God, I hate electric scooters.
Ever since drunk teenagers started riding them around my apartment a couple of years ago, I knew that they would be the death of me. I was never someone who thought that they would have kids, and my death being caused by some football player going 40 on one of those was an end that even further solidified my belief.
Unfortunately, I had a new problem to deal with. Even though I had been cracking my head on the sidewalk by my apartment a moment before, I was now standing with a perfectly intact skull in a pitch black room. I guess that pitch black wouldn't be entirely accurate though, considering the alter in front of me with a glowing blue light surrounding it. Seeing no other choice, I approached the statue that appeared to depict a Himalayan cat, and got a a closer look at the inscription carved into a metallic on the statue's stand.
虚空に迷いし旅人よ.静寂なる猫の影の下,古き神々の御名を呼び覚ませ.
天を照らす者（アマテラス）,海を裂く者（スサノオ）,炎を纏う者（カグツチ）,大地を守る者（オニャド／サルタヒコ）,そして風を導く者（フジンの神）.
これら「五柱の神」に簡潔なる祈りを捧げ,神性の扉を開くのだ.さもなくば,永遠の闇がお前を飲み込むであろう.
Well, that felt a bit targeted based on my heritage.
Potential racism aside, if videogames or any other nerdy media that I had consumed over the previous 3 decades I spent on Earth taught me anything, it's this: don't overcomplicate things. Why am I in this dark room? Who sent me here? Is this catholic heaven and we got the imagery wrong?
These are all questions that I most likely wouldn't be getting the answer to anytime soon, and it felt like it was just going to be significantly easier to start with the statue that looked eerily like my childhood cat.
My Japanese was pretty rusty, considering my grandmother passed a few years before, plus writing was never my strong suite anyways. Fortunately, enough years of being babysat by a woman who could barely speak English made it so that I would pretty much always be able to get by, and I was able to eventually translate what it said. The names that it mentioned were of traditional Japanese gods, and the inscription seemed to be asking for me to call their name or wake them up, or something along those lines.
Outside of the Naruto name drops, the tales of these gods that I had heard or seen were mostly from a dusty book about Japanese myths that obachan kept on her shelf. In my younger days before the internet, flipping through the pages was a good way for a bored kid to pass the time. The artwork that depicted the gods in their various stories were beautiful and haunting at the same time, especially with the absurd and dark nature of the tales from Japanese myths.
I looked around after translating, if nothing else than to give my brain a bit of a break. The room, if that title was even accurate, was devoid of any doors, windows, or other ways that I could conceivably leave. Attempting to push the thought of being trapped here for all eternity out of my mind, I returned my focus back to the statue, wracking my brain for what I could do to move forward with whatever strange process this was.
"What were the names again?" I whispered to myself as I looked over the inscription once more. Attempting to slow my pace to not put myself right to sleep, I stopped upon catching the name of the first god, Amaterasu. Outside of an emo ninja's black flames, the history of the sun god was filled with joy, betrayal, and a variety of other stories from the rich history of Japanese mythology. One passage that I remembered popping up consistently in the text that I was reading was a line that basically every major story would end with.
"Amaterasu-ōmikami…Saki-mitama… Kushi-mitama?Mamori-tamahi Sakihahe-tamahe," I said out loud, my pronunciation butchering the sacred prayer of thanks that had been traditionally offered to the Sun God.
The moment I finished and opened my eyes, the previously dark room had become dazzlingly bright as the state began to burst with radiant energy. The light that came out of it was so bright that I thought my retinas would be completely, and I immediately had to shut them and shield them with my arms. Even through the many shields I had attempted to put up, the light was so bright that it was very clear when it had faded, and I looked around to see that the light seemed to have attached itself to my body. The warmth that it made flow through me was physically comforting, but mentally I was still freaking out.
Without warning, the statue lit up once more, thought this time the light was focused on a single screen that seemed to have been created from a pair of beams coming out of the cat statue's eyes. Taking a closer look, I saw that this screen had a bunch of text on it, though this was thankfully in English.
