8 years ago
There was a flash of light and the next thing I knew, there were a number of robed people in front of me who seemed extremely exhausted and were being supported by people in some kind of metal armour from the sixteenth century.
Most notably, there was a blue screen in front of me with my name and some numbers on it but I didn't get the time to look through it as a man approached me wearing what would be considered fancy clothes, but I couldn't tell the difference since I was yet to see any other set of clothing. He was the king's right-hand man, as I would soon find out. He talked to me in a language I had never heard but could somehow understand. Everything was so bizarre that I didn't even ask him what was going on.
I followed him absent-mindedly looking at things here and there. He took me to a fancy room, got me fed and bathed by a maid, and then finally told me what was going on. I had been summoned to another world as a hero to save them from a cruel demon lord. He told me to open my Status to confirm. The same blue screen popped up with my name, species as Human, class as Hero, level one and a bunch of stats. He asked me and noted down my stats, telling me that I was incredibly strong for a level one. He told me that they had summoned heroes before but none were as strong as me and that I would be their saviour. He fed me a bunch of emotional and motivational shit that I just gobbled up without any questions and sincerely promised them I would save them. I would much later find out that my stats were actually weak for a Hero and they feed the same shit to all Heroes they summon so that we don't self-doubt on the lines of 'if others couldn't do it, how can I?' or try to pry into their affairs for why they would keep doing this even if they don't succeed.
For a month, I had to stay inside the castle and train with a sword. That was for three reasons; one, I had no idea how to fight. Second, the Hero class gives more damage and faster skill level bonuses when using swords. Third, was for a thorough brainwashing. I was kept in a secluded part of the castle where I met a limited number of people under the pretext of 'You're the hero and have a lot of influence so people will try to get you on their side using lies'. In hindsight, I look at the irony of the situation with bitterness.
Most of the day I would train with the sword. I had nothing much to compare with except for my teacher and some soldiers. Sword, or any physical weapon for that matter, never appealed to me but in a week I was able to defeat all the soldiers and my teacher said I was a prodigy. Even if I am weak for a Hero, compared to normal soldiers, I was still much stronger even with little training. That only served to boost my confidence.
Naturally, I ended up befriending those soldiers. In rest periods between training, they would talk about their dreams of defeating the demons and bringing peace to their kingdom. I admired how passionate and selfless their speeches were and didn't realise when I started to do the same. One month is more than enough a period to change someone, especially when you put them in a completely new environment.
Sometimes I was made to meet with people who claimed they had their families taken away by the demons. They would beg me to take revenge for them. I don't know how true their stories were, but they did their work. They slowly ate at my psyche, raising my hatred for the demons. Somehow, it all came down to defeating the demon lord and no demons would invade human kingdoms again. Oh boy, how foolish I had been.
Once the month was over, and the level ups due to training had slowed to a stop, I was deemed ready. A ceremony was kept where my existence was announced to the public. There were feasts and celebrations and I was shown off to the populace while they cheered. Even I would raise my sword to the sky and enjoy the hoots.
Next I started to go into the outskirts of the kingdom to hunt low-level demons to raise my level. Life was at the peak of goodness; people loved me, I was steadily raising my level and to top everything off, I even had my own harem. I was introduced to three men who would be my party members and soon, they would often openly argue for my affection. I always had to calm them down and tell them that that kind of discussion could be left to after we took care of the demon lord.
We would mostly hunt unintelligent demons in the forest surrounding the kingdom. Rarely, we would encounter low-rank demons but I didn't know at the time that they were low-rank. For us, they were considerably strong but we still managed to always defeat them. Once or twice, we would encounter mid-rank demons and through life and death situations, we would emerge victorious. A few months passed by like that and mid-rank demons become barely manageable without being on the verge of death.
Finally, that moment came when my life took a turn. We had just finished fighting a mid-rank demon and two of my party members were injured; that's when a high-rank demon appeared. From one look I could tell that it was stronger than the one we had just fought. The mid-rank demons we faced could take a somewhat humanoid form but this one was perfectly human, save for his skin color and the wings at its back.
In our current situation, we would have all died. I told the last member of my party to take the other two and run from there while I held the demon off. The demon didn't even bother pursuing them and just waited for me to make the first move. I activated my best Skills and charged but he blocked my sword with the back of his hand. My sword didn't even leave a scratch on his skin.
Demon: Pathetic.
I backed off and attacked again but he again blocked the same way. I backed off immediately.
Me: You're the demon lord!?
