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"What do you mean?" I asked in confusion.

"Exactly that, when did the first Reaper begin fighting in Hellsgate? You will get it wrong but just take a guess."

Remembering Bella\'s comment about Roland Winchester I smugly replied feeling like a know-it-all.

"The Roman period. Before the birth of Jesus."

"Good guess but no, it was even earlier. Try again," Lilly replied.

"What? Then the stone age?"

"Incorrect, earlier."

"What could be even earlier than the stone age? Thats when the dinosaurs existed."

"Indeed, and I am telling you it\'s even earlier."

"You are shitting me, right? How is that even possible? Even if it was, how could you even prove it."

"Correct, how would one prove it when man didn\'t even know how to write. But you know of stories that are passed further even without such tools, don\'t you?"

She should have meant word of mouth. People did share tales before being able to write them, but I didn\'t understand how that fact applied in this case. If reapers did exist before the stone age, what proof did we have?

Perhaps amused by my expressions. Lilly poked my nose with her index finger as she explained.

"How adorable. You already know of the proof of times earlier than the stone age John. You just haven\'t connected the dots yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Benben, Atlantis, Elysium, Asgard, Nirvana, Jade Mountain, Shangri-la, the garden of Eden, Avalon, the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, El Dorado, Hawaiki, Silat Bridge, Takama-ga-hara I could go on, but you get the idea."

What? From the words Lily recited a few sounded familiar. Atlantis the city underwater. Asgard, Norse mythology\'s version of heaven. Nirvana, the Buddhist final destination everyone wanted to reach. Jade mountain, where the Chinese believe the immortals dwell.

Avalon, King Arthur\'s last bastion. The garden of Eden were Adam and Eve ate the fruit.

Mixed in them were works of fiction, myth and religion. According to the tales that surrounded these stories some of them should have happened before the stone age but what of it? What has any of this have to do with reapers?

"You don\'t seem convinced. John, if today\'s people saw how I controlled water with my {fate} what do you think they would call me?"

"Ugh, a superhero? A mutant? Or maybe a weird science experiment," I replied honestly.

People associated things they didn\'t understand with what they knew. Today\'s world had a number of stories that spoke of beings that surpassed humans as works of fiction. Superheroes to be precise.

"And if it was during the time before the stone age?"

\'But if it was in the time of the stone age. Being able to call down water from air like Lilly does would be seen as a… No fucking way…\'

"Yes, I would have been seen as a god," Lilly nonchalantly declared.

"Are you telling me that Thor, King Arthur and Sun Wukong were all reapers?" I asked in disbelief.

"I don\'t know about them specifically, but I do know that if they did exist from that long ago, they should have been reapers. You already know how they would have gained their abilities."

"{Fates}."

"Correct. Now pull up your phone and take picture of me."

"Now? Why? What for?"

"Just do it, and you\'ll understand why," Lilly pushed urgently.

Following her orders, I took my cheap ass phone, opened the camera app and took a picture of gorgeous woman in front of me.

"Now what?"

The woman then suggested. "Look at the picture."

When I checked the picture, I felt a chill creep up my spine. What the fuck was going on? The background was there but Lilly wasn\'t. Was she invisible or something? Before I could ask, I got disoriented by a flash and a camera shuttering sound.

The phantom with blue hair approached then showed me the picture she took as she spoke.

"This is my picture of you."

"I…I am not in it," I answered in a trembling voice.

"Yes, reapers cannot be seen in both mirrors and pictures. Tell me what other being is said to be the same?"

The answer was obvious, it would be vampires. Was she telling me vampires actually existed as reapers that somehow turned to myth? Maybe it was just all a big coincidence, but before I could say anything my companion continued.

"Then what about if you saw Mia Flair and Amari Soldat transform?"

Anyone who saw Mia would automatically believe werewolves were real. Amari would be considered Kingkong in real life. Wait… you have got to be shitting me…

"Correct John Smith. Every single ghostly apparition or creatures considered make believe from bigfoot to the Lochness monster were either reapers or demons. The heroes in every religion and myth were reapers with either their manifested {fates} or soulgear. Now tell me, what have you noticed prevalent in every single religion and myth?"

