The last thing Eren Tamoto remembered was the smell of diesel and the screech of tires. He'd pushed a kid out of the way of a runaway truck, which was a very "heroic" way to die for a guy who spent twelve hours a day delivering cold ramen to ungrateful salarymen.
Now, he was staring at a ceiling made of rotting straw.
I'm not dead? Eren thought. He tried to sit up, but his ribs screamed in protest. A wet, metallic taste filled his mouth. He leaned over the side of what felt like a pile of dirty rags and coughed.
A glob of bright red blood splattered onto the dirt floor.
Great. I'm not dead. I'm just dying slower.
He looked at his hands. They weren't his hands. These were pale, skeletal things—fingers like twigs, skin like parchment. He wasn't in Tokyo anymore. He was in a shack that looked like it would lose a fight with a stiff breeze.
[CALIBRATING...]
A voice, flat and cold, echoed inside his skull. It wasn't a human voice. It sounded like a high-end microwave combined with a judgment call from a disgruntled god.
[SOUL INTEGRATION: 100%]
[WELCOME, CANDIDATE 001, TO EUXERIS GAIA.]
"Candidate... what?" Eren wheezed. His voice sounded like sandpaper on gravel.
[HOST: AUGUSTOS PENDRAGON]
[RANK: -F (ABYSSAL TRASH)]
[STATUS: MALNOURISHED, CRITICAL ORGAN FAILURE, IMMINENT DEPARTURE]
Abyssal Trash? Eren—now Augustos—stared at the floating translucent blue screen in front of his face. Iget reincarnated and I'm literally ranked lower than a zero? And did it just say 'Imminent Departure'? Is the system telling me I'm about to kick the bucket again?
"Status... check," he whispered, mostly because that's what people did in the light novels he read during his lunch breaks.
[AUGUSTOS PENDRAGON]
[STRENGTH: 0.2]
[AGILITY: 0.1]
[MANA: NULL]
[LUCK: -99]
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: TRY NOT TO DIE IN THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES.]
"Very helpful," Augustos muttered. He looked around the room. It was pathetic. A broken stool, a pot with a hole in it, and a stack of wood that was too damp to burn. His stomach gave a roar so loud it actually hurt. He wasn't just hungry; he was "empty" in a way that felt like his body was starting to eat its own soul.
I just want a bowl of tonkotsu ramen, he thought miserably. Extra pork belly. Soft-boiled egg. Is that too much to ask for in the afterlife?
CRASH.
The front door—which was really just three planks held together by hope—flew off its hinges. A man the size of a small refrigerator stepped inside, his boots crunching on the dirt. He wore a leather vest that looked like it was struggling to contain his chest hair.
"Augustos!" the man roared. "I know you're in here, you little leach! Lord Kaelen wants his tax. Three Silver Hearts. Now!"
Augustos blinked slowly, looking up from his pile of rags. "I... I can't even afford a sandwich. Where am I going to get silver?"
The man, a local tax collector named Boros, let out a wet laugh. He kicked the broken stool, sending it splintering against the wall. "Not my problem. If you don't have the coin, I'll take your liver. I hear the Alchemists' Guild is buying 'pure' human organs for experiments. Though, looking at you, yours might be too shriveled to fetch a copper."
This is it, Augustos thought. I've been here for three minutes and I'm already being harvested for parts. The customer service in this world is terrible.
Boros lunged forward, grabbing Augustos by the collar of his tattered tunic. He lifted the boy effortlessly. Augustos felt his vision swimming. The "Imminent Departure" warning on his system screen started flashing red.
"Wait," Augustos gasped, his hand flailing out, searching for anything to use as a weapon. Or a shield. Or just something to hold onto so he didn't fall over. "The... the door..."
"The door?" Boros sneered. "You're worried about your door?"
Augustos's fingers brushed against something cold. Something heavy.
Right where the door used to be, there was a wedge of metal used to keep the wind from blowing the planks open. It was a jagged, rectangular slab of rusted iron, about three feet long. It had no edge. It was covered in layers of grime, dried mud, and what looked like bird droppings. It looked like a piece of a bridge that had fallen off and spent a century in a sewer.
There was a scrap of rotting leather wrapped around one end.
Augustos gripped the leather. It felt... strange. The moment his skin touched it, the screaming in his head stopped. The hunger didn't go away, but it became a quiet, dull hum.
"Let... go," Augustos said, his voice suddenly steady.
"Or what? You'll hit me with your doorstop?" Boros laughed, reaching out with his free hand to snatch the hunk of metal away. "I'll take this too. Might be worth a few scraps at the blacksmith."
The moment Boros's fingers made contact with the rusted surface of the slab, the world didn't explode. There was no flash of light. There was no thunder.
There was just a sound. A soft shirp, like a delete key being pressed on a keyboard.
Boros froze.
His eyes didn't just go wide; they rolled back until only the whites were showing. His grip on Augustos's collar vanished as if his muscles had simply forgotten how to exist. The giant of a man collapsed, hitting the dirt floor with a heavy thud. He wasn't dead, but his breathing was so shallow it was almost non-existent.
[ALERT!]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY INTERFERING WITH SYSTEM LOGIC...]
[ERROR: RANK -F CANNOT PERFORM 'CONCEPTUAL DELETION'.]
[CORRECTION: THE OBJECT PERFORMED THE ACTION. HOST IS SIMPLY THE HOLDER.]
Augustos sat on the floor, panting, still clutching the rusted slab. He looked at Boros, then at the "doorstop."
"I didn't even swing it," Augustos whispered.
"He just... touched it."
He looked closer at the metal. Beneath the rust and the dirt, he could see a faint, pulsing vein of something that wasn't quite light and wasn't quite shadow.
What the hell is this thing?
[ITEM IDENTIFIED: RUSTY DOORSTOP]
[GRADE: ???]
[DESCRIPTION: A heavy piece of junk used to keep doors open. It is very dirty. Please wash your hands after touching.]
The system is lying, Augustos realized. It's scared of this thing.
He looked back at Boros. The man was in a deep, catatonic coma. He looked like his very "will to be a tax collector" had been sucked out of his pores.
Augustos looked at his own trembling hands, then at the slab of metal. He felt a weird sensation—not a voice, but a feeling. It was a feeling of extreme hunger. Not for food, but for... everything.
"Well," Augustos sighed, using the slab to pull himself to his feet. He felt slightly stronger, as if the slab was lending him just enough energy to stay upright. "I'm starving, I have no money, and I just put a government official into a coma with a piece of scrap metal."
He looked out the open doorway at the desolate, starving village of Kitango.
"First things first," he muttered, tucking the heavy "doorstop" under his arm. "I need to find a kitchen."
As he stepped over the threshold, the rusted metal hummed. For a split second, the rust flaked off a single spot, revealing a surface so black it seemed to swallow the sunlight.
High above Euxeris Gaia, in a realm of gold and marble, a bell began to toll. It was a bell that hadn't rung in ten thousand years.
But Augustos didn't hear it. He was too busy wondering if this world had soy sauce.