Braun rhythmically breathed, taking in air and exhaling it out in natural intervals. To an outside observer, he’d appear no different to a sleeping man.

After a certain amount of time passed, Braun finally felt it was just right, and opened his eyes.

Acting as if he just woke up from some deep slumber, he looked around, confused, observing the room he was transported into.

The walls were a plain shade of white with dark gray floors. Clear white lights illuminated the room, leaving little amounts of shadow, revealing the entirety of the plain room that only had a table in the middle and two chairs placed on opposite ends.

Braun sat on one of those chairs, bound to a futuristic metallic encasing that sealed his whole body. Blue lines glowed across the metallic, weirdly shaped cage that was attached to the chair, preventing him from moving a single muscle except for his head and neck.

On the other hand, a middle-aged man sat on the opposite side of the table, with rough. tanned skin and thick black hair parted in the middle. He appeared rather normal, with a face reminiscent of an aged veteran who had gone through a lot of ups and downs in life which complemented the stubble around his chin, giving him a rundown feel.

Just like the other members of the organization that he met, he too wore a simple skintight black suit, with blue lines running across their body.

Compared to before, when his aura was fully unleased and untamed, he resembled more of a normal civilian now that his aura was held back.

His blue eyes shone upon seeing Braun wake up, and a small smile formed on his face.

“You’re finally awake,” he commented.

“This…” Braun’s eyes opened wide.

“Don’t be alarmed, we’re not here to kill you,” the man carefully said, and made sure to not alarm Braun.

“You guys attacked me!” Braun retorted, his eyes revealing anger and resentment.

“We were just trying to apprehend you, we never planned on actually harming you. It was your fault to be so aggressive,” replied the man with a helpless smile.

“Fuck you mean aggressive. You guys were the ones who sent a card flying straight out of nowhere which nearly cut my neck, sent out four dudes with superpowers, and duked it out in a one versus four battle!” Braun was clearly not having it.

The man sighed upon hearing the captive’s claims and raised his arms. “I admit, we were wrong.”

“Yeah, you guys were wrong.” Braun harrumphed, but the anger in his eyes gradually dissipated, and was instead replaced with a level of calmness. “Now then, why did you guys apprehend me?”

“I knew having superpowers would eventually land me in trouble,” Braun added softly as if he was talking to himself.

The man showed no surprise at Braun’s unnatural calmness, whereas a normal person in his situation would continue crying out in protest and resisting, panicking to no end. Their recent trainee definitely acted that way.

“To explain that, I have to first introduce who we are.” The man raised his finger, and blue light shone on top of the table, forming a three-dimensional hologram.

“My name is Karsen, Karsen Smith, and we’re Aegis,” he said with a casual tone.

The hologram changed, showing a symbol of Earth protected by a golden shield shimmering with resplendent stars.

“Aegis?” Braun muttered with confused eyes.

“Yes, Aegis—an organization spanning the entire world, created since the early days of humankind. We are humanity’s shield, humanity’s weapon, and humanity’s guide.” Karsen smiled. Inwardly, he couldn’t help but gloat at the guide part of their trademark motto, but he didn’t really care that much and had enough thick skin to say it with a straight face.

“Early days? Like caveman days?” Braun asked.

“More like the Age of the Gods,” Karsen blandly answered.

“Gods?” Braun’s eyes lit up.

Hah, this guy’s attention is already hooked! Now I only have to repeat what I did with Kaya and this team’s basically golden! In five years or so, my retirement plan is basically guaranteed! Karsen’s eyes brightened upon seeing Braun’s attentiveness.

He calmly cleared his throat and changed the hologram to a new one, showing a beautiful mural of an image that had been spread all throughout the world.

It was a mural known as Ragnarok, a strange piece of history that seemingly had all of Earth’s scattered mythos gathered into one work. From the Olympian gods to Buddha, the Vikings, and so much more, it had all of them.

The mural was incredibly large, spanning nearly a hundred meters long if one viewed the original work, but the hologram squished it down to just a few meters in length.

On it, the image depicted a war of divine scale, with two opposing sides of light and darkness.

Heralding humanity’s gods was a radiant figure of light, that was the being known as God, the almighty creator of mankind. Behind him stood Buddha, Odin, Zeus, Shiva, Sun Wukong, and other gods recognized as some of the strongest beings in their respective mythos.

Further in the back were other gods, each representing an integral part of human history.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

To the right side of the image, however, was a more horrifying visage.

From a dark void covered in brilliant stars, eldritch entities swarmed their way in like a literal manifestation of the apocalypse coming into life. There were swarming tentacles reaching out to the gods, a gargantuan thousand-armed monster, a massive fleshy eye with pupils capable of penetrating through one’s soul—even though it was merely a mural and a hologram at that, the image bore a striking appearance that drilled deep into Braun’s mind.

“Ragnarok, a war between the gods of humanity and the cruel madness of the gods outside,” Karsen said, his tone now grave and serious as if retelling a time long past, thousands of years into the withered branches of time.

“It’s real?” Braun inquired, his voice a little bit higher than before. If one even looked closely, they’d see his eyes glowing with a dim green light, as if his excitement would almost leap out and cause a fire to erupt.

“Yes, one hundred percent real.” Karsen leaned back on his chair, his subtle smile widening when he saw Braun’s eagerness to learn.

“Thousands of years ago, humanity lived alongside countless gods. It was known as the Age of the Gods, the Divine Period, or whatever fancy name others give. At that point in time, humanity was at its utmost peak, even far surpassing our technologically developed society of today.”

“We had governed the planets of our solar system, had populations in the tens of billions, and terraformed the planets to our liking through the gods’ divine powers. An average human could live for over a hundred years, and nearly all of humanity wielded supernatural abilities—we were basically unstoppable.”

