"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm and take your seats! Please move away from the passageway on the right! Gentlemen, let's remain calm! Allow our medical teams to enter the arena! Hey, you there!"
The announcer, responsible for hosting the final matches of the World Mixed Martial Arts Championship, was still reeling from the events that had just unfolded, but with no other option, he was shouting at the top of his lungs with the microphone in hand to calm the crowd.
No one expected such a scandal to occur in the final match of the world championship. Tomorrow's newspapers would likely read, "Harly McGraner forced to bid farewell to his career one step away from the pinnacle due to his opponent's rule violation."
Perhaps the blame would fall on the referee, but even he couldn't have predicted such an incident in the ring. After all, what kind of fighter would strike his opponent's head from behind with full force after the opponent had already lifted the trophy?
The match was already over, and the winner had been announced. This had now escalated into an attempted murder.
The announcer watched as the crowd tried to attack the person who had climbed into the ring and put Harly in this state, while security forces intervened.
Half of the 400,000 people who came to watch the final match in China's capital were angry about what happened to their favorite fighter, while those who came to watch the fighter who broke the rules sat quietly and watched the brawl escalate.
Harly McGraner, the central figure in the incident, had already died, contrary to the medical staff's attempts to determine the cause of his condition. His heart was still beating, and his lungs were still drawing oxygen, but the blow he had received had completely shut down his brain. It was likely that within a few minutes, all bodily functions would cease, and his heart would stop beating.
At that very moment, Harly learned the answer to one of the world's greatest mysteries: Souls are real!
His soul looked exactly like his body, but it moved independently of it.
As he slowly regained his ability to think, his soul suddenly began to be pulled toward the sky. It was as if someone had caught him by the chest with a fishing rod and was pulling him out of the water.
At an incredible speed, his soul pierced through the clouds and entered space. The moment his soul left the Earth's orbit, he felt like a fish emerging from the water; the force binding his soul to the Earth was no longer there.
And with the loss of resistance, the already incredible pulling speed reached an even more incredible speed. The stars would flash briefly, pass by, and then vanish into the darkness again. No one knew who or what was pulling it, but the idea of returning to the world had long since been erased from its mind.
Fortunately, it didn't take long to find out the answer.
Perhaps because the speed of withdrawal slowed down, an egg-like, gigantic technological structure and thousands of small technological structures floating around it slowly entered the field of vision. What would a human think while being pulled into one of the channels opening to outer space from the structure at the center of the giant technological space station that gave off a science fiction vibe? Harly was thinking the same thing at that moment.
"That shit is f*cking awesome!"
Pure admiration.
A magnificent space station built by an unknown race in an unknown amount of time.
After Harly's spirit was pulled into the spaceship, he found himself in the middle of a white room. After being sprayed with an unknown white vapor, similar to the isolation chambers one passes through when entering an isolated area, one of the room's walls opened like a door.
Harly and the young girl standing in front of the door, wearing glasses and a lab coat, stared at each other for a moment before Harly spoke first.
"Essalamün aleyküm, my name is Muhammad Ali."
After staring blankly into Harly's eyes for a few seconds, Harly quickly rephrased his sentence.
"Alright, I admit it; I lied, I'm not Muslim. My name is Emanuel..." Harly continued hesitantly when he received no response from the girl. "... And I'm a Hindu..."
There was silence for a moment longer.
"Wow, talking to someone as quiet as you and looking into your innocent eyes reminded me of the first time I visited Buddha."
Harly was about to continue speaking when the girl furrowed her brows and pulled a semi-transparent earpiece from her ear, silencing him. "You're not here to judge, so please shut up,
I can't hear you."
"Huh! I'm sweating my ass off."
"Really?"
"Okay, I'll shut up."
Harly waited a little longer, then began to get impatient, but he didn't say anything. Fortunately, at that moment, the girl took off her earbuds and began to explain to him what was going on here, and it seemed that she already knew enough about Harly's life.
...
"In short, we'll send you to one of these seeds, and while you're there harvesting souls, you'll also fix any anomalies that may arise during your mission."
Harly quickened his pace, a huge question mark on his face, and stepped in front of the girl to stop her.
"In short? There's no 'in short' here because I didn't understand a single thing you said. You're just showing off your technical jargon."
"Step aside."
Harly stepped aside without hesitation when he heard the alien girl's voice because it wasn't very realistic that his martial arts knowledge would be useful in this damn cyberpunk-style place.
Just then, two people appeared in the corridor where Harly and the girl were walking. The girl coming from the opposite direction gave Harly a familiar feeling, and the combination of her and the man walking beside her, wearing an apron and glasses, was exactly like Harly and the girl in the apron.
Harly immediately realized that he wasn't the only one brought here. Whatever was happening here wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last.
At that moment, the girl quickened her pace and began to explain to Harly what was going to happen. "We don't have much time, so don't ask questions. First, you need to know that this is a world created by us, based on an anime called Naruto that you watched as a child. Your job is to go there and harvest the souls of the dead and send them to us. If you do your job properly and perform the best among the 100 test subjects sent to the world, this will become your official job. You'll gain the right to live forever and become an official crew member of this ship."
Harly wanted to ask what would happen if he failed, but he already had an answer in mind.
"And don't worry, I've designed a system especially for you. This way, you can gain enough strength to stand on that seed, and at the same time, you can get the answers to your other questions from the system."
When Harly saw that the girl had stopped talking, he was about to say that he didn't remember most of the anime he had watched as a child, but the girl turned to him and the floor beneath Harly's feet rose slightly, transforming into a glass capsule that enveloped him.
"Additionally, from now on, your name is no longer Harly, but Eren. Once you arrive there, don't leave the place you're in and try to master the novice rewards. This is the last advantage I will give you. Due to the time difference, our next meeting will be after you complete your mission. See you later... And don't forget, you are Eren. Be Eren. Eren..."
Immediately afterward, before Harly, now known as Eren, could say anything, a light flashed inside the capsule, and when he opened his eyes again, he was in a forest filled with giant trees.