"Who are you? Why did you give me a new life again?" the man asked, his voice echoing loudly in the area.
"..."
The system did not reply. It never did, not to questions like these. Instead, the three holographic templates hung before his eyes, floating in the air like golden cards waiting to be chosen.
Each one glowed with a different color. One blue. One black. One red. They pulsed slowly, as if breathing, as if waiting.
He took a moment and stood up from the ground. His legs felt strong. His back did not ache. His knees did not crack.
He looked at his palms and turned them around, studying the smooth skin, the firm muscles, the absence of age spots and wrinkles. He clenched them into fists and realized an amazing thing.
This was not the body of a dying old man.
This was the body of a warrior.
"I came back to the peak of my life!" he said in surprise, noting that he was in his prime body, the body he had when he was still eighteen years old. The same body that had run for miles without tiring.
The same body that had lifted weights that made grown men stare. The same body that had attracted the attention of every woman who crossed his path.
"HAHAHA!" He could not help but laugh out loud since he got his young body back. The sound of his laughter was different now. Louder. Fuller. It did not end in a wheeze or a cough.
It rolled across the empty space like thunder.
Growing old was good and fortunate. He would never say otherwise. One hundred fifty years of life had given him wisdom, patience, and perspective.
But a young body was simply a miracle compared to his old shell at his last breath as a dying one hundred fifty year old man. He remembered that final moment clearly.
The beeping of the heart monitor. The cold hospital sheets. The taste of medicine on his dry tongue. The way his fingers could barely hold a cup of water.
Now those same fingers were strong enough to crush stone.
He wiped the tears of joy from his eyes and then looked at the three choices before him. The templates floated patiently, waiting for his decision. He studied each one carefully.
"Kira Yamato is good, but he is just a normal human without his Gundam," he muttered, shaking his head.
The blue template dimmed slightly, as if accepting the rejection. He remembered watching Gundam Seed as a young man. Kira was powerful, yes, but only inside his mobile suit.
On the ground, on his own, he was just another person. That would not do. He needed power that came from within, not from a machine. He moved his gaze to the third template. The black one.
"Ainz Ooal Gown is also good and overpowered, but he has no flesh," he added, shaking his head again. The black template flickered. Ainz was terrifying. His magic could level cities.
His summons could crush armies. But he was a skeleton. A collection of bones held together by dark magic.
"I cannot imagine a woman loving to make love with metal," he said, or with bone, or with whatever else Ainz had under that fancy robe.
He had not been given a second chance at life just to spend it alone and cold. That left only one option.
"There can only be one wise choice. System, I pick Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto!" he shouted out loud, his voice filled with absolute certainty. The red template exploded with light.
"Affirmative, host!" the system replied.
A breath later, he was granted the full one hundred percent power of Old Man Yama. Not a fraction. Not a copy. The real thing.
He got the peak power of the template, the version from when the old man still had his left arm on his body. That was important. That was the difference between a legend and a corpse.
Yamamoto with both arms was Yamamoto at his absolute strongest, the man who had stood at the top of the Soul Society for thousands of years. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he felt it.
Heat. Not the gentle warmth of a summer sun, but the raging inferno of a volcano erupting inside his chest. His veins burned. His muscles tightened. His hair stood on end.
Power flooded into every cell of his body, rewriting him, remaking him, reforging him into something greater than a man.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. The pressure was too much. The energy was too vast.
A full minute later, an immeasurable spiritual pressure descended on the scene around him. The ground beneath his feet cracked. The air grew heavy, thick as water.
Small animals for miles around fled in terror. Birds fell from the sky, not dead but unconscious, unable to withstand the weight of his mere existence.
The very light seemed to bend around him, as if reality itself was struggling to contain what he had become. He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
A small flame appeared at his fingertip. It was no bigger than a candle's flame, but its heat was enough to melt the stones at his feet into bubbling lava.
He smiled.
"Not bad," he whispered. "Not bad at all."