Chapter Text
Shen Yuan died so horribly that he was still nauseated when he woke up in the afterlife. What he assumed was the afterlife.
He was stood in a clump of people at the entrance of a nameless village in the mountains. He could see banks of snow bracketing the mud road. Cold wind blew through his thin T-shirt and sweats. He only had house shoes on, and the mud was already beginning to seep through to his cold toes. There was not a single sign of electricity or advanced technology—no telephone poles, no asphalt road, all the houses he could see had simple thatch roofs. If he still had his phone—and he did not—he would have bet that its only use would be to check the time.
He counted seven other people standing at the entrance of the village -- some with looks of obvious fright and discomfort on their faces, three with a mien of resigned acceptance. Shen Yuan had read enough stories of rebirth and transmigration that he was waiting for someone to start crying and demanding this prank end.
He was unexpectedly lucky-- the most reaction that one of the terrified people had was to turn to another and ask if they'd died too.
One of the resigned people, a woman in a thick blue cardigan and slim-cut jeans, strode to the entrance of the village and turned around. "We have all died," she said firmly. "The challenge ahead of us is to survive. You can think of it like a gauntlet-- survive through a number of worlds based on horrors and myth, and get the chance to go back to your life."
A young man in a My Hero Academia T-shirt and cargo pants raised his hand like they were in a classroom. "How many worlds?" he asked.
"We assume it's seven. When this world is completed, you will enter the interim world and meet other players. There is no record of a player completing more than seven worlds," the cardigan lady said, softening her tone with a smile.
Shen Yuan noticed she hadn't mentioned the other possibility-- that maybe they had no record of worlds after the seventh because no one had ever completed the gauntlet.
"Now!" She clapped her hands briskly. "There is a short grace period at the beginning of each world. Let's use it to introduce ourselves. Name, how many worlds you've gone through, and any specialized skills."
Shen Yuan doubted "literary criticism" was a skill she was looking for. Charitably speaking, he was at least somewhat familiar with horror stories. Maybe knowing the genre conventions could count as being helpful?
"I'm Miao Yin. This is my third world, and my strength is organizing clues," the cardigan lady said. "Start from my right and go in order."
The man directly to her right was dressed in a black turtleneck and light blue jeans. He had a curly perm that was just on the verge of growing into his eyes. Tossing his hair back, he said, "Hao Chen. I'm a natural leader."
Miao Yin gestured with her hand, 'keep going'.
"This is my second world," he said.
The young woman to his right was dressed in yoga pants and an athletic jacket, with a pocket for her phone on the right arm. She looked to be on the verge of tears, but spoke with only a faint quaver in her voice. "I'm Huang Yili. This is my first world. I'm … um, my strength is… Well, I'm decent at running." She looked at Miao Yin as if pleading, 'is that okay?'
"That's useful," Miao Yin assured her. "Next."
The man to Huang Yili's right was dressed in a white cotton lab coat, closed all the way to the collar. He'd been fiddling with something in his right pocket for the last ten minutes. "I'm Zhang Yitao. This is my second world. I'm a chemist."
Shen Yuan had some doubts about what use chemistry would be in a horror world. It was all very well and good to work with chemicals in a lab environment, but how much access would they have in a village in the preindustrial era? Unless they could find deposits of sulfur and saltpeter and reinvent the gun, but that seemed vanishingly unlikely.
The next woman to speak, dressed in a low-neck shirt and a knee-length skirt, all Shen Yuan managed to catch was her name, Guo Meng. If she had any special talents, he completely missed hearing them.
To her right was the nerd in the anime shirt, Zhao Xu, whose special talent, apparently, was languages. When he mentioned it, Miao Yin closed her eyes-- not a flinch, if Shen Yuan was judging. Possibly a prayer for patience.
"Thank you for telling us," she said simply, turning to the man to Shen Yuan's left, dressed in a red button-down shirt and black pants.
"I'm Zhou Lin, this is my first world. My talent is I'm good with people."
Shen Yuan was beginning to wonder how "talent" was defined in this purgatory realm. He had been expecting, say, martial arts skills. Knowledge of fending off the supernatural, even. Not the kind of banal crap you said to flatter yourself at a job interview.
But he couldn't think on it too long, because his turn had rolled around.
"My name is Shen Yuan. This is my first world. And my strength is…" … familiarity with narrative conventions? Literary criticism? Trash talk in the comment section of a forum? "…familiarity with fantasy and horror conventions," he decided. He'd certainly read his fair share of horror stories (and horr-ible stories, but who was counting?).
At the fall of his last sentence, Miao Yin startled, turning to look behind her. A man in his sixties had approached from the village, clad in a plain navy jacket and black hakama that reached his mid-calf.
"Ah, the new workers," he said happily. "We have been waiting for you."