World System Among Gods

Chapter 1: "Back To Life"

"Report commander, unit five has been successfully destroyed. I'm heading there to see if there are any survivors," Ares immediately ran to worry about the condition of the camp where his fellow soldiers were standing guard.

"You guys hang in there. This is beyond belief," muttered Ares, who soon reached the camp.

The situation was quite severe. Blood was splattered everywhere, and there were even some organs that had simply fallen off.

Ares immediately approached one of his colleagues, who seemed to be still moving. "Hey, hang in there. I told the commander I'll try to save the people who can still be helped here."

A soldier looked with blurred vision, then slowly got clearer. "Ares? Are you Ares?"

The man said while spewing blood from his mouth.

"Yes, mate. It's me, Ares. Hang in there. I'll try to help you," Ares said, then immediately helped his friend, who was crushed by the rubble.

"Fool. You shouldn't have come here. We all just realised..." the man was sweating, and blood flowed from his mouth. Occasionally, the soldier coughed, so his sentences were unclear.

"W-what do you mean by that?" Ares replied in confusion.

"We're all just being used as scapegoats. It is all a trap. The commander was clear about our defeat, and before the attack, that man said our sacrifice was necessary for future success," the man explained stammeringly.

Ares tried to understand the situation and the events at hand. The man began to feel the irregularity of the situation and conditions.

"If this is all just a supposed form of sacrifice, then..." Ares muttered as he realised that he was also falling into a trap.

But it was too late, as someone in the distance was already aiming a red laser at Ares.

"Checkmate!"

A missile hurtled towards the crumbling base camp. In just a split second, the building was destroyed.

"Argh!" Ares screamed as the building's metal pierced through his chest.

"Is this the end of me?" the man muttered as his vision began to blur.

Although Ares had taken steps to leave the place, he was too late. Some of the rubble was now also tearing Ares' body apart.

"Oh Lord. H-heaven, please g-give me ano-ther c-chance!" It was the last sentence Ares uttered before he lost consciousness.

[System synchronised. User detected. Vital condition weakened. Two realities will merge into one.]

There was a sudden glitch in the situation. Ares felt like his body was passing into a dimension. Scientifically, Ares seemed to be fused into a part of the language programme of artificial intelligence.

"I didn't expect it to be this painful," muttered a young man who woke up downstream.

The roaring sound of the waterfall could even be heard clearly there. The clear-coloured water seemed to become murky around the man lying there.

The man's trance that had been blurry was now clearer. The man then held his head, which still felt dizzy.

"Blood! Am I bleeding?"

As the man's vision began to clear, he could see that there was blood dripping from his forehead, and his leg appeared to be torn from being dislocated.

The man turned his face upwards and saw a steep cliff not far by the waterfall.

"Could I have fallen from up there?"

As the man's mind began to compartmentalise, he noticed something strange. "Why am I here? Wasn't I in a base camp building earlier? My body is still intact. Didn't the missile fire destroy this place and tear off some of my limbs? In fact, I'm pretty sure there was a long metal rod that went through my chest. So what exactly happened? Why did I get injured as if I fell off a cliff?"

Ares tried to feel his shoulders, which had scratches from the steep cliff, and there was even a cut on his left leg. All of the wounds were fresh and obviously quite severe, with even more blood seeping out of them.

"Arghhh!" Ares cried out again as pain attacked his head. This time, the pain was much more severe.

After that, a strange memory seemed to enter Ares' mind. Unable to bear the pain in his head, Ares finally fell unconscious.

On the near edge of a steep cliff and a small clear waterfall within the wilderness, a seventeen-year-old youth blinked his eyes several times, having woken up from his stupor.

"This memory is really real. Looking at what's around me, it seems like I've just experienced something beyond reason and logic. It feels as if I felt two deaths become one, and then I was born in this place." Ares sounded so soft, indicating that he was still so weak.

"Strangely, this is not my body. I actually changed places with someone. The funny thing is that this man's name and age are the same as mine."

Ares, who was still in disbelief, immediately checked his physical condition. The man was really surprised that the body actually had identical similarities with his body.

Ares was a soldier trying to save his friend on the battlefield, who had to die because of his commander's unknown covert plan. But reality seemed to change; Ares, who was supposed to leave the world and go to the realm of the spirits, was stranded in another world and merged with the soul of a young man with a name and physique identical to his.

"I am now Ares Shaddai. I am a young prince of the Empire of the Strongest."

Ares Shaddai was a prince who was loved and supported by the people. However, the imperial family did not like that and had their own political agenda. Although the people wanted Ares to ascend to the throne, it was not by the rules of the empire.

The public's support gave Ares made the imperial court consider the man a potential threat to the crown. Ares was a prince with no fighting skills and no military experience, so if the people began to stage coups and demand that Ares rise to power, the elders of the empire feared that the reign would end and not continue.

"Ares, I have only known you through the memories you left behind, but I already feel a closeness as if we were twin brothers. Now, you rest easy in the beyond, let me avenge your disappointment and prove to them that you are no weakling," Ares responded with determination.

The man felt that betrayal was betrayal, no matter where it came from. Sacrificing a life to achieve a goal easily was something Ares hated right now.

"Dude, it's a shame that your body is really weak," Ares muttered as he tried to stand up, but his body was so limp that he had no strength.

"If I had my real body, this kind of injury wouldn't hold me back," Ares said after getting up and standing straight.

"This world is much different from mine. I just found out that magical powers in this world are very common. By using a little bit of inner energy science, I can judge that Ares is a white magical ability element. It seems like this is the element of light," Ares said.

From the remaining memories, Ares could tell that the white magical ability with light element was just a type of healing technique. The man now understood the reason why his body felt so weak.

"Ares is also not very good at physical arts. It looks like that guy rarely works out. This situation really makes me feel unlucky."

While muttering, Ares accidentally noticed a strange sight in his field of vision. There was a set menu that looked like a computer desktop. The man was then puzzled.

"Wait a second! Don't tell me this is similar to the novel I was reading!"

Without waiting any longer, Ares pressed the strange panel in front of him. Suddenly, the transparent desktop-like menu displayed some text.

"Oh, shit!"