"Look at that. Another idiot in a daze."
"You'd think that if they were going to come to a place like this to throw their lives away, they'd be sharper than this."
"Oh please. How many people just come from anywhere to throw their lives away? Do you think it's some coincidence that the mortality rate is so high? I never believed that bullshit."
"Is that your way of making yourself feel better? The pain is going to be the same, I assure you. Keep your head on a swivel or you'll die just like the rest of them too."
There was a flicker in Zarek's eyes as the conversation caught his attention. He looked up to find several people looking at him.
The first thing he thought was…
'Another Dream Godsfall Tear?'
A Timed Godsfall Tear could technically be anything. The only reason for its moniker was that it wouldn't last forever and would eventually blink out of existence. That, and the fact it often provided a shocking opportunity while also being ridiculously dangerous.
But when Zarek finally started paying attention to his surroundings—truly paying attention—his heart couldn't help but skip a beat.
What was this place?
Zarek stood in a hall of what felt like some semi-futuristic home. Well, it would have been a home if not for what shockingly lay beyond it.
The ceilings were a fluorescent white and there didn't seem to be a single edge or corner to anything, everything curving like some sort of zero-volume geometric hellscape that left Zarek feeling oddly uncomfortable.
People of all sorts of shapes and sizes stood around him, mostly human, and yet not in the quirkiest of ways. Some of them had spots of scales on their bodies, some had tails that were a little too high up their backsides to just be their kink flavor of the day, and yet some others had skin that was a little too pale, or arms that were a little too long, or eyes that had more than one pupil…
Zarek's observation abilities had always been sky-high, and it felt like the more he scanned the room, the more he felt like he had been kidnapped by some sort of alien race.
And it certainly didn't help with what he was seeing beyond.
Some of the curved surfaces that formed the room weren't a fluorescent white at all. Instead, they curved into arches of glass… glass that looked out into a starry sky.
They were suspended in the middle of space—or maybe they were moving through space itself, and the cosmos was just so vast that Zarek couldn't tell.
'What the hell…'
Despite his shock and surprise, Zarek's actual expression hardly gave anything away. This, as ridiculous as it felt, wasn't enough to shock him. Not by a substantial margin, anyway.
Maybe if they were little green men with bulging black discs for eyes, he might have poked a joke or two at their expense first. But this? This left him feeling more serious than anything else.
Everything that had been happening was far too odd.
Zarek had lived three lives before this one. In every one, even though he eventually got himself killed by being too reckless, he always made it to S Class, and always stood near the pinnacle of what was possible on Earth.
He never failed so substantially that he would fall flat on his face before making it very far.
But that was the problem.
He had been through so much, seen through so much, so why was it that just two months in this time around… everything just felt so foreign to him?
At first, he thought it was just because someone was messing with his Karma. He still believed this to be true, though since then, he hadn't felt the same heavy hand.
Whoever it was seemed to have realized that he had noticed their presence and backed off, or they had already gained from Zarek what they wanted to gain in the first place—which was its own set of problems, but he'd just have to deal with that as it came.
But now, Zarek felt that something much deeper was at play here. The odd silence of the system was also very peculiar as well. It had been far less chippy recently. It had already slowed down its commentary after the Hero Candidate fiasco, but since he got the Anato Codex, it had been completely silent.
He was learning about things that seemed to not be related to Earth at all, and now he was suddenly dropped into the middle of an odd room of people he could only describe as aliens?
How could all of this be a coincidence?
It felt like time was being accelerated around him in ways that he didn't quite understand. Someone else was putting their hands on the lever.
Chi.
Zarek's eyes sharpened and he looked to the side. Another duo stumbled out from seemingly empty space, falling forward and then catching themselves before they hit the ground.
Malik and Qiqi.
At that moment, the room began to rumble.
—
[Welcome, participants. You have all been sent here as Heroes of your worlds. Blessed by the grace of your overseers, you must prove their belief in you true.]
—
Zarek stood to his full height, stealthily slipping the hourglass into his pocket and reading the words over and over as though the third or fourth time might give him more insight into what they were trying to say than the first.
But his mind couldn't help but be entirely focused on a single one presented boldly above the rest.
Heroes.
—
[Prepare yourselves, as we will be arriving shortly.]
—
There was a sudden rush, and then the stars blurred all at once before coming to a stop.
The vessel they stood upon trembled and then slowed.
Down below, through the curved windows, a planet that was far more green than blue appeared, three blood moons overlooking its surface as though the eyes of demonic beings.