That was easy, every religion and myth had an end of the world and lots of wars and death. Reapers would…

\'Reapers have a universal skill we all share. We gain souls in the presence of death. Anything that dies around you grants souls. The only question is how much.\'

"You can\'t be serious. This is just insane," I murmured in anger.

"What if I told you that every religion and legend you know of was the story of a group of reapers who existed once upon a time. You should know that our task has a time limit, right? Apocalypse, Ragnarök, Armageddon call it what you will. But the world already ended numerous times. Didn\'t the dinosaurs prove that? The bible even tells you how the world ended in its version."

"But. If it did who would be able to record and keep that knowledge." I insisted in denial. This shit was too wild for me.

"That is what IRIS is. They are called the eternal watchers. A group of reapers whose sole purpose is to pass on knowledge from the past."

I gulped in terror at what I learned; this was too frightening. If what Lilly said was true, then every single god from every conceivable religion was just a reaper who became stupidly powerful. Yet the reason why they all faded into myth was not because they weren\'t real but because they all died to Hellsgate.

Gilgamesh, Shiva, Sigfried, Rama, Set, Buddha, Susanoo, Lubu even King Arthur! These people were beyond legends from all over the world and were revered for their accomplishments and their heroism.

If they were all reapers, that meant they all failed to accomplish the reaper\'s main task. And I actually said I would close the damn thing?

"And it does not stop there, even today, IRIS exists to pass on knowledge and protect the reapers," The phantom elaborated.

"From what? If they protected the reapers, then how did the mythological reapers all die?"

Lilly made an unhappy expression as she answered. "IRIS does not interfere inside Hellsgate, they only interfere on earth. They protect us from Trinity."

"Trinity?"

"John, you have yet to ask how we know about the existence of demons," Lilly challenged.

"Trinity is made up of demons?"

"Partially correct. This is the shadow war waged in the world of the reapers. IRIS has been fighting Trinity since the first demon got out of hell. Trinity has only one goal, to prevent the reapers from stopping the end of the world. And they have succeeded plenty of times, if records are to be believed. You already know of their other name — the Illuminati."

"Wow! Really? But why don\'t the reapers unite to take out Trinity? Shouldn\'t that be an easy feat for the Sovereigns?" I asked in anger.

"Then why hasn\'t the world ended world hunger, slavery or even poverty?" Lilly rebutted in sarcasm.

I closed my mouth and felt a bitter feeling swell in my chest. Right, people were selfish, this probably extended to reapers as well. Uniting towards a common goal meant some people needed to push aside their own desires. If even the worlds of humans failed to do it, what more of the world of reapers?

"Your daily life is influenced by their war more than you can even realize John. Reapers have always taken cared and guarded humans as they are in a way our parents. The only way for a reaper to be born is for a human to die. If there are no longer any humans, reapers will soon follow."

My daily life was influenced by the battle between IRIS and Trinity? That seemed farfetched. I lived like a normal person prior to dying. How could I even be affected?

"Are you aware that IRIS was the one who started both WWI and WWII? You can pretty much guess the reasons why. More souls and more reapers. However, while the reaper population experienced a boom, it soon halted due to the number of humans significantly decreasing. Thus, IRIS shifted tactics, to have the humans train without dying and being able to learn from their mistakes."

That sounded like the human\'s having multiple lives which was impossible, but before I could verbalize my thoughts, Lilly continued.

"They forced the world to develop computer games."

"W-What?" I stammered in disbelief.

"IRIS wishing for a way to develop the combat potential of humans created the gaming industry. They normalized the idea of killing undead, trained the humans how to plan with limited information, and how to \'play\' around the rules of a specific concept in order to win. Such abilities translated to competency in Hellsgate."

This sounded like total bullshit but from the standpoint of a reaper it made a lot of sense. Yet Lilly wasn\'t finished.

"Unfortunately, Trinity got in the way. Instead of allowing for reapers to be trained by the games, they destroyed the gaming industry by moving it away from the simulation and making it lose its purpose.

"Pay to win, gacha, battle passes you name it. On top of this, games that relaxed instead of trained a human were also developed. Even games that lacked any analytical thinking that were just books or sex simulators in a nutshell were added to the mix."

While I did not understand most of the reaper history, I did understand the world of gaming. That meant the gaming industry was destroyed not by corporate greed but by Trinity. Holy hell, this was some area 51 type shit.

"I think I need to sit down for this."