Grim Reaper in the Apocalypse: Reaping Immortals

After the explosion, Atlan's entire body, his entire Soul System, was destroyed into mere particles. He was just nothingness, floating around in the middle of nowhere.

If he was a normal human being, he wouldn't even be able to think and become conscious at this moment in time. They would be dead, plain and simple.

But Atlan was no simple being. He was the inheritor of the God of Death's legacy. He was poised to become its next ruler.

So, death had no meaning for him.

However, he felt even weaker than when he was a child. He felt like he had no such power at all.

Where am I? Atlan asked himself, but there was no answer for there was only himself in this dimension.

Where am I? He continued to ask himself, and yet, no one ever answered his question.

He continued in this state of fugue for an indeterminate amount of time. He didn't know how much time had passed, but it felt like thousands upon thousands of years had passed. He continued to ask this question to himself, with no one answering him.

It was only when a million years had passed did he finally remember.

He died. The explosion had destroyed both his body and mind.

And once this realization had set upon his soul, he finally came to remember who he was. He was Atlan.

And as he remembered his own identity, he looked around himself and felt pieces of his own power scattered around like gas in a room. It was just spread around haphazardly with no one there to collect it.

Despite his limited mobility, Atlan slowly made his way through the rest of his powers.

He felt like he would come back to himself once he had collected all of the pieces of himself back in one place.

Millions more years passed until finally, he had collected all of his powers inside a ball of indeterminate size. It looked like a fuzzy white ball with fire raging from the inside.

This was his power. This was the Soul System that he had lost when the explosion occurred.

But, he could never bring it back the way it was before. After all, that was gone. He had to create something new—something completely different.

So, he spent more and more years trying to change and mold the ball of power in this unknown space and dimension.

He continued to make it denser and denser, consolidating it into a very fine point, with no dimensions. It was just a point in space.

It was only then that a substantial change came upon his body.

He looked around and suddenly saw himself among a sea of stars. These stars also had the same point of power that had no dimensions. It was infinitely small, yet infinitely filled with power.

And somehow, Atlan felt as if these stars were looking at him. Some looked at him with curiosity, some looked at him with indifference, and some with hostility.

Atlan knew. These were Gods.

Because they could see him, it meant that he could see them. He was no longer a regular human being. It felt as if he had gone and transcended into something different. It wasn't necessarily better, but it was different. Way different.

After all, he felt like he was among those stars in the sky. It felt like he could touch them and be with them.

This meant only one thing. He had reached the starting point of his ascension to godhood.

After harvesting the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Specialist-level Canzer, he had finally reached the threshold of power that could be considered godlike.

He still had a long way from becoming part of the biggest stars in the sky, but he had reached the threshold.

He finally realized why they were looking at him with those eyes.

They were looking at the birth of a new god!

Upon this realization, Atlan finally found the power within himself to rebuild his body. He wanted to rebuild his body into something better than before, without all the weaknesses that made him human.

His Soul System was gone, but despite that, Atlan felt as if he was even more free than before. It was as if the shackles put onto him by a different God were destroyed.

He felt like he could finally start his journey as the inheritor of the God of Death.

Slowly, he rebuilt his body, one atom at a time.

Slowly, flesh and body began to gather around the single point of power that contained all the godhood of his Soul.

And somehow, this point of power supplied the flesh and blood, bathing it with power and turning it into something much stronger, something that could not be compared to normal humans.

He felt like his entire being was rejuvenated.

After a while, his body had been reborn!

His physical features remained the same, but there was something different with him. His eyes looked ever so distant, his aura seemed ever so powerful.

Atlan opened his eyes.

He looked up at the Gods in the skies, who were looking down at him.

He opened his mouth and said,

"I will come for you,"

Those were his last words for the gods. Once he had reached this level of godhood, he finally realized why the God of Death hated the other Gods with a passion. He finally understood the crime they committed that was worthy of death.

And retribution would come. He will come for them.

Atlan opened a rift in space and left the haven of the Gods. He had to return to the dimension of the humans in order to fulfill his plans.

As soon as he did, the points of stars in the skies started to tremble. Some, out of fear, but most out of anger.

They would have never thought that the God of Death was able to relay his legacy to a human. That was supposed to be impossible.

But now, he was led free into the world.

Apocalypse had begun.