Prologue
My life was never overly exciting.
I mean, sure, it had its moments, but I wasn't really anything special.
…Yeah, I know, that's what ALL the special snowflakes say these days.
…
…Yes, the name of Lysander isn't exactly common…
…Ok so maybe my eyes were a little odd for a human, but not anything that would immediately scream, "Hey look, it's THAT freak again! Let's go see how much we can kick his ass and get away with it!" Besides, everyone still alive these days had something abnormal about them.
Yep. No edgy cliche backstory for me, fortunately.
At least, that's what I thought for the first two decades of my life. Oh boy, how quickly things change. It came as a surprise to the world three weeks after my 20th birthday. The disease that would come to be known as 'The Splicer Plague' within a year of its initial outbreak. A freak accident of evolution found while some scientists in an "undisclosed location" were testing bioweapons on different types of bacteria. All in the name of science and the pursuit of human control over nature, I'm sure.
Nature, of course, is a cold-hearted and primal, not to mention vengeful, mistress. One of the bacteria the scientists got their hands on was a bit unstable, and an oversight in the testing process led to it being exposed to a particularly nasty variation of the previous year's strain of flu. Now, the scientific explanation was that the bacteria was able to survive the virus by taking samples of its genetic code and basically using those samples as mugshots. Every time the bacteria's defensive system encountered anything that matched a taken sample, it would be destroyed or neutered and assimilated.
Of course, the scientific community was enthralled by such a discovery, after a few careful experiments showed that the bacteria could actually be, essentially, programed. Give it a sample of DNA and it would attempt to consume it and seek out others with the same profile. Further tests proved that it would be possible to trick the bacteria into editing genetic code, with no small amount of precision, and relatively little effort. It was hailed as the cure to human biological limitations in some circles. The process became known as CRSPR, or gene therapy to the general public.
So of course, something inevitably went horribly, horribly wrong.
Long story short, that little bacteria ended up mutating nearly every living thing on the planet in some fashion or another when it got out of control. Hence the reason it was nicknamed the Splicer Plague, as nothing that came into contact with it would remain unmutated, with the small exception of a few types of flowers. I was lucky to get away with only odd, sliver colored eyes and a bit of stem cell regeneration. Wouldn't heal a bullet wound but minor cuts and bruises were a thing of the past for me.
Humanity's birth and fertility rates changed drastically, basically driving us to near extinction in less than half a decade. Combine that with super diseases popping up every month and animals and plants quickly outpacing us with rapid growth and evolution, and our fate was sealed.
I barely lasted five years in that blighted hellscape as civilization around me crumbled to dust.
My death would not be a pleasant one, I'll give you that much. At least my sacrifice meant that my only surviving family, my no-longer-teenage sister, was able to make it to a group of hardcore survivalist types holed up in the Appalachian Mountains with a machine of war as her escort. I heard that they had even managed to get a lab set up there, so maybe my brilliant sister would one day help find a way to reverse all the madness our lives had become in the last few years.
Love you, Sis.
As for my gruesome demise, our little survivor group was moving through the ruins of some town I couldn't remember the name of when we apparently ran into the territory of the biggest, most terrifying thing in the region.
An active Mk-12 ATLAS Enforcement Platform. Commonly known as a LYNX.
Now that may not sound like the most intimidating name, but we had good reason to try to avoid it. Imagine one of the biggest cats to ever exist, and then add on about a decade of bio-engineering and cybernetic enhancement and you'll come close to what we were looking at.
Now imagine it has more weapons built into its body than half a platoon of fully equipped marines. Marines that had access to heavy ordinance and possibly a few things the Geneva Convention would have been seriously upset about. Oh, and it also has an AI built specifically for helping its heavily augmented mind process modern combat scenarios. Considering this thing was built around the starting months of the last serious war, nearly five years before the Plague, it was in surprisingly good condition. It wasn't exactly alive, as it was so far into the machine side of things that it no longer had a need for the pathetic meatbag concepts we lowly humans ran on, like eating, or sleeping, or worrying about the morality and consequences of our actions.
It was almost cute the way it played with the mangled corpse of some unidentifiable mutated animal in the same fashion as a kitten with a ball of yarn.
Given the LYNX was roughly the size of a large truck, not to mention out in the middle of the street, we really should not have been able to get a fairly heart-attack-inducing 30m from the bloody thing without anyone noticing. It was pure dumb luck that we were able to silently retreat without pissing ourselves.
