My vision began to refocus, and I blinked rapidly to hasten the process. I had no idea how long I was trapped in pure darkness, but the feeling had been incredibly unpleasant, to say the least. Complete sensory deprivation was not fun.

However, the experience made me painfully aware of the limitations of my current state. My only senses were sight and sound, and the only thing I could hear was the robo-voice.

Advanced Universal Training and Observation Unit, was it?

Screw that noise, I would just call it Auto.

I looked around as my ‘eyes’ adjusted and I noticed something strange in the corner of my vision. A small meter had appeared in my field of view and filled up slightly with a bright yellowish-white color.

“Hey Auto, what’s this little bar?”

“That is your holy power.“

“Holy power...? What can I do with it?”

“At your current level of power, you may grant knowledge through your Tether and you may perform a ‘lesser miracle’ once every 8.16 days. As you increase in power, you will eventually be able to expend it to perform ‘greater miracles’. Certain individuals who devote themselves to your ideals can become priests, monks, clerics, or paladins who gain their powers from you. If you, yourself, gain enough power, that is to say, if you gain enough followers then you will eventually even be able to manifest yourself into the world for short periods of time… though this is a very draining endeavor, so you will not be able to do it often.”

“So basically, I can talk to people through my Tether, I can occasionally affect the world directly, I can make an army of holy warriors, and later I can become a big badass avatar that wrecks faces?”

“Affirmative.”

“Awesome!”

“Additionally, Overseers can grant special abilities or bonuses to their followers called ‘perks’.”

“How do I do that?”

“When you reach one hundred followers, you will unlock your first perk. You may unlock additional perks at increasingly higher numbers of followers.”

“I want it! I want all of it!”

The powers Auto was describing sounded pretty sweet! I could already imagine myself as a giant, flaming behemoth walking through armies and swinging a big sword!

“Where do I start…” I mumbled to myself. As cool as all that sounded, I only had one follower and...

“Shoot, I don’t even know her name!”

“I would implore you to focus on the situation at hand. You have been unconscious for five days in the reckoning of the world below. Your Tether has just awoken inside the fortress town of Cairel, the nearest human settlement to the location where you encountered her.”

“That means she’s alive!” I exclaimed, relief flooding my non-existent body.

Though I had been slightly distracted by all the cool, new things happening to me, I was still worried about her. That was a pretty graphic experience after all. She might even be traumatized, right? One of my buddies got his leg blown off while walking his dog and the poor guy was too scared to leave his house after that. What happened to her was on a whole ‘nother scale, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she never went outside ever again.

“Once again, I would implore you to focus on what’s important,” Auto interjected, interrupting my thoughts. I might have imagined it, but I would swear there was a hint of impatience in his robo-voice.

“Alright, alright. You said we were meeting the other gods, right?”

“Affirmative. The other four Overseer’s presiding over this world have been summoned to this location. Two of them rejected the summons, however, so today you will only be meeting Lord Dallin and Lady Jocelyn.”

“Okay, is there anything I need to know before I meet them?”

“Affirmative.” Auto replied.

Again with the one word answers?

“Wh-” I started when a door suddenly appeared in front of me. The door swung open, and a heavy force slammed into me from behind, throwing me into the open doorway.

“Have fun!” Auto cheered as the door slammed closed and then disappeared.

“Damn emotionally unstable robot…” I muttered shamelessly. “I bet your mother was a…”

“Hmmm?” a lovely voice cut me off before I could finish my curse.

I looked up and saw the most beautiful woman who ever was… probably, anyways. I now knew that my perspective was rather limited, but she certainly was the most beautiful woman I knew of.

Her features were indistinguishable, and her form was rather vague. One might ask how I knew she was so beautiful if I couldn’t see any distinctive details about her but I could only say this:

I just knew.

Her beauty was not defined by features, clothes, makeup, or accessories. Her presence and aura wrote the laws of beauty and I could only humbly acknowledge them as facts.

“Would you like to complete that statement? I am most curious as to what kind of man our newest Overseer will be,” the woman asked lightly.

Despite her light tone, I recognized the poorly hidden malice hiding beneath her words.

“No, I think I’ll abstain,” I replied evenly. “I apologize if I have caused offense. It was not my intention to do so.”

