AFTER DEATH I LIVE AGAIN - Season 2 Episode 27

The mangly blue-purple furred overgrown beast snarled, then paced forwards towards Devon again, each step crushing swaths of grass and overturning the dirt. How could a mere human mock a beast of his stature?

Your confidence knows no bounds, does it mortal?

Devon laughed, the young man in the earl’s leather armor running his hand through his messy dark brown hair that could pass for black. “It really doesn’t. I’m confident because I’m not afraid of you. Why should I be afraid? Just because you’re much bigger than me? You think I give a fuck how big you are?”

“What do you think you’re gonna do, huh?” Devon shouted down the road at the behemoth. “You’re gonna kill me?” He smirked, a wild frenzied look in his eye. “Fat chance of that.” Devon gestured with his arms and legs, as if he was test piloting an avatar or something. “This body, this container… whatever, man. I’ve been dead inside for years. Not just since I reincarnated. So go ahead and try to kill me.”

The behemoth snarled again.

You have offended a warbeast of the thirteen clans. This is a transgression that will not be overlooked! The thirteenth army will rip you asunder! May you never rest even in the underworld!

Devon raised his left hand in a fist, then casually flipped it upside down and raised his middle finger. “You can’t kill something that’s already dead, dipshit. So fuck you and your master.”

The young man’s mind flashed to those days when he slaved away to earn a living, working part time at the local deli in the afternoon and then another part time job as a car mechanic’s assistant to pay for his university. He always stunk of car oil by the end of the day, after he finished working at the car mechanic.

Devon reminisced at how his manager at the local deli shop yelled at him incessantly. The man was an alcoholic who beat his wife, and he took out his frustrations on his workers. But part time jobs with that kind of pay were hard to come by back then, so he really couldn’t afford to piss him off.

Times were different now, though. He didn’t need to put up with anyone’s shit anymore, regardless of if they were a colossus sized behemoth or a demon clan lord.

“I will not answer to any master, ever again,” Devon said simply. He really meant it, from the bottom of his heart. He who had become death himself would be a slave no more to any master, whether they be from this world or the next.

Devon didn’t notice it, but his skin produced a faint golden glow when he uttered his last sentence.

But the behemoth noticed it.

And the behemoth felt a shiver down his spine that caused a thin film of cold sweat to envelop his body, and for his breath to turn anxious.

The behemoth closed the lids of his eyes, wetting them before reopening them, his brain rejecting the possibility of what he just saw.

How could a mere mortal…?

But that glow, it was unmistakable…

The behemoth reopened his eyes and observed Devon again, the faint glow that previously surrounded his body fading away like a firefly’s final glow.

As an ancient being, the behemoth had knowledge of the netherworlds that scholars in this world could only dream of obtaining. And it was because of his particular knowledge set that he was able to piece together what had just happened there, for the briefest of moments.

That boy standing all the way over there just showed signs of godhood.

But that was impossible. By all rights, a mortal vessel could never contain the soul of a god without breaking into a burst of divine light and disintegrating into nothing. When the gods occupied a mortal body, the typical body could last minutes on average, if not seconds. Lasting for several hours while holstering the soul of a god was a miraculous feat in and of itself.

So how could this boy show the tell-tale signs of godliness without screaming for dear death or showing any signs of deterioration?

It was impossible.

Unless…

Unheard of.

Absolutely unheard of.

The behemoth shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thought which had implications so bone-chilling that he refused to entertain the thought. But the rational part of his mind could not get rid of the nagging suspicion.

It was said that the gods were once mortals themselves during the formation of the realms. When a mortal possessed great power, and developed a godly ego, they were said to have begun their ascent to godhood.

But that was just a creation myth. No one was alive to have seen the origins, and no new gods were ever introduced thereafter. Poseidon, Dionysus, Hrothgar, Vishnu… they were there since the beginning of time.

The behemoth heard the creation myth sung as a poem from his own mother, so many millennia ago when he was just a babe.

He still remembered that poem from the deepest recesses of his memory.

He always dismissed it as a fabrication, a fanciful story to be told to the young to allow them to understand the world in a way that made more sense to them.

But what if the poem was true?