# Chapter 1
I died. Yes, I actually died in my own bed, and I was absolutely certain that was the end. As it turned out, I was dead wrong.
By some miracle, I came to in an unfamiliar place that looked suspiciously like the office of a typical government bureaucrat. The first thing that caught my eye was the corpse-pale glow of fluorescent lights. One of them was flickering oddly, making a faint crackling sound. The air had a kind of "plastic" quality to it, saturated with the smell of an overheated printer and dusty file folders.
"Welcome to our humble office," said a man's voice, pulling me out of my dazed inspection of the room. He looked exactly like a textbook office drone.
"Hello," I said uncertainly, addressing the man behind the desk. He radiated bone-deep exhaustion from every pore. "Um… where am I?"
"You're in the Office of Reincarnations," he answered flatly, watching me through bloodshot eyes.
"R-Reincarnations?" I repeated, not trusting my own ears. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"Hff…" The man let out a heavy sigh and fixed me with a piercing stare. "Look, you already know you're dead. Let's not waste time and get on with the procedure."
I just nodded like a bobblehead. No point in irritating the person my fate now depended on.
"Good. Sign here and here, and I'll send you off to your new life." He wearily extended a pen and a stack of papers in my direction.
"What's all this? I hope it's not a contract for my soul," I said, taking the papers with a skeptical look.
"No, standard procedure. These sheets are your consent forms and a waiver releasing our company from liability in the event of unforeseen circumstances," the employee "reassured" me.
His explanation made signing the papers feel even more horrifying. But I had no other choice. I scrawled my signature quickly, before I could change my mind.
"Good man, should've done that right away. Now, let's choose who you'll become in the new world."
"Uh, hold on — how exactly does this work?" I decided I should clarify the details of my future.
"There's nothing complicated about it," he said, adjusting his glasses. "You see that machine over there? That's the Enigma — a cutting-edge development from the Reincarnation Department." He pointed to a device that looked like a bingo lottery drum. "You get one spin. Whatever comes out, that's who you'll be reborn as. But don't worry — my job is to help you."
I felt uneasy. Was my fate really going to be decided by pure chance?
"Are there other options? I'd rather not leave it up to a lottery."
"Listen, you're starting to annoy me," the man said, a hard edge creeping into his voice. "There is another way, but then you won't be able to change anything at all. I'll just pick a world for you myself. Trust me, you won't like it — everyone who gets on my nerves, I dump in the most unpleasant places imaginable. Heh heh heh…" He finished the sentence with a deeply unsettling grin.
"No, please! I'll take the machine!" I decided not to test the clerk's patience any further.
"That's what I thought. Go ahead then…"
"Well… here goes nothing." With those words, I cranked the lever.
"All right, let go — it'll stop on its own."
I pulled my hands back. The machine kept spinning, filling the room with a steady, rhythmic hum. Silence settled over the office. To be honest, I was terrified. What if it landed on someone disabled? That would be a death sentence for my entire new life. My feelings must have been written all over my face.
"Nervous? Understandable — your whole future is riding on this. But I can offer you some comfort: since this is your first reincarnation, you benefit from Beginner's Luck," the employee said, breaking the silence.
"What luck?" I blinked. "You mean I'll get a chance to reincarnate again after this?"
"Yes, but you'll need to accumulate good karma in your new life to do it. If you can't manage that, you'll be sent to Purgatory for final oblivion." He seemed to read the question forming on my face. "I can see you wondering how you ended up here in the first place. Let's just say you got lucky. Your younger brother — the one you raised — grew up to become a remarkable person and led people toward a brighter future. You received karma credit for raising him. As for Beginner's Luck, the system will simply tilt things slightly in your favor when the result drops. So just wait."
I was speechless. My thick-headed little brother had become someone important to humanity? What on earth had happened after my death? Though right now, something else mattered more — how was I supposed to accumulate karma in a new world? I was about to ask, but the clerk beat me to it.
"The Enigma has stopped. Come, let's see what we've got."
He walked over to the lottery drum.
"Ha — congratulations! A violet Fate Ball. Let's see now… Marcus Eisenhardt, mutant, twenty-one years old. Possesses the power to accumulate singularity energy and channel it for amplification. Currently located in a Hydra laboratory as a test subject…"
With every word he spoke, it became harder to breathe.
"Listen carefully," the employee's voice turned serious. "When you wake up, you won't remember this conversation. All that will remain is knowledge of your new body and its abilities. You've gotten incredibly lucky — singularity energy is a truly exceptional power. Simply put, it works on the same principle as the gacha games you're familiar with, with one key difference: you cannot pull living beings. The system will adapt to your consciousness and will be intuitive to use. That's all. Goodbye."
He cracked open the violet ball, and an overwhelming, wild weakness immediately flooded through me.
*Damn it… why did it have to be Marvel…*
That was the last thing I managed to whisper before my consciousness finally went dark.
---
Awareness returned slowly. At first there was only the sensation of a thick, leaden void — and then, gradually, a dawning recognition of my situation. My body felt foreign, far too massive and sluggish, as though I were pinned beneath immense pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
I forced my eyes open, but the picture didn't get any clearer. A murky, yellowish suspension swirled in front of my face. I tried to inhale — and my chest ignited: my lungs were not filled with air, but with a dense, oxygenated liquid. Drowning panic surged through my mind for one terrifying instant, but my body didn't thrash or convulse. It was paralyzed, bound by dozens of thin wires.
I was inside a transparent container. Sensor pads clung to my skin like hungry leeches, tracking every heartbeat. Thick cables ran to the back of my skull and along my spine, and from my mouth extended the corrugated tube of a breathing apparatus.
*Where am I?.. Who am I?*
Along with the air bubbles drifting up toward the surface, fragments of another life rose to the surface of my mind. Nuremberg, cold winters, and scenic forests… Marcus Eisenhardt — the name pulsed at my temples, merging with my own sense of self. A volunteer flight to Sokovia. Meeting a beautiful girl named Nada, a brief and blissful courtship, and then an ice-cold betrayal. She had worked for Hydra and lured me into the laboratory as a test subject.
Shadows moved on the other side of the capsule glass: people in white lab coats and guards bearing insignias shaped like a skull with tentacles.
"Stabilization phase complete," said a voice distorted by the liquid medium, crackling through the incubator's speakers. "Subject's readings are normal. He is ready for the next stimulation stage. Initiating electroshock therapy to the cerebral cortex…"
My eyes went wide. Deep inside the container, the blue lights of the electrodes flickered to life.
And in that moment, directly in front of my face — burning through the liquid itself — a violet display flared to life. It was not part of Hydra's equipment. It was burning inside my mind.
---
**[ "SINGULARITY" ACTIVATED ]**
**[ Current User Status: Critical (Exhaustion) ]**
**[ Anomalous Singularity Energy Level Detected ]**
**[ 10 Free Pulls Available ]**
*Do you wish to summon?*
---
A blue spark leapt from an electrode and slammed into the water. The pain was indescribable — it turned me inside out, sending every muscle into wild, violent spasm. The tube in my mouth nearly tore free, and the chest sensors screamed as my pulse spiked off the charts.
*Yes! Spin it! Right now!* I pleaded desperately, feeling my consciousness beginning to dim under another surge of current.
The violet flame inside the system whirled, collapsing into a blinding vortex.