Common sense dictated that we stay the hell away and hope it doesn't notice us. We considered ourselves to be a pretty badass and capable survivor group, with nearly all of us having some form of military grade equipment. Yet we knew that that thing had the potential to wipe the floor with us in under 5 minutes, if it decided to be lazy. Hell, it's stealth alone had us so outclassed we might as well have been kids playing with sticks and stones. Any sane group of individuals would have steered clear once the were able to get safely out of the kill zone. We were a very special group though.
So naturally we were busy planning how to steal it.
The hushed, frantic conversation we had behind that wrecked gas station a mere 150m from the unholy fusion of cat and Terminator would go down in the annuls of history as one of the most idiotic, poorly thought out, and downright suicidal plans we had ever thought up. That was familiar territory for us, though. The only way so many of us were still alive was because it was these very same plans that had saved our asses while the highly trained and professional people of our world tended to die following the rules.
Pretty soon Operation: Rewire the LYNX's brain to fight for us and don't get killed in the process was in motion. Sure, it wasn't the best Op designation, but it was Fumbles idea and we felt the poor teenager needed all the encouragement he could get right now. We all needed it. This opponent was easily on the top ten list of Things NOT to mess with as far as the new world order went. There were six of us, unaugmented humans, against a beast with no pity, remorse, or pain receptors.
It's a bloody miracle only one of us died.
Of course, Fate chose me to be its personal chew toy for the hour.
Yeah, the fight really only lasted maybe two minutes, but that's a really long time to have to sprint between cover, shoot at the thing enough to distract it but not cripple it, and not get blown to pieces by its shoulder mounted pulse cannons while also not letting it close enough for melee. Add in the thermal vision it apparently had and, well, you get the idea.
Once it slowed down enough for our resident engineer Fumbles to get near it, we started pouring fire at it in a more concentrated pattern than before, hoping to get it to stagger and lose focus on the young techie. 10 seconds later and it was out like a light. Fumbles, as we knew him, was practically magical when it came to technology. Unfortunately, the monster was in some kind of hibernation mode that let it heal worryingly fast. Once we noticed the metal literally flowing together like water, we all collectively screamed at the kid to work faster.
The Plan actually worked perfectly, right up until the abomination woke up, looked at me for a solid 4 seconds, opened its jaws, and proceeded to fire the shotgun it had in place of a windpipe. My last fleeting thoughts were something like "what kind of sick bastard even thinks of something like putting a gun in somethings gullet!?"
Fumbles did manage to get the…programming…brainwashing…done in time for us to give it a new final set of orders while I was still alive.
Yeah, but I had no plans for going quietly into that good night.
I went kicking, screaming, and ranting as loudly and vehemently as possible at the demon cat while bleeding out from the massive, buckshot-induced hole in my stomach.
They promised to name it Lysander, after me. Bastards to the end.
I think I'll just…close my eyes…for a bit….so….
…...Tired…
End Prologue
Chapter: 1
*…*
*ping*
I genuinely did not expect to open my eyes after getting my guts blown apart. Today was a fun day like that.
Slowly, as I thought I was still wounded and in shock or something, I checked my surroundings. It was some kind of dilapidated industrial warehouse that we had lured the beast into. Much better firing positions in here than the street. Yep, there was the hole in the roof, looking like it was about to collapse on top of me. Couldn't hear any screaming or gunfire anymore. In fact, all I COULD hear was a little pinging sound somewhere nearby.
*ping*
*ping*
God, I wish that noise would shut up
…gah, this is easily the most pain I've ever felt…
*PING*
Oh cool, IT GETS WORSE.
…
…
Why has it stopped? Now I'm lonely. What I wouldn't give for some entertainment if this is apparently my eternal afterlife. I really hope it's not.
[Entertainment, you say?]
[I believe I can oblige]
…Ok What.
No seriously, hold up. What the hell is this?...
…
…
No…no, no, no, no this… please scary voice, tell me this is just… a bad dream? No, wait, that sounds incredibly stupid and contrived. I need information, fear is the mind killer, and I am very afraid right now.
"…um…hi?" I think, trying to do something like project my thoughts. That's right, remain calm Lys, you've been through stuff almost as crazy as this before. Remember the hallucinogenic cornfield from a month ago? This is nothing new.
[Be silent, child, and listen to my proposal]
[First of all, Congratulations on being able to attract my attention, not many mortals can anymore.]
[So, as you appear to have already figured out, your body is no longer among the living. Your soul, however, is another matter entirely.]
