His hands trembled, sweat covering his whole body — just like the way it did when he carried those metal bars.
"What the fuck is going on!" he wondered, his eyes darting all over the bodies. He tried not to look at them, taking small steps back, wrapped in fear, but it was futile — he couldn't unsee what was right in front of him.
His eyes shifted to the right, catching one of the corpses. It was a woman, around his age. Her eyes were opened wide and so was her mouth. She looked like she had been scared to death. She only had one arm — not how nature intended. You could see the cracked bones where the other arm should have been. Clearly, a large amount of force had been exerted to break it.
With pained murmurs, he turned his head to the left, only to see a male corpse lying on top of a female one — his genitalia still inside the woman. An awful sight to behold.
Thud!
Clack!
He stepped back into some blood. Was it already there? No — he stepped and crushed someone's head. The thought alone made him tremble, shocked. Instinct dragged his eyes downward, while human fear kept them up — a battle of two emotions that had kept humanity thriving for centuries.
"Who am I kidding… I'll have to look down sooner or later," he told himself.
Then —
He turned his head to the ground, only to be welcomed by a disturbing sight. The step he took — that clacking sound — he had stepped on a dead baby's head, crushing it in the process, soaking his foot in a pool of blood.
Ross froze, his head shaking. A sting of pain shot through his stomach — a force pulling and pushing all his insides at once. His cheeks inflated, the way they do when someone is about to throw up. He bent over instantly, a burst of breath rising from his stomach and forcing its way up. He couldn't hold it anymore.
Bwaaa!
He vomited at the horrible view — the baby's eyes spreading across his leg like shoelaces.
Bwaa!
He continued, the fluid dripping onto the corpses in front of him.
Cough.
He stopped, pulling himself up as he wiped his lips with his T-shirt.
"Jesus… what did I do to get here?" he wondered, eyes down, all energy drained out of him.
But then he remembered something — he had never been superstitious. Didn't believe the stories of someone in the sky watching over humans. Maybe that was his sin.
Then —
Thud. Thud.
Footsteps echoed through the silent castle, the sound bouncing around like someone in high heels entering a quiet church. But this was different — no heels, just decent shoes echoing from the sand screen in front of Ross.
"Why did you vomit on my collection?"
Words calmly echoed from the figure approaching from behind the sand screen.
Ross's eyes shot toward it. He couldn't mistake it — someone, or something, was coming through.
"Do you know how many years it took for me to gather them all?" the voice continued. Whether the tone was angry or sad was hard to tell — that's how calm it was.
Half a foot emerged first. Bare feet. No shoes. Understandable — the chicken-like shape of his toes clearly made it hard to find shoes that could fit properly. They stuck out, but not too far, still the size of a human's.
"It took me five thousand years — centuries worth of collecting all of them."
The figure finally stepped through… and one thing was awkwardly different — his appearance.
.....
The being looked less like a man and more like an animal. His posture was strikingly misleading — decent, just like a butler. Ross's eyes froze, focused on the strange being before him. He had pure white hair, like sheep's wool. His hands were covered in straight, white hair as well.
On his face, he wore a mask with horns pointing outward like a bull. He wore a black suit with gold joints embedded at the seams, and over it, a robe like the ones gods wore in mythological stories — shining in full glory.
He stood between human and lion — a demi-human, as some games would call it.
But that wasn't the craziest part — behind him, a lion's tail stuck out, rigid, muscular, with some hair at the tip.
Ross's eyes dulled — the fire he once had when alive drowned instantly at the sight of the creature. Within all the fear, a subtle feeling of acceptance rose in him — almost like surrender.
And beneath all of that… a grateful feeling. Ever since arriving here, he hadn't seen his father. So wherever his father was, it must have been the opposite of this brutal place.
"Mr. Ross Mutt, may I ask you a question? An easy one, for your kind of intellect."
The being spoke gently, though it sounded more like a command than a request.
Ross twitched, attention snapping to the mysterious being standing before him.
"How does he know my name?" Ross wondered.
But then a memory surfaced — from the books his father used to read. In every religion or culture, it was believed that when a person dies, he meets a divine being that guides him. If you see a demon, you're in hell. If you see an angel, you're in heaven. Now this was where Ross couldn't understand — the being before him didn't look like an angel or a demon. He had a scary mask, but the robe told a different story.
Guh.
He swallowed saliva, preparing himself.
"Ask away."
The being grinned, excitement radiating even through the mask.
"Tell me, Mr. Ross… have you ever heard of reincarnation before?"
Ross concentrated — the man had asked a strangely exciting question.
"Yes, I have. A theory devised by the superstitious, a situation where a dead person gets reborn again."
"A theory?"
"Yeah,A way to make people behave."
"Have you ever read the Bible?"
"Not much."
"The scriptures say God created heaven and earth and everything in it. That was six thousand years ago — and up to now, that supply has been replenished. Fish, trees, people. Mr. Ross Mutt, how do you assume that was possible?"
"Reproduction."
"Correct. But in divinity, reproducing is recreating — recreating what was gone. In other words… reincarnating. For centuries, the soul's of humans, animals, trees have always been recycled with minor tweaks to the bodies"
"Aah…"
Ross froze. He was completely scrambled. He wasn't even superstitious to begin with — and with all this, his mind couldn't keep up.
"Mr. Ross… you where once someone very important in your past life .So I, SATORU, will return you to the world of the living."