his bleeding chest and the whitish light striving to restore all layers of skin.
But, strangely, the metamorphosis taking place within him did not end with transmigration and regeneration. He could clearly see that the rotting corpse — the previous owner of this body — had slightly bronze, tanned skin. However, now this shade was rapidly changing to a dull white. Surely the same was happening to his eyes, face, and hair... He was regaining his appearance from his past life.
"Haah..."
It hardly resembled the sigh of a man who had been screaming frantically just a moment ago. Rather, it resembled the sigh of someone suffering from severe depression.
But anyway, he tried to sit up and look around.
In front, to the right, to the left, behind, and even beneath him was only loose, recently dug earth. There was no doubt about it.
"A grave... Bravo, very symbolic," he stated dryly.
He was lying at the bottom of a flat rectangular pit. It felt like it was about two meters below ground level.
Only the unchanging starry sky sat above him, like an eternal overseer. Although even it seemed somehow strange, unlike what he was used to seeing.
"... " After hysterical screams and moans, the area returned to silence, interrupted only by rare howls... probably the wind.
And at that moment, his eyes were fixed on the starry face that so resembled the very creature that had brought him back to life.
"Damn it... Damn it all..."
Despite everything, he found the strength to act and tried to get to his feet.
His body felt like an old, rusty mechanism, working with an obvious creak. The pain was receding, but that didn't help him adjust and get used to it. It was as if he was unconsciously denying the reality in which he was alive again.
No wonder, because just recently he had literally blown himself up with a damn...
"Hey, are you listening? Or maybe you're watching, I don't know..." He began to scan the starry sky with his eyes. "If you have the power to put me here, then you can take me back, right? Please, take my life. Get rid of it."...
Unfortunately, no one answered him.
For anyone, the miracles happening would be a cause for significant surprise. Regeneration right before your eyes? A change in body structure? Damn reincarnation, or what else is it? All this seemed and was incredible, existing only on the borders of fantasy, in the pages of novels and in movie scenes. And a second chance at life was a cherished dream for most people... Yet he was different.
"Please don't force me... Take my life and give it to someone else. Someone who is worthy of this chance..." he said painfully.
"..."
"Please..."
"..."
But, as in their recent face-to-face meeting, all persuasion proved futile.
His teeth began to bite his trembling lips, and his eyes betrayed him with tears, which was quite shameful for a 22-year-old.
"To hell with all this... To hell with you, whoever or whatever you are! I'll do it myself. I did it once, I'll do it again!" he shouted hoarsely into the sky and began to try to climb out of the grave.
It is unlikely that for anyone else, a new life was as terrible a nightmare as it was for him.
However, although he could continue his bravado and rage at the heavens, saying that he would take his own life...
He knew he had been punished.
He was punished with life and sentenced to live
It was exactly what he deserved, because...
"Because I'm a damn villain..." he croaked, biting his teeth into the edge of the earth.
There is no torment worse than the torment of conscience of the darkest villain.
…
The stream of falling soil threatened to knock his body down again, so he had to increase the pressure. Sticking his feet higher and higher and throwing his arms further, he climbed until he finally crawled to the top, no longer afraid of falling.
For a few seconds, he spat out dirt and caught his breath, then got up on his knees and opened his wet eyes.
"..!"
Everything changed in an instant.
He didn't know exactly how much, but it seemed that all six of his senses were mercilessly attacked. His dark soul froze in horror.
Probably the first was the smell...
A disgusting corpse stench invaded his nose, many times exceeding the foul smell of his own body.
The second was definitely sight.
The sight of mutilated people spread before his eyes. Their bodies were torn apart and shredded to pieces.
It seemed that even their amazing equipment and weapons, seemingly created in the style of a dark cyberpunk future, had not helped them. Not counting the scattered body parts, at first glance there were about seven corpses sprawled in a circle, right next to the dug grave.
But the strangest thing was the dull yellowish hue that fell on the bodies and the surrounding area directly from the sky.
"What the...!" he was about to exclaim, but he didn't notice that he had lost the ability to breathe.
This was because, in fact, the first sensation that affected him was the piercing feeling of a gaze directed straight at his back.
And that gaze was far more frightening than the sight of mutilated corpses and severed limbs. Every cell in his body felt that the owner of that gaze was far more terrifying than any monster or villain.
Much more terrifying.
'Because this is the only place his eyes cannot reach, so…' This was one of the phrases that the starry being muttered during their encounter.
Most likely, it said this to itself, not to him. And yet, it was precisely now that he remembered this vague phrase.
"... " With very slow movements, he began to tilt his head back and turn carefully.
Was it scary? It was very scary. The feeling was so frightening that he was physically unable to turn around immediately.
Everything he had tried to deny until that moment began to pour out. Rebirth in a decaying body, excruciating pain, his own grave, torn corpses, an unknown world, and...
The unknown starry sky.
All the unknowns in general were terrifying, and combined with the frightening sight on his back, this feeling reached its peak.
And yet, only now did he realize that there was a completely different starry sky above his head. And right above him was the most obvious and frightening proof of this hypothesis.
"D-damn b-black hole..." he blurted out in horror, falling on his backside, unable to take his eyes off the celestial object.
The most terrifying proof of the universe's power over man was right there in the sky. An insanely huge object, combined with a mesmerizing golden disc, brough...
"...!" But there was something even more terrifying than that celestial power.
It was what stood right in front of him and never looked away.
Seeing it with his own eyes, he was convinced of his intuitive guesses.
It was undoubtedly more frightening.
Lesson 2: Be careful what you want to know, because...
"Big Brother is watching you."