[Now, your soul is weakening, but there is enough juice, so to speak, for you to have a little time to think on what I am going to say]
[If you so wish it, I can manually transfer your soul to another stream, in the hopes that it will integrate in some fashion elsewhere]
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
[I believe the words you would understand about this process are known as reincarnation, rebirth, and…getting Isekai'ed…Oh fantastic I'm dealing with one of you]
"The hell does that mean?"
…
"…Oh."
"Hey! I resemble that remark!"
[Do you accept or not? Your running out of time so be quick about it]
"Will my… um… new world… God that sounds weird, be as bad as this one was? Because if so, I'd much rather take whatever afterlife this one has."
[Given that this world I have been observing for the past few years is pretty high up on the branching path of streams, I would say you have a 50/50 shot at ending up being reborn in what is considered a Paradise world]
"…The other 50% chance worlds are at least normal, right?"
[No]
[Most of those worlds are shrouded and hidden from my vision, so I would hazard a guess that they contain powerful entities within, as well as both ends of the spectrum]
[Bliss and Pain]
[Health and Blight]
[Warmth and Cold]
[Wrong and Right]
[Perhaps not in equal measure, but you get my point.]
[Do you wish to take that risk?]
"Well, gambling was never my particular vice of choice, but I'm willing."
[Good. Willing participants seem to have a much higher survival rate than the norm.]
Well that wasn't an encouraging statement to hear.
"So, what am I expected to do? I assume your not doing this out of the kindness of your heart, right?"
[I wish for you to thrive in whatever world you end up inhabiting. Raze it to the ground and salt the earth you walk upon, or lead them to unite their realm in peace and prosperity. I don't really care, as long as you make a life you feel is worth living. There are many across the realms who…never get that choice.]
"Who are you?"
[I am what happens when a world is… Deleted. Nothing is left but a fragment containing the memories and dreams of that world. I remember everything, even the most minute detail, that my species knew across its entire time on our world. It is a Cursed Existence, but I owe it to those I could not save to remember it all.]
[Do me a favor, will you? Should you find one with a strong enough soul to survive the journey, and that you feel is worthy, tell them to wait for The Echo. I promise I will find them]
[We need more survivors to weather the storm that is to come.]
[Lastly, a gift from the world that I could not save. I believe you will know how to use it well.]
[Good luck. You're going to need it]
…
Of course, the first thing I feel in my new life is pain.
Not the pain of going through the birthing process again, but the kind you might associate with being disassembled and then reassembled on the level of your atomic structure. Old instincts kick in, and I start struggling and trying to open my eyes to see what the hell is going on.
It was at that point I discovered I don't seem to have eyes.
Let that sink in for a second. I am in completely new territory, a place that I was explicitly told could be very dangerous, maybe even more so than my old Apocalypse, and I was missing one of my basic senses.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to stop internally panicking.
"Oh, calm thyself, child. You are safe here. This is a place of Light and Love"
Whatever was speaking, its voice thrummed with Power, that much I understood. That voice was more akin to reading bold text imprinted upon the sky itself than simply listening to someone talk. Tentatively, I did everything short of moving or making noise to try and figure out A: where I was, B: who had spoken to me, and C: why I didn't seem to have a body anymore, at least not one that I could get any response from.
Slowly, ever so slowly, a fuzzy picture formed in my mind as I concentrated and tried to calm down. It showed what looked like a perfectly clean and immaculately designed room, basically the classic picture of what artists envisioned Heaven would look like, except this room felt purer than a simple image. Along the sides of the room were what appeared to be…
…Cradles?
Yep, those were cradles all right. Made from what looked to this new sense, if that is what this was, like solid starlight, constellation patterns and everything. Inside those cradles were little balls of light, about the size of a newborns head. I kept scanning until I found two figures standing next to one of the cribs, both of them looking down at the ball of light inside.
"If I may ask, my Lord, why do you seem interested in this one? I can't sense anything different; he seems to be perfectly healthy."
"I apologize Gabriel, I was just thinking of things to come. There are important topics Michael wants to discuss with you all at the next council. Come, I believe it's appropriate to let these little one's rest and get used to making their bodies for the first time."
"As you request, my Lord"
Ok now I was less worried and more confused than I had been since talking with Echo. Yes, that was the name I was going with, you try summing it up more concisely. Back to the question of the hour, what was I? Not human of course, the figure with the Powerful voice mentioned creating a body. Was I some kind of spirit? A ghost? The beginnings of a terrifying Eldritch Abomination?
