The Future Is Now, Young Man

The sound of leather shoes of expensive manufacture landing upon a stone ground echoed into a vast space of light blue, ripples emanating from the area of impact, a young man standing, fixing his black three piece suit, tie and white shirt, leather gloves clearly specially designed to fit his hands worn with much class.

His pitch dark hair neither left ungroomed, nor very sophisticated, staring at himself through the mirror-like surface that was both the ground and every structure around him, a charming smile manifesting into existence, one he remembered to have swooned many girls into his arms and then into death's.

'Well, would you look at that, even better than I remembered' complimenting himself, it would appear that Edrick Lucien Anoteros had been reverted back to his greatest prime, no longer a dashing silver fox, but an atrociously handsome devil, nature truly had spoiled him.

He had expected himself to awaken inside someone else's body, but not only was it not the case, he was clearly not in the world Irandelle had shown him, perhaps he was actually going to hell instead? It had been the original plan after all.

Checking his pockets as he walked, faint ripples appearing with every step, despite looking like a tranquil lake, the ground here behaved like a puddle that got nothing wet, but also sounded like rock for some reason, all around him, pillars and obelisks were rising in and out of the ground, as though waiting on cues to do their little affair.

The horizon was light blue, everything was light blue except for Edrick himself, he looked like a stain on an artist's magnum opus, one that outshined the artwork, but a stain nonetheless.

Walking around without worry, he eventually stumbled upon what looked like some sort of shrine, but without all the contrasting colours, within, a wide shouldered, tall- Yet skinny figure was sitting directly upon the ground, looking away from Anoteros.

'Ah yes, not suspicious at all' smiling like he had just been offered something that would up in the trash, he did not move closer and instead retrieved something hidden inside of his jacket, Edrick did not have clue of the how or why, but judging by all available elements, his current appearance had been copied straight from one his younger days, and this included all the fun gadgets he carried around.

One of such quirky contraptions had for ability to create a bright flash and loud sound when used, it could also shoot bullets at a velocity of three-hundred and eighty-one meter per second, but that last part was not very important, Edrick had always preferred to get up-close and personal, but sometimes, relationships needed to be distant.

The sitting figure jolted up in an instant, looking like a cat who did not know that pushing over cups would cause a big and scary sound to occur, this motion was remarkably quick, but that's all they did, so instead of getting hit in the back of the head, they got shot in the lower back.

"Who- How did you get in here?!" surprisingly, Anoteros understood whatever nonsense this man was gargling, unsurprisingly, his response was to shoot him again.

Aiming for the hips, the person, who was definitely a male, and was not coloured like the surroundings, instead sporting a rather pale complexion and a head lush with overgrown brown hair, dressed in all sorts of layers of clothing with bits free to swing in the air, he kept barking even as a puddle of blood formed beneath him.

"What sorcery is this?" he spat alongside a nice stream of vomit.

"What sort of philistine does not know what a gun is?" he shot him in the wrists and ankles before stepping forward, a little tinge of precaution could not hurt.

"At least liken it to something you know, maybe I will feel more inclined to enlighten you" stepping over the stranger's head, securing his foothold, now, with just a little twist, the miracle of death could occur at any time.

Slowly, he pivoted his foot, that ecstatic sensation when the neck was a mere twitch away from breaking, but not yet damaged enough for the victim to be completely resigned to their fate was the best, hard to recreate with other methods with such precision, though, it lacked that exciting brutality, the sort that gave a free paint job to a room before you could even realise.

"Please…" said the man, or so Anoteros believed, as half of his new friend's face was pressed against warm blood and puke, it sounded more akin to a fish opening and closing its mouth than anything else.

'Mmh, is it really wise to kill the only other person in an unknown environment?' wondered the young Edrick, only for that soft tune to ring out anyways, this was the sound of someone dying.

"Sorry for the lacklustre death, but I don't have many tools and no other suits to change into" he explained to the cadaver, appearing as though he felt scorned that it would not deign to answer him.

Straightening his back, something reflected into his eyes.

It was a flat rectangle, that emitted no light yet felt very much bright, coloured into the same shade of purple as his eyes, a few words written in oppressively pure white appeared like they were being written on a keyboard by an incredibly slick-fingered person.

Many sentences were written, but the essence of it all was rather simple.

The screen was introducing itself as Edrick's 'special system' and calling itself the 'Depraved Cultivation System'.

Informing him that to get good stuff, he simply needed to complete acts of immorality and be a general sewer sludge of a person, Anoteros was not seeing anything that he wasn't already doing and was thus rather frigid about this two-dimensional floating screen.

In the next instant, everything turned black, but not the darkness of death, nor the darkness of a lightless chasm, feeling his eyelids subtly trembling, Edrick rose up from what felt like a most comfortable sleep, but no wonder of if everything had been a dream coursed through his mind, as there were already multiple things that rubbed him the wrong way.

First things first, this bed was not his.

It wasn't the king-sized monstrosity he had bought decades ago to accommodate for more people at once, although, it certainly was a rather wide one either way.

The sheets did not have the right texture, their colours were of bad taste, there were way too many pillows, and most of all, the room was absolutely not the same.

This bed was situated right in front of a sliding door, the sort that was not quite translucent, but that you could discern shadows behind, the bed was also over elevated on a platform, walls on each side.

Sitting on its edge, Anoteros inspected the most problematic of what he had noticed, which was his body.

Where was his well-defined body built to be both powerful, resilient and flexible? And what sort of low-life would let themselves be so awfully scrawny?

Especially egregious as he began trying to walk around, was that this body was not one of poor genetics in the least, the arms might appear awfully long comparatively to the rest of the body, but it was not a defect.

Shoulders were wide in spite of the skinny nature of this flesh.

And most off-putting to Edrick, this body was taller than himself, by a long margin, at least two meter tall.

'What a waste…' he thought, this guy was clearly not anyone, the clothes on his body were refined, his room was clearly not that of a peasant, and yet he had somehow managed to not find the time or resources to turn himself into a fine machine of flesh and muscles.

As Anoteros went to try and fetch a mirror, that's when it hit him, the flood of information that the three-headed goddess had promised, having so many things poured into one's head out of the blue was a bit disorienting, but all of that mumbo jumbo arranged itself neatly.

"Huh… Nice"