Reborn in Another World: I Became a God

The edge of the Grey–Mist Woods lay like a wound torn by invisible claws—bare red clay sharply bordered with dark green foliage. The morning mist here held a sickly gray–blue hue, clinging to tree trunks like congealed pus.

Raine followed the old hunter, each boot sinking into the water–logged humus with a disturbing squelch. The deeper they trekked, the more grotesque the trees became—straight–growing spruces twisted into hunchbacks, their bark sprouting knobbly purple fungi that burst noxious spores at the slightest touch.

Even more chilling was the mist, which sometimes solidified into translucent veils that revealed faint humanoid shadows drifting within.

"This very mist nearly consumed you," the hunter said, poking aside a cluster of glowing blueberries. When one popped, its juice scorched the moss like acid, leaving a coin–sized black hole.

"That logger who vanished last month… three days later they found him three miles into the swamp," he whispered, throat bobbing. "His body had swelled so badly even his mother didn't recognize him."

Raine bent to pick up a pale stone—but the texture on his fingertips told him it was a vertebra. Tiny, neat teeth marks scored its surface—not wolf wedges, not bear molars, but precise geometric carvings, like ritual decoration. As he absently rubbed the bone, the green lines on his wrist heated painfully, a foreign memory crashed into his mind:

A rag–clad humanoid gathering around a black–stone altar, webbed fingers wielding serrated obsidian blades to carve a deer corpse. Its blood dripped into the altar's groove, shaping a glowing rune…

BANG!

A sudden musket shot sent a murder of crows screeching skyward, their black wings blotting out light above.

The hunter's face paled, his grizzled beard trembling. "That's the ranger's signal gun… something's wrong!"

They raced toward the sound and found a ranger fiercely smashing a writhing burlap sack with his flint–lock butt.

The sack let out an eerie baby–like wail, at its torn opening, a clawed limb covered in cyan–gray scales slithered out. Flecks of fresh human bone lay scattered nearby—bone crevices still clinging to sinew—and a copper ring glinted on a detached finger.

"Caught another ghoul," the ranger grinned, his missing tooth swiveling in the light, his leather armor was crusted with gore and gunpowder, exuding a foul stench of decay.

"These swamp abominations grow bolder, just last night one breached the sheep pen west of town..."

The burlap sack bulged violently, the hunter barely had time to shout a warning before it exploded in green–yellow spores.

The ranger clutched his throat and collapsed. His exposed flesh rotted in visible swathes, like wax effigy burned by unseen flames.

An irrational instinct surged in Raine, he rushed forward and pressed his palm against the ranger's heaving chest. The green lines on his skin flared brilliantly, he could now see the poison's path through organs, sense the silent wails of dying cells.

As his awareness traced the toxin's source, his vision abruptly expanded—

Deep in the Marsh of Rotten Bones, a dozen hunchbacked figures danced around an eerie green flame. Their webbed claws cradled skull cups, from which a yellow spore mixture bubbled. Beyond them, on an altar pooled from hundreds of skeletons, floated a half–rotted green crystal, its surface crawling with black vein–like patterns…

"Cough!" The ranger's sudden hacking stole Raine back. His taste was iron and rust; a trickle of blood seeped from his nose. The ranger's rotting flesh peeled away like bark, revealing tender pink muscle beneath.

On the walk back to town, the three moved in solemn silence, like a funeral procession. The hunter carried the ghoul's severed head on his pitchfork—a head with six compound eyes set among cyan scales and spiral rows of teeth. Only at the ruined town border marker did the hunter break his silence: "What are you, exactly?"

A gust of night wind blew Raine's tattered cloak aside, revealing his crystal heart glowing just below his collarbone. It beat at a brisk sixty–three beats per minute—three beats faster than at dawn.

A screech from a night owl echoed above, as though mocking an unanswerable question.

"A patient," Raine whispered, lightly tracing another new green line on his wrist, "Just like you."

That night, everyone in Black Swamp Town with knowledge of medicine had the same dream:

Under a massive crystalline–veined tree, a silver–haired youth—his hair threaded with jade—grounded herbs in a mortar. Every drop of potion that touched the soil sprouted emerald vines and silver buds. But when they approached him, the youth turned—younger, with one warm amber eye, the other composed of shifting green runes that constantly formed shapes of illness.

At dawn, Raine awoke to furious pounding at his door.

He opened it to find a small crowd kneeling in the mud, clutching mold–eaten tomes. Each cover bore the same emblem—an entd serpent staff and glowing vines, identical to the marks on Raine's wrist.

At their head was old Martha, her gnarled fingers holding a gleaming shard of green crystal that flickered ominously in the morning light.