“Yah!” someone exclaimed in the video I was watching online.

It was about a group of people in another country using all sorts of magic to save people from a dangerous car accident. One of them used magic to turn off the fires, another one used rock magic to move things around, and the last one jumped in there and pulled out the people that were in danger.

I tried to do something similar to the one with the rocks, by trying my hardest to turn my mana into rocks like that. I was able to create a small beam-like rock that only fit in my hand, but it was that small only because I was in my room and I couldn’t do anything that could damage it.

However, one day, I was going to be doing the exact same things as them! Especially now that after six months of training in the National Institute of Magic I was finally able to reach the lower parts of the D ranks. Just six months! By that rate, in a few years, I was going to be in the S ranks, and with my heroic deeds, the whole world was going to know me!

Still, despite my great progress, the competition was fierce, more so with those around me, which comes to show that I am indeed fated to become an important man in the future. Just look at the people that surround me.

First, Victoria, a rich girl from one of—if not the—biggest Magic Corporations in the country. Not only was she given pretty good looks, but she had all of their resources at her disposal, so right now, she was working on getting to the upper B ranks, and having her as a friend of mine was truly a stroke of fate.

Following that same pattern was David. He wasn’t particularly special in my opinion, and I would say that he’s a bit of an asshole, since he would take me and Brian to the gym to get beat up at first, but he was a close friend of Victoria, and like her, he’s trying to reach the higher levels of the B ranks. I had to admit that I’ve grown to like him, since he does put things in perspective and pushes me to try even harder—which is something that I cannot hate.

But besides him and Victoria, there were a couple of people that I would say actually shine truth to the fact that I’ll become important as well: Althea and Nicole.

Let's start with Althea. For me, she’s the second most beautiful woman I’ve seen—second only to coach Reeta, of course—and her personality is somewhat stern… but she always does what’s best for everyone. The most important part for her, beyond her beauty and personality, is her genius with magic.

She was blessed with amazing talents at it, being able to not only control almost every single element in magic with ease—from basic elements, to the rarer ones like Darkness—but also being a master of combat, so much so that she’s the only one that’s capable of keeping up with my Reeta.

Not that she’s able to beat such a perfect woman, but just standing there and forcing Reeta to try, speaks of the amazingness of her powers—which I think by now are on the lower or mid-ranged A ranks, if not higher. I wasn't sure.

But the most important one has to be Nicole. In the past few months, her talents with magic have grown far too much, to the point where she’s now also standing on the B ranks of magic power. Although, she can only do Fire Magic—a Fire Deviant as she and Althea call it, which is the thing that really makes her special above everything else.

She’s a fairly cute girl with a cheery personality that makes you happy to be around, but she’s also the kind that gets very confident only to end up having her confidence struck down by someone else—usually coach Reeta or her magic master, Asteora.

And that too! She’s being personally trained by the SSS Rank Mage, Asteora! The only one of her kind! I’ve had the opportunity to see her from time to time, but she’s usually not around. Nicole says some wild stuff like Asteora’s most of the time watching us, but I think that’s either just nonsense, or something that she says to give herself confidence—I don’t know.

Still, just the fact that one of my friends is being trained by someone so important gives credence to the fact that I’m bound to be on the same track as them. I just have to keep training everyday until eventually I reach their levels and become the most well known hero.

As for why I want to be a hero? Well… It started a few years ago when I was just a child. Back then, the world changed suddenly, and the kind of stuff I loved to watch as a kid turned into reality; where beings with magic, monsters, and all sorts of powers flooded the world.

I, like every other child, also dreamed of having those powers, mostly because they were cool, but the thing that caught my attention the most was when real superheroes appeared. One in particular that I loved the most.

You could see him in one of the posters in my room: Super-Demon!

At first, people thought that he was just a dude wearing a demon-like mask with a couple of large horns popping from his forehead, with a costume that was was kinda stupid; even if for a child like myself it looked super cool. It was a yellow and blue tight suit—yep, just like you’d imagine—which displayed his muscles and strange figure with the claw-like bits.

But it was later on that people learned that he was an actual real demon, and that he wasn’t wearing a mask—that that was his actual face. Imagine my surprise when I learned that demons were good people.

Still, he would speak with such passion and such optimism, that I couldn’t help but feel like I wanted to do that. And so, when my magic awakened some six months ago, I cried over the happiness of being chosen to be part of those who can become heroes.

That is not to say that everything’s been easy ever since then. There was an issue that popped out this one time with some cult that I hadn’t really paid attention to, because they said they were all about ‘the holy light’ and cleansing evil from the world, so when they told me they could make me stronger, I nearly said okay. But they asked me to give out Althea’s information, and then said that the so-called evil was the demons and things related to them, which is when I said ‘no thank you’ and ignored them ever since.

Brian, on the