The woman, probably Lady Jocelyn, covered a smile with a vaguely defined hand.

“So, you’re that kind of man.”

I shrugged. Honestly, I had no idea what kind of person she just categorized me as, but I wasn’t too fond of the types of people that categorized others in the first place. I turned my attention to the other individual in the room. He, too, was blurry and indistinct. I figured all Overseers must appear like that since we didn’t have a definite form or body.

He was the man among men. More specifically, he was strength itself. I thought I knew strength as a member of the resistance, but I was wrong. He didn’t have defined muscles or an athletic form. I had no idea how much he could lift or if he even could lift. I knew nothing about the strength of his personality. I could feel only one critical fact that was plain as day.

He was strength.

Also, he was probably Lord Dallin.

“So how does this thing usually go down?” I asked, trying to move the conversation along.

Dallin stared at me for a long moment. After a long pause, he grunted, seemingly satisfied as he pointed towards a table with six empty chairs that appeared floating in space. I moved over, noting that there were nameplates on four of the six chairs.

Dallin the Strong One

Jocelyn the Lovely One

Loki the Hidden One

Mumblegrumble the Strange One

On the fifth chair there was an empty nameplate and on the sixth chair there was a nameplate with a completely illegible name, as if someone tried to scribble it out.

Somewhat intrigued, I made a mental note of it just in case it was important.

“Is that my chair?” I asked for confirmation, gesturing to the chair with an empty nameplate.

Dallin nodded silently.

I started to walk towards my chair but then paused. Here was a perfect opportunity to cancel out my initial negative impression. I changed directions and moved towards Lady Jocelyn’s chair.

Arriving at nearly the same time as her, I pulled the chair back. She gracefully accepted my offer, sitting in the chair and allowing me to assist her. I made my way back to my seat and, as I sat down, I made eye contact with her.

She seemed… amused, mostly.

“As the Leader presiding over this world, it is my privilege to preside over this meeting. Any objections?” Jocelyn started smoothly.

Nope. Zip. Nada. Just don’t make me do it and I’m fine with anything else.

After a brief pause to ascertain our acceptance, Jocelyn continued.

“The meeting today is to welcome our newest member. Unfortunately, two of our number were unable to make it. Loki sends his apologies and Mumblegrumble sent us a picture of mermaid cookies.”

Dallin snorted but otherwise remained silent. Maybe he was just shy?

“The first item on the agenda is basic introductions. Dallin, would you please start?”

Dallin stood up. He stared down at me for a good thirty seconds, nodded firmly, and then sat down.

Was I supposed to get something out of that?

Jocelyn, meanwhile, was staring at Dallin with a bemused expression.

“He’s a talkative fellow, but that was unusually excessive. He must like you.”

Huh? I definitely missed something.

“I’ll go next,” Jocelyn continued. “I am Jocelyn. Hanulfall is my four thousand four hundred and thirty first world. Amongst the residents of Hanulfall, my title is the Lovely One and I preside over beauty, light, and justice.”

“Beauty, light, and justice?”

Was this a domain or attribute kind of thing? I used to play tabletop games with stuff like that.

She nodded. “We’re a bit overworked here. Dallin, Loki and I each preside over three domains and Mumblegrumble takes the miscellaneous. Meridian hasn’t sent a new Overseer our way since this world was integrated.”

Meridian? Was that a person, place, or organization? Integrated?

I hesitated at all the unfamiliar terms, but luckily my confusion didn’t clearly show on my face. Benefits of being a vaguely defined spiritual god-thing, right?

“Alrighty then. My name is…” I stopped.

Huh? I couldn’t remember my own name. I could remember all kinds of details from my previous life. Names, people, places, events. Everything was there except the one thing that I needed right now.

“Ahh… that’s strange… I can’t remember my name...” I mumbled.

Jocelyn tilted her head quizzically.

“Is that even possible? No, obviously it is.”

“You believe me?” I asked, surprised that she didn’t really question it.

“Of course. Like Dallin said before, his secondary domain is ‘truth’. You can’t lie in his presence.”

Ah. I missed that little detail somehow. It was kind of hard to find detailed meaning in long pauses of dramatic silence.

“So, uh, I don’t know my name. This is my first world and I’m looking forward to working with you all.”

Silence.