“But we’re here, no gods in sight,” Braun interjected.

“Correct!” Karsen smiled, unbothered by his captive’s taunt.

“We were basically unstoppable with the sky being the limit, a sky that was filled with godly entities that soon found a tasty little fish called humanity,” said Karsen.

“This is sounding way too cliche,” commented Braun. “Let me guess what happens next, God, the strongest god of humanity gathered all the other pantheons and fought against the gods from the stars, eventually suffering defeat but ensuring humanity’s continuity.”

“Yep, that’s what happened.” Karsen nodded his head, amused. “But that’s too much of a summary.”

“What happened is a little more complicated than that. It was actually a rather equal fight between both sides, but the fate of humanity was looking grim and we’d die out before the divine war ended, so the gods had to make a wise yet incredibly selfless decision.”

“Sacrificing themselves for one last suicidal attack, countless gods, both from humanity and those outside were massacred and no more greedy god came to devour the last bit of humanity that remained on Earth,” Karsen narrated.

“A suicidal attack?” Braun snickered. “And then they left Earth alone after all that? Even a human like me wouldn’t want to leave crumbs when the opportunity presents itself, so any wandering god should be more than willing to gobble up humanity for a nice little snack.”

“That’s because our solar system is in another spatial plane entirely, separated from the rest of the universe.” Karsen tapped on the hologram, changing it into an image of their home planetary system where a strange barrier seemed to surround its entirety, blending in with the asteroids roaming just outside the place.

“I see…” Braun’s eyes shone. “Then if we’re practically safe from any prying eyes of the malicious gods outside, why are you guys restricting the development of superpowers in this world?

“Oh? What makes you say that?” Karsen asked, genuinely curious at Braun’s spot-on remark.

“Well, thousands of years had passed since Ragnarok, and superpowers remained persistent across human history. However, while I may be reaching out a bit here, superpowers should be more widespread than it is now.”

“It’s incomparable to the golden age of humanity where gods roamed the earth and the supernatural was commonplace. Here? It’s a goddamn rarity, like a one-in-a-thousand type of thing.”

Karsen rubbed his chin, his smile widening.

“You’re actually right, we are restricting the rampant development of superpowers and superpowered individuals, and it’s all done for one reason—they can sense us if enough superpowered individuals exist at the same time.”

“Have you questioned yet how we even tracked you in the first place?” Karsen pointed at Braun.

“Yes.” Braun simply nodded his head, showing no grievances over his capture.

“That’s our Super Force Radar at work, a planetary scale radar system that detects super force activity at a high enough level,” explained Karsen. He then zoomed the hologram towards Earth, where countless beacons of light lit up.

“Although having all of humanity right now gain access to superpowers wouldn’t allow them to detect us yet, the sudden jump in power would quickly cause humans to rapidly develop, going into space, conquering the other planets in the solar system, and repeating history all over again—including Ragnarok.”

“So, there’s some sort of energy leaked out when using superpowers that can be detected, and if humanity’s super force activity increases to a high enough degree, the quantity will bring a qualitative change, causing the energy leakage to go past the spatial displacement, allowing the outside gods to notice our presence?” Braun inquired.

“Yes, yes, that’s right.” The hologram shifted once more, revealing a futuristic version of humanity. The whole planet was conquered, with floating islands hovering in the sky, giant ships traversing the clouds and sea, and skyrise buildings covering the continents like the common house one can find everywhere they look.

“But just because a lack of superpowers doesn’t mean humanity will remain stagnant though. With the end of our reliance on superpowers came a new chapter, a new focus, a new path.”

“Science was the key to allow humanity to grow in power while remaining undetected from the outside gods.” Karsen’s lips parted, revealing a toothy grin.

“Mmm…” Braun hummed thoughtfully, before taking a deep breath.

He then twisted his neck, looking to the left and right with a confused look. Looking back at Karsen, he asked, “So why are you saying all this to me?”

“To keep you interested, and so that you’ll have to do less studying later once you join Aegis,” Karsen replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Braun snorted upon hearing Karsen’s reply and rebutted, “What makes you think I’m joining your organization?”

“Oh, you will. I’ll just erase your memories, repeat this all over again, return your memories to you once you say yes and have made a vow to the heavens, and lock you in here with me,” Karsen answered shamelessly.

“Damn, memory erasure.” Braun clicked his tongue. “So that’s why I haven’t seen any other supers besides me making a ruckus, you’ve erased my memory of them, haven’t you?”

“I thought you’d be more apprehensive and fearful. Why do you sound annoyed instead?” Karsen laughed softly.

“Why should I care? It’s not like I could have done anything about it. Besides, it already happened, so that’s that,” said Braun.

“Very pragmatic, I like that. You’d be a nice addition to the team,” praised Karsen.

“Sigh.” Braun groaned.

“Well then, I assume you’re going to join us now?” Karsen added.

“Before I say yes, how many times have this happened already?” Braun asked with a piercing glare.

“Seven times.” Karsen closed the hologram and gave Braun a curious glance. “Honestly, in each of those attempts, I thought you’d say yes, but you’d adamantly refuse in the end.”

“Oh, that?” Braun snickered. “I was probably way too petty and wanted to annoy you, and since you just revealed to me that you can erase my memory and probably said the same thing to me before, I probably decided to fuck with you a bit.”

“Oh…” Karsen’s smile deepened. “I hate you.”

“You’re welcome.” Braun laughed.

“Fuck you. Welcome to the team, you bastard.” Karsen stood up while pressing a button on his wrist.

The metallic object covering Braun’s body unlatched itself, loosening its tight grip, and finally allowed Braun to move around once more.

Chuckling to himself, Braun stretched his body around and said with a light tone, “I hope you guys won’t disappoint me.”