Heyho! I've been gone a long time, huh? Well, I kind of lost my inspiration and took off from the site for some time, but recently got a bit of a kick back for it and wanted to try a new idea I've been sitting on for ages now.
I am quite new to Danmachi, but have done what I could to familiarize myself with it after seeing the anime so whatever mistakes I may do, be more than free to correct me on them in the reviews or in private DMs!
The pilot chapter touches into highly sensitive subjects, namely suicide, so if you are someone who cannot handle such a topic, you might want to consider skipping about half the chapter, or even ignore it entirely until chapter 2 comes out.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danmachi or any characters within them nor do I own any rights to other material referenced or used in this story.
"Talking"
"Thinking"
"Distorted voices talking (Monsters, Gods with Arcanum leaking etc.)"
PREMISE:
A Failure and enemy to himself, Eobard Schmidt can no longer handle the guilt of all that he lived through and surrenders to despair, ending his own life, but the afterlife has no intention of letting him rest just yet, for transcedental beings have a mission for him, a mission disguised as a blessed opportunity for another chance...
Well... here goes... I am Eobard Schmidt, 34 and... well, about to die.
Sigh...
It has been a while since I have felt this loathesome about myself... over a year now, I think? My memories are a mess, I wouldn't remember precisely no matter how I tried.
My eyes were stinging due to lack of rest and the dryness of the air. Or was it because I keep rubbing them every few minutes in futile attempts to get rid of the stinging sensation?
My legs feel like jelly, I don't think I ever felt my knees be so unsupportive and wobbly, my feet so fragile I fear my ankles would snap like twigs and my weight would drop me on the ground harshly.
My hands... my hands were holding onto the object of my final act. A Rope, hanging from the wooden safety rail of the upper floor's stairs over the hallway of my home. A rope tied into a noose. My noose.
My face was so close to it... I could swear I am smelling the fabric it is made out of, feeling its texture on my skin, and yet my eyes, clear as day, show me it is inches before my face.
My hands were shaking. Why was I shaking? Am I afraid of what might lie beyond? Am I excited that it finally ends? Am I remorseful that THIS is how it ends? I... I cannot tell. My thoughts, my emotions... they are all over the place, incoherently messy and so convoluded and intertwined with one another I cannot figure out what I feel, what I think. I just know I feel... something. Something worth shaking over.
I pull the noose closer while raising my chin, tieing the rope around my neck before grabbing the knot at the back end and tighten it.
I know it will hurt... I will suffer, obviously, but... questions arise. Questions that are insane, idiotic, and yet... they make sense? What would end my life first? The asphyxiation or a potential neck injury? Or pressure to my carotid arteries causing brain death?
Am I a psycho for being fascinated with this question knowing what I am about to do to myself? Probably... but I've reached the point beyond return several times over.
People always said life would flash before one's eyes in the face of death, but as I finish tightening the noose, I don't see it. I don't see a single image of my life in my mind's eye. Why?
My feet slowly inch closer to the edge of the chair I stand upon, preparing for the final act, the movement that will finalize my fate.
Why do I not see my life before me? Was it so bad it was not even worth remembering in death? Am I so ashamed of how I wasted it that I don't want it to be the last thing on my mind?
I force myself to see at least some of the things that have happened throughout it all.
My first day in my first school...
My first fistfight with bullies and suspension...
My first time seeing my parents argue...
My first time being roped into trying out substances by my alleged 'best friend'...
My first time having my heart broken...
My first time attending a funeral of someone I knew...
Damn... I went astray pretty early, my only good memory was from when I didn't even know left from right...
And it only became worse from there.
My parents' fights got worse, physical even, and both of them lashed out on me when the other wasn't around...
My addiction became out of control and I burned all my savings for a short high. Nearly overdosed more than once...
The things I did for my dealer while I had my debt... so many faces pummeled with iron bats used for baseball... youths traumatized for life... women punished and violated before being pimped out...
