Outside the city spiraling into chaos, the Commander of the city's armed forces stood alongside other uniformed officers.
His gaze was locked on a radiant light piercing the starry metropolitan sky.
He replayed the conversation he'd had earlier in his mind. That man's words still echoed in his head.
---
Flashback
The door of a cabin creaked open slowly, revealing a silver-haired man. Dressed in a gleaming military uniform, he stood there with an air of commanding presence.
The Commander approached, a faint smile on his lips. "The uniform suits you. You should think about joining the Senkai—you'd fit right in."
The man returned the smile. "I'm flattered by the offer. But the Senkai would tie me down, keep me from fulfilling my mission."
The Commander raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "And what's that mission?"
The man paused, his eyes growing serious, his voice filling with solemn weight. "I want to give this world the hope it's missing. I aim to bring joy to people's hearts, to become a symbol of peace in this broken world."
The Commander was caught off guard, surprised to hear such words from a mercenary's mouth. Lost in thought, he barely noticed as the man turned and walked away.
"Don't ever take your eyes off that sky, because hope will shine from there like a star," the man said, leaving those final words behind.
The Commander watched him vanish. And so, he kept his eyes on the night sky.
End Flashback
---
The Commander snapped back to the present, his stare fixed on the glowing streak climbing into the heavens.
The officers instinctively drew closer, bound by a mix of fear and fragile optimism. A solemn silence blanketed the ravaged city as the radiant light reached its peak.
Its blinding glow spilled out, illuminating tense faces. Something massive was about to unfold.
---
Nero hovered high in the sky, overlooking a city drowning in chaos. Screams of terror and blaring sirens filled the stifling air.
Yet, despite the disaster playing out below, his face was calm, radiating an unsettling tranquility.
He thought back to his encounter with one of the novel's original protagonists—a fleeting, precious moment loaded with memories he wished could've lasted longer.
"Who'd have thought I'd run into that guy here… Guess I've already thrown the plot off course," he murmured in a low, almost inaudible voice.
His fists clenched briefly, a flicker of frustration. A quick smile crossed his face as he refocused on the suffering city below.
His azure gaze wandered through the maze of abandoned streets. Crumbling walls, tattered signs—it was all a living mirror of the violence tearing through this place. The wind whipped past, carrying scraps of paper and shattered glass.
Nero's eyes lifted to the night sky.
As his mind drifted, he couldn't help but feel a thrill at the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. He was the linchpin of this event. And this was just the start.
Soon, the world would see only him.
In Legends of Heroes, a unique power system reigned supreme. It revolved around gaining extraordinary abilities—talents that let you pull off the unimaginable.
At its core was a mysterious energy, an ever-present essence that governed everything. This energy was called Ether. It lived in every person, every object, pulsing deep within their being.
But only a rare few humans—despite their ordinary looks—were born with the innate ability to see and feel this energy. This gift let them tap into supernatural powers, vaulting them beyond mortal limits. These unique souls, defying the world's rules, were dubbed deviants.
The story of Legends of Heroes hinged heavily on these deviants. Their existence was a cornerstone shaping the novel's events and driving its plots.
Deviants could wield Ether to influence their bodies and surroundings through ethereal flows called spells. The possibilities were endless, but spells generally fell into five main types:
Elemental spells—creating or controlling nature's elements like water, air, earth, fire, lightning, sand, and more.
Psychic spells—manipulating the essence of things, like mind control, spacetime bending, telekinesis, telepathy, and so on.
Summoning spells—calling forth things or beings that didn't exist in the world, like animals, objects, spirits, demons, etc.
Enhancement spells—altering the state of an object or person, strengthening, warping, transmuting, or degrading it.
And finally, heterogeneous spells—a catch-all for anything outside those categories, like sealing spells, necromancy, analysis, and more.
This was Nero's new reality.
As a huge fan of the series, his first instinct was to test this power that had always fascinated him—a power that could change his life forever. It felt like someone had handed him the toy he'd always dreamed of.
The character he now embodied was Nero Vaelheim, a major antagonist and one of the most powerful deviants in this universe. Nicknamed "the Genius," his excitement to explore and master this incredible power was uncontainable. He'd thrown himself into experiments, getting a feel for the different ways to wield Ether—the lifeblood at the heart of all deviance.
There were three main ways to use Ether:
First, drawing from the energy already inside you, the stuff your body had absorbed.
Second, tapping into the Ether in nature, bending the environment's forces.
