“Damn, almost made it.” 

“What is the rush, it will be there when we get home anyways.”

“Yeah, but we could of made it if this old guy didn’t get in our way.”

“Stop it, you’re being rude again.”

“ACK!”

The old man sighed as the two kids squabbled beside him, a couple teenagers, probably a brother and sister. 

He didn’t mean to get in their way, but with his cane and bag of groceries, its not like he was very mobile. Maybe, twenty or even thirty years back he would have had been a bit faster to get out of their way, but at eighty-three, he wasn’t exactly jumping anywhere fast.

He chuckled to himself for a moment, remembering back to his past when he was a young lad, and would complain when old people didn’t get out of the way too. Of course, he didn’t complain in front of them, that was just rude. He wasn’t going to try and correct the kid though, not worth the energy he would have to expend, and he knew it would be like talking to a brick wall anyways.

They were waiting at a crosswalk for the light to turn green. Traffic was fairly heavy, else the kids might have already tried to move across without waiting, but here they were, stuck with him.

As their argument was heating up, the old man thought about his wife and kids, and grand kids now.  Heck they were probably these kids age at this point. His wife, the love of his life, had died a couple years back. Fifty-five years of marriage, and cancer took her. Honestly at their age, anything could happen so he accepted it and moved on.

His three kids were all successful, a lawyer, a doctor, and one was even slated to go up to the new space station, the ISS 360 they built to replace the ISS partially funded by that computer company that made operating systems or something. Compared to him and his wife, the kids did very well. 

His wife was a nurse, and he…well he was a jack of all trades. He had a short stint in the military driving tanks, worked on oil rigs, a construction worker, farm hand, mechanic, deckhand, landscaping, even a short stint flying crop dusters unlicensed. He had never really stuck to any one job. He didn’t need to, he won the lotto when he was twenty and did the smartest thing he ever did in his life, and hired someone to invest everything for him.  Money was never an issue for them, so he was able to provide for his family even if he was between jobs.

As he mused about his past, the light turned green for the walkers, and the two kids started to dart out. The old man just happened to be watching down the road and saw that a truck was almost on top of them and running the light. Without thinking about it, he dropped his groceries and jumped as hard as he could, throwing his back out in the process. He pushed the two kids out of the way, and the truck struck him instead. 

The last thing that went through his mind was the decal on the front of the truck.

What is a Japanese truck doing here?  

He woke up.

This surprised him, even more surprising was that he was no longer in pain. 

“The drugs they have me on must be amazing. How in the world did I not die?”

He opened his eyes but the room was dark. He rolled to the side and stood up, amazed that there was no pain. It was so dark he couldn’t even see an outline of his arms or well anything. He realized he was on the floor not a bed, and suspected he wasn’t in a hospital once he patted himself down and didn’t find any tubes or IVs attached. He also noticed he was naked.

“What in the world is going on?”

“Just a moment, we will be live in 5” a voice said in the darkness. It was a masculine voice, a deep tenor, with a bit of an southern drawl to it.

“Live? What do you mean.”

“Quiet. 3, 2, 1.”

A bright flash of light forced him to close his eyes, his arm reflexively coving his face as well. Loud music started playing like the intro to some daytime game show that famously told people to get their pets spayed or neutered.

His eyes quickly adjusted to the lights, and he dropped his arm so he could look around. He was standing on a raised platform, golden floors and walls surrounding him. Bright white seizure inducing strobe lights were flashing everywhere, giving him an instant headache. Looking behind him, he saw ten doors, all different colours. They all had red lights above them and digital rectangular boards all saying <World Randomizer>.

“What in the hell is this?” he said, and as if to answer him, another voice came over a PA.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, deities of all ages and times, welcome to the DEN, where we put reincarnators into various worlds in order for them to grow stronger and compete in the grand finale. The winners are granted immortality, the losers are returned back to the life stream, their souls hanging in shame. Without further ado, please welcome our host, Alec Triveck!”

Before he could make a joke about the name of the gameshow host, the lights stopped flashing and dimmed leaving a spotlight both on John and a man across the room. Up on a dais, a pale blue haired man stood, head tilted back like he was inspecting the ceiling and arms outstretched, taking in applause that couldn’t be heard. He wore a nicely tailored white suite with a matching white shirt and shoes. A blue tie and handkerchief finishing the ensemble. 

“Welcome kids to your new life as a DEN protagonist, you will be competing against other groups in various anime, vide- wait who are you?”

“My name is John, John Wayne. Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? And what the hell is anime?”

“Cut to commercial!”

The weird lighting subsided and the room was flooded with soft white light. The man, Alec, stepped down from the dais and approached him.  He was shorter than John, probably around 5’8″, even with his hunched back, John was still over 6′, he was 6’4″ in his prime. 

