Chapter 2
"Aaaaaaaaaa" Aaron screamed at the top of his non-existent lungs, the memory of immense pain, even if only for a brief moment, had deeply imprinted itself in his mind.
This madness went on for a while before he realized that he couldn't feel anything.
"Huh, I don't feel anything. Am I dead?" Aaron questioned himself. Inspecting his body, he could see that it was semi-transparent, which could mean several things, for one, he was experiencing an out-of-body situation.
A phenomenon where the spirit temporarily left the body due to a near-death experience. Another potential answer was that this was all just a dream.
'I spent a lot of time watching anime and reading manga. I must have fallen asleep due to exhaustion and just having a nightmare,' Aaron thought in denial of the truth.
The room he was within seemed like something someone dreaming would see.
It was a large room completely white in colour; upon closer inspection, there didn't seem to be an exit.
'Now how does one wake up from a nightmare?' Aaron questioned himself, his mind still refusing to confront the truth.
How could one blame him? He was an orphan with very few friends.
He had worked his way up slowly for as long as he could remember.
The world wasn't particularly kind to orphans, especially ones that carried baggage.
He had spent gruelling hours working to get himself through college and was only a semester away from graduating.
Believing he just suddenly died without accomplishing anything to some crazy truck driver or whatever was controlling the truck just seemed too hard to accept.
Though his mind still vividly remembered the pain of his body grated against asphalt, he still tried deluding himself.
Upon closer inspection of the room, Aaron noticed a desk at the far corner of the room.
There seemed to be an outline of a person sitting outside a chair by the desk.
'Strange, when did that appear there?' Aaron questioned. Curiously, he approached the desk to see what it was.
The closer he got to the desk, the colder he felt, causing him to stop.
'Is it possible to feel all this in a dream?' Aaron questioned himself.
"Come," a chilly voice called out to him from the desk. The strongest emotion that he felt upon hearing the voice was fear.
Aaron didn't know when it happened but the moment he came to his senses, he was standing in front of the desk.
"Sit," the voice said, like a puppet; his body sat in one of the open seats.
"W....wh.....who a..ar....are y...you?" Aaron barely managed to stutter out of his mouth. It was almost as though his teeth were clattering due to the cold he felt.
"Who do you think?" the being before him posed a question in reply. The truth that he tried to deny suddenly started to feel more real.
What he was feeling now couldn't possibly be a dream; just sitting in the presence of whatever this creature was seemed to be emitting a pressure that threatened to crush his very existence.
The image of the being was so hard to describe in words, it was like it was in front of him yet not there at the same time.
There were no facial features to describe; the being was just there in front of him.
"A...ar..are yo..you ...god?" Aaron stuttered in reply. This was a wild guess from himself. Several options had crossed his mind like a dream demon or a dream traveler, but he could now feel that this wasn't a dream.
This left him with several more options; this was either god, the devil, or something equivalent.
"Hmm, not quite right but not so far off too," the being replied.
'Why is it talking in riddles? What does it want from me? Am I truly dead for real?' Aaron thought rapidly darted around within his mind.
"Relax," the being said; immediately the pressure that he was feeling reduced and a calming sensation overcame him.
"Hmm, you should feel a bit better now," the creature added.
"Thank you," Aaron replied, not sure if that was the right thing to say now.
'Tsk, I had reduced the level of my existence infinitely close to zero, and this mortal still couldn't stand it,' the being pondered as it observed Aaron.
"Anyway moving on, are you aware that you are dead?" the being asked.
"So I am really dead," Aaron muttered, his emotions threatening to spiral out of control.
He looked up to the non-existent sky and cursed out all his pent-up emotions.
"Are you done?" the being asked after a while.
"I am sorry, Uhm your holiness," Aaron replied with a bow.
Now fully back to his senses, he realized that cursing in front of a being that may or may not be god was bad, so he was trying his best to butter the being up, lest he be thrown into hell or something worse.
"Ha, Ha, Ha. You're a funny mortal. Just call me X," X replied.
"I see, Uhm X, so what happens now?" Aaron hesitantly asked.
"Hmm, to put it simply, I have an offer for you," X replied.
"An offer, not a command?" Aaron questioned. He knew that he wasn't special enough to receive an offer from a godlike being.
He wasn't the nicest person, nor was he a bad person.
Living for him was mostly about himself; surviving by himself was already hard enough as it was.
There were times that he gave to charity and the beggars but that was because he thought that he could have easily been one of those people, but it wasn't anything special, or he believed so.
The only other thing he could think of was that he was a virgin all his life.
'Could it be because of my training towards sage-hood?' Aaron playfully thought.
"It's none of that nonsense. I simply traded with the god of your world for a decent soul, and you happened to be chosen," X said, interrupting Aaron's thoughts.
'So my world god sold me, that’s crazy' he thought.
"I see, so what is the offer?" Aaron asked a bit dejected.
Inwardly, he was rejoicing; his Semi-Otaku senses were tingling.
'This is definitely one of those novel reincarnation offers, right? Right?' Aaron desperately wanted to believe.
"Sigh, yes it's not too far from what you are thinking," X replied after reading Aaron's annoying thoughts.
"Why?" Aaron hesitantly asked. Although he was thrilled, he still wanted to know why such a powerful-looking being wanted to reincarnate someone like him.
"Hmm, to put it simply, I am conducting an experiment that involves the construction of alternate realities. I will refrain from giving any more specifics," X replied.
"I see, so where do I come in?" Aaron asked.
"By adding something that shouldn't be there, it creates a ripple in the set fate of the original world, and multiple alternate realities are produced from your potential actions. I will elaborate more further," X replied.
'Alright, that's already beyond my earthly brain so… Whatever,' Aaron concluded.
"Why cant you just use your godly powers to just do it directly?" Aaron decided to ask.
"There are rules to follow; nature fights back in a nasty way to any being that twists it too much beyond its natural form," X simply responded.
Aaron didn't understand anything that X meant, no he didn’t want to bother trying to understand, so he shoved it in the back of his mind.
To him, there was no point in trying to comprehend a being beyond nature.
X was going to do what X wants anyway, so he was just going to go with the flow.
"Uhm, so where am I going and what am I doing?" Aaron asked. He had already decided to accept the offer of reincarnation.
He could already imagine his fate if he rejected..