'Where in the world am I?'
Everywhere Gray looked, it was simply a vast, empty nothingness. A cold, silent void.
The faces of his friends flashed in his mind, vivid and agonizing.
Leo's final, determined gaze. Knuckles's roar of pure, selfless rage. Specs's lifeless expression.
'Leo… Specs… Knuckles… I'm so sorry.' The thought was a silent, desperate scream into the void. 'I'm so, so sorry.'
He wasn't curious about reincarnation, or heaven and hell.
Such things were luxuries for souls with a clear conscience.
All he could feel was the crushing weight of his failure.
'It was all for nothing. My stupid pride… my stupid dream. What a joke. I killed them. If only I had agreed to them bringing weapons in the first place, if only we planned an ambush instead of going in directly.'
If he could just go back. If he could have one more chance, just one single moment.
"I'd listen," he whispered into the emptiness, voice trembling. "No… even that doesn't matter. I'd be content just to share another cup of noodles, to laugh and waste time with my friends. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Then, suddenly, the nothingness gave way to a dimly lit expanse, an endless procession of figures shuffling forward in an eerily silent line.
Gray found himself standing among them, another formless shape in a sea of souls.
At the front of the line was a large pot of soup and an old woman who looked similar to witches in fairy tales.
The souls in the line would step forward and take a bowl to consume it before entering a large, black and white vortex which exuded an ancient aura.
As the new soul in the line stepped in front of the pot to consume the soup, everyone, including him would move up in position.
'Just what in the world is this place?' Gray thought to himself.
He could see that the souls in line had faces full of struggle, confusion, and fear.
But as if they couldn't control their bodies, they would continue walking to the front of the line before taking a sip from the pot of soup.
As soon as they did this, all the fear and confusion drained from their faces as their eyes became empty and dull.
He looked carefully at the pot of boiling soup, written on its body was 'Soup of Forgetfulness'.
Gray's eyes constricted as he saw this.
An old woman ladling soup from a massive pot, giving a bowl to each passing soul. At this moment, he realized where he was.
He had heard the legend when he was still alive.
'Meng Po's Soup of Forgetfulness…' The thought struck him not with resignation, but with a surge of cold panic.
'If I drink that, I'll forget everything. I'll forget them.'
He looked at the dull, empty faces of the souls who had already drunk the soup, their past lives wiped clean.
He saw it not as a mercy, but as the ultimate erasure.
'No.' The thought was a defiant cry in his soul.
'I can't. Forgetting them would be the final betrayal. It would be like killing them all over again. My memory of them… of what I did… it's my penance. I have to carry it. I mustn't forget!'
But the line moved forward, an inexorable current pulling him toward the old woman.
His soul body moved against his will, like a puppet on an unseen string.
He finally reached the front, and his hand, as if it belonged to someone else, reached for the bowl of soup offered by Meng Po.
Gray peered into the swirling liquid.
For a moment, he thought he saw Leo's determined smile, Specs's thoughtful frown, and Knuckles's boisterous laugh shimmering on its surface before fading away.
'I'm sorry, everyone,' he thought, his soul aching.
He closed his eyes, accepting the unavoidable. He had to drink it.
Slurp.
Gray drank the soup in one gulp, bracing himself for the sweet oblivion that would take away his precious memories forever.
However, instead of his mind going blank, his entire consciousness was assaulted by a taste so foul, so unexpectedly vile, that it shocked him to his core.
'What the heck is this? Expired dishwater? If this is the last meal before reincarnation, I'm filing a complaint!'
The sheer disgust of it all was so overwhelming that it momentarily overshadowed his grief.
He had to use every ounce of his willpower not to spit it out.
He quickly hid his revulsion, instantly forcing his expression into the same dull, lifeless mask as everyone else.
"Hmm?" Meng Po's ancient eyes, which had seen countless souls pass by, flickered towards him. "Did I see wrongly?"
She narrowed her eyes, her gaze sharp enough to pierce through any deception. She waved a wrinkled hand.
"You. Step aside for a moment."
Gray's non-existent heart skipped a beat.
A cold sweat he couldn't physically produce pricked at his soul.
He dared not disobey. He shuffled quietly to the side, keeping his posture slumped and his face utterly blank.
'Don't react,' he screamed at himself internally.
'Empty your mind. You're a perfect student; you've been faking emotions your whole life. This is the most important act of your existence.'
Meng Po studied him with an indifferent gaze that seemed to last an eternity.
Finally, she let out a dismissive snort.
"Whatever. Go on."
Gray followed her instructions, moving at a steady, vacant pace.
Relief so profound it almost made him buckle washed over him, but he didn't let it show.
As he walked toward the large, black-and-white vortex ahead, his mind raced.
'Why are my memories still intact? I can still remember them!'
He had no idea why the Soup of Forgetfulness didn't work on him. But none of that mattered as long as he didn't forget his loyal friends who died because of him.
The swirling vortex of reincarnation was right in front of him.
'A new life…' he thought, a solemn vow forming in his soul. 'I don't know what's coming, but I won't forget you guys.'
Just as he was about to take the final step, a faint but familiar high-pitched voice echoed from somewhere far behind him in the dim expanse, piercing through the silence.
"Boss! Wait! Let's look for each other once we reincarnate! Find us, okay?!"
Gray froze, his soul jolting. That voice... It couldn't be...
"What?! Y—" He started to turn, a flicker of disbelief and desperate hope in his eyes.
But before he could even look back, the powerful pull of the vortex intensified, yanking him forward irresistibly.
As he stepped into the vortex, a sudden, violent jolt shot through his soul.
Then came a pain more unbearable than any bruise or knife wound.
"Aaaghh!!"
It was as if the vortex was trying to destroy his soul, the vortex rumbled all throughout.
Gray's soul was trembling nonstop as he endured the pain.
…
Outside of the vortex, Meng Po stopped giving out soup as she looked at the vortex with narrowed eyes.
"What the hell is happening to the Gate Of Reincarnation?" then her eyes constricted violently as she remembered the soul that just entered.
"That soul just now... it wasn't just my imagination, my soup didn't work on it!"
At that moment, the entire underworld began to shake.
Cracks spread across the sky itself, deep and jagged like lightning tearing through the heavens.
The Gate Of Reincarnation flickered wildly, unstable and chaotic.
A large towering figure instantly appeared right before the vortex.
He was about 10 meters tall, had a full beard, and wore a red and gold armor which seemed to be made of dragon scales.
He was the King of Hell.
The King of Hell had an imposing aura, however, at this moment, he was sweating bullets from nervousness.
"For a soul to be able to disrupt the cycle of Samsara… There's only a few reasons I can think of as to why something like this can happen, and regardless of what it is, we're definitely in for a lot of trouble." the King of Hell said nervously.
"My king, can't we do anything about it?" asked Meng Po with a worried tone.
"I've already checked, there's currently no one who can enter the Gate of Reincarnation, so we can't interfere in what's happening inside." said the King of Hell
…
The Underworld, Gate of Reincarnation.
"ARGHHH! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?"
Gray was still screaming at the immeasurable pain he was currently experiencing, cracks were starting to appear on his soul.
It felt like the world was trying to crush him, he could feel that this place held some sort of animosity towards him.
There was a profound aura of life, death, and reincarnation in this vortex, however, he could tell that this vortex wasn't trying to make him reincarnate, but instead, destroy his soul!
However, he could also tell that it was struggling to destroy him, as large cracks were also starting to appear in his surroundings.
"I won't go down this easily..."
As if responding to his will, his soul, which was on the verge of collapse, shone a silver light as the cracks on it were being repaired.
Simultaneously, the cracks in the surroundings of the vortex were getting bigger.
"How'd you like that, asshole?! Hahaha!" Gray guffawed when he saw that the vortex was struggling.
The vortex, as if it could sense that it wouldn't be able to destroy Gray's soul, opened a huge rift which sucked Gray's soul away.
"W-wait a secon-" Before Gray could say anything else, he was swallowed by the rift, and at the next instant, he was in a whole different dimension.
"This place is..." Gray looked with wide eyes at his surroundings.
…
The Underworld, Outside of the Gate of Reincarnation.
The commotion finally stopped, however, the large towering man didn't seem happy at all.
He knew that a huge mess was going to happen.
"Your highness... what should we do?" Meng Po asked with a grim face, she knew that whatever that was, it wasn't good news.
"Sigh... what can we do? We can only deal with what happens next. I hope everything will be alright, we didn't do anything wrong after all." the King of Hell answered helplessly.
He was also confused by the situation. But it wouldn't do them any good to panic over it, as that would only make it easier to cause more damage.
They had to remain as calm as possible, he could only hope that the people who would come next are reasonable.
However... as if to crush his hopes, at this moment, the entire underworld shook.
The underworld seemed to groan under the pressure as if something had descended, it made an even greater commotion than earlier.
A huge spatial rift opened up in the sky, where an army of divine figures clad in white armor walked out.
"Where is my son?" the voice sounded calm, but the whole underworld trembled under its might and authority.