Free Web NovelChapter 2: Obscure figures
[You have died.]
"The fuckkkkk."
"I... I really died."
Oliver, who had just woken up to the strange system ping declaring his death, couldn’t help but mutter in pure disbelief.
People often used to say that death was just the beginning of a new adventure.
Back then, it was just a phrase. Something people said to comfort those who had lost someone. But ever since around 2000 years ago, it stopped being just a saying.
Since then, humans who died... sometimes came back. And then everything changed.
Those who returned told what really happened after death; and how when they had died, they woke up in a completely different dimension.
How they had to gain the recognition of a deity and then they had to complete a trial.
And only then would they be given a chance to return to Earth, reborn in a new body.
This phenomenon is known by the modern people as Ghoul ReBirth.
The word ’ghoul’ was first derived from the Arabic language, where it originally meant a demon or an evil spirit. freёweɓnovel.com
And while over the past hundred years or so they weren’t really treated like demons anymore, Oliver himself didn’t really want to become one. Especially not this young, and not with the kind of image they still carried.
But it’s not like he had any choice here.
"So it’s really real, huh?" Oliver muttered under his breath.
Even though he already knew that this would happen after death, he was still amazed and slightly excited to take his first steps in a whole new world.
He was still feeling a bit sorry for leaving his sister alone in earth, but it’s not as if he could go back easily now.
As his mind finally began to clear, he started looking around. freēwebnovel.com
It was an closed, completely white room. The room was completely empty and there was nothing there. Nothing, all except a single stone that was placed in the center of a round table.
It was just a jagged piece of black stone with strange purple mysterious hue that came and disappeared out of nowhere. The stone itself looked as if it didn’t belong there. To be more specific, it looked as if it didn’t belong anywhere.
Oliver just stared at it for a few seconds and then slowly, he began walking towards it.
"This must be the awakening stone." he said quietly.
"If I touch it, It should give me my origin doctrine... right?"
While Oliver probably should have hesitated a bit more after seeing something so strange, even if he had heard about its existence before.
But he, for some reason, didn’t think much and just reached out and touched it, as it was as if a strange warmth was pulling him in...inviting him to touch.
As soon as the first contact was made, the room was suddenly filled with the same purple glow Oliver had seen on the stone before.
The glow was blinding and yet not uncomfortable at all. And within that glow, for just a brief moment, he could make out one faint, obscure figure, not a single feature of whose was visible.
But he could definitely tell that she was a woman.
It looked as if the woman was about to do something, but suddenly, another figure stepped in between.
It was a man with two horns.
The newcomer pushed the woman’s silhouette... and she was suddenly expelled from whatever space this was.
It didn’t really seem as if she was weaker than the newcomer, it was just that she hadn’t anticipated the other party appearing there.
Boom!
Suddenly, the room was filled with a green glow instead of the earlier purple one.
And then, just as suddenly as the man had arrived had appeared, he disappeared.
Meanwhile, for some reason... Oliver couldn’t even remember if he had seen anything just now.
[CONTACT REGISTERED]
[Item detected: □□□□□□]
[Error: translation layer corrupted]
[True function: shall force the drifter’s origin into awakening by aligning their existence—and from that forced concord... something inevitable shall be drawn out]
[????]
[????]
[????]
While the strange, comforting glow still surrounded him, words began appearing before his eyes—
it was the infamous system he had read so about in so many novels.
Those kinds of stories had become insanely popular in recent years... especially now that there were real-world examples of them in ghouls who had become more involved to the lives of normal humans now and weren’t that disconnected from society anymore.
Oliver stared at the words for a moment.
Then he let out a small breath, a faint smile forming on his face.
"Align existence... and force out something inevitable..."
He continued, "Wow...this is even more edgy than those novels."
As for the meaning behind those words, Oliver didn’t pay much attention to them.
Over the years, information about this stone had become fairly common knowledge even to normal humans, though no one really understood its full meaning.
Some parts were pretty clear.
"Drifter" referred to the person who touched the stone and was also the title for humans who had died and had not yet returned backed to earth even once, and "origin" most likely meant the doctrine they would receive after making contact.
But the rest..."forced concord," "something drawn out"; despite countless theories, their meaning was still a mystery.
And then, suddenly, something changed as the system text changed.
[PROCEED WITH ALIGNMENT?]
"...Sure... I guess?"
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!"
Just as Oliver said those words, he immediately regretted them as pain began to surge through him like hell.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!"
While he had heard that during this awakening ceremony it would hurt a lot, he simply hadn’t expected it to be this bad. After all, he had already been stabbed once before, and he had thought ’how bad could it be?’.
But it really was much, much worse than the stabbing pain.
The stab wound had been different.
It was concentrated in one specific place, a sudden kind of attack that hurt a lot at first and then gradually began to lose its intensity as he began to get used to it. And even then, his strong will to spite the masked man with his last words had allowed him to somehow tolerate it.
But this pain was different.
He couldn’t even tell where it was coming from. He just knew that it hurt like hell.
It was as if the very core of his soul was being attacked, defended, broken, and reconstructed and that too, all at the same time.
It was as if, if he tried to adapt to the pain, then the pain adapted to him adapting and increased the intensity.
Still with no other choice he could only grit his teeth and barely attempt to endure the pain.
"Aaaaaahhhhh... Daaaaammmnnnnnnnn iiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttt!!!!!....HAAAH."
He cursed out loud as he grabbed his own hair and began pulling them hard, trying to shift his focus away from the other pain somehow.
But unfortunately, it didn’t help him at all, and he had no choice but to continue enduring the pain.
"Huff! Huff!"
And then finally, after what felt like an eternity to Oliver the pain stopped as if it was never there. Not even any residue of it remained, except for a slight tingling in his head from how hard he had been pulling his hair.
And then the words came in front of his eyes again.
[Alignment sequence: concluded]
[Attempting to understand drifter’s origin and awaken it.]
[Attempt 1: Begin]
[Parsing drifter’s soul signature]
[Locating origin layer]
[RESPONSE DETECTED: FRAGMENT ONLY]
[Origin: unstable]
[???]
[Attempt semi-successful]
[Attempt 2: Begin]
[Enabling passive alignment]
[Origin too diverse???]
[???]
[Attempt failure]
Seeing the two continued failures, and the result going from semi-successful to a complete failure, Oliver couldn’t help but feel worried.
Was all that pain for nothing?
And how was he even supposed to get any deity to accept him and gain their blessing if he didn’t even have a doctrine?
If a Drifter wanted to remain in the Spirit Realm past the first month without ascending through the First Ascension Trial, then they needed to receive the divine blessings from one of the many gods whose gaze rested upon the Spirit Realm.
And so if he couldn’t even get the support of any deity, then how would he return back to home?
[Attempt 3: Begin]
[Attempting to converge origin... into one]
[ORIGIN STILL TOO DIVERGENT?]
[Forsaking... Aether]
[Origin converged]
[Attempt successful]
Seeing that the attempt was finally successful gave Oliver a moment to breathe, but also made him a bit confused.
All he knew about ’Aether’ was that the ’Aether beasts’ in the spirit realm had the same in their name.
Even though he was still confused and a bit nervous about what Aether was and why it had just been forsaken by the system and whether it was something important for survival, for now it was enough.
At least he would gain his doctrine.
And just then—
[Origin converged into path]
[Origin path awakened]
Those words made Oliver, who had just let out a sigh of relief, take another deep breath.
"What the heck...??"
"Origin path? Not doctrine?"