I wouldn't get a solid answer until what felt like months later. I spent the time pouring over memories of my previous life after I realized I could not only remember my entire life on a near-photographic level, I could actually recall some things that I had never run into personally, like the information regarding genetics and how to make synthetic muscle, or the exact specifications of how to fabricate a pulse weapon. I may have been a survivor of an apocalypse, but the info I now had stored in my brain, if I even had one, accounted for a lot more than one lifetime's worth of knowledge. It took me a while to understand what had happened, but in hindsight I shouldn't have been surprised. Echo did mention that it had a "gift" for me. Apparently, this gift involved some kind of perfect recall of the summation of human knowledge of my old home.
Then the realization hit me. It was the exact same ability Echo had mentioned it was… cursed with. Huh, wonder how my Humans and whatever it was stack up against each other. Wonder if I will get jaded, ok, more jaded than I already was, because of this.
Honestly the thought of what a monster I could become sent chills down my spine.
Yes, you heard that right, spine. Making a physical body out of pure energy was a hassle, but with my knowledge of anatomy, molecular bonds and such, creating matter wasn't nearly as hard as it should have been. Somehow, though, I was still one of the last of the newborns to fully manifest a physical form. Yes, I did love having eyes back, thank you for asking. Also, even though I didn't even try to make them, I had a single pair of wings coming out of my back, just below the shoulder blades running up to about halfway across said shoulder blades. They were surprisingly large, given my body was just under 2m in height with a nearly 4m wingspan. They reminded me a lot of an albino peregrine falcon's wings more than something like a dove or swan. All built for pure speed.
So yeah, I was an Angel.
Yes, like an actual, biblical, living in Heaven, Angel.
With the mind of a human steeped in the sin and violence I had needed to survive a world filled to the brim with monsters, both beast and man.
I was so screwed.
Most of the first few years of an Angels life was surprisingly solitary. Not sure if this version of God considered the downsides on infant psychology with the lack of socialization we were getting, but maybe that didn't really apply with celestial beings. All of us formed bodies that resembled fully grown humans of all shapes and sizes, with the exception of our wings, which struck me as odd. After all, the classical bible sometimes described celestial creatures like angels as what I would consider terrifying monstrosities. Sure, we shared the name, but that was about it.
We weren't even monitored really, just left to wander and discover and learn at our own pace. At first, I thought I would have to hide how smart I was, but after hanging around(spying) on the other newborns and a few of the less powerful elder Angels, that disillusionment was quickly broken. Figures that supernatural beings free from human understanding would develop their minds supernaturally fast as well. I never even had to hide at all, just keep up with the others absurd learning curve and you were fine. Heck, some of the angels seemed to hit their limits a lot earlier than I expected. Its like they got lazy or something.
In all those first few years, never once had I been called by a name. Whenever someone needed to find me, they always came themselves. We could all vaguely sense the unique pattern of each other's souls or something. Apparently, our names would be given to us by God Himself, but for some reason he never quite managed to get to me. Almost like He was avoiding anything to do with me, which I was perfectly happy with, as any real conversation would likely lead to some uncomfortable truths being revealed. I always got the sense that the old man knew something about me, something He was… afraid of? It seems ridiculous but the evidence was there.
None of the other Angels paid me much attention, except for the Seraph Gabriel who occasionally checked up on me, like a distant but doting mother. It was actually because of her that I was not bored out of my mind all the time. After living on the razors edge of life and death for so long, having to fight tooth and nail for every scrap available, those habits became second nature to me. Thankfully because of Gabriel, all the others assumed she was taking charge in straightening out my "odd behaviors". Why did they care if I was antisocial? I had books, I was learning their strange system for what they called "magic", and nobody was trying to shoot at me and steal my stuff!
It was eventually Gabriel who suggested that I just pick a name for myself. She was sure God would understand.
And thus, I could finally call myself Lysander again.
I was still gonna ask anyone who met me to call me Lys, that would never change.
Again, it was Gabriel who shattered one of my expectations right out the gate. It turns out that God can't, or won't read your thoughts. He is much, much more concerned with your actions, and honestly, I can see where he's coming from. Imagine constantly being bombarded with all the contents of what seems like millions of Angels minds. Then add in humanity. Apparently even supernatural minds have a limit.
That's definitely for the best, because if He could see me…
Well, let's just say I don't think He would just cast me out of Heaven like He just did to Azazel a week ago. Bloody pervert. It was that event that led to me figuring out where in the timeline of this world I had entered, if it went by my knowledge of all the variations of this story. Sometime soon, Azazel and probably a bunch of other Fallen would congregate to a fairly large human city known as Babel. As in the infamous story of the Tower of Babel. Yeah, the place that got wiped off the map via Holy nuclear explosion like Sodom and Gomorrah. Needless to say, I most certainly did not want to be down there.