And finally, blending the two for an infinite range of possibilities.
For Nero, his Ether manifested as the ability to shape his surroundings, to create phenomena and concepts. In the original story, he was hailed as the greatest summoning deviant, able to materialize almost anything with his Ether mastery. Sadly, his early death at the hero's hands had cut his peak short.
Now, Nero was in the driver's seat, determined to push past his predecessor's limits. With the memories he'd inherited, the experience he'd gained, and his knowledge of the novel, he'd reached the original Nero's skill level in just a few months—and he aimed to blow past it. All he needed now was more experience.
After the Dragon King, this was his latest test.
With the Dragon King, it'd been about mastering what this body already knew. Now, it was about outdoing the original.
"Flow Zone," Nero whispered, his tone almost reverent.
He didn't need to say it, but as a fan, how could he resist dropping that iconic line?
The words barely left his lips before a surge of energy erupted from him, spreading across the sky like a fan unfurling through the heavens.
Flow Zone was a deviant's starter spell—a way to flood the environment with your internal Ether and claim it. Specialists in this were called summoners or alchemist deviants. Once the zone was corrupted, it became the deviant's playground, limited only by their imagination and power.
Nero stretched his arms out horizontally and closed his eyes for a moment. One perk of being reincarnated was his boundless imagination, paired with a body brimming with insane energy reserves. After a quick breath, he opened his eyes and murmured, "Release."
Another iconic line—totally unnecessary, but too good to skip.
The sky behind him morphed into thousands of glowing dots, blending with the starry night. Each dot was actually a pillar of light, stretching endlessly across the urban skyline.
Nero could feel every pillar, their presence electrifying his core. But he didn't linger on the sky. His focus shifted to the city below, where humanoid monsters wreaked havoc.
"Time to clean house," he muttered. He raised his right hand, then lowered it slowly, whispering, "Light Rain."
That was the name he'd just come up with for this spell.
At his cue, the thousands of light pillars plunged toward the city like a shower of divine shards.
The show was on.
---
The urban sky blazed to life, lit up with a thousand fires that bathed every corner of the metropolis in dazzling light.
Thousands of glowing points stormed the heavens, studding the firmament like glittering jewels. The sight was breathtaking.
Onlookers gaped in awe at the supernatural display unfolding before them. A mesmerizing kaleidoscope stretched overhead. But their joy was short-lived.
Without warning, the glowing dots broke free from the sky, plummeting toward the city. A chilling silence smothered the crowd, snuffing out their earlier wonder. Terror gripped them, freezing gazes and squeezing hearts. Everyone—monsters, deviants, cops, medics, media, regular folks—was caught in this grim descent from above.
Yet amid the panic, two figures stayed oddly calm. The Commander stood outside the city, staring at the sky with steely resolve. In the heart of the fear-ravaged city, Jarek pulled himself up, his eyes glinting with strange fascination at the falling light.
When the glowing points finally hit the ground, their true nature defied all logic. They turned into massive pillars of light. These towering structures crashed into the city with pinpoint precision. But against all odds, they only targeted the monstrous humanoids infesting the streets.
A symphony of destruction followed.
The light pillars struck mercilessly, reducing the creatures to ash. Even those hiding in the darkest corners couldn't escape their doom. The pillars, armed with uncanny awareness, tracked them down, hunting relentlessly, flushing them from their secret lairs.
The paradoxical carnage left onlookers speechless. Civilians still in the city watched, stunned, as the pillars spared them entirely.
The Commander, witnessing the grand scene from afar, let a confident smile slip. "So this is hope…"
Like a divine judgment raining down, the light pillars unleashed their blazing power, staging an apocalyptic spectacle. The humanoid monsters that had sown chaos and terror through once-peaceful streets faced their own grim fate. In despair, they tried to flee the overwhelming might of the pillars, realizing their former invincibility was a lie against this heaven-sent strike.
The giant monsters, once arrogant and mighty, scattered in panic, their eyes wide with dread. They knew, even without being hit, that these pillars could destroy them.
But there was no escape.
Where they'd once been predators, they were now prey. The pillars, with deadly accuracy, pierced their flesh, impaling them before blasting them apart in bursts of pure energy.
The creatures' cries of distress echoed across the city, clashing with the blasts of raw power.
It was a jaw-dropping sight—a cosmic reckoning. The light from above had wiped out the evil. One thought burned in every witness's heart: divine, purely divine.