"I... don't want to die!"
The old man from Jingu still remembered the pain and bewilderment of that moment—the instant the Jackal-Headed Desert Warrior broke through the guards' line and brought its double-bladed axe crashing down on him.
It was as if he had returned to forty years ago, when he was still the most promising heir of the Shinto line, before lust and greed had swept him away. Back then, he had devoted himself to studying shikigami arts and protecting his family's legacy.
Even though his father had poured cold water on his enthusiasm, saying there was nothing left to cultivate in the real world.
Those had been such glorious days... He had held a high position at the shrine, where local worshippers knelt before him in reverence.
The secret shikigami manuals passed down by his ancestors and the cursed tools handed down through generations had all been entrusted to him.
How wonderful!
If only his former self hadn't been blinded by the obsession with eternal life and limitless power. If only he'd been content to play the charlatan and hadn't clicked the pop-up, stepping into this endless cycle of horror movies.
What kind of peaceful life would have been waiting for me?
—How unfair.
—I'd already come to such a marvelous world. I'd already seen the power that surpassed everything else. The veterans had said that once I returned to the Main God Space, I could enhance myself with those incredibly generous main mission rewards... And I'd even discovered that the power of shikigami could circulate inside my body...
Why did I have to be so greedy?!
His skull split open, hot blood spraying in every direction.
But his brain, not yet severed, and his instinct to survive suddenly brought his thoughts into sharp focus, as if he'd broken through some unknown barrier.
His body, weakened by age, grew strong once more.
He seemed more agile than any top athlete.
And so, death was delayed for an instant.
But only for an instant.
When his bones cracked and his brains spilled out, more jackal-headed warriors surged toward him from the monster army. The old man from Jingu no longer had the strength to struggle.
"I... really can't accept this."
Darkness swept over him.
The taste of death was a blur, fading away.
Until...
"Old man, still sleeping? You're the weakest of this batch of newbies."
The voice carried a faintly familiar quality, as if he'd heard it only recently.
Oh, it was the captain.
A proud, conceited young man with different-colored eyes.
"Xiu... Captain."
"You know me?"
The teasing voice turned serious in an instant.
The next moment, the old man from Jingu felt the shikigami cycle that had just formed within him get easily suppressed.
Then what happened?
Not much, apparently.
After that came a shudder that seemed to come from his soul. His eyes flew open, and an imperceptible scarlet pattern flashed across his pupils.
His vision was blurry at first, then focused on his surroundings.
A pure white plaza came into view. Huge light gates stood on either side, while a golden Great Light Sphere floated high above.
In front of him stood a circular table and a row of chairs. He had been asleep at the very edge, with a man seated to his left whose face was identical to the captain of the East Sea Team's—but whose bearing and build were clearly different.
He leaned against the table, the corners of his mouth curled up.
He looked downright unpleasant.
He wasn't the captain from his memories. That man might have been proud, but he'd never stared at a newbie so brazenly.
Besides, their builds didn't match.
The captain was on the slim side.
The man before him was powerfully built, like a muscleman from Dragon Ball.
What kind of enhancement was that?
The old man from Jingu had no idea why he'd been given another chance at life. He hurriedly forced a ingratiating smile, then pretended to casually... look around.
Aside from the man who resembled the captain but was clearly much more muscular, all the other Reincarnators were different from the people in his memories.
"The East Sea Team."
"That Kaguya-hime—is she an artificial human, or did he bring her over from the Naruto World? Hard to guess."
"Either way, I didn't get the treatment you get when you return..."
As he listened to the inexplicable muttering, the old man from Jingu's gaze settled on a refined-looking man with glasses at the center of the seats.
Among this group of strange characters, he stood out the most.
Rational, perhaps?
That was one way of putting it.
"Welcome to the Devil Team. Mm, I'm the captain here... Chu Xuan." The unfamiliar, rational man adjusted his glasses.
This obviously wasn't the East Sea Team.
The Devil Team was a squad with an especially high concentration of copied Reincarnators with great potential.
The criteria for joining were unclear—
Some speculated that newbies would be copied here if they unlocked the first stage of the Gene Lock on their own during an early trial.
Others believed that a newbie only needed to unleash a powerful will to survive in a life-or-death situation to be copied over.
Still others said that newbies with certain talents, such as innate telekinesis or the ability to foresee disasters, or those favored by some unseen force of destiny, would also be copied by the Main God.
Of course, there was another theory:
The Devil Team was the most selective. Even if a newbie met one or several of the conditions above, the team would only recruit them when it had an opening.
Its members were incredibly powerful and rarely died.
Just as Jingu was at a loss, a young man with an even more absurd physique—his muscles practically bulging to the point of bursting—came over, excitement in his voice.
"Xiu, if we run into the East Sea Team in the next team battle, let me gouge his eyes out and give them to you!"
"Good brother, I owe you this."