“How did you get here? Where are Tina and Damian? There were supposed to be two kids on this team, a brother and sister that had a slightly inappropriate relationship back on your planet.  That was supposed to be the whole schtick for this group! What are we going to do with you, an old man? We had plans laid out just for them!” said Alec. He didn’t stop to let John answer and kept ranting about this problem or whatever he was talking about.

John had just about enough, and he felt more energetic then he had in years, so he grabbed Alec by the shoulders and picked him up and shook him. 

“Listen here little man, I’m not sure who Tina and Damian are, but I saved two kids lives from being hit by a truck. I thought I was dead, but wound up here. Now tell me what the fuck is going on, or I’ll introduce your head to the floor and your teeth to the heel of my foot.”

Did he mention that he had a temper. It was the other reason he didn’t stick to the same jobs for too long.

The smaller man, stopped babbling and looked at John. He looked like he was about to laugh, but stopped then tilted his head and looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Put me down, let’s talk.” 

Sitting him down, John stepped back. Alec snapped his fingers. A couple chairs and a table materialized out of thin air. On the table was a bottle of alcohol he didn’t recognize and a couple tumblers. John was also covered in a white bath robe, it was fluffy and quite comfortable. The man gestured for John to sit down, and poured them both a drink. John joined him, taking his glass and had a sip. It was the most delicious drink he had ever tried before.

“Damn, this is good.”

“Glad you like it, its my own batch of Westria, aged seventy-six years in a barrel made of Yuma Wood. I am very fond of it.”

He had no idea what that was, but it sounded like it was something this man was proud of.  He had another sip and then sat the glass down.

“So, can you explain exactly what this is?”

Alec put his glass down as well. “Well, to be frank, you died. Our system then grabbed your soul and brought it here.”

John nodded but frowned “Makes no sense to me. Well the dying does, that truck was flying and well I am an old man, but what is this about a soul?”

“Your soul, your life force, your…well…your you. When you die it normally gets sent back to the life stream, to be recycled and reborn again at another point in time. Instead we, the gods of the Omni, intercepted your soul before it made that journey and brought you here for another chance at life.”

“Really? That’s a thing? You can just bring people back to life?” He thought of his wife.

“Well, not quite. Only if we act fast enough. From the moment of death, we only have a few moments to bring you here, a fraction of a second really. Otherwise your soul will have entered the life stream. So no sorry we cannot bring back your wife.”

“Damn.” John picked up his drink again and had a larger swallow. He was over her death, but if he had the chance to bring her back, he would, even if it was for a short time.

“So what is this you are doing here then?”

“We developed some entertainment for the other gods of the Omni, bringing people like yourself back to life to enter our game show. You compete for prizes, and most importantly, the chance to become a god.”

“God eh? Well I’m not exactly a believer myself, though seeing this place makes me question that.”

“Well we are not gods like that Christian God of your home world. If it helps you, think of us as just higher beings. Maybe like that Q fellow from Space Trek or whatever show that was on Earth.”

“Star Trek. Okay then so…you brought me here to do what exactly?”

“Well, you were not supposed to be here so we made a mistake, it was supposed to be those kids. They had the knowledge to be able to compete in this show. I don’t think you really qualify. Sorry.”

John pounded back the rest of his drink, taking that all in. He didn’t care that he died, at his age he was living on borrowed time anyways. To have the chance of living again though, that seemed like a good trade for showing these gods a show.

“Well I am here now, might as well do it, whatever it is. Even if I lose, I still will probably get to live longer than I would have on Earth. Besides, I’ve done a lot of weird stuff in my life, but I never got a chance to be on a game show. It should be fun.”

Alec looked at him, drank the rest of his drink as well. “Fine. Well what we do here is send you into different stories, and you either take the place of the protagonist or as a random person near them at the start of the story. You then have the creative license to change the canon of the story or follow it along to its proper course. Not that you know what that is.”

John nodded, it seemed simple enough so far.

“Okay, so I just need to go to these places and…live? Is that really entertainment for you people?” 

“It’s not just living, its surviving. In these stories, tons of stuff happens, wars, apocalypse, deaths, that is all nearly unavoidable. You are not just going to be able to settle down somewhere and hide for the next fifty years John. The point of sending reincarnators is to change things up, make it new for us to see if you can bring peace, war, or change to these worlds in some significant way. Even if you ‘fail’ the canon, you may succeed in other ways.

We are omnipotent and omnipresent you see, so we already know everything that is going to happen, but in this show, we cannot see the future you create on purpose so it provides us much needed entertainment, instead of you know, going around and blowing up universes on a whim.”

Alec topped their glasses off. John took another sip and pondered this. Did he really want to get stuck in another life? One filled with strife? He didn’t know if he could do that alone. He thought of his wife and kids, and what they might think of him doing this. 