That was the only explanation. How else could there be such a strong demon? The demon just looked at me and laughed. Then it created some kind of an orb of mana and launched it at me. I activated all my defensive spells in the nick of time but was still blown away with my left arm completely shattered. I don't know how far I flew but it must've been a lot. Just before I landed, I managed to activate all my defences again with the last of my mana and survived with barely 200 HP from an original of more than 3000. The fall broke several ribs and I was in excruciating pain. I was losing about 1 HP per second so in 200 seconds I would be dead. My only healing skill was a channelled Skill that would continuously drain my MP for boosting my HP regen but it took 50 MP to start and I was sitting at 20. My MP regen was much slower than the rate at which my HP was falling. I was down to 30 HP when I finally had enough to start the Skill. The effects were immediately visible. My HP decrease stopped. In the next minute, I regenerated only 2 HP but at least I was alive and healing. I just laid there till I healed back up to about 200 HP before I got up. I couldn't stay here. I had to find my companions and warm them about the demon lord. Maybe it was the situation numbing my common sense or I really had turned so stupid that I believed that together and fully recovered, we could stand a chance against it.
But that was when the next problem arose; I had no idea where I was. I was still in the forest somewhere but I had no idea which direction to move in. I just hoped for the best and started walking in a random direction. My left arm was completely useless and my sword was gone. I grabbed a stick with my right and just started trudging forward. Due to the strain, my HP regen slowed even further. Thankfully, the MP consumption of the channelled Skill was quite low and I was recovering mana faster than my health. With it, I was able to use Skills that didn't require explicit movement on my part to keep wild animals away.
Occasionally, I would encounter unintelligent demons and what I had once considered easy prey now became life and death struggles. But somehow I always managed to survive. Over days, my ribs got mended and it was easier to move, even though my left arm was still beyond repair. I was now able to consistently maintain my HP over 500 and with it my regen also increased. I could tell the arm was healing but I estimated it would take a month at this rate. Maybe if I had a comfortable resting place, I could heal in a week. But unfortunately, trouble kept following me.
I always kept a lookout for intelligent demons and would run away at the first sight. They would often pursue but give up after I would blast them with a bunch of Mana Ball. Another good thing about the Hero class is that though it gives a very high to sword Skills, it also gives medium boosts to EVERY other Skill. That was when I woke to my love for magical combat. As I gained levels in my Mana Ball, I got more Skills like Fire Ball, Flame Arrow, Ring of Fire and similar ones for other elements as well. Once I could consistently maintain my HP over 1000, I would even pick fights with low-rank demons when I thought I could get away with it. My fire Skills that I used the most evolved into lightning ones and my fights started to get much easier. My left arm started to get better and I could now defeat a low-rank demon by myself, even in my injured state.
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I had lost count of the days, but I am sure more than two months had passed since that fateful day. My body was completely healed and with my now much higher level and survival Skills, I had even started picking fights with mid-rank demons. I gained all kinds of Skills, including combat ones and resistances. I got Poison Resistance, Charm Resistance, resistances for different elements, Petrification Resistance, Evil Eye Resistance, Blood Magic Resistance, Plague Resistance, and more. The Hero class really was broken.
After a few more days, I arrived at a village. I had never been happier in my life to see strangers. I desperately wanted some decent food, a change of clothes and to freaking know where I was! I wanted to get back to the kingdom, to my party members. They must have been going crazy, looking for me.
But I should have known that my luck sucked. The villagers refused to talk to me. And when I tried to explain to them that I was a Hero, they got even warier. I tried my damnest to get some reason through to them but they started attacking me. With no choice left, I ran away. But I had finally found a clue to my whereabouts and I wasn't going to let it go in vain, so I used the one thing I learnt best in the past couple of months; persistence. I just sat outside the village gates, not saying anything to anyone. At first, the guards would shoo me away but over a few days they stopped bothering since I would just sit there and do nothing. Their job was to drive away the unintelligent demons. I started to help them out and they started to become friendlier when they saw how strong I was. Over some days, they brought me food and gave me some old clothes. I got to know that the kingdom was hundreds of miles away and I had been walking away from it all this time. I needed to make the journey back but I was just so tired. A week later, the guards agreed to vouch for me to the village chief so I could stay inside. The chief reluctantly agreed and let me stay with one of the guards. I started to teach them the sword. Together we would venture deeper into the forest and I began to power level them by hunting stronger demons. I gained the first in my list of Titles that would change everything for me.
You have obtained a new title!
Title
Trusted(Hero version)
Description
Trust is one of the hardest emotions to capture. The ones who trust you expect you to value it more than your own life.
Effects:
None
Added effects due to Hero version:
1. Higher beings can instinctively feel your sincerity.
Warning: they can also feel if you're being insincere.
My time with the villagers was fun. I had gotten close to a number of them. According to the guards, the whole atmosphere of the village was getting better thanks to me. I didn’t understand how that was possible, and they told me that they always had food problems. Their village had some kind of old spell around it that repelled strong demons so it was safe but they couldn’t go too far out to hunt wild animals. I was not only helping them bring back a whole lot of food for their people but also helping them become stronger so that they could hunt for themselves once I would have left. It got me even more motivated and I started teaching them how to defeat low-rank demons. Once I had power-leveled them, even they managed to somehow be able to defeat low-rank demons.