After several long moments of surreal quiet, Dallin leapt to his feet, pointing at me. I felt a vague pressure as if something was pounding against my head but otherwise, I didn’t notice much, or any, of what he was trying to say.

Jocelyn nodded in agreement.

“I wasn’t expecting a total beginner. That could make things a little difficult. I don’t have time to participate in your training either. Did your parents teach you the ropes?”

“Parents?”

“Yeah, which Overseers facilitated the organization of your being?”

Hmmm. I tried to rack my brain to see if anything like that might have occurred during my twenty-five odd years.

Nope. Nada. Zip. Nothing.

“My parents were normal humans from Earth.”

Silence. I sensed a pattern forming. I would need to learn some of the new common sense soon if I didn’t want to keep looking like a total newbie.

“You… evolved from a lesser species? You’re sure you weren’t just organized as an Overseer?” Jocelyn asked, stuttering slightly.

Lesser species, eh?

“Nope, I have twenty-five years of memories from my time as a human,” I supplied. “Though I have no way to confirm or prove it, I also have no reason to believe that the memories are false.”

Jocelyn started to fidget as she pondered, fiddling with some loose strands of her aura.

“Alright. We’ll hit some of the key points in this meeting but it looks like it will take you a bit longer to acclimate and start helping out than I originally thought.”

“I appreciate it,” I replied.

“First, our purpose as Overseers is to harvest faith and souls. We establish religions on worlds and provide guidance, blessings, and other such things for our followers in return for their faith. When an individual purely dedicates themselves to our teachings, we obtain their souls when they die.”

I raised my hand.

“What do we do with the faith and souls?”

“We create a copy of the soul and send it to some semblance of whatever version of the afterlife we sell to our followers. Then we send the original to the bosses in Meridian.”

“So Meridian is a place?”

“Indeed. It is the origin of time, space, creation, matter, mana, energy, and so on. It’s the original home and current headquarters of the Overseers. It’s also a popular vacation spot. You should visit when you accrue enough PTO.”

“What does Meridian do with the souls?”

Jocelyn shrugged.

“That’s something they don’t tell the bottom of the ladder people like us. I’ve heard you have to successfully fulfill terms over a thousand worlds before your request for that information will even be considered.”

Well, that sounded sketchy. So, gods were just soul harvesters? And they didn’t even send the real soul to heaven or hell? Seriously?

I wasn’t deeply religious in my last life, but it was still a bit of a letdown to discover the truth.

“You said you came from Earth, right?”

I nodded.

“How is Thor doing? Last I spoke to him, he was excited about some movie. Said that he had high hopes of obtaining followers due to some comic book hero adaptation or something?”

“That was a hundred years ago, and I doubt anybody seriously worshiped him over that. In fact, religion was dying in my world after the War of Unification started. The only ones still around were the big ones like Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and such and even those were dying remnants in the wake of the Unification Army.”

Jocelyn sighed.

“Earth always was a problem planet. I’m glad I’ve never been assigned there. The people are so ungrateful and sensitive!”

“Gee, thanks for the amazing compliment,” I muttered sarcastically. “Do the people view religion differently here?”

Jocelyn shook her head.

“The humans on this planet are all descendants of people from Earth, so we had to take a more roundabout approach to build successful religions. Through some complicated processes and by exploiting the magic systems of this world, we managed to build an automatic resurrection device. Anybody connected to our Overseer system will automatically resurrect at the nearest resurrection point upon death.”

From Earth?! And did she just say that they created a way for humans to respawn? And it works?

If there was a religion like that on Earth, I probably would have joined in a heartbeat. But something didn’t quite add up there...

“If humans don't really die, then how do you harvest their souls?”

“Oh, they still die. Every time they revive, we take a piece of their soul and eventually they just stop resurrecting. Also, they can still die of old age and such. This just protects them from premature causes of death like murder, sickness, starvation, and disease.”

Still, that was incredible. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the soul ripping part but the rest of it was neat.

“To increase the frequency of human deaths and hit our weekly soul quota, we released a general decree of persecution against the native inhabitants of this world. In order to manipulate the humans into following the mandate, we universally grouped all of these local races together and labelled them ‘monsters’.”

Oh…

Well then. I wasn’t so sure I liked this job anymore.