His name was Zheng Zha.
Copy Zheng Zha!
He had been copied at the point when he was making Luo Li, exchanging for a vampire enhancement, and considering whether to choose qigong.
Even now, he couldn't think back to the moment he arrived without feeling a surge of fear. He and Luo Li had suddenly appeared in an unfamiliar Main God Space.
Before them stood a black man and a white man whom they didn't recognize at all.
By nature, he would have been the sort to go over and strike up a conversation, trying to figure out what was going on.
But the veterans had erupted with unprecedented malice. The basic senses granted by his vampire enhancement let Zheng Zha keenly detect their venomous hostility.
Xiu had stepped in to stop the racist thugs and sent Luo Li back to their private room, sparing her the tragedy of being violated.
He had preserved the last shred of dignity he had as a man!
Of course, he and his good brother, who'd stayed on the plaza, had been beaten up badly.
At the time, Xiu had only just arrived from the Ninja World. He'd only unlocked the first stage of the Gene Lock and had an ordinary Three Tomoe Sharingan. He hadn't mastered many high-level ninjutsu. He could only put up some resistance, enough to avoid being farmed.
He'd also protected Zheng Zha, keeping him from being bullied too badly.
Later, his good brother, who seemed to know the secrets of the Main God Space, had secretly told him that he could pay a D-rank side story to buy Luo Li back from the Main God. That way, he could keep his lover out of the thugs' sight and exempt her from the horror-movie trials.
At the same time, they could go to the previous trial's story world to uncover more resources.
The Devil Team's next trial was Final Destination 3.
The previous one had been Heaven and Earth Mystic Gate.
The two of them had secretly teamed up and gone there without anyone knowing. For two months, they'd killed all kinds of low-level ghosts in Hong Kong in the last century. They'd even gone to Thailand, where witchcraft and obscene sacrifices were everywhere, grinding out points without rest.
In the end, with the power of celestial phenomena, the duo who had opposed the Devil Team's old order made it to the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty and found the great cultivator from the original story:
Hermit of the Thatched Cottage!
They obtained part of his inheritance.
By comprehending the Dao, Xiu had begun to unlock a more advanced Sage Mode, allowing him to absorb the power of nature from any environment.
As for Zheng Zha, he had mastered the path of cultivation and obtained a scroll of the Heaven in a Pot secret art.
"If you don't want to explode and spend the early stages stuck in prison, you have two options: focus on cultivating Yin Power to support your vampire system, or exchange for a plot item called Perfect Blood to balance out the positive and negative."
With his good brother Uchiha Xiu looking after him at every turn, Zheng Zha developed steadily. When he broke through to the second stage of the Gene Lock in a burst of power, he joined forces with the strategist Chu Xuan, who had been copied after Final Destination, and ambushed all the farmers in the previous trial, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
They established a new order!
They elected Chu Xuan, who excelled at management, as the Devil Team's captain.
Recalling all this, Copy Zheng Zha let out a quiet breath... He was glad to hear news of the East Sea Team.
At last, he could repay his good brother. Even if he killed that guy from the East Sea Team, gouged out his eyes, and collected his body for research, it still wouldn't repay the debt in full.
At least I can do something for Xiu!!
"The next trial is The Mist. The teams we'll face in the team battle are the South America Team, the East America Team, and the Celestial Team. Four teams in total."
At that point, Chu Xuan added calmly,
"Even if the Main God doesn't make it explicit, we'll have to get through at least the next trial before we can meet the East Sea Team."
Why? Zheng Zha didn't understand.
But Zheng Zha decisively gave up on thinking.
With Chu Xuan and his good brother Xiu around, I don't need something useless like a brain.
It's a burden.
"Based on the intelligence Xiu read and shared with everyone, the time difference means that the East Sea Team is still in its early stages. It doesn't have many veterans, and no matter how impatient the Main God is, it won't make them face a powerful team."
"Besides, the matching system has a delay. Unless that Uchiha Xiu did something to violate the Main God's principles, provoking it into sending them to us to be wiped out right away."
"However, at the latest, we'll meet the East Sea Team in the third team battle. They'll definitely be strong opponents."
Chu Xuan spoke at his usual unhurried pace. "You need to be ready."
His gaze fell straight on Copy Uchiha Xiu.
"Uh... the third team battle at the latest? What about the second one?"
Zheng Zha still didn't understand. He hadn't grasped the reasoning, so he simply asked,
"What about the second one? I can't wait!"
"Probably."
"The East Sea Team has one Soul Bender and one Saint, and there's a female assassin named Zhao Yingkong."
"Those three are proper Reincarnators. They don't have many strong fighters."
"The model I've constructed tells me that the Kaguya-hime with the Three-Tomoe Sharingan between her brows is one hundred percent an artificial human."
"And before they fight us, that person will definitely squeeze every available resource out of the Ninja World."