Probably would say go for it! They were always up for adventures…like the impromptu family trip to the North Pole.

“Can I build a family again?”

Alec smiled, “You would be surprised at how many people don’t even think about that and end up with women and children in different worlds. Yes you can, and depending on a few things, you might even be able to bring them with you to other worlds. Its surprising how many of our previous contestants have ended up with a giant harem after a few years.”

 John was surprised at that. He had never looked at anyone other than his wife since they were in high school. Well there were a few times she brought a female friend from work home with her when they were younger, but THAT was her idea not his. The thought of having a gaggle of women pining over him overwhelmed his reptile brain for a moment, before shaking himself. He was old, it wasn’t like he was getting it up often without the help of a little blue pill. 

Alec laughed at him. “John you’re funny, we will fix your body up for you real quick and you can look like you did in your prime, say about thirty-five or so. It’s mainly cosmetic though so you will need to be careful. Also you have the gatcha that you can spend points on to help things along, we are generous gods.”

“Sounds like it could be a load of fun, even if I lose. What is this gatcha you’re talking about though?”

Alec paused, then remembered that he was talking to someone who was going to walk in blind to this show.

“You know what, lets just show you everything. Normally we don’t do this for the contestants but what the heck, you already have enough handicaps with not knowing any of the stories you will be entering.”

Alec snapped his fingers and a screen popped up in front of John. It showed him some basic information on him, like his name, age, and current world he was in. It also showed some stats on how strong he was and a tab to show what skills he possessed. Another tab showed his party members, another for quest. Those were both blank right now.  There was also a tab that showed him the gatcha, which had plenty of different roulette wheels to spin to win prizes like a casino.

Weapons, Armour, Skill, Clothing, Eroge, Housing, Vehicles, the list went on for the different things you could use these points he would gain on. Prices vary depending on the wheel, with some only fifty points a spin while others took ten thousand.

John was a bit overwhelmed with all of this, but decided to just roll with it. It was something crazy, and his life had been pretty mundane since he got old.  He tabbed back to his skills and saw one there already.

“What is this for?”

“DEN Return? It brings you back here whenever you want. It has a twenty-four hour cooldown between uses but if you get stuck in a situation that you need more power or are about to die, you can use it to return here. Time stops in that world and you can rest in our lounge here. After a break, you can return, or enter another door and progress that story instead. I’ll be here to answer any questions you might have when you return as well.”

“Neat. I kind of like having a safety net. So what about these worlds.”

Alec smiled and swiped his hand. On the screen in front of him were a list of a ton of names that John didn’t recognize.

“I don’t know what these are. Naruto? High School DxD? Oh Batman, I know that one. I thought you said these were stories, but isn’t that just a comic or movie?”

“It’s still a story, many of these are anime…err…cartoon worlds brought to life, or videos games and novels.”

“Ahh, well, crap do I need to choose them or-“

“No those doors behind you will randomly choose worlds for you. You don’t get to see what is in the door until after you have entered. Once you do, some information will be downloaded to your brain to give you your backstory to that world. Don’t worry about language barriers, you will understand everyone and they will understand you as well.”

John spun his drink around in his glass for a moment, thinking things over. He didn’t have a clue about how this was going to turn out but screw it, he was going to enjoy this new chance at life.

“Very well Alec, make me young again.”

“Welcome back from our commercial break, I am glad to present to you our newest reincarnator here at DEN, John Wayne!”

A spotlight shined down on John, revealing his new body. Like he was when he was younger, a lean 6’4″, kind of muscular though he had some fat on his gut, a sharp angular face and a full head of hair. He opted to keep his hair the same colour, grey, almost silver looking, and matched it with steel blue eyes. The transformation team had finished their work quickly, warned him again that it was mostly cosmetic and they apologized for not having time to modify other body parts for him.  They disappeared as fast as they appeared, not giving him much chance to say anything to them.

He waved to the non-existent camera, not quite sure where he was supposed to look, so he chose Alec as his target.

“Glad to be here. Beats going for a swim. Had a sinking feeling it would be my last time.”

Alec did a true Picard facepalm at the horrible dad joke then continued with his introduction.

“John is a special contestant this time around, with no prior knowledge to the vast majority of the available worlds he will be going to, so please cheer him on and send in plenty of donations for his points!”

“Wait donations for points? Is this the Hunger Games?”

Alec ignored the question “Please John, pick a door and enter. Good luck on your journey!”

With that, Alec disappeared and all the lights around the room shut off other then the spot lights around each door. They were all different colours, Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold, Silver, Brown, Orange, Pink, White and Black. Nothing else gave a clue to what destination they might lead to.

“Well…I like Green, lets try there first.”

John entered the door, and disappeared.

The text box above the door flashed and read <High School of the Dead>

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep