That Time a Bookworm Got Ascended in Tensura

Ch.7 No-Where, Just South of Hell

Myne's pov: 

W-where am I? It is so bright. I am surrounded by the whitest void I have ever seen. Though when I squint it become a black void. I didn't understand it. 

Wait, Hadn't I died? I tried saving that purple haired kijin. I hoped it worked. Though I'd have no way of finding out now I assumed. Last time I had died, I got reincarnated. Would that happen again? Would it be yet another new world? Right now, it didn't seem like it to me. I didn't even know where I was. 

As I lifted my hand to try to shield my eyes, I noticed something.. odd. 

My hand kept changing. One moment it looked like Myne's, the next moment it looked like Urano's, then the third one was unsettling, there was no hand, just an arm with a charred lump. I looked down at myself and realized my whole body was doing this. switching between the three sporadically. 

Where-ever I was it definitely wasn't somewhere physical, that much I could be certain of. 

So I walked, and walked. Along in this never-ending white void. Was I even really moving at all? I couldn't tell. So I just kept walking, to stop myself from going insane really. There was nothing more I could do to keep that feeling out of my mind. The encroaching feeling of losing all of it, slowly, as the void consumed me. 

I wouldn't let that happen though, I valued my families, and my memories. I wouldn't let go of all of it that easily. I simply would not allow it. 

As I wondered the void I started seeing things from my own memories, appearing in front of and around me, but whenever I reached out for them I could never get to them, it was infuriating. I just wanted to reach for my mother, or my sister. I could never actually reach them though. 

Slowly the environments around me began to change too, shifting and changing their shape around me. 

One moment I was in the void, then suddenly I was in a valley with a mountain, the valley was empty and completely surrounded by the mountains. I steeled myself and began to climb the mountains. Here there was no exhaustion, it wasn't like when I was in my human bodies. Here no feeling of being tired or spent ever crept into my mind. 

The environment shifted again, now being a deep ocean. I swam down into the deep seeing a reef full of colors and life, with fish that were almost magical looking. I had always wanted to see something like this in person. Though being under water life this made me realize I didn't need to breath, as I was now. So I swam deeper, into the inky blackness of the deep water. My muscles just kept my going and I couldn't even feel the weight of the water pressing down on me as it should be. 

I kept thinking back on my family, waking up in that bed for my first time. Seeing my sister and mother for the first time when I got into that world. Despite me being in the depths tears still filled my eyes and fell down my cheeks. Soon enough the tears were not all the was falling. 

As I got deeper into the inky blackness I began to fall, and around me brilliant lights suddenly started to shine. I was falling toward a little blue dot from here. I realized what was around me were stars, and was that big white dot in the distance, was that the moon? Was I in space? As I was falling the blue dot got bigger and bigger. I started to see green and texture, mountains and forest and deserts. Seas and valleys, peaks and plateaus. I fell into a desert valley and in the distance I could see a big city, crowded around a mountain. 

On the peak of the mountain was a sanctum, it was something I had seen depicted many time. So I started walking toward it, running actually. As fast as my legs could take me, small, or large, or charred. It didn't matter which ones I was using. I ran toward the domed sanctum as fast as I possibly could. 

As I ran I got closer, and started to realize just how large the sanctum was, even my adult body was dwarfed by the stairs in the distance alone. As I ran up to the peak of the mountain and got to the stairway, I climbed each step with care. My face was tense and I hoped this was where I was thinking. Though I knew it wasn't in the world I was in before, it was some non-physical place. I made my way to the door, and opened it. Inside was a shimmering light and at the same time a foreboding darkness. 

I stepped inside regardless. 

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As I walked through the halls and arches, I found myself entering a large room with a high ceiling, there was a black and red stained window on the other side of the room, and a throne sitting in front of it. 

'I had never seen the inside of the sanctum depicted, is this really what it looks like?' I though to myself as I walked. The carpet here was nice, almost as nice as the ones in Tempest. though my charred legs simply hovered above it, moving in a more disembodied way, while the other two sets actually properly stood on it. 

Really this had all been a very confusing experience. This place may be foreboding but it was also the only place that had stayed this constant. Really it was very refreshing to finally exist in  a place this stable after that almost agonizing trip up to now. 

I was walking toward the throne slowly. I didn't see anything there at the moment, though that would change soon. I stared at it more closely, the intricate design and ornate religious symbols spanning across it's surface, though my constant changes in height made that sorta hard. 

Then I saw her. Silver hair, pearl white skin, a dark black skirt, and two heterochromatic eyes. Her left eye was blue and her right eye was red. She was truly beautiful, stunningly so. I couldn't help but just stare at her for a time. No questions could come into my mind as I did so. 

Though there was one after a moment. It took me some time to voice it, but eventually I found myself saying it. "Who are you?" It was three voices layered over each other. One was soft and frail, the voice of my charred self, one was small and cute, Myne's, and one was deeper but feminine, Urano's. 

She looked up and noticed me, it seemed she was lost in though before this. She looked me over carefully, inspecting every bit of me. She seemed, surprised. "Do you really need to ask that?" She said it in an incredibly blunt way, unbefitting of her beautiful looks. She stood though, and made her way over to me, walking elegantly  as she did so. 

I stared at her and backed away, not wanting to be too close. I realized who that foreboding was from now. It was from her. Then suddenly I remembered what happened right before I died, it was vivid in my mind now. "..Luminious..." All three voices echoed as they trailed off. Now I knew who she was, but why was I here? She also certainly wasn't what I was expecting. 

