'…Who am I? Where am I? What's happening to me?'
Countless questions arose in his mind as he tried to make sense of everything that was happening to him.
He was in a void like dimension, and what accompanied him was the unlimited darkness and a feeling of being submerged in water.
Suddenly, a steady flow of memories and information entered his brain.
'My name is Grisha.'
Grisha repeated it like a mantra in his head as if he was afraid to forget it at some point, and while doing so, he was able to remember the majority of his first life.
He was just a regular citizen, an undergraduate university student studying biochemistry engineering before having an intimate encounter with a 20t white truck during his vacation in Japan.
'Is this the afterlife? It's so boring that I might die again, even though I am already dead.' Grisha complained and could have sworn that he heard a skeleton pirate laughing at his lame joke.
The thought of all of this being a product of his imagination didn't even cross his mind, because he saw how fast that truck was going and his body was certainly unable to withstand tsuch an impact.
'I just hope Truck-kun won't isekai me into a dead world or something…'
As if Truck-kun had heard him, Grisha suddenly felt an unresistable force that was pulling him somewhere unknown and that scared him, the fear of unknown creeped inside him.
However for some reason his mind drifted to a faint memory of his childhood, to the time he first went to the pool of the local town and accidentally jumped into the deeper parts and almost drowned…Luckily, the lifeguard had quickly caught on it and jumped into the pool to saved him.
'I was a dumb kid back then…wait, why am I suddenly remembering this?' He didn't have time to think about it. His eyes went wide as he observed the darkness of the void shift into a chaotic mesh of colors, symbols and eyes.
Suddenly, a splitting headache struck him, which forced him to clench his temples in pain.
'W-What is this…?' Grisha's thoughts felt strugglish under the immense pain. He could tell something was changing inside of him on a fundamental level. A change that he was sure wasn't welcomed.
"Sefirot…"
"...Chaos Sea…"
"God Almighty…"
"Visionary...Degeneration…Tyrant…Sun…Omniscience…"
The ravings spoke in an unknown language and yet its meaning was conveyed directly to Grisha. If he were in a normal state of mind, he would have recognized the words and their meanings, but as of now he was too busy not losing himself to pain and ravings.
'Stop–!'
Just then, a flash of divine light pierced the chaotic dimension and engulfed everything in brilliant white, including Grisha.
The effects were instantaneous.
The ravings were silenced and the Grisha's throbbing pain disappeared as well, returning to normalcy. However, it drained all of his strength, he could feel he was about to pass out at any moment.
'Thank…you…' With the last bit of his strength, Grisha thanked the entity who just helped him before losing consciousness.
…
…
…
"*Cough* *Cough* What is this place?" Grisha coughed out the 'water', leaving a weird aftertaste in his mouth.
He woke up in a strange place (again), but this time he wasn't just drifting in some weird dimension.
Beneath him was hard soil and a layer of cold liquid on top of the ground. It was hard to tell what exactly it was since it was all dark and the only source of light was far away and up from his position.
"Ack!"
Grisha held his head in pain after he tried to stand up but ended up hitting his head on the ceiling instead.
'So it's too cramped to stand up but spacious enough to move around.' Grisha concluded and waited for the pain to pass. 'So I have to crawl towards the light after all?
With no other choice, he crouched and started treading forward carefully enough to not hit against anything again. At his current speed, it would take a while to arrive, but that was alright.
What he needed now was to conserve strength, not speed.
So, he began the cycle of crawling, climbing and resting that lasted more than he would have liked, but he endured for what felt like days, Grisha finally arrived at his destination and…
"Ughr! The smell!" Grisha pinched his nose and waved his hand to fend off the foul odor. "It smells like old people having sex (not that I actually know how it smells)."
The source of light was actually a room that was poorly illuminated, the lamp on the ceiling looked like it was gonna give up anytime soon. The walls were grayish white, but were covered with black streaks. The tables and chairs were toppled, some still usable while others were broken, but what caught Grisha's attention were the broken machines and the countless yellowish papers scattered across the room.
'It looks like a research facility that was abandoned in a hurry…' Grisha thought and found it to be a weird place to be reincarnated into. 'This looks like a horror movie…hopefully it isn't.'
Curiously, he crouched and picked one of the papers that was on the broken machine. To his surprise and joy, it was written in English.
⌜...Research of the appearance of oil in a dried-up oil field... Why would they need to build a research facility in such an unimaginable place for such matters?
...God, what did they discover deep in the oil field...
...This is some amazing material...
...What exactly happened? The doctor turned into a puddle of black oil in front of me!
...More and more people have turned into oil. This research facility has been sealed from the outside... No one can leave. No one can leave...
...Mad, they've all gone mad. We're still normal, but our food is almost running out...
...I seem to be hearing things. There seems to be sounds coming from underground. It's summoning me. "He" is summoning me!⌟
"No…this can't be…" Grisha's hand trembled as the text was awfully familiar. His first reaction was to deny it all, but the idea was discarded once he remembered the ravings and the knowledge that was forcefully transmitted to him.