[ DIVINE SYSTEM INITIALIZED ]
Patron: Amaterasu-ōmikami (The Heaven-Shining)
Vessel Status: [Mortal Vessel of the Dawn]
[ CORE ABILITIES ]
• RADIANT BODY (Passive): Your physical form is infused with solar energy. You grant Comfort and Healing to allies within sight. Your physical strength is also tied to the sun, vastly increasing in daylight hours.
• SAKI-MITAMA (Blessing): High-tier purification magic. You can instantly cleanse any curse, poison, or "Darkness" status.
• TRUE REFLECTION: Your spirit acts as a mirror. Hostile magic directed at you is automatically reflected at Double Damage.
'…I knew college was bullshit," I said out loud as I attempted to wrap my brain around the gravity of the situation.
Looking down at my body, the only one of these skills that I could see proof of was the radiant body, since the radiant light that had nearly blinded me seemed to be attached and not leaving my body anytime soon.
"Can you like…dim just a little bit?" I asked my own stomach in what had to be the strangest interaction of my life. To my surprise, it actually did get dimmer, and to the perfect level where my eyes weren't straining but I could still see around me. It felt almost too intuitive, as if this weird magic light knew exactly what I wanted it to do.
While the small fireworks show that I had created for myself was at least some forward progress, no obvious doorway or other way out of the room emerged, and so I returned to the plaque. It was significantly easier to read through this time, and even though the light glowing around my body certainty made it easier to see than before, it almost felt like my mind was just processing the words much faster.
Over the course of the next hour, I dug through my childhood memories, scratching and clawing for every detail that I could remember reading from that dusty book. By the end of that hour though, I had successfully pulled off similar rituals with the names of 4 additional gods, and the 5 total screens that were displayed in front of me showed off…quite a variety, to say the least.
[ DIVINE SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COVENANT II]
Patron: Susanoo-no-Mikoto (The Summer Storm)
Vessel Status: [Storm-Born Sovereign]
• THUNDERWALKER (Passive) Your body acts as a lightning rod. Electrical damage is absorbed to refill your Stamina, and your movement speed increases by 50% during rain or storms.
• SNAKE-SLAYER'S EDGE You can coat any handheld object in a jagged edge of pressurized wind. This edge ignores 30% of all physical armor and deals bonus damage to reptilian or "monstrous" foes.
• THE TENTH YEAR BLIGHT A toggleable aura that causes nearby plants to wither and metal to rust. It serves as a powerful "anti-durability" field against enemy equipment.
• HEAVENLY REBELLION A massive burst of kinetic force centered on your body. It repels all incoming projectiles and forces enemies back 20 yards.
[ DIVINE SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COVENANT III ]
Patron: Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto (The Night-King)
Vessel Status: [Shadow of the Lunar Throne]
• ETERNAL CHRONOS (Passive) Your perception of time is tied to the moon. Your thinking speed and reaction time increase as the sun goes down, peaking at midnight.
• SILVER MIRAGE You can create a solid duplicate of yourself made of moonlight. The clone can interact with the world but shatters into freezing mist if it takes direct damage.
• TIDAL PULL You can manipulate the "gravity" of objects within your line of sight, making them weightless or unnaturally heavy.
• PHASES OF THE VOID You can become partially translucent, allowing you to walk through solid walls and ignore physical restraints.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COVENANT IV ]
Patron: Izanagi-no-Mikoto (The Primordial Father)
Vessel Status: [Architect of the Living World]
• GENESIS PULSE (Passive) Your touch can "repair" broken objects or heal organic tissue. You have a natural affinity for base-building and crafting.
• IZANAGI'S COMMAND: A high-tier mental influence skill. Your voice carries the weight of creation, making it difficult for lower-level entities to disobey your direct orders.
• SPEAR OF THE BRINE You can summon a spear of concentrated seawater. Upon impact, it explodes into a crushing whirlpool.