She chuckled lightly, both at my reluctance to be near her and the way I said her name. She seemed to be really enjoying this now. She was in front of me in a moment and she softly caressed my cheek. Her hand felt cold, and it felt as if she had no pulse. "Ara, such a beautiful young woman, and such a cute young girl, all in the same mind. Though that sorry state right before your death. It really is pitiful." She was almost teasing me as she talked. I didn't understand what she meant really, or what she wanted. Her behavior was just too outlandish to me. 

I tried to back away. flinching away from her touch and trying not to engage with her.

However she didn't let me, she tightly grasped my wrist, though I felt no pain. She then dragged me to a small room. There were many flowers and the windows let in as much light as if it was always under the light of the moon. The many plants seemed to grow here regardless though. She led me to a small table and sat me down. 

After I sat down from her almost forcing me to do so I had another question, it had just come into my mind I finally had someone to ask, so I would take the opportunity to do so. "Where are we?" I asked her in a rush, it really was starting to frighten me. I hadn't reincarnated so where-ever I was must not be good. 

After sitting down she stared into my eyes for a moment, then she looked away at some of her flowers, lightly grabbing the petal of one of them. "I suppose that is a better question, though I dont think you'll like the answer." She trailed off then waited for confirmation from me. 

I nodded lightly and thought about it further. "I died, and now I am here. I need to know." I said it as I was thinking about why and how I could have ended up with her. Really nothing came to mind. 

She looked back to me and took my hand, clasping our fingers together as she held my hand on the table and then started to speak. "Before you died, you made a wish to me. You desperately pleaded for the power to do something. I granted your wish, and that was why you said my name. You died in my name." She said it casually, as if it made perfect sense, though her face was marginally more serious than before. "So currently you are just a soul, that I have a hold of. Where we are is inside our minds, though currently it is more mine than yours. You were more in your own before though." She continued. She quickly stopped though to allow me to speak. 

My mind was racing, why would a god get my soul when I died in her name. She didn't put me into an afterlife of her own making or anything. She was just holding onto me? What did that mean. Why was this happening? "What are you?" I posed the question, I needed to know. I just felt that contained the answer to this. I needed to know it too. 

At this question she smiled. It appears she was willing to be honest with me. "Ara, finally getting to the right place I see?" She teased again quickly, then got serious again. "It is true I am the god, Luminous, though I am also someone else. I am the demon lord, Luminus Valentine. The Queen of nightmares." She stated boldly, then chuckled at my shocked expression. She was clearly enjoying this. 

I was immediately terrified, I wanted to run away. If what she said was true though, there was no way for me to do so, I was just a soul she was holding onto at the moment and there was likely absolutely no way for me to escape. I shivered where I sat. 

She got closer to me, leaning in and caressing my cheek again. She stared deeply into my eyes then began to talk again. "While I'd love to keep you, I doubt I can get away with that for long. That slime will find you one way or another." She said, very close to me. Almost talking directly onto my ear as her face passed mine. "So, I will give you to him. Though I have a few, conditions." She was tightly holding onto my hand and cheek now. 

I was shivering hard now. "T-the slime?.. Do you mean Rimuru?.. I just want to go back to my family... Why would you give me to him?..." I was trailing off, I was close to tears now. It seemed either way I may never get to see my family again. 

She again chuckled lightly to this. "That slime is currently evolving into a demon lord, you know? He made a promise to revive you. I do believe he'll be strong enough to do it too. So don't worry about that." She was teasing me with the information almost. 

Though, it still calmed me down greatly. I questioned why Rimuru had promised to revive me, but somehow I knew it was true. "W-what are the conditions?" I tried to say it confidently and tried to push all my fear into the back of my mind. 

She sat back into her chair after releasing me, and smiled. Her eyes glowed just a bit, then she started to speak once again. "First, tell all of what you have learned here, to no one. Tell not a single soul." She said this firmly, and assertively, it was frightening. Especially coming from someone who looked like a teenage girl. "Secondly, I would like you to keep tabs on the slime for me. I will maintain a magic circuit with you so you can talk to me. Tell me, everything." This second part was less assertive, though she was still taking dominance over me. 

I really had no choice, I was completely cornered. The conditions certainly weren't that bad either. Plus, I wanted to live in Tempest ultimately. So I suppose this gives me an excuse. Though I couldn't tell anyone of this, so it would definitely be hard to convince people still. "I accept." I said it as calmly as possible. 

Immediately after saying it, everything suddenly went white again. Then took on the appearance of a black void.

I could see a majestic girl, truly beautiful and absolutely perfect, maybe in her early teens. She had silvery blue hair and deep crimson eyes that had an incredibly complex pattern inside them. As her hand grasped over me, I realized I was in the form of a soul at the moment, I was then able to see so many things. A massive group of other souls formed as well, and then we all went to our own bodies. 

After some time of, talking? The girl motioned with her hands down while saying something. Then I say my body get regenerated, and I entered it once again. 

I opened my eyes, and for the first time I heard something I didn't even have the faint memory of the last time I heard it. 

{Notice.}

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--2485 words-- 

(AN: These cliffs, they are absolutely massive, yea? hehehe. Hope you enjoyed this more trippy chapter.) 

(AQ: Still posing the question from the last chapter. It will determine a lot about the next one, should Rimuru adopt Myne after her resurrection to mirror Myne becoming Rozemyne in her own story? You don't need to answer it a second time if you already did on the previous chapter, but if you haven't. please answer it.)