My throat feels a heat rising and my stomach was churning in an ugly way... just thinking about the surface of everything I did before my recovery makes me want to puke.
I truly was... no, AM the worst... just because I stopped doing it doesn't erase that I had done it. What was that saying again? Scars bleach with time? Except... every now and then, you still feel them as if they were a fresh wound. All my sins... those are my scars. All of the crimes I committed and the people I hurt... I feel this weight every waking moment. These scars did not bleach...
Knowing I have no redeemable qualities or chances anymore, I cut my thoughts short... I don't want to wallow in my self-hatred or the desire to be pitied. I want... I want it to end.
My feet violently kick backwards, my heels pushing the chair away from under me, and gravity does the rest.
The pressure of the noose... I could feel it with excrutiating detail, and yet... it doesn't hurt. Weird... am I so numb to pain that even this flies over me? Is the noose squeezing my carotid arteries so tightly that I am losing consciousness faster than I can register pain? Or... am I already dead, and my thoughts are merely delayed while my life vacates me?
My eyes feel heavy, heavier than ever before. So I close them.
Ah, they stopped stinging. Feels kind of good...
Who would have thought...
... death ain't so bad after all...
...
...
...
Huh... dying is a slower process than thought...
...
...
...
Okay, something is not right- wait a moment... why does my body feel so... soaked?
My eyes snap open and... white. Everything everywhere is just... white.
I lift my upper body and realize that I am laying, or now sitting, on what seems to be water? But it's in the same white as... well, everything, this entire space.
I am not that tall, I only measure up to 5'9, and yet, even from this height, were it not for the light waves emitted from where I was seated, I would not be able to tell the water from the space and might have thought I was flying or something...
I know I died, my neck was in the noose, weight pressing it into my flesh, so there is only one answer that makes sense...
I am dead, and this is the afterlife.
Weird, I would have assumed it to be a bit more... crowded.
"Fret not, young soul."
Who was that!?
WHAT was that!?
My head frantically turns left and right, turning around to look behind me, in front of me, above me and hell even below me, even though I don't know if the water is so transparent I see the white of the space, or whether its so strongly reflective that it matches the white of the space without any contrasts at the horizon...
My head hurts trying to figure it out...
"Thou hast indeed passed on, but thy fate has yet to conclude."
The voice... again, this voice... it sounds so ominous, so deep that it cannot be human. A god of death? A reaper? Maybe something that dabbles in death more minorly like a Medjed?
"Thou hast amusing ideas, but nay, young soul, thou faceth not A god, but THE God."
The already blinding white of the space suddenly flared up, hurting my eyesight and making me shield my vision. After a few seconds, the light subsided and I saw... well, no idea what I am seeing.
It looks humanoid. Head, torso, legs and arms-... LOTS of arms, potruding from the back, the armpits and shoulders. I count nine pairs, maybe more, I am currently very distrustful of my eyesight. This... being... this God looks like something out of an eastern mythology. Long earlobes, a golden kimono, two staves, one per one hand on each of his-hers-its side, I have no idea what Gods identify as, or even if they have such a concept.
But what caught my eye the most was... wheels and threads. The arms furthest at this gods back were holding wheels while the arms on the upper part of the shoulders were weaving threads rolling through said wheels. They were spinning something, but... maybe my eyesight is worse than I thought, but the threads just... disappear... I don't see where they continue or even if there is an end piece...
"Thou wisheth to know mine name? Your kind hath memorized me as Chakravartin. Mine existence weaveth the threads of Fate for all lifeforms. Nay is there a cosmos mine threads cannot reach, nay is there a soul which's destiny I have not been part of. Thus you, too, young soul, are product of mine creation."
...huh, so a Deity that spins the threads of fate for literally all of existence stands before me...
...I have no idea how to react. Shocked? Surprised? Awed? Furious? Afraid?
I was all of it at once, a stalemate of emotional chaos in its greatest form, keeping each others from bursting and me breaking down more by accident than by my own control. I would know, self-control was never a strength of mine...
