Chapter 1: Chapter 1— Two deaths in the same Day

"Your stupid compassion for animal lives is costing you your life now," that was the last thing Laden heard before a bullet pierced his chest and everything went dark.

"The Spirit World will be merging with your world very soon, and all humans will be annihilated if nothing is done about it," a loud voice reverberated in the surroundings.

Laden, who was currently floating in an unending darkness, tried his best to look all around him, hoping to see where the voice was coming from, but he just couldn’t find anything.

He didn’t know what was happening, but the last thing he remembered was being shot by the military men that were supposed to watch him.

They were on a mission to acquire an eyou,ngered species and protect it, but his guards were blinded by greed and actually ended up betraying him.

"Don’t bother trying to look for me; even if I were standing right in front of you, you still wouldn’t be able to see me," the voice said again.

Laden was taken aback by those words, but he still tried his best to maintain his composure.

"Then why am I here?" he said in a very hurried voice, making it obvious that he was still bothered by those eggs he had hidden.

"You are here because I saw something in you and that thing is going to help the two of us greatly," the voice said again.

"And don’t worry about the eggs anymore; they are safe now, and if it will make you feel better, I have also taken care of those men."

Though he wasn’t willing to show it externally, Laden felt a sense of happiness upon hearing that those men were already taken care of.

"You still haven’t told me what I am supposed to help you with exactly and how I can," Laden said again.

"A new bout of summoning ceremony will be happening very soon, and I need your help taking care of the chaos that will follow—"

"Summoning ceremony? What the hell is that?" Laden wondered.

The voice suddenly stopped in the middle of the conversation as if distracted by something else, leaving Laden hanging.

"They have noticed so fast," the voice said in a slightly worried tone.

"Then we don’t have any more time to waste."

"I will be sending you to the spirit world now; try your best not to die. The survival of both our worlds depends on it."

Laden was finding it difficult to process what was going on, as the switch from explaining something to him and about sending him to the spirit world happened so fast.

Laden was just about to say something when he heard a large cracking sound reverberate everywhere and, along with it, a large tear appearing in the darkness above his head.

The moment the tear appeared, Laden felt the darkness all around him shake extremely violently, and his soul felt like it was being crushed by an unfathomable weight.

"Haaaaa," he cried out in pain.

"You must go now," the voice said hurriedly before Laden felt like he was being flung extremely harshly.

He moved at a speed so high and so fast that he felt like he was being dragged in two opposite directions.

"What the hell is going on?" Laden shouted in pain.

He had gone from the forest to the dark place and now he was being flung to an unknown location in such a short amount of time.

The feeling of flying through the air persisted for a while until Laden felt himself slowing down and finally landing harshly on the ground.

Pain shot throughout his body as he tried his best to check out his new surroundings, but he just couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

All around Laden were extremely tall grasses that stretched out as far as his eyes could see, but that wasn’t what was actually shocking to Laden.

It was the color of the leaves. Instead of being the green he was used to, the leaves were totally red, making his surroundings look like a sea of blood.

"Where the hell is this," he asked in confusion.

He could remember that the strange Voice told him it would be sending him to the Spirit World but he wasn’t sure if this was the spirit world the voice was talking about.

While he was still trying to get a full scope of where he actually was, Laden suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from behind him.

He instinctively turned around to check, but what he saw almost made him fall straight on his bum.

Standing behind Laden was a rabbit. But this bunny was nowhere close to being a normal bunny; the bunny behind Laden was almost twice as tall as he was, creating a shadow that completely covered Laden.

"What the hell is that?" he muttered under his breath.

But luckily the bunny didn’t seem to look as if it wanted to attack him. Instead, it just stood there looking at Laden strangely.

Grrrrrhhh!

Laden suddenly heard just as he noticed a change in the bunny’s eyes, and he instantly knew that things were about to go crazy. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Behind the bunny in front of him, one at a time more and more bunnies kept popping their heads out, the smallest one being just a little bit taller than Laden.

"That can’t be good," he said softly.

As if triggered by his words, the bunny immediately bared its teeth, and the sight almost knocked Laden unconscious. The rabbit’s teeth were large and extremely sharp, looking like small knives instead of teeth.

"That is not the teeth you should be seeing on an herbivore," he said before turning around to run as fast as he could.

In a short amount of time, Laden created a bit of a distance between him and the bunnies as he turned around to see them not moving at all.

"It seems I was the one overreacting," Laden thought.

The thought hadn’t completely left his mind when he suddenly felt saw the bunny take a single hop, almost completely closing the gap between them.

"Bastards, it seems they were only toying with me," Laden said in a pained voice.

Following the lead of the first bunny, the others also took a hop and landed behind their leader.

Seeing them growing closer, Laden pushed himself to the max and tried his best to widen the gap between them, but it seems it was all for nothing.

Laden watched the tips of the bunnies’ mouths curl up to form a sinister smile.

"They are really toying with me; animals aren’t supposed to be like this," Laden thought in fear.

He noticed the bunny’s muscles tense up again, signifying that it was ready for another leap.

"Here it comes, from my knowledge of rabbit anatomy, they should be able to change directions between hops, so this is my chance," he thought.

When he noticed the bunny was about to leave the ground, he quickly switched directions and ran to the left of his former path.

Just like he predicted, the bunny wasn’t able to change directions in time, resulting in it landing in Laden’s previous position. But what Laden underestimated was the bunny’s intelligence.

Instead of immediately chasing after him, the bunny leader signaled to the others, and they immediately changed directions and hopped towards Laden’s new direction.

Laden was shocked by the sudden turn of events, but the last thing he saw were some knife-like teeth before everything went dark.