Copy Uchiha Xiu remained expressionless throughout.
Whatever reasoning Chu Tiandao came up with, just blindly trust him.
As long as this guy didn't get full of himself and secretly scheme against me like he had with Li Shuaixi, then... we're all fucking brothers here. Let's run the Devil Team well.
And crush the final team battle!!
After Chu Xuan finished speaking, Zhao Zhui-Kong, who had witnessed the bloody internal elimination on A Nightmare on Elm Street, gave a goofy chuckle. He offered no opinion and kept pretending to be an idiot.
"Yingkong, your brother is really looking forward to seeing you."
"Tsk, tsk. Right now, this old newbie is the one who looks the most harmless on our Devil Team."
The old man from Jingu shuddered when their eyes met.
The man across from him was playing with a dagger, his expression so sleazy.
Had he taken a liking to a balding man with a receding hairline like me?
And the veterans here had no manners at all. It sounded like they'd read all my memories without permission!
Perverts!!
Elsewhere.
On the Cairo battlefield, where time flowed differently.
The battle grew more and more brutal. Kobayashi Yoshito's arm had been slashed by a bone blade, the phantom of Kazan the ghost had begun to fade, and Kitagawa Nacai was nearly out of strength. The domain created by her cross was wavering.
As the capital of a civilization with a long history, Cairo was home to over a million people. The four low-yield nuclear backpacks had been detonated in two waves. They had indeed eased the pressure quickly, but they couldn't help the group secure victory.
During World War II, the plutonium bomb codenamed Fat Man had been detonated over the Urakami River basin. Its yield was equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT, and it had destroyed sixty percent of the city's buildings and killed fewer than 80,000 people.
Zhao Yingkong, who had been treated as their main force, was once again driven to the brink. Covered in wounds, she was about to be swallowed by the undead!
"Come back."
A rope looped around her with pinpoint accuracy and yanked the girl back.
Eddie, the leader of the Medjai, was riding a camel. He set Zhao Yingkong down. "Take a break. My tribe still has strength to spare."
As the chieftain swung his curved blade, a camel caravan behind him launched a countercharge at the undead.
"La!"
"For Ra!"
"Pharaoh, please protect your most loyal guards..."
For now, they could only rely on the still-numerous native guards. For every one of their own they lost, they took three enemies with them—five at most. Relying on the power passed down through their people, they fought desperately against the immortal army.
Their decline was inevitable.
Then space abruptly twisted, and two figures arrived via Flying Thunder God Kunai!
Uchiha Xiu landed steadily in the middle of the battlefield, his gaze sweeping over the corpses strewn everywhere, the jackal-headed warriors, and the guards from the various tribes.
"Looks like we didn't arrive too late."
No one from the East Sea Team's core group had been eliminated in this minor trial. So... as their captain, he could accept anything.
How could he unlock the Gene Lock without facing pressure?
And without unlocking it, how could he have any standing in the Main God Space?
"The Ten Plagues Curse... ends now."
The Book of Amun-Ra floated in the air.
What nature did chakra belong to? Its original form was neutral. Now, Uchiha Xiu, arriving just in time to save the day, used the life-giving power of Yang Release to fully awaken the ancient tome's primordial authority.
As long as he was in Egypt, he could use it to strip away immortality and purify the dead.
"Dust to dust, earth to earth, curses to the underworld, souls to oblivion!"
His voice rang across the entire ancient city.
The Jackal-Headed Warriors, dragged back to the living world by the curse and denied reincarnation, suddenly froze. Their sand-like bodies cracked apart inch by inch.
"Ahhh—!!"
Their shrill wails rang out—not in resentment or anger, but in gratitude for their release.
A gale swept through Cairo's streets, carrying countless grains of sand away until they vanished from the world.
Some Cairo citizens afflicted by the curse had not been deeply corrupted. They began to regain their senses, the strange markings on their faces vanishing rapidly as their shriveled flesh gradually regained its fullness.
On the city wall, still bearing the scars of a fierce battle, space rippled where Kaguya-hime was watching.
Three figures stumbled out, looking worse for wear.
"The sun..."
Staring at Uchiha Xiu hovering in the air and saving Egypt, Evelyn, the reincarnation of the Pharaoh's daughter, looked thrilled. Instinctively, she raised a hand and pointed at the book before him.
Almost at the same time, her boyfriend O'Connell hurriedly covered her mouth.
Her brother Jonathan grabbed her hand.
That belonged to the big guy. Don't covet it!
"Little sister, I've got a bag of ancient gold coins on me. I also picked up a golden statue while doing archaeology in Ramesses II's offering hall. If we sell all that, we'll have enough to live comfortably back in Europe."
"Forget about all those gods and ghosts. Just settle down and enjoy life. We're never setting foot in Egypt again—not in any ancient civilization, for that matter."
Before you continue