"Nay, young soul, I hath surpressed your actions. You need only heed mine commands."
...Well, that explains why I can't put forth any reactions.
Come to think of it... I haven't spoken a single word so far... my mouth would not move.
...Oh, speech was also surpressed by the God Chakravartin, it seems.
"Over all of existence hath mine purpose been to grant fates. To bestow upon all of creation reason and purpose. Though not all receiveth bliss from beginning. You, young soul, endured greatly, and suffered greatly. Thy anger for yourself... beyond any soul of ye generation. Thou shall become an agent in mine name. Existence spans infinitely, worlds exist in accounts inconceivable even to mine divine existence. Thou shall embark upon one such world."
If I could react or answer, I would have refused with extreme adamance. I was not about to play lapdog to the deity that just admitted being responsible for how each and every life is lived, including my own. However, I am not an idiot, it is clear I have no choice, no saying, not even the liberty to complain. Chakravartin was a higher being and is employing me for his own ends...
Well, thinking about it, aren't I a hypocrite for complaining? Reasoning aside... from the sound of it, he IS about to give me a new life in a different world... a life I could live without regrets maybe, even a life worth being proud of... and here I am being a pissy little bitch about it.
"Thou shan't be sent emptyhanded. A body capable of great feats awaits ye soul to commandeer it. Upon opening thy eyes, knowledge of this body and the world shall imprint into thine mind."
So as soon as I am back with the living, I'll basically have an encyclopedia downloaded into my brain... that is pretty neat, I cannot badmouth it and believe me, I am trying to.
"Thou art free to play with this world, unite it, destroy it, doom it to chaos, save it... it matters not. Thou must however finish thine mission first."
Wait a second, did he just say-
"Thine mission is but a single task. A great evil dominates this world, a spawn of a higher being imprisoned beneath deepest soil. A Black Dragon. Slay this foul abomination, and thou shall have freedom."
...Something is bugging me... Why not just take care of it himself? He is talking about giving me a new life and body in that world like it is absolutely no big deal, a body made to kill some evil black dragon too... so why not kill it himself?
"Thou art wise to question mine lack of initiative. Mine kind may not tresspass into space-time. We who govern existence remain beyond life's reach forevermore. Our existence is permitted only outside the realms of existence itself. Were mine kin to enter such a world, it shall cease to exist, destroyed by the pressure of mine kind's divine aura alone. Mine kin is too powerful to be allowed within existence."
... I will pretend that Chakravartin didn't read my mind and just focus on the answer... I suppose that makes sense. Him and his kind are so powerful that just existing inside a singular world would wipe it out completely and leave behind an empty event horizon, so they exist outside the boundaries of reality beyond space and time... huh, there could be an argument made about omnipotence being a self-imprisonment over its inability to coexist with non-omnipotence.
"If thou mind finds humor in my fate, then thou art ready to endeavor into ye own. Closeth thy eyes, young soul, I shall now imprint upon ye thy new name."
Still have no choice but to obey, so I just do what I am told while telling myself it is being done with reluctance. It won't hurt my pride as much if I don't admit out loud that I am actually kind of looking forward to this.
Why it hurts my pride? Well-
"Begone, young soul, and may thy journey bear entertainment for mine kin!"
Booming much louder than usual, the voice... I don't know how to describe it other than... the voice THREW me out of the after life. I'm talking grabbed by the back of my collar and chucked like a damn sack of potatoes. This wasn't a throw, this was a YEET.
And with it, I felt... sensation. I could... FEEL.
I try to open my eyes again and-
HEADACHE!
Ow ow ow ow ow! I am in the middle of receiving the information about the world and my body and it's so much it hurts my brain!
Damnit, he just couldn't make it more gradual, could he?
"Ugh, painful..."
Indeed it i- wait... I just spoke...