But again, my luck sucked. One day I was out hunting with the guards when I noticed smoke coming from the direction of the village. We rushed back to find the entire village burning.
Petrification resisted!
I realised there was a demon attack. I turned to warn the guards but all of them had already turned to stone.
Demon: So it’s you who has been going around killing my minions. This time I’ll make sure you’re dead.
My whole body trembled. It was the demon I believed to be the demon lord, the one who was the cause of all this. And what did he mean? It was my fault that the village was destroyed? Then the first time I met him was also due to my hunting demons?
Me: Maou!
I pulled out the sword I had received from the villagers. I needed all the damage boost I could get against this monster.
Demon: Hahahahaha!
The demon lord laughed like a maniac.
Demon: Let me tell you how weak you actually are, Hero. I am not the demon lord.
Me: Lies!
Demon: I am not even worth a hair of a demon lord. I am a measly high-rank demon. Even a thousand of me won’t be able to defeat a demon lord, much less the current Maou. Demon lord is a being that stands on the top of all demons and if a new Maou comes by defeating the previous, it only means he is stronger than all the others before him. Not only are you so weak that you can’t even wound me, know that I am not at my full strength. My true form is much more powerful and resilient.
In my anger over the villager’s deaths and my subconscious refusing every word he uttered, I attacked him but he blocked it the same way he had done the first time we met. He stopped the blade with the back of his hand. But this sword was not the same as what I had in the kingdom. The sword shattered against his arm.
Demon: You and that ‘System’ of yours!
The demon spread his wings in anger and thrust his palm in my stomach. I had no armour and didn’t have a chance to activate any of my defensive Skills. My body took the full brunt of the attack, instantly knocking more than a 1000 HP.
You are paralyzed!
Whatever he had done wasn’t physical. As the shockwave of his attack spread across my body, I lost all feeling in my limbs and my body fell backwards. He put his bare feet on my face and grinded.
Demon: You managed to get strong enough to give me a wound in just months.
He showed me his hand that he had used to block the sword. It had a small cut and a black liquid flowed from it.
Demon: If you had the same sword as back then, maybe this could have even reached the bone.
He said while licking his wound. It shut close as he did that.
Demon: That ‘System’ of yours lets you get so powerful so fast but it has a limit.
He said as he enjoyed grinding my face more with his feet. I was losing about a 100 HP each time he would do that.
Demon: You need ‘EXP’ to get stronger which gets slower the more powerful you are and requires you to defeat stronger opponents.
He ground on my face one last time before getting off to enjoy the scene he had created.
Demon: Ultimately, your source of strength is also your downfall. Your growth will stagnate after a while, while ours won’t. You may be able to defeat numerous weak foes after a short amount of training but you will never win against the truly powerful.
With my HP slowly trickling back up, I started to regain a bit of feeling. With my mana resting at almost full, I prepared to strike him with Lightning Arrow. But I had to wait till the moment was right.
Demon: You’re the one they summoned a few months back.
He bent down beside me and sneered at me.
Demon: You lot are so foolish. You believe every word those humans say and get yourselves killed at our hands. Even we enjoy it, you know. Fighting weak humans is no fun and the demon territory is too much competition. Crushing those who believe they stand a chance is the best feeling.
You have obtained a new title!
Title
Foolish(Hero version)
Description
You are incredibly gullible and have a penchant of listening to the wrong people.
Effects:
None
Added effects due to Hero version:
1. You can tell when someone is talking about you behind your back.
Suddenly, the demon turned in another direction.
Demon: Shit, it found me!
He ignored me and flew up. In less than a second, his body transformed into something else. I watched in shock as his presence got many times thicker. I knew at that moment how wrong my decision of trying to attack him had been.
The demon’s body turned into a large ‘X’ with a large number of small wings and eyes, all over its entire body, and it started flying in the opposite direction of whatever it had detected, at full speed. Suddenly, there was a heatwave so intense that I could feel it even with my numbed senses.
???: I finally got the pesky insect.
A heavy voice resounded around me. Next thing I knew, an incredible gust of wind blew the remains of the village and me away. A giant creature descended right then and some invisible force caught me in the sky.
???: What are you?
I came face-to-face with the giant creature. As much face-to-face I could come when its face was bigger than my entire body. The demon's true form had been about 5 stories tall but this creature was easily past 10 stories. Moreover, its length was twice its height, not counting its tail. Its body was dark red and crystalline blue scales grew along its spine. I had never seen the creature before but even I could tell it was the legendary being known as dragon.