• REJECTION OF YOMI Once per day, you can "negate" a fatal blow. Reality is rewritten so the attack simply never happened, resetting your condition to 10 seconds prior.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COVENANT V ]
Patron: Ame-no-Uzume (The Heavenly Reveler)
Vessel Status: [Conductor of Divine Joy]
• UNSTOPPABLE RHYTHM (Passive) As long as you are moving or dancing, your evasion rate increases exponentially. You cannot be "rooted" or slowed by magical means.
• CAVE-BREAKER'S LAUGHTER A sonic attack that shatters illusions, magical barriers, and mental charms. It forces hidden enemies to reveal themselves.
• MANTLE OF THE STRIPPER (Unique) You can shed any debuff, tracking spell, or physical binding by "discarding" a layer of your spiritual aura.
• THE MORNING STAR DANCE A high-speed combat style where every strike landed generates a flash of blinding light, disorienting all enemies in the vicinity.
While the abilities themselves were overwhelming to take in, what had been happening to my body was more of a pressing concern. The dazzlingly bright lights coming out of his body from the first prayer were intense enough, but each subsequent one he made added more to the chaos. The intensity of the sunshine that radiated off of him was nearly equaled by the power of moonlight that now seemed to flow within him, and the chaos of the swirling powers of the storm god made it nearly impossible to see through the crackling lightning that kept flashing in front of my eyes. The abilities of Izanagi were clearly causing strange distortions in whatever soil that I was standing on as mushrooms and various other plant life started to sprout around my feet that were tapping uncontrollably.
"Ok, can you all just…calm down?" I asked as I looked down towards my chest, and the immediate ceasing of the chaotic swirling allowed me to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
While the intense power that seemed to have bonded itself to him appeared chaotic and wild, it almost seemed as if the power of each god wanted to work with me. The brief experience that I had with MMORPG's had taught me to instinctively guide abilities toward certain slots, and the powers seemed to follow along with my thought pattern. Just as I had desired but before I had even formed the thought, the powers of each god gravitated toward different limbs, eventually settling into specific places on my body.
Looking down, the showy part of acquiring the powers seemed to be over, and a subtle but constant glow had settled onto each of my limbs and my torso. On my arms were the powers of probably the most famous gods, the right belonging to the Sun God Amaterasu while the right was the Storm God Susanoo. The shimmering golden glow of my right arm and the light blue on my left that was broken up by the occasional crackle of lightning was a bit distracting, but I imagined that I would get used to it.
On his legs were the representations of the gods Tsukuyomi and Izanagi, with the dark shadow swirling around his right leg in stark contrast to the multicolored pattern on his left. Though what I found the strangest was the pattern on my chest. While the powers of the other gods were obvious and showy, it seemed like the only representation of Uzuma on my body was a small tattoo of a mirror. The design of the tattoo wasn't even anything crazy, just a simple bronze color palette with a tiny piece of what appeared to be emerald or jade embedded in the top.
I looked around at my bizarre circumstances, and just as I was about to look around and ask "now what?", the darkness faded. As if I had been standing in cube made of darkly painted glass, the walls around me shattered into dozens of pieces, I instinctively covered my head, though I couldn't feel the physical sensation of any of these shards making contact with my skin.
After the sounds of the environment around me cracking and bursting had subsided, I cautiously opened my eyes. While the cat statue with the glowing display screens were still there, the rest of the surrounding environment was vastly different.
Surrounding me was a seemingly endless forest of bamboo trees, and the chirping of cicadas reminded me of my visits to the Japanese countryside when I was a toddler. Even if the memories weren't the clearest, the nostalgia I felt looking around this beautiful environment made me feel as if I had been reported back over 20 years.
Despite the immense power I felt surging through my body and the seemingly peaceful environment around me, I did have to consider the major issue with my current situation.
"So…what the hell is actually happening here?" I asked as I scratched my head.