I blink once. Twice. Thrice. Four times. My eyes begin adjusting and the light of the high noon sun stops blinding me, partially because I tilted my head to the side to look away from the sky.
My sense of touch was telling me that I was laying on grass.
It also told me I was armed and armored.
I lift my head, then my torso and sit up once more. It feels strange... so... so easy to move.
I slowly lift myself to my own feet and dust my knees off before giving myself a good look-over.
I had a black skintight suit as my first layer of wear, something akin to a ninja would wear, with my pants' sleeves being shut with bandages that ran down from the center of my shins to my ankles, which were covered with black sandals that only reveal my toes. I wore matching black gloves, leaving only a tiny space of exposed skin right below my wrists. Over the suit I wore a matching black Haori that was shortened so it does not go past my knees, and over it I was covered with red plated armor that was designed like some sort of segment. Plates were connected at their edges with two metallic wires on each end, creating three series of loose plates, one in front of my groin and one on each of my sides at my hips, waist and thighs. The breastplate connected with much thicker metallic wires to shoulderguards that were similarily segmented.
Then there was my physique. I was tall... taller than I remember being in my previous life. I am definetly a 6 footer at least, looking like 6'2 if I had to guess as precisely as possible. My body was muscular... I don't remember ever even having abs, but this body was just... huff, I could pass as an underwear model no doubt. And the strength too, these muscles weren't for show. I wasn't a bodybuilder having bulging veins, but underneath my clothing, anyone sees my skin will see nothing but ripped power. My face had a strong jawline and an oval shape, slightly tip-like towards the chin. It was a bit of a longer facial shape, but it was not unfitting from what my hands could feel. My nose was thin, short, but an almost parallel nosebridge and my eyebrows were a bit on the thicker end, though thankfully far, FAR from bushy. Lastly the hair... long doesn't even begin to describe it. It reached down to my ass! It was wild, spikey, and several shades blacker than my undersuit. I had a wild set of mane-like bangs running across the right half of my face, hiding my right eye from sight.
Yes... the knowledge Chakravartin imprinted into my brain is coming up in full swing... this body has a name...
"Madara Uchiha"
As soon as I said that name, my brain suffered another migraine from new knowledge assaulting its neurons. His abilities, his techniques, his muscle-memories... his body was now fully integrated as MY body. I now know his history and his power and... wow, this guy is no joke. Cleaving mountains with a single swing from some ethereal sword he manifests out of nothing? I would not want to be this guy's enemy. Well, guess that means I wouldn't want to be MY enemy.
I only now noticed that I had a large, 8-shaped Fan on my back. Yes, Madara uses it for a number of techniques... I absolutely have to practice with it. Having this powerful body is one thing, but I need to familiarize myself with it... well, it and the world I now inhabit.
"Where am I?" I ask myself, and as soon as I do, migraine numero trés makes itself present as my brain is, for lack of better terminology, uploading all it knows to my memory storage so I can recall the information at will.
So let's see... giant labyrinth dungeon that spawns monsters, surpressed by a city known as Orario, spawned three great beasts, two of which were dealt with some years ago... which means the dragon is Beast number 3 and my target.
Gods came down a thousand years ago and gave the mortals the key to unlock their souls via 'Falna', insignia inscribed on a mortals back with the ichor, the divinity-imbued blood of a gods host-body, which displays the soul and thus its body's power in a numerical value that can be increased and measured. It also manifests three sub-type of abilities known as Skills, Magic and Developmental Abilities based on the souls truest desires, accomplishments, struggles and pains. Furthermore it functions via an experience-collection type system wherein the experience is classified as Excellia. Its amount and potency scale based on the difference between the Falna's bearer and its adversity. So the worse the odds and the deadlier a foe, the better the quality of the Excellia and the more of it can be gained. And to transcend ones current status for a Level up, a large enough amount of high quality Excellia must be collected, most commonly by overcoming a life or death situation with small chances of victory and even less chances of surviving said victory. Translating that into simpleton, to level up, survive trying to commit second-hand suicide in the dungeon.
