I just do not get it. One moment I was in the middle of a school trip, hopelessly gazing at the clear blue morning sky through the bus window, and then, in an instant, just like the blink of an eye, the entire world changed and i was now in this unfathomable, endless void, floating without a body, existing only as a single point of consciousness in the literal middle of nothing.
All I can summon when I try to recall those environments are bland, empty landscapes. I do not even know if I could truly think there. It felt more like being trapped in a continuous state of watching myself do or think nothing. I was awaken of course, but I was not in control, not even of my own mind
Then, I cannot say how or when, but suddenly instead of the pure darkness, I found myself in front of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
She stood in the middle of an infinite white. When I looked down, I realized I was there too, and with a body moreover. Not some strange bubble of spiritual energy that might have been my soul, but now a proper human body with perfectly functional hands and everything.
At least within my field of view, we were the only ones floating in that landscape, a place that could easily give you a headache if you stared at it for too long
Thinking about this for a few moments, I finally realized that, just like I was gazing at her, she was simply gazing at my face. Her eyes had been in contact with mine for several instants already, and I still did not know what to do.
It felt surreal to see such a figure in a place like this. A woman with mauve hair so long it almost brushed her knees, looking no older than twenty, with the kind of beauty that could rival a top model standing not even half a meter away from me.
Her perfect violet eyes lingered on me for a long moment before she finally spoke.
"Okay. The fact that your eyes are moving means you have finally awakened. Wonderful.
You do not know how desperate I was when I realized one of the souls had lost its way in the void. Then I had to spend months searching for you.
You know I am a nature goddess, right? Doing work like this was never supposed to be my job. If it were not for you, I could have been back home for months by now.
At least your personality was not completely erased before I found you.
it was not, right?"
She waited a few moments for my response, but since I was still trying to figure out my situation, my mind began to drift with the flow of time. After an unknown passage of it, she spoke again.
"Hmm, are you okay?" she asked, tilting her head
"Oh, sorry. Yes. Well, I guess yes.
Actually, I woke up only a few minutes ago, but I am feeling really strange. This body just does not work correctly. I was literally lost in my thoughts for the last few minutes, and I could not even perceive it. Really sorry."
then she said
"Thank goodness. Then you are mostly okay, and that is good for me and you. It would be disastrous if I admitted to my superior that I lost someone, haha.
Anyway, I think you already know that you have unfortunately reached the end of your previous life and everything."
I answered after hearing her.
"Well, it was not really difficult to figure out after spending long hours staring at something that seemed like it was trying to resemble black, but in the end only gave me the most perplexing feeling of weirdness.. Not much different from this place though"
After this, I just gazed at the infinite white again, trying to figure out why only our bodies really existed in this entire place. It is not as if forms and light do not exist here, since they do. Everything just does not make sense at all. Maybe they just do not care about creating a place to comfort my mind
It could be just a room. It could be not that difficult i guess.
Then she said, "At least you appear to be completely resigned to this.
Thank you for this.
I had to comfort thirty crying teenagers, a seven cats owner, and one drunken before desperately trying to find you."
Then I answered this, just now realizing how passive I was to everything happening to me
"It is not that I am not sad about being dead. It is just that my mind has already passed through the grieving, but I cannot really remember this. or maybe, i'm just insane"
"But wait, then everyone died on the trip?"
She replied
"Well, It's quite difficult to survive a direct attack from an Elder Dragon. Even my mortal form could not.
So yes, everyone, from the students to the teacher to the driver. It is fair to say that not even your bodies remained, not even your bones, or the bus itself, or the ground where your bus was, nor the surrounding kilometers.
But this does not matter, because now I, Goddess of the Dryads and of the Old Trees, was appointed to be the one who will find the Heroes who will be entrusted to defeat The Demon king. bringing peace once again to the lands of Epode."
Then, after a clearly dramatic pause, probably expecting some facial reaction from my part, she continued, "And you, Bran Godwin, who was supposed to live the meaningless life of the average individual of your generation, are now chosen to become a hero in another world. Do you accept such a burden?"
"You called yourself a Goddess, and you said a Dragon? Wait, you called my life meaningless?"
After clearly thinking for some time, she said, "I did not say that."
could only stay there, staring at her, not believing what was going on
Then, after some of the most weird silent seconds of my life, she said
"You are imagining things. Maybe you spent too much time in the void. I am sorry for that. Anyway, do you agree? Becoming a hero in another world? I know your generation has an entire fiction genre about this and it is quite popular."
I did not respond immediately. She clearly said that, but does it really matter? It is not like I was doing something great. But I was in my teenage years. What was I supposed to do?
This does not matter anymore, right? Since it is over. And I will never see my parents, my sister, or my friends again.
Oh, they.
"Okay, are all the others sent to be 'heroes' in this same world?" I tried to clearly emphasize the word heroes since I knew very well that most people in my classroom were anything but heroes
It felt more like this goddess had simply found the nearest tragedy with a convenient number of victims and decided to use them to end her job as quickly as possible.
She then answered, "Who could waste such an opportunity? Even the drunk driver accepted immediately. What was his name again? Anyway, do you accept?"
"Does being a hero mean something? Like, will I be capable of selecting some power or maybe an advantage to ease my journey? Will I need to be born again, or will my body just materialize there?"
"This is a world with blessings that resemble the games and stories you have played and read. They have classes, and the hero is the most powerful class. It can evolve in both physical and magical aspects when you level up, and it can learn any skill from any other class. Since we are at a problematic point in this world's history, someone will use part of their divinity to generate your exact body there for you because wasting two decades is not something we can afford. Again, do you accept?"
Everyone accepted. And it is not a bad reincarnation. I do not know how doomed this world is, but it is not like I can simply choose to return to my life as if nothing had happened.
"Okay, I accept, but I want to be sent to the closest thing this world has to a beginner's zone. I do not want to just appear in the middle of the demon lord's army or in a dragon's cave, got it?"
Thinking of something, I said again, "And I need some monetary funding. It is not that equipment sellers or the adventurer's guild are charitable institutions, right?"
She almost instantly replied, "Okay, this can easily be done. Actually, only the adults request it."
She unexpectedly began to laugh.
"Just now I realized that most of them are still doing basic labor jobs just to pay the adventurer's guild registration fee."
This continued for an entire minute, and after this, she said, "That is all. This is the beginning of a legendary and epic adventure that will be told for generations. Or maybe it will be, like so many others, just the beginning of a truly torturous journey, ending in a slow and painful death. In the end, it could be both
Enjoy the journey. bye." She then raised her hands in a sign of farewell, and after that, every sensation simply disappeared.
And after an unknown period, just like the blink of an eye, I awakened again.