Chapter 1447: Contemplating
While Dalla did her best, trying to teach an all-powerful angel how to slap. And while Merida kept an eye on them while sitting beside the sleeping Grace, Arad had his own plan.
From what he saw until this point, he started to feel that he was on the edge of understanding something fundamental about the universe. It was this strange feeling, tickling at the back of his head, screaming that he had missed something.
First, ever since he became an adult dragon, he has gained a lot of powers, but ignoring anything related to raw power, like his size, magic, and damage. What interested him more was the souls.
Each living being had at least one soul, and having both the body and soul linked together is what people call "Living."
The soul acts as a backup most of the time for the body’s memories and ego, keeping a copy of its essence safe, away from the threat of physical and mortal reach. The reason for that was simple: death wasn’t the end.
Everyone knows this by now, but it was quite the thing to think about. The goal of all life is death, and that is a literal thing. The moment anything "Alive" is born, the clock starts ticking, indicating that death is already approaching. Arad could even say that getting born is the first sign of death.
So, what happens when someone dies? Simple, the soul and body separate. The temporary mortal flesh decays and rots away, while the soul has to suffer one of four fates. Five if some bullshit took place, which Arad seemed to find often.
The first two are what all people know well, hell or heaven. When a mortal dies, they are judged by death. The first is whether the mortal has a god or not. If they have a god, they’ll either go to hell or heaven, based on their deeds. If they don’t, they’ll either go to hell or the underworld, where they’ll wait in line to reincarnate.
Of course, if they are bad, hell awaits. Sometimes, their god can vouch for them against death’s rule, and even get them to heaven or the underworld before she throws them into the infernal hells.
Hell is the place of suffering, heaven depends on which god the mortal believed in, and the underworld is one long waiting line, at the end of which you’ll lose all of your memories and sense of self to get reborn as a new person.
So, who was death? How much power does she have? Based on Lala, the succubus nun, death is an emotionless, taciturn maid. She is the one snatching every soul in the entire universe, and her power far exceeds most gods. For example, she was here many times during Arad’s trip, and no one could notice her.
She harvested the souls of every monster he killed, and he could never sense her. She harvested Dendron’s soul twice and shoved her into the tree to get reborn. Once, when Arad killed her, and once when Mathilde evaporated her with a kick. So death is probably just as harrowing, if not more than someone like Amaterasu. She could be standing right behind Arad, holding her blade without him having a clue.
So, what triggered Arad’s current contemplation? Many things, starting with Dendron. When she died, death snatched her soul and shoved it into the World Tree, because that was Dendron’s heaven. So Dendron was reborn in her heaven, and that just happened to be the same place that she was in before.