Chapter 20: Chapter 1 - DC Comics (2)
2103 words. Have a great day!
The weak and sudden static electricity running through my arm forced it to jolt autonomously, bringing my wandering mind back to the present, far from the fever dream I was experimenting with.
Slowly opening my eyes, I looked around me for a source of light.
Weakly, I crawled toward the closed window and slowly lifted my head at the lowest level possible for me to see outside.
The roads were destroyed. Bodies of all ages were lying on the ground, lifeless.
My sight began to blur. I was unsure if it was because of the sweat dripping from my forehead or the poison slowly but surely flooding my organism and carrying me to my final moment.
This operation was a suicidal one.
I had known this fact the moment I was assigned to it.
"Go fight for your nation, you will be a hero..." I whispered to myself, coughing blood and probably pieces of some organs.
Strangely, I could not help myself but laugh at my predicament.
A dying man, last of his platoon. These fat guys up there will probably say some bullshit about how everyone kept fighting until the very end.
How the enemy was wicked to the core.
How we were heroic.
Such bullshit.
This operation was a total failure. The civilians were killed in the unexpected ambush in the same way they almost killed all of us.
Maybe we would have been capable of fighting all of them off before they did anything if...
No.
We should have been capable of killing them all. However, our provisions were poisoned. We noticed it too late.
Most of us were already too weak to walk or be awake.
I shook my head once more.
It was unnecessary to think about that. It's not as if I could go back and kill the traitor before anything happened.
Kill these fat corrupt men who sent us to our death.
My silent laugh echoed through the empty room I was in.
"Even in my final moment... I think about killing. Were you right? Was I crazy since the day I was born?" I asked through several coughs which reddened the ground on which I was lying... dying.
"It pains me to do that." A voice reached my ears. A voice I was familiar with, came to break the loneliness of my whispers.
I painfully lifted my torso thank to the wall behind me to gaze at the first lieutenant, the platoon leader.
The traitor slowly walked up to my dying figure.
I had trouble breathing but surprisingly had enough strength to lift my gun toward him.
Seeing my trembling hand with the gun, the man sighed and kicked it away before focusing back on me.
As if enacting the final act of a play, my right hand fell to my side as I focused my fading sight on him.
"You were the best one of them, Markus. However, your lives were not worth the fortune of these nuclear plans." He said, lifting his gun toward my head.
At these words, I chuckled. For sure, greed is one of the greatest sins of humanity.
"Do you have any last words?" He asked, finger on the trigger.
"My left pocket... Take what's inside." I whispered. My life would end in a matter of seconds now.
"What is it?" His voice commanded, clearly suspicious of me.
He was right. I would be too.
"A memento of our friendship... Hopefully, it will dissuade you from starting a third world war."
At my words, his body visibly relaxed a little as the corner of his lip lifted.
He approached my dying self, his gun still pointed at my head. He was foolish, but not stupid at this point.
However, all precaution and action on his part would be useless from now on.
John gripped my left hand and pulled it out of my pocket.
He waited for a second for the possible last action from me, but it never came.
My request was my final action. My last middle finger to him and his employers.
He slowly put his hand in my pocket and quickly pulled out what I asked him to retrieve.
John's eyes went wide as my memento was nothing but an unpinned grenade.
"You should have known now. I hate friendship bullshit." I said, my voice clearer than ever.
The silence following was drowned under the deafening sound of the explosion and the already unstable building in which we were, collapsed probably because the integrity of its structure was compromised.
The two of us disappeared through the smoke as our bodies were dismembered by the sheer strength of the grenade. Our death was painless. Maybe it was because I was condemned by the poison, but the moment it exploded, I felt nothing but pure bliss at John's horrified expression.
As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold... or through the smoke of a grenade.
-*-*-*-
Death was... strange.
The limitless cold which hugged my body at my death was quickly replaced by an addictive feeling of euphoria as I felt weightless.
I could recognize this strange happiness as fake. There was no way that I could feel anything positive from such an unsatisfactory situation.
Dying after saving this corrupt world while our names would just be added to the list of the dead soldiers is nothing but immensely frustrating.
A sigh left my immaterial mouth as I thought back about the dream I had a few moments before the fucked up drama between John and me.
If there is someone who planned all of this, they must be one huge psychopath.
Or maybe, from their point of view, we were nothing but puppets, characters which goal was to entertain them.
Even our reality could be nothing but words on a screen, a product of their imagination...
Or even both.
Another sigh escaped me.
For a long time, I dreamt of saving humanity. Saving them us of... ourselves.
I wanted to be a soldier to protect my country. Maybe even do some real change. However, I soon understood that such a thing would be impossible.
Not at my scale at least.
The only option for peace to exist would be the extermination of humanity.
However, what would peace be in a world free of humans?
A red ribbon on a rock.
A useless artifice, unusable by the living beings on the floating giant rock.
Since peace was an unattainable dream, the other alternative was more radical.
Law and order, taken to extreme levels.
All criminals would either be imprisoned, condemned to labor to repair their crimes, or simple and direct execution.