"Am I really in the world of Lord of the Mysteries?"
He had read the entire webnovel of book 1 and some spoilers of book 2, so he should've been turned into a pile of flesh and blood long ago due to the knowledge he possesses, and yet he is still standing there fine and all.
"Is it because of that light that is protecting me from corruption? Or did I end up in some strange parallel universe?"
Grisha sighed and shook his head. It was clear that he wasn't going to get any answers there or anytime soon.
"Calm down, let's first assess the current situation…" He muttered to himself and looked around the room, more carefully this time.
"This place is definitely Chernobyl and I just crawled out of Chaos Sea like a baby, just like Ancient Sun God did, and yet I don't feel any different than a regular human. In this regard, I am more similar to Klein than to 'Him'." He walked over and grabbed on the only few intact chairs before sitting on it.
"Maybe I am just a vessel for the resurrection of a higher being?" Just the thought of that filled him with dread.
'Should I just remain a low sequence beyonder? Or even just a regular citizen?'
'No.' Grisha shook his head in denial, it wasn't even a matter of pride.
'If I remain at low sequence, I wouldn't even be worth a pawn in the plan of gods, just cannon fodder.'
'Not to mention remaining as an ordinary citizen is impossible. If this is before Ancient Sun God's appearance, then humanity is still under the rule of Elves, Giants and Sanguines as subordinates or slaves.'
'However, if this is after 'His' death, then I am equally cooked as this continent turned into the Forsaken Land of Gods, where the whole place is swarmed by beyonder creatures.'
"Fuck it, every route I take leads to doom." Grisha sighed in exasperation.
In the end, however, he was forced to make a decision.
"I will just try to raise my sequence as high as I can and try to survive whatever shit fate throws in my way."
Grisha got up from his seat and went his way to find the exit.
At some point of his search, he had to stop when he felt a strange sensation wash over him, it was like something was connecting and resonating with him.
It was a strange experience, but he could pinpoint that it was coming from two sources.
He traced the first source and found an iron door with two menacing machine guns attached to it.
'Yeah….I am not going there.'
Grisha turned around and walked away without hesitation.
After going up a few floors, he finally reached the other source which convincingly was close to the exit of Chernobyl according to the emergency evacuation plan.
Approaching it, he found out it was coming from an object that was laying on the floor.
It was a silver mirror with ancient patterns on the back and an 'eye' on each side at the front. All stroke familiarity to Grisha like that yellowish paper from earlier, despite it being his first time seeing it.
"No fucking away…" Grisha muttered in excitement as he hurriedly made his way and picked it up. "Arrodes!"
His excited call was answered by words that appeared on the surface of the mirror.
{Great master, your loyal and humble servant would like to greet you. Is there anything I can be of help to you?}
'Maybe this journey won't be as bad as I imagined it to be—Huh!?' His thoughts were interrupted when he saw his reflection in Arrodes.
Instead of the face of a 20 year old student that he was used to, no, what was reflected was the astonished face of a young boy around 12 years old.
'I have become younger!?' Grisha almost shouted from surprise as he touched his own face.
On the reflection was a kid who still had to lose the baby fat, he had short blonde hair and blue eyes, beneath his dirty appearance was a baby smooth skin. It was like looking at an old photo, but somehow better than he remembered.
'Maybe it's one of the perks of reincarnation?'
A part of him felt dumb that he didn't notice sooner when there were some clues, but he just shrugged it off.
"Well, can you tell me if this body has been corrupted or influenced in any way you can detect?
{Even though the Great Master's vitality is not as blinding as his presence, there aren't any signs of corruption or influence by external entities. On the side note, it appears that the Great Master has a special connection with the Chaos Sea, but I am sure the Great Master already knew that.}
'Should I be flattered that I got glazed by a mirror first instead of a woman?' Grisha lampooned and grimaced in silence.
Grisha sighed and his expression turned serious. He didn't doubt Arrodes' words due to its nature as Sealed Artifact and powerful divination capabilities, but that's what puzzled him even more.
'I have a connection to the Chaos Sea where I crawled out from, but I am not corrupted by it?' He was skeptical despite knowing that Arrodes was likely correct.
After all, Chaos Sea is the Sefirot that was believed to be the source of the corruption beneath the world, and he not only was immune to its corruption for some reason, but also connected to it.
Grisha decided to test it by focusing on the link and trying to tap its powers. The process was surprisingly easy as a vortex of dark blue 'water' suddenly appeared on the ground with the size of a small puddle.
That said 'water' had countless illusory eyes that were looking directly at Grisha for a moment before 'they' squinted in amusement and pushed a potion out of the vortex.
He immediately stopped the connection with the Chaos Sea, making the vortex disappear, and hurriedly catch the potion.
"This is…" Grisha looked at the glass vial in his hands in awe as he instinctively knew what they were. "A Beyonder potion!"
{Ó Great master, this humble servant is honored to witness Great Master's first steps in reclaiming his authorities!}