This Reincarnation Requires a Subscription Fee

The priests immediately recognized that the energy was divine power. However, it wasn’t just any ordinary divine power. This was the first time they had encountered such raw, unrefined divine power, and it stung like being cut by a blade all over their bodies. It felt as though the divine power emanating from the pillar of light was reprimanding them.

Cardinal Kaltas also trembled as he felt a sensation similar to that of the ordinary priests. It had not been long since he received the urgent news that the Saintess and the Cardinal had been safely secured.

‘Just when I thought everything was going according to plan.’

At this precise moment, seeing such an extraordinary surge of divine power made him feel an ominous premonition that things might not go as smoothly as he had hoped. When he gauged the direction of the pillar of light, he grew even more uneasy, as it seemed to be coming from the territory of Duke Elpinard.

“C-Cardinal! Your Eminence!”

As he rubbed his stinging arm, the door suddenly burst open, and a young priest came tumbling in as if he had been thrown. Cardinal Kaltas was about to reprimand him for his rude behavior, but he clamped his mouth shut when he saw the priest’s face. The young priest was pale, as if he had seen a ghost.

“S-s-something terrible has happened!”

The Cardinal sneered at the priest’s frantic tone.

“Are you making a fuss because of that pillar of light? I’ve already seen it, so calm down.”

“N-no, it’s not that! It’s something else!”

The priest, who was shaking his head in a daze, caused the smile on Cardinal Kaltas’ lips to fade. If it wasn’t because of the pillar of light, what could have caused the priest to react this way?

The priest, now almost hysterical, grabbed the Cardinal’s robes and tugged on them. It was something he would never normally do, but now he was completely out of his mind.

“Y-you must go at once!”

“To where?”

“T-to, to the Holy Father’s chamber! You must go there!”

Cardinal Kaltas, who was about to irritably shake off the priest’s hand, froze.

“…The Holy Father’s chamber? Why?”

At the Cardinal’s question, the priest shouted as if he was about to collapse from the intensity of the moment.

“The Holy Father has opened his eyes! He walked on his own two feet!”

“…What?”

* * *

“Ugh…”

I groaned as I clutched my head, which was throbbing with pain, and barely managed to open my eyes. I found myself lying flat on the ground, as if I had been thrown off a wagon and tumbled onto a flat surface.

I quickly sat up and looked around. It didn’t take long for me to realize that something was off.

‘Huh?’

This wasn’t an ordinary place. A vast, endless white space stretched out before me in every direction. Instinctively, I felt that this place wasn’t real. It wasn’t due to my legendary intuition. This was a genuine, instinctual sense of unfamiliarity.

Dazed, I stood up from where I had been lying.

The whiteness was overwhelming, and the stillness was so intense that it sent a chill down my spine. It felt as though I had been dropped into the middle of a vast, endless ocean, leaving my mind momentarily frozen. I had no idea whether I should stay put or start walking in some direction—if there was even such a thing as direction in this space.

‘Not that I’d know which direction to take anyway.’

In fact, I wasn’t even sure if the concept of direction existed in this place. As I stood there, filled with questions, scanning my surroundings, a voice suddenly broke the eerie silence of the space.

“Hello, Subscriber!”

‘Where is that coming from?’

I looked around frantically, but all I could see was the same white expanse stretching endlessly in every direction.

“I’m the manager of your reincarnation subscription service, the jack-of-all-trades in Heaven, the messenger of the gods! The one and only idol of Heaven, ‘Serlus!’”

‘What is this?’

The cheerful voice seemed entirely out of place in this strange space. 

‘And what’s with the idol bit…?’

I stood there, dumbfounded, my mouth agape at the ridiculous cheerfulness and the incomprehensible words. The voice’s owner didn’t seem to care about my reaction, as the lively voice continued without pause.

“‘Se’ from the word ‘world’ (which is hard to find), ‘Ru’ from ‘ruby,’ and ‘S’ from ‘star!’ Together, that’s Se-ru-lus! But you can just call me Lus for short!”

“Oh… uh… okay…”

I responded awkwardly, instinctively trying to keep my distance. This was definitely someone I didn’t want to get too close to. But the owner of the voice didn’t seem to mind at all, maintaining their upbeat tone.

“There’s been a bit of an issue, so we urgently brought you to this space! Although your subscription period isn’t over yet, unfortunately… you’ve stopped breathing!”

“What?”

The fact that this person could say something like “you’ve stopped breathing” with such cheerfulness was shocking. First, I was startled by the tone, and only after that did the seriousness of the situation sink in.

“Uh… so does that mean I’m dead? But I still have subscription time left?”

I had painstakingly—well, maybe not painstakingly, but with genuine effort—collected coins by distributing four-leaf clovers. With those precious coins, I had bought my subscription time, my lifespan.

“You’re not saying I’m going to lose my subscription time just like that, are you?”

Even though I was in a non-physical space, my pronunciation was precise, despite the childlike body I was currently in.

“Oh no, not at all!”

As I raised my voice, ready to lodge a complaint, Serlus hurriedly denied it.

“Heaven guarantees the full duration of the subscription period that you’ve purchased with your hard-earned coins!”

“Of course, that’s what I thought.”

I sighed in relief. In my previous life, I had died honorably while searching for the Mad Dragon. But this time, if I had died simply by falling off a wagon, it would have been a rather pitiful end.

“However, since your breathing has stopped, there will be a penalty due to the need to readjust your body!”

“Penalty?”

I glared at Serlus with wide eyes, feeling indignant at the idea of being penalized on top of dying. Serlus quickly tried to explain.

“Don’t worry, Subscriber! It’s not a severe penalty! We’ll just be reclaiming one of the reward cards you obtained through donation bonuses!”

“What did you say?”

They were going to take back the only reward card I had, and it was a legendary one at that!

“That’s unacceptable.”

“But it’s the regulation…”

“If there’s such a regulation, you should have informed me in advance. Terms that aren’t disclosed beforehand are invalid.”

“…”

“If I had known about this rule, I would’ve been extremely careful to avoid dying. The fact that I wasn’t means this whole situation is your fault.”

As I began to argue logically, the once-cheerful Serlus fell silent.

“It’s already frustrating enough that I bought this weird product! I’m overwhelmed with all the quests piling up! And now you want to take away the only card I have?”

“Um, Subscriber?”

“If this is how it’s going to be, I won’t continue this reincarnation. I don’t care if my breath returns or not—I’m not doing it!”

With that, I flopped down onto the ground in defiance. 

Every time I checked the ‘Quest List,’ it was always filled with requests from various gods. They relied on me, their ‘Subscriber,’ to handle tasks they couldn’t deal with themselves. And wasn’t I the one who received the special title of ‘Saintess’ as a benefit for being the ‘first subscriber’?

It’s highly likely that there are no other subscribers besides me right now.

‘That means I don’t need to act like I’m at a disadvantage here.’

In hindsight, it’s only logical. 

‘A reincarnation subscription service? Seriously?’

I recalled the ancient document that Servian had sent to me. Who in their right mind would sign such a ridiculous and crude document right off the bat? In a world where everyone lives by the rule ‘never sign anything without reading it,’ only someone as reckless as me would sign without a second thought.

Of course, people like me are few and far between.

Which is probably why I ended up becoming the first subscriber to this ‘reincarnation subscription service’ that’s been trying to recruit customers since ancient times.