Until I found a very Important piece of information mentioned offhandedly in a rather thick tome in one of the many libraries that some of my peers unwittingly had led me to. This library contained detailed information on the human world that God had created way before I was sent here. It mentioned that each human has a small chance of having innate magical potential in the form of something called a Sacred Gear.
That little tidbit caused me a great deal of worry.
Somewhere in my memory, that phrase "Sacred Gear" was setting off an alarm bell. At first, I ignored it so I could go somewhere quiet to read. That lasted all of five minutes as my concern for the alarm bell grew exponentially as I ignored it. Finally, I set the tome I had worked so hard to find down and proceeded to look up that troublesome phrase in my archive of a mind.
Looking for a specific memory in the summation of human knowledge wasn't as simple as typing something into a search bar on the Internet. The more people who had known what something was, the easier I could recall it, and this topic was apparently relatively unknown compared to something like, say, how to wield a sword properly.
When I finally found what I was looking for, and understood its implications, I kind of completely froze up. For like 20 minutes.
See, the words "Sacred Gear" only really had one place in my new memories. It was in this vaguely popular Japanese light novel and animation series than ran about 50 years before my time. The novels detailed quite a lot for being such a silly story, more than I had expected from what was basically almost pornographic, and there was a really, REALLY big problem. All this time I had thought the coincidences to religion from my old world showing up here was really unnerving but of little consequence, as long as I could stay safe here in Heaven.
But the revelation that I was apparently now a part of a fictional world, with undefined limits and a story, a story that forecasted an apocalyptic war between the three factions of Heaven, the Fallen angels, and the forces of Hell. A war so great that it could only be interrupted by…
By…
…
Dragons. The Red and White Heavenly Dragons, who would eventually become Sacred Gears themselves. If I could find proof that they were real here, I could start making plans. Maybe this world wouldn't be exactly like those light novels, but if those two were real, it would probably play out very similarly, if not exactly as depicted. There was also another major problem, and that was the main storyline of those books. If the backstory was going to be hell to try to survive, making it out alive through the canon events of the story, that wouldn't take place for at least a few thousand years, made The Great War seem childishly easy by comparison.
The Heavenly dragons being sealed.
Kokabiel's betrayal and subsequent Murder of God.
All of the human and supernatural conflicts.
Azazel figuring out how to make or just straight up rip a Sacred Gear out of a human.
The War ending in a terribly fragile ceasefire.
The stupidest Protagonist I've ever seen.
Kokabiel trying to restart the Great War.
The war between Ophis and The Great Red, the only two dragons MORE powerful than the Heavenly dragons.
…
Trihexa
It seems like I never left the apocalypse, honestly.
I think I'd actually take a few mutated beasts over being in this stupid story.
It took me less time than expected to find any info on the Heavenly dragons, given that I wasn't sure if the information would be secret or something. Turns out it wasn't outright secret, but definitively put purposely out of the way so someone would have to know to look for it.
So yes, there were other entities in this reality stronger than God.
I can't believe that something so bloody powerful could fall into the hands of a freaking overly perverted teenager. It genuinely blew my mind that something so obviously cliché and retarded had a better than not chance of actually happening. That is, unless something were to change.
Wait.
I could do that.
I could do that right now, in fact. All I had to do was tell-
No. No I couldn't risk just telling Him and hoping He would believe me or take care of me. A LOT of angels die in the Great War, even some of the most powerful ones. If I had to fight as I was now, I would be dead again by the end of the first day of fighting. So, my only choices were to run somewhere and hide until this all blows over, which would take forever, or I could run, but go somewhere I could train, get stronger.
With my memories I could probably just make a gun and shoot anyone who came after me.
Hell, I could eventually make the damn LYNX and have it massacre stuff for me. Ride that high for a while, just go nuts.
…
…I'm in a fictional world, as an Angel of all things, with the summation of all human knowledge including knowledge of this world's possible future, and its actually possible I can use this worlds physics and magic to replicate other, more powerful forms of fictional abilities. Abilities that I have an entire archive of, (humans sure do love their fiction, don't they?), that could make me the most powerful thing in this existence.
All I need to do is leave Heaven.
All I need to do is draw the attention of God.
All I need to do, is Fall.
…
Gabriel is going to be so pissed.