July 18 of 2016, was the day my mind exploded in a thousand and one different ways.

  A series of memories flooded into my mind, into the deepest part of my brain, and made me finally remember who I was, who I had always been, and who I would become.

  For anyone in the small residential building at 871 220th St and Bronxwood Ave in New York, it was an early morning like any other. But among so many dreams, mine was the only one that could become real.

  Eighteen years ago, I signed a contract I shouldn't have signed with a complete stranger. A beginner's mistake in the afterlife.

  At the beginning of this long dream, disconnected fshes were all I could see as I tried to remember my death in my old life. However, these fshes started to grow clearer as I continued down a long corridor. In this way, I began to remember.

  I shot myself in the chest to protect the woman I loved from a... thief? It was too dark. Besides, what was her name again? Well, those were details I wasn't able to remember. However, I could remember a lot about my life.

  I was a young man who had just graduated from the Faculty of Information Technology. I was excited about the new phase of my life, because I had neglected everything during my teenage years. When I say neglected, it was because I spent many years pying video games and online games. I was always among the best pyers on the Asian Server. That meant I was from some country in Asia, but I couldn't remember which one.

  Well, I guess the brain really has a limit to the amount of information it can store. Which is curious, because although I couldn't remember crucial details about my personal life, I remembered everything I'd consumed in my life: every song, every game, every novel, every manga…

  In fact, it was because I was addicted to all this that I ended up in this situation.

  "What situation?" you might be wondering.

  Well, I'll expin. When I bcked out with my girlfriend crying on my chest, I woke up in a strange world. The walls seemed to be made of pure darkness, but fortunately, there was a table in front of me, not far from the chair opposite it.

  Above me was a white light that I couldn't figure out where it came from.

  It looked like the setting of an interrogation room.

  *Yeewk*

  A door creaked open, and I looked back over my left shoulder to see a man in a white suit. He was rge and had bulky arms, but I wouldn't say that these simple, superficial features made him stand out. The lion's head was striking.

  A voluminous lion's mane with bck hair so shiny that it made me want to ask about the brand of shampoo, even though I was in this situation.

  This mysterious being with the lion's head sat down in the empty chair, leaned an arm on the metal table, and smiled at me.

  "I have a proposition for you," he said pinly.

  "Where am I?" I asked. I needed to ask.

  "Sigh..." He took a deep breath and touched the air next to him, which made a holographic window appear.

  "Here in your file it says that you have the Avid Reader lv10 skill. Why are you asking me a question whose answer is so obvious to you?"

  "I just want to confirm."

  "Right. If you want me to tell you so badly, I'll gdly tell you... You're in the Afterlife!" he excimed, spreading his arms wide with a broad smile on his face. Then the smile disappeared. "Are you happy now?"

  I smiled wryly. "What proposal do you have for me?"

  Finally, he smiled sincerely. Probably because I asked no more cliché questions. Then he crossed his fingers and legs, too.

  "I have a problem, and I need you to solve it for me. Billions of years ago, two of my creations ended up meeting by accident. One of them was called The One Above All and the other was called Absolute Being, both with power bordering on TRUE omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Their contact happened for only a moment, their paths crossed briefly while they were traveling to their multiverses. However, a second for an ordinary creature is an infinitesimal amount of time for creatures like them."

  "Let me guess: during that contact, they pnned something you didn't want."

  The lion snapped his fingers and pointed at me. "Exactly! I've created more Itarims than I can remember, and they all ended up with the same fate as me — boredom, pure boredom. So my Itarims usually create universes, instigate wars, and then build other universes to entertain themselves and nothing else. Except that The One Above All and Absolute Being are up to something bigger than that. Look at this."

  He touched the holographic screen in front of him, and it floated towards me.

  When I looked at the screen, I saw a bunch of symbols that I couldn't recognize. Slowly, I raised a half-scowl at the lion, and with that, he realized his mistake.

  "Ah—! Right... I always forget how incapable normal humans are." He snapped his fingers, and the letters became legible.

  "Now I can read. Number Report... Bh, bh, bh! Description: Multi-verse Marvel is on a collision course with Multiverse Solo Leveling. Recommended to avoid joining spheres."

  My eyes widened in surprise. I shook my head, swallowed, and frowned, but none of this helped me process what I'd read any easier.

  "Dude, is this some kind of joke? If it is, I have to say it's not the least bit funny." I looked at the lion and said firmly.

  "I wish it were... Your universe is a matrix universe, where the Itarim who run your universe have made it so that their humans can catch glimpses of other multiverses. Because of this, most of the works you know really exist, and their authors are the prophets who saw through the multiverses."

  I blinked a few times, still incredulous. "That means Game of Thrones..."

  "Yes, all real. However, the prophet George R. R. Martin is having a bit of trouble envisioning the st book."

  "Stephen King?"

  "Some books yes, and some no. He's greedy, so he uses his own dreams as references to create some bizarre things... And if you want to know about Tolkien, well, he was just a writing genius. Nothing glimpsed from another universe. He created everything himself."

  I took a deep breath. "Okay, fine... And what do you want from me? Why am I here, in front of the being who created the beings who created all those magnificent things?"

  "Because you're an ordinary human. Everything you have is ordinary. Your dreams are ordinary, your appearance, and even your..." He looked down suggestively, and I felt invaded.

  "Hey!"

  "Don't get me wrong, but that's all true. However, it's not a bad thing. That's what I need. Someone ordinary, but with extensive knowledge about the multiversal spheres that will soon collide and need to come into harmony."

  "Soon? You're the Being who created everything! Why don't you stop the collision from happening yourself?""Being the original creator of some beings doesn't give me power over the creations of my creations. My omnipotence ends where another's omnipotence begins, and there are rules in each omnipotence that don't allow one omnipotent being to interfere directly and decisively in another's creation. In short, it's too complicated to describe in words. That's where my proposal to you comes in... You will be reincarnated in the Marvel Universe, and on your eighteenth birthday, you will Awaken and recall this conversation.

  "Awakening? That's not something from the universe..." At that moment, I stopped talking because I finally understood.

  The collision of the spheres that the lion was talking about was not an event simir to the collision of two pnets but the fusion of two universes.

  "Looks like you've finally figured it out." The lion said, smiling with that exorbitant amount of teeth. "You'll be my contingency pn. The One Above All and Absolute Being did this as a great form of entertainment, not only for themselves but for all their siblings and parents. However, the other Itarims can get bored quickly with the same old characters, and that's why you'll be there. A man from an ordinary universe amid Hunters and Heroes. They will look forward to your next steps."

  Those were the lion's st words to me. If there were more, I couldn't remember and probably never could.

  Very cold, I woke up drenched in sweat. There was sweat on my forehead, on my hands, and my shirt was sticking to my chest. But none of this mattered. When I woke up, I didn't even have time to wonder if it had all been a dream because in front of my eyes was a holographic screen with golden light.

  [System Initialization!]

  [Pyer Number 2 Identified!]

  [Welcome, Brandon S. Oneal, to the Pyer System!]

  [First step: Choose your Css]