My Reincarnation as a Chicken

eaglesnovɐ1,сoМ

“What the hell was that?”

<<I got the required information. I believe that is what we wanted, yes?>>

We charged down the hallway at lightning-fast speed, our goal was the [Akashic Records].

“You believe all that crap he spouted?”

<<The King of Hell has no reason to lie.>>

“So you believe he’s just going to tell you that the ultra-important book is just sitting there unguarded?”

<<Yes.>>

I face-palmed, almost losing all tolerance I had for this devil. As I heaved a heavy sigh, I decided to persuade the agent through other means.

“Even if the book is unguarded by people, what makes you believe that there isn’t any magic guarding it?”

<<That is an undeniable possibility, so we shall scan first>>

“If we scan and we find that there’s nothing we can do about the magic spell, what then?”

<<… With your absurd magical affinity and the system master Alpha’s aid, we should be able to take it with the most minimal effects from the spell>>

“Oi, oi, that means I’ll take some sort of damage or be affected by the magic spell.”, I pointed out, but the agent didn’t respond to that. I could sense the area a bit, but the King hadn’t moved from his spot. He was still enjoying his meal, which meant he either was actually oblivious to our plans, or he really was confident that absolutely no one could steal the book. Somehow, I doubted it was the former.

Still, the system master had to be watching us, right? That meant she was protecting us in her own way. I had to believe that Alpha really could pull something off.

As I thought about it more, I started to realise that this [Akashic Records] thing was beyond broken. If I got a hold of it, maybe I could see my own future. Then again, I wasn’t even a higher being so such a thing wasn’t necessarily impressive. My mind was more on Alpha. Could the [Akashic Records] get a read on Alpha’s past, present and future? If it could, maybe I could use it to get an insight into who the system master truly was.

There was also the matter of how accurate this book was. Usually in manga, the future isn’t set in stone and things can be done to alter it. Some of those stories didn’t make sense and usually ended with paradoxes, but I also found them more plausible than a certain future. I mean, the whole concept of the ‘Butterfly effect’ sounded like a stretch, but when you thought more about it, the more sense it made.

I mean, if I were to look into that book and I saw a future where I died a horrible death, I would do everything in my power to change such a future. Well, this wasn’t really any evidence to my beliefs, but I felt like it needed to be said. No matter what, I simply don’t believe in a certain future, because I would change any future so long as it didn’t suit me. This must sound like some weird control freak monologue, but if anyone heard of something unfortunate happening in their future, of course they would do anything to change that.

Maybe that was the same for Alpha and the agent. Both were extremely determined to acquire this book after all. One to cure an ailment, and the other for some unknown reason. The only thing is, I didn’t see how looking into her past or the future could cure an ailment. If she looked into the future, maybe she would see a future in which she got cured and find the solution earlier, and that would change the future in some way. Or maybe she was going to look into the past to find out what sickness she had. I mean, she had a clear memory problem.

With regards to Alpha, maybe she was looking into the future to see if she ever found love. With her shitty personality, I wouldn’t be shocked if she was secretly aware that her chances of marriage were beyond abysmal and was seeing if the prospect was impossible… ah, of course I was just joking… before some spying brat takes away my stats.

<<This is it>>

Without me realising, we had arrived in the room containing the [Akashic Records]. The room was massive. A tower spiralling up to the heavens, with floors upon floors filled to the brim with rows and rows of books. Lamps lit with blue flames were fixed on the wall, going up with the staircase that led up. The ground was tiled, and had been placed in a way that created the symbol of two flowers, both facing opposite ends. One was a beautiful black rose in full bloom, whereas the other was wilted and prickly.

The walls had murals etched onto them, going around the room. It depicted a duo – man and woman, doing something. I couldn’t determine for sure, but it went from a man with the woman, to a man alone, to the man with a child at his side. I was assuming the man and woman were something like lovers here.

Enough of that though. What mattered most was the thing at the bottom and very centre of the room – a white podium. On this podium that was quite literally my size, a book rested on it, closed. I, the agent, flew over to the podium and got a better look at the book.

Its cover was made of something resembling dull red leather. Golden symbols of all sorts had been inscribed on the book from front to back, and although cumbersome at a first glance, they managed to find a way to fit onto to the cover elegantly to give the book a certain suave.

