Slowly, I looked back up at YHWH, who was still muttering under his breath.
"It's actually astonishing how fucking sketchy this seems," I admitted to the deity.
He looked back at me, his eyes filled with total, unbridled exasperation.
RIGHT!?
THIS FUCKING THING HAS CREATED SO MANY TINY GENOCIDAL, POWER-HUNGRY, RAPIST, IMMATURE ASSHOLES WHO KEEP HOPPING FROM DIMENSION TO DIMENSION, DESTROYING EVERYTHING IN THEIR PATH. IT IS A MIRACLE WE HAVEN'T FLOODED THE ENTIRE EARTH AGAIN JUST TO STOP THIS INFLUX OF SHIT FROM ARRIVING HERE.
I winced.
"Really? Is it that bad?"
YHWH gritted his teeth, the sound like tectonic plates grinding together.
THAT BAD.
EVERY MISERABLE FUCK WHO GOES THROUGH THIS THING EITHER BECOMES THE MOST DESPICABLE BEING POSSIBLE, A DEBAUCHERY-OBSESSED ASSHOLE WITH NOTHING BUT MATING ON THEIR MINDS OR THEY SIMPLY DIE HORRIBLY BY BEING COMPLETE IDIOTS.
For the first time, YHWH chuckled. It wasn't a nice sound.
THOSE ARE THE BEST ONES.
"Oh."
I glanced back down at the magazine.
Well, this wasn't the Hell I was expecting, and it certainly wasn't the Purgatory the angel had promised me.
Sure, the risk of death was apparently very real, and there was a high probability I'd turn into a tiny little edgelord once I got a taste of real power.
However…
I wasn't a good person. I hadn't been a terrible one, my violations of human rights leaned more toward the side of survival-based murder and general shittiness rather than the truly unforgivable stuff, but still. I had always been willing to do bad shit to survive.
So, if you presented me, of all people, with the possibility of gaining enough power to destroy worlds? Oh boy. Oh, Lord Almighty. That was a tempting offer.
I could already see it: more money than I could spend in three lifetimes. Endless feasts of the most delicious food in the multiverse. Incinerating any asshole who tried to stop me with laser beams from my eyes. A luxurious mansion with a giant pool where I could idle away the rest of my days…
It was too easy to picture myself: sunglasses on, a piña colada in one hand, a gorgeous redheaded model in the other, and servants cooling me off with those weird giant leaves I saw in a movie once.
Yes… YES! THE PERFECT LIFE WAS SIMPLY WAITING FOR ME! RIPE FOR THE TAKING! AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF STUPID POVERTY, I HAD IT! RIGHT HERE!
As the saying goes: if life gives you lemons, make some fucking lemonade.
And this was one big-ass lemon tree.
Excited beyond belief, I turned the page to select the world I would be arriving in.
I would probably effortlessly conquer it in about a month, and perhaps, if I felt merciful, I would let it exist as a sort of… amusement park. Yes. An amusement park, all for me.
My enthusiasm withered the moment I actually looked at the options.
"What… What the hell is a RWBY?"
It was a page full of nonsense. Skyrim, said one, with a picture of some snowy mountain.
My Hero Academia, said another, accompanied by a picture of a… school? Huh? Another simply said HighSchool DxD, as if that meant anything, with yet another picture of a school, though this one looked weirdly luxurious.
Confused, I looked up at YHWH.
"Uh, what are these words I'm seeing here?" I asked, a tiny bit nervous.
YHWH glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
POPULAR MEDIA FROM EARTH.
ESPECIALLY POPULAR WITHIN YOUR PARTICULAR AGE GROUP, MIGHT I ADD.
"But… I don't know any of these things."
God shrugged.
DON'T CARE.
Shit. I should have known that living on the streets and having little to no contact with whatever normal people my age did was going to bite me in the ass eventually.
S-Still! There were more names! Surely, I must recognize something from this stupidly long list!
I kept reading. Diablo, Nasuverse, Fallout, Worm, uh, Highschool of the Dead? Just what the hell were these things!?
After some more hopeless scanning, I finally stumbled upon something I recognized.
Dragon Ball.
Yes! I knew that! Who in their right mind didn't know Dragon Ball? Goku, Vegeta, Krillin, and whoever the fuck else, everyone knew them! Take that, magazine. You couldn't fool me for long!
My misplaced sense of victory against the inanimate object didn't last long, however, as I remembered one very important detail.
Goku is there.
Oh, hell no. I was not fucking with that.
Back to perusing the endless names.
Touhou, Bleach, Attack on Titan, Berserk, Shin Megami Tensei (what the fuck does that mean?), Neon Genesis Evangelion(I knew that one! I also knew it ended horribly!), One Piece, Naruto (Also knew that one!), Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Pokémon (That one too!), Kuroinu, Legend of Zelda, Marvel, DC, and…
…and that was it.
…
"Oi, God. I don't know any of these places. If I go to any of these, I'll get slaughtered."
Again, he simply shrugged.
YOU KNOW, THIS WHOLE THING IS RIGGED TO GIVE YOU THE ADVANTAGE BY KNOWING WHAT HAPPENS IN SAID WORLD.
FIRST TIME I'VE EVER SEEN THIS SAD, SAD SHOW HAPPEN BEFORE MY EYES.
"Come on! You can't expect everyone who came before me to know all of these pieces of media, right?"
IT'S NOT ALWAYS THE SAME LIST. IT ADAPTS DEPENDING ON THE GENERATION WE'VE TAKEN THE SOUL FROM.
BESIDES, EVERYONE AT LEAST KNOWS ONE OF THOSE WORLDS WELL ENOUGH TO GET BY FOR A WHILE.
AGAIN, THIS IS REALLY SAD.
"Right. So, uh, if I don't know any of these, does it matter which one I choose?"
Sure, I recognized a few names, but my knowledge of those places was so lackluster it really wouldn't matter in the long run.
YHWH didn't even bother shrugging this time.
SOME ARE MORE DEADLY THAN OTHERS.
I'M NOT TELLING YOU WHICH IS WHICH.
…Fuck it.
Deciding that I just didn't care anymore, I simply closed my eyes, moved my finger around for a bit, and pressed it down on the page.
I opened my eyes to see what I had picked.
Neon Genesis Evange—
Oh, look at that. It seems I got it slightly wrong. Silly, clumsy me. My finger slid rapidly to the side. I was, in fact, looking to go to, uh… HighSchool DxD?
Yeah… yeah, HighSchool DxD. That was what I chose. Very confidently, in fact.
Apparently, I thought about it hard enough to actually make the name I chose glow.
YHWH chuckled to himself.
DUMB FUCK.