For some, it would maybe be too merciful. For others, too barbaric and brutal.
The government already, and will always ignore the opinion and safety of people. Why hide behind a facade laced with hypocrisy if you do not need it?
The answer is simple. Humans are weak.
There is no such thing as absolute power.
This is why they hide behind lies and false promises.
In the end, everything revolves around power.
That's probably what humanity will always need. What humanity is constantly lacking.
What would I do with absolute power?
As I said, I once dreamt of saving humanity.
I simply do not anymore.
I would probably observe humanity inevitably destroy itself.
Maybe that's why God never bothered with us. Even if we are saved, history will simply repeat itself after a while.
How much time did I spend floating in this endless sea of... whatever it was?
I don't know. It is strange.
It's almost as if I make micro-naps but they are random and almost imperceptible.
While I was thinking about the strangeness of my situation, floating words similar to video games appeared before me.
[Calculating Karma...]
"Karma? As the dogma in Hinduism? Is it supposed to say if I should go to Heaven or Hell?"
[Karma is generated by your actions. It is either positive or negative. If positive, it can bring to the soul, countless rewards in the next life. If negative, the soul will undergo immediate extermination or punishment in the next life.]
"Let's hope I don't get reborn as a worm then."
[Soul's Karma: 7 900 000 000]
"I can guess that it is positive, but is it not a lot? What did I do to deserve such a huge amount of positive... karma?"
[Soul's saved its world from a third world war by killing the messenger of the nuclear plans.]
"Really? I was just speaking some bullshit back then. What kind of failure is he to bring the plans with him at all times? At least send someone to retrieve it?" I shake my head at this.
I was quite grateful for his incompetence.
[Here are the Soul's options based on its karma.] I read on the floating digital-like board.
[Reborn in Heaven as an angel.]
[Reborn on Earth with random perks, but no memories.]
[Reborn in a random fictional world with random perks.] -> [Very popular among the souls.]
[Being erased.]
[Reborn in Hell as a demon.]
"Choosing to be erased would be rather... illogical." I said, preferring to ignore why such an option would be there.
"I don't want to be reborn on Earth. I saw once how rotten this world was. I also doubt that any of these perks will let me have any kind of supernatural powers there." I concluded since there was no record of any superhuman to have ever existed on Earth.
"Hell sounds like an unattractive place. While Heaven should be calm and the closest thing to utopia... The only problem would be the lack of action? I can't know for sure, but I would perhaps be pretty disappointed and bored after a while."
I shrugged my shoulders as the only option left was being reborn in a fictional world.
"I don't know what to expect from the fictional world. I simply hope to not have useless perks."
I lifted my hand and clicked on the third option, almost expecting it to go through the screen.
However, a distinct sound resembling the ones in video games was heard as the words once again shifted.
[The Soul will be reborn in a fictional world with wishes.]
[Random perks selected.]
[Because of the huge amount of karma of the Soul, the perks are higher-quality.]
[Three random perks have been chosen.]
[Congratulation! [Logic adaptation] evolved into [Logic manipulation]
Congratulation! [Enhanced comprehension] evolved into [High-end comprehension]
Congratulation! [Enhanced composure] evolved into [Perfect self-control]
The remaining karma points are used to improve the fictional world and the new body of the soul.]
Overwhelmed by the amount of text on the screen, I took a moment to comprehend everything that was written.
"Logic manipulation? It sounds incredibly powerful..." I whispered to myself.
"Wait. It still is a fictional world, who knows what kind of monster would inhabit it?"
I looked back at the screen where only a single sentence remained.
[Select the age of the body.]
Pressing the text, I immediately had access to numbers, from 0 to 9.
Being reborn too young would be annoying while being too old would be as annoying.
I pressed on the 2 then the 0 before validating the number.
If my hypothesis is correct, the perk [Logic manipulation] would make me potentially ageless.
[Soul's body randomly created.]
[Error.]
"What?" I anxiously waited for the mysterious system to explain what was the problem.
[Due to the overwhelming power of the perks, unable to make a human body.]
"The fuck does that mean?" I frowned at that, I couldn't be a human?
As if caring about my question, the system continued to explain the process.
[Solution found. The following races of the fictional world are compatible with the perks. Please select one of them.]
Multiple words began to appear, under the system's announcement.
[New God]
[Homo-Magi]
[Meta-human]
I read the three propositions and immediately knew what I should choose.
Unless it is a world where gods are hunted, I don't believe that I will have much difficulty surviving.
Without further delay, my finger pressed on the [New God] and with a flash, the texts disappeared.
[Compatible race selected.]
I could almost feel a smile appearing on my face despite the lack of any kind of facial muscle.
[Titles attributed as a foundation to the divine body.]
[The Unknown One] and [God of Logic]
I could feel my mind beginning to shut down.
[Reborn in progress.]
[Fictional World] -> [Alternated DC Comics Universe]
[Have a safe trip, nameless soul.]
The unsurprisingly emotionless voice was the last thing I heard before everything went dark.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone