The world didn't just fade; it snapped like a dry bamboo stalk.
One moment, Kanetaro was bracing for Mother Nature's next mood swing; the next, his stomach stomach was doing a somersault over his liver. He hit a hard, metallic surface with a grunt, sliding across the floor until his sandals caught a groove.
"Wonderful", Kanetaro groaned, pushing himself up. "I died a hero's death for a unified land, and my reward is being tossed around like a cheap sack of grain. I have had gentler welcomes from mountain bandits in a thunderstorm."
He stood up and blinked, and for the first time in his life- and afterlife- he was genuinely baffled. He wasn't in a village or a forest. He was standing on a massive brass plate.
Everywhere he looked, the horizon was filled with collosal, interlocking bronze gears, hissing iron pipes, and glowing blue lines etched into the floor that hummed like a thousand angry hornets.
"Is this Heaven?" he muttered, poking a glow pipe with his toe. "It looks more like a blacksmith's fever dream".
Suddenly, a deafening CLANG echoed. The massive gear beneath his feet began to rotate. Then the one next to it. Within seconds, the entire world was a grinding spinning death trap.
"Whoa! Watch the heels!" Kanetaro yelped. A massive iron pillar surged up from the floor, nearly launching him into the abyss.
He didn't panic; he moved. Growing up as an orphan on the streets of a war-torn province meant you either had fast feet or no feet. He leaped into the air, his robust strength propelling him off the edge of a rotating cog. He danced across the machinery, performing a mid air twist to avoid a swinging pendulum.
"Is there a 'Stop' liver?" he shouted to the empty air while sticking a perfect landing on a moving tooth-edge.
"Or may be a 'Please don't turn the martyr into Miso paste' button? I am starting to miss the angry lady with the trees!"
He spotted a high stationary ledge protruding from a central spire. With a burst of power that cracked the brass beneath him, he lunged, caught the edge and swung himself up with the grace of a street cat.
"Verily thy scurrying is not entirely without merit", raspy voice remarked.
Kanetaro nearly fell off the ledge. Sitting on a floating silk cushion was an old man with a beard so long it it looked like a frozen water fall. He wore robes woven form starlight and ink stained parchment.
"Gah! Gramps! Give a warrior a warning!" Kanetaro exhaled, clutching his chest. "You must be the one mother nature told me about. You have all the answers right? But honestly I would settle for a bowl of rice and a map to the nearest exit."
Knowledge adjusted his spectacles, looking at Kanetaro with a bored gaze of a tax collector. "Thou art Kanetaro. The orphan who didst trade his life to mend a broken realm. Why dost thou prattle so? Silence thy tongue; we hath much to accomplish ere the stars align".
"Listen, Master Monk, I am retired" said Kanetaro. " I did my time. I fought the wars, I ate the dirt, and I died. I am just looking for a nice quiet corner to exist in. No more destiny no more greatness".
"Thy quiet is forefiet", Knowledge said, waving a hand. Suddenly, a massive iron weight- the size of a temple bell- dropped from the ceiling. Kanetaro instinctively caught it, his knees buckling as the sheer weight pressed down. "To be a God is to carry the burden of the heavens. Lift, boy. Or be crushed like a bettle under a shogun's boot".
" I... really.... hate.... bureacrats!" Kanetaro hissed through gritted teeth, his muscles bulging as he forced the weight upward.
The hours that followed were a nightmare of 'devine training'. When Kanetaro wasn't lifting impossible weights, Knowledge was snapping his fingers to summon a swarm of Narasytes,those oily, shadow beasts from the shadows of the gears.
"Hark! The shadows hunger!" Knowledge would chirp from his cushion while sipping tea that smelled like ancient paper. "Defend thy life, for it thou perish here, there is no second after life to catch thee."
Kanetaro swung his katana, his blade a blue of steel. He sliced through a Narasyte's red gem, ducking under another's claw.
"So, no peaceful rest and the risk of permanent non existence? You gods really have to work on your hospitality! I have stayed in infested barns that were no more welcoming!"
As he fought, a thought struck him. Knowledge had mentioned a 'Duel to Choose the New Gods".
Kanetaro smirked to himself as he kicked a monster into a grinding gear.
If this is all a duel , he thought, I will just throw the match. I will walk into the arena, trip over my feet, lose on purpose, and they will have to let me go. I will be the first man in history to fail his way into a peaceful retirement. I am a genius.
"Hey old timer!" Kanetaro shouted, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"What's the point of this duel? Why me? Surely there's some other dead guy who actually wants to be a God. I am just an orphan who got lucky with a sword."
Knowledge floated closer, his eyes suddenly glowing with a cold, ancient light. "The old Gods hath withered, their light consumed by narasyte rot. The Heavens require a pillar, a soul of pure sacrifice. The Duel of Divinities shall commence soon. Winners should ascend to the throne. Losers...."
Knowledge paused, a dark riddle dancing in his eyes."... Losers become the very fuel that keeps these gears turning. Thou shalt either rule the stars, or thou shalt be the grease upon the cog."
Kanetaro's smirk vanished instantly. "Wait.... what was that last part about the grease?"
"Grease", Kanetaro repeated, the word tasting like soot and bad luck.
He had spent his entire life as an orphan, scrounging for leftover rice and dodging the blades if drunken ronin, only to find out that the 'Great beyond' was just a giant machine waiting to grind him into axle oil. He looked down at his katana which pulsing with a rhythmic light that felt suspiciously like a countdown. "First I am a martyr, then I am a saviour and now I am potential lubricant for a celestial clock? I have had more dignified endings in my dreams after eating a blowfish".
As Knowledge's floating cushion drifted into the bronze smog, leaving only the rhythmic thump-hiss of the domain, Kanetaro sat on the edge of the brass platform and dangled his legs over the abyss. His mind, honed by years of surviving on nothing but wit and sharp eye, began to whirr faster than the pistons around him. If losing meant becoming 'grease' and winning meant becoming 'god' he never asked to be, then the answer wasn't to play along.
He looked at the interlocking teeth of a massive gear nearby and narrowed his eyes; if this whole afterlife was just a machine, he just had to find the right spot to stick a metaphorical crow bar.