The Ballad of Crystl

1: Strange Rumors

"How many souls have you gathered, Crystl?" a slightly scarred reaper asked the slim silver-haired reaper, me, eating noodles. "I probably got about seven hundred today."

"Who cares?" I, the silver-haired reaper replied uninterested, "it's not like we get anything from collecting and delivering souls, Khendal."

"That's true but," Khendal tried to keep the conversation up, "it's our job... aside from fighting off the cannibals at Death Verse."

"The only thing I am interested at is the physical training I receive from Master Condy and Master Precy." I added chili oil in my noodles, "I rather do that than delivering souls for that Supreme Being without compensation."

"At least one of the major death gods here is getting all the luxury in the world," Khendal pointed at Fugn who was eating with them.

Fugn is the so-called god of space and time. He can slow time to the point of it almost stopping and he can open up portals to create shortcuts from very long ways. He truly is one of the major death gods. Although, he looked like a god in his forty's, with sly narrow eyes and pale white skin accompanied by a curly gray hair, this guy is a veteran.

"It's always tough to be a major death god," he grinned at us, "but is tougher to have three little piglets to take good care of."

"Why do you always call your children piglets?" I disappointingly asked.

Fugn grinned, "You'll understand when you become a father like me."

"Well, not in a million years," I rolled eyes showing lack of interest, "or not in while..."

"Not in a while," Fugn chuckled. "That's making progress..."

"Have you heard about rumors spreading throughout the kingdom?" Khendal abruptly joined back in the conversation. "You know, about the expedition towards the center of our universe?"

"I haven't," I raised my hand to order another bowl of noodles. "If there'd be an expedition, wouldn't it be better if the Supreme Being did it? Honestly, I think Lord Voix is doing some monkey business behind our backs."

"Lord Voix is a busy god," Fugn ordered another bowl for himself too. "Of course, he would be delegating his tasks to us his underlings. If it were to happen, then I'd like to know more about it."

"Is this your first time hearing this, Sir Fugn?" Khendal confusedly asked. "I thought you majors would be the first to know something about this..."

"Maybe I was out for a leak when they discussed about this topic..." he answered jokingly. "Ah well, it's true but they haven't made it public and yet I don't understand how something discussed in secret immediately spread out like wildfire."

"Either way," I started putting some condiments to my bowl of noodles, "I just don't give a care about it. I'd rather go reaping rather than going through the effort of doing some useless expedition of whatsoever..."

"Always the antagonistic type," Fugn poured chili oil to his own bowl. "I just don't seem to care either..."

"Well, I guess the both of you are right." Khendal ordered another bowl, "Especially with the compensation and recognition we really need to have..."

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In a mortal world, a universe elsewhere, I decided to go do some soul reaping with my colleagues from the Blood Tool. Khendal and Fugn were also with me during the reaping. Collecting souls for us are easy work since there were a lot of us. We collect souls using small balls we call 'cherries' and then we categorize them for reincarnation or damnation.

"There's a multiple vehicular accident and there's mass casualty," Fugn surveyed the area. "There are no reapers yet, are we going to get that?"

I took a look and made a huge sigh, "Alright, let's go..."

Doing the process of soul reaping is like luring the souls to come to you or just catch them. We do our reaping in a way that we lure them to come to us instead of catching them. Some souls don't follow through though depending on what their circumstances are anyways. We let go of those who couldn't accept the fact they died or those who have unfinished business. Just in case, if their so-called business is something we can't permit, we will capture them.

The easiest way to lure a soul is the use of light. Most of those who died would readily accept going to the light while some others would prefer to stay behind. Once we were finished gathering those who were lured by the light, the next method was pretending to be another soul to mislead the others towards the reapers. The success rate depended on how charismatic one can be but if it fails, we use the final method... capture.

The process of capture will be, at best, done with respect towards the dead.

"My condolences to all of you," I greeted three souls. "I am the grim reaper and I am here to collect your souls."

There are three kinds of soul. The first kinds are those who readily accept their fate despite not walking towards the light or being misled by disguised reapers.

"I see," the first soul replied. "If you are the reaper then I am truly dead."

"If you would please come with me..."

The second kinds are those who deny the fact that they are dead and are still confused. The best thing to do is to present them the facts by showing them their dead bodies or the circumstances they were in.

"No," the second soul shook its head, "not like this. It's impossible..."

"There was a large scale accident a few moments ago and you were one of the casualties," I walked towards its dead body. "This is here is the proof that you are no longer alive."

"I remember..." the soul started to have flashbacks. "This can't be happening..."

"It already happened and there is nothing you can do about it but accept it." I approached the soul without causing it fear me, "I'll give you time to think thoroughly until you decide to call for me."

Finally, the last soul kinds are those who refuse to accept no matter what and would not go down without a fight. These souls have some legit unfinished business that they have to accomplish whether it is for good means or evil means. We just have to delay their collection date.

"I can't go yet," the soul backs off. "I can't leave my family behind... I have to watch them over. I can't come with you just yet."

"I see," I had no choice but to let it go. "When you fulfill that mission, I will collect you."

"Thank you Mr. Grim Reaper..."

Overall, most of the souls we collected would be sorted for reincarnation due to the nature of their deaths.

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The next day, Master Condy approached me to bring him special news.

"It seems that the rumors about the upcoming expedition are true," he showed me a list. "It's compulsory that we two and the Blood Tool are part of the expedition, ain't it exciting?"

"Since, when did going to an expedition exciting?" I sighed, "I'd rather go reaping..."

"You really do show lack of enthusiasm, don't you?" he patted my head, "Even when you already memorized almost all weapon related disciplines I taught you..."

"Well, you were just a great teacher, that's all..."

"Stop with the flattery," he gave a big smile feeling proud and all. "I'm going to finally teach you the last thing you'll need to learn."

"I named this fighting style as the Weaponized Body Fighting Style," he made a stiff poise hardening every bit of his muscles. "You will be almost invincible even without any weapons."

"I think I'm all down to it," I cracked my fists, but then I felt some foreshadowing coming along the way. "Do you really think this'll be useful in the expedition?"

"We'll never know," Master Condy shrugged off. "You know, the way the criminals evolved into cannibals was not a part of the Supreme Beings' original creation. They just evolved as they commit more acts of soul-eating cannibalism. I heard that cannibals who eat more become ghouls and then they become abominations and so on. If in case they are the reason for this expedition then we'll need to train ourselves, okay..."

"The royal highness and one the four God Killers, Lord Cyrrus Caine is coming with us."

"That makes the expedition much safer than ever, plus I the weapon master will be coming along with his weapon-manifesting apprentice," he boasted, "What could go wrong?"

I felt reassured, but deep within, I was still uncertain. Back then, I should've followed my gut feeling. I really should've looked more about the sudden plan of having an expedition. I should've questioned about why now and why not before when the problem about these cannibals wasn't as worse as the problem now? It's inevitable as to why things like this unfolded. How did it end up like this?