And no, I am not missing out on how ironically fitting it is for me personally to require such feats... assuming I really do start as a level 1 despite very likely being the most powerful living thing thats ever set foot in this world other than its native gods. That is an ugly can of worms I would like to avoid, so fingers crossed this body has a naturally high level, which means all I need is a Falna myself to verify.
Continuing with the summary of what my brain is sharing to me about this world...
Many humanoid races coexist in peace, but not harmony. Animal-people such as catfolk, werewolfs, chienthropes, boaz, hume bunnies, renards, weretigers and similarily anthropomorphic beings. Human-like races like Elfs, Dwarves, Pallums and Amazons. And of course humans themselves. Peace exists as none of these races nor any of their home countries are at war, but it is not harmony because distain exists... Pallums are looked down upon as the defacto scoundrels of the world, shamed for an act of blasphemy when they believed Fianna, one of their knights long ago, to be a deity. Amazons are sexual predators with no concept of boundaries that can only birth female offspring and rely strongly on 'male suppliers', for lack of better words, to not go naturally extinct. Elves have a modicum of prejudices towards non-elves, seeing them as inferior due to their longevity and natural capacity for magic. Prejudices skyrocket within the general vicinity of a high elf's presence. And Renards are incredibly rare because until recently, they were being sacrificed ritualistically for Killing Stones to share their powers with non-renards since they are a people with innate magic even more potent than the elves, but subseptible to it being trapped within a materialistic object, the aforementioned Killing Stone...
"This world is a damn powder-keg waiting for one careless idiot with a cigar to set it ablaze." I comment mostly to myself... well, entirely to myself, who else would I be talking to?
It seems that the world is simply focusing on the dungeon as some sort of unified adversary, but the Black Dragon's triumph... 14 years ago? 15?... demoralized the population tremendously, leading to a rise in a faction that believes the natural state of struggle through a freed dungeon to be the only way for the world to live. Evilus... how lazy were their founders if that was all they could come up with? Why not something edgier, darker, but with more fanatic zeal, something with a sense of unity and fraternity... like the Brotherhood of Chaos or something...
Oh well, I can yell their ears off later...
Hm, my knowledge of the world is still updating, but it seems I have all the important bits covered so I can navigate this realm without looking like a neanderthal who just found out how to leave his cave.
My mission... Chakravartin was adamant that it comes before anything else. I am not free until I kill the Black Dragon.
"Guess I start looking... a lead would be nice-"
MIGRAINE NUMBER 4 IS WAY WORSE THAN ALL THE OTHER 3!
"OW OW OW OW!" I growl as I grasp my head at its temples with both hands, rubbing in circles in vain hopes of easing my pained skull and its contents.
Side note, I am parallel to my current thoughts imagining what it looks like for someone as calm, collected, apathetic and unimpressionate as Madara to wince from a headache... a mild distraction, but it works.
But it gave me information again. Zeus and Hera... the two gods whose Familia killed two of the three beasts, but were nigh-completely wiped out by the Black Dragon. Hera and Zeus are both in the wind, their locations unknown... but their last members, the sole survivors of the dragon... they perished in the Dungeon some 7 years back. Alfia and Zald...
Migraine number five was by far the mildest one, for once not eliciting a reaction of pain from me, but it gave me more, and MUCH more specific information... the exact location of their bodies, or what little remains survived years of decay, hungry monsters and natural absorption of the dungeon's soil.
Oh, now I see... my brain has an idea it wants me to go through with... Oh this could work, yes.
If I am to keep track of my mission as simple as possible, I need to name it, and I need to catalog my subsidiary missions leading to the main objective...
"How about..." I start, sinking into thought for a few moments. "Operation Dragonrend? Yeah, that sounds good enough without being too embarrassing or edgy. And step 1 of this operation... Recover genetic samples of Alfia and Zald and..."
"... Resurrect them with Edo Tensei..."