The book itself wasn’t thick, surprisingly. A book that contained all information on all life that had existed and will existed, in my mind would have been infinite.

<<This is it>> the agent reached for the book, but paused. For the first time, I sensed an emotion from her. It wasn’t happiness, or relief or a sense of victory like I would have expected. She was anxious. Her reason for doing all that she’d ever done was right there, in front of her, but her, my, hands couldn’t move any further than where they stopped.

“Is there something wrong?”

<<This… there’s… I-I can’t.>>

Oh? Her nervousness was actually showing in her speech now. Of course, it only sounded like a computer glitch to me, but since I felt her emotion, I could tell. Still, none of this made sense to me.

The agent didn’t seem like the type to ever get anxious about such things. In fact, the agent definitely wasn’t the type to get anxious. There had to be something else-

“I’m surprised you stopped yourself.”, a voice whispered into my ear. My neck whipped around at breakneck speed, swinging my claws like a beast at one behind us. He easily caught our arm by the wrist and glared at us like insignificant ants.

“Honestly, your greed will be the end of you, Vagetha.” He dropped our arm, with keeping his impertinent tone. “You were lucky to not be erased the first time. Are you sure you wish to do this again? Maybe your new master will be able to bear the burden of the drawback instead of you is what you were thinking, hm?”

Eh? What did he just say? Bear the burden of the drawback? Me? Was I being betrayed at the moment?

“Meh.”, he shrugged, uninterested. “I wish to talk to your master, please switch places.”

Eh? What did he just say? Switch places? With me? He knew I was here?

<<W-What are you talking abo->>

The agent attempted feigning ignorance, but was cut off by an impatient Ozvaloth.

“Have you no control over your own subordinate?”, he snapped at us.

<<M-My Lord?>>

“Ugh.” He groaned and waved his wrist at us. “That’s the problem with you devils. You change loyalties far too easily when faced with someone stronger.”

<<…>>

“Now assume control of your body so we may speak, Hinotori Hyakkiyako.”

I was busted! He mentioned my name! He probably knew who I was from the get-go, huh? I mean, it made sense. I could tell if someone had two souls in their body by virtue of the fact that I was part devil and could steal souls as well as the use of [Skills] to infer. Him being the master of the entirety of hell, being able to tell the number of souls in a singular body must have been as easy as breathing to him or he had to have at least had a skill for such situations.

“L-Lord Ozval-”

“Do you have any particular goals?”, this man really had to be getting it on from cutting people mid-sentence.

Still, I couldn’t quite get angry at him. If I did, I was practically sealing my own death sentence. I was certain that if he sensed the slightest bit of hostility, he wouldn’t waste a single second cutting me down.

“Huh?”, I muttered, confused by the randomness of the question.

“For your life, I mean. Is there something you can determine to be what you’d spend the rest of your life doing?”

No, not that. I understood the question, I simply didn’t understand why he, the king of hell, would ask me that. Was this one of those death threats from movies, where the bad guy goes all like ‘Since you’re about to die, any last words or regrets?’? If so, I guess I had lots of stuff.

“Hm? Are you ambitionless?”, for the master of hell, he who watches over the souls of every being in existence, he definitely lacked the patience for most things. Then again, having trillions of souls to monitor must have been the most tasking job imaginable for a person, even if they were a god.

Guess I had to say something before he popped my head off. What kind of ambition would satisfy the great king of hell? Wait… in the first place, why do I think that giving him a good response automatically saves my life. I just tried to steal from him!

“You’re about to take up the mantle of kinghood. Do you not have any aspirations or desires for your people?”

Oh? The king of hell was surprisingly virtuous. But if this is what he was talking about, then I wasn’t sure how to respond. I mean, in the first place, I never really planned on becoming the king of Larm. Things just happened and I was forced into that position. Lots of people look up to me now for some unfathomable reasons. I mean… me, a shut-in that was ready to leave my friend to die, is now being heralded as some hero worthy of leading an entire nation in under two months.

The more I thought about it, the more stupid the monsters in Larm seemed. But given how short their life spans were, two months had to be extremely close to a year for them. Give or take, 8 months in their eyes.

Back to the point, I honestly had nothing in particular for the future of Larm. I mean, for now, since Larm was my home, I was willing to make it some sort of impenetrable fortress to ensure our safety, but I hadn’t thought about it past the war between humans and demons. Once that settled down, I imagined we would simply return to life before. Everyone would live their own lives in Larm the way it was before and time would pass on as such.

In short, no. I had absolutely no future plans for Larm as a whole.

“I just want to make everyone happy.”, I told a lie, hoping he would take it.

His cold eyes met mine and we stood there, looking at each other for quite some time. The whole atmosphere felt tense and it was like his eyes were tearing me apart from the inside.

“The moment you stop lying to yourself, you will achieve great things, Hinotori.”, he saw through me easily, then raised up his arm, his palm wide open.

I heard a thud from behind, followed by the fluttering of pages flipping open at a rapid pace. I turned around to see the [Akashic Records], being ran through by an invisible force.

“Do not look at it.”, he warned, but it was too late. My eyes had already caught hold of a single page.

I saw a girl. Blonde hair, vermillion red eyes and phoenix wings on the back, crying over a corpse. Around the little girl, a war was going on, spears, broken swords, corpses, scorched earth and blood surrounded her. She was in a swarm of death and she had survived. The girl had an absurd attachment to corpse before her. It didn’t make sense, but I knew that she adored the man in front of her, but now he was no more. She was dirtied, but had no injuries on her as far as I could tell. She cried and cried till her body ignited into flames. She… she was trying to kill herself with her own flames, but she couldn’t. Nothing in this world could hurt the little girl. She thought it was her blessing, but now it only looked like a curse to her.

Up in the sky, a pair were watching her. Both of them were laughing. It was a duo of gods who had betted on which side of the battle would gain victory. They pitted both sides against each other and that had costed the girl dearly. As she burnt herself, the girl glared at the gods. They both took notice of her, but ignored her immediately. Little did they know, they were breeding their worst nightmare. For the first time, her flames caused a burn mark around her neck. Like a dog collar or choker, her neck was now steaming red, visibly different from her pearly skin.

The little girl-

“I told you not to look.”, the king of hell grabbed me and turned me around. My eyes met his once more and for the first time, I noticed that he wasn’t glaring at me. His eyes showed… concern. Something I wasn’t expecting to see.

He let go of me once he saw that I was fine, then pushed me aside. A page tore out of the book and fluttered onto his open palm. The book then closed with a thud.

“I believe this is what you were searching for?”, my eyes darted over to the page in his hands.

“U-Um, whaaaattt? Nooo. I would never try t-”

“I am aware that the Demiurge Alpha sent you to acquire the [Akashic Records].”, I was starting to feel a wee bit light-headed now. Then again, I guess it would make some sense, right?

Alpha was trying to get her hands on this book. That must have meant, her future was also in here. That meant, the King of Hell sort of ranked higher than her, right? Ok, that last part didn’t make sense, but I was going with it. If he could see the future, then he definitely knew all of this was going to happen.

My only problem is that when I first came… he didn’t know who I was. He thought I was Makrov. Did that mean the vision of the [Akashic Records] had a loophole? Like some sort of blind spot one could use to stay out of its range. If I took in the various factors, it had something to do with a curse on the soul. Since Makrov’s ‘Blessing’ cloaked my soul, he wasn’t of the fact that I was in hell. In that case, maybe the [Akashic Records] required to be able to actually sense the soul. If this was right, I had possibly just found a way to blindside the all-seeing king of hell.

“My [Akashic Records] is able to see multiple futures of every soul in existence. Because of this function, certain events just fly over my head at times. Warn the demiurge that prolonged use of even a single page by an entity other than me will result in a shattered, irreparable soul.”

I was totally wrong! He was simply looking at an alternate future in which Makrov actually did return to hell.

“Heed my words, Hinotori Hyakkiyako.”, his voice suddenly had an oppressive power in it. “In the coming days, a sacred event will begin. You will be given the option to join in and under no circumstances must you agree to this event.”

‘Sacred event? Again?’

“Should you decline this message, teleport to the location of the [Sacred Event] as a bystander. Collect what you have been searching for and flee immediately. Under no circumstances are you to interact with any other sacred bearer, or you will lose everything.”

With his warning delivered, the page in his palm begun to disintegrate, as did my body.

“Huh? Huh? Eh? What’s happening to me?”, confused, I questioned. I felt no pain whatsoever though.

“Never return here, Akira Kuromiya.”

“Hu-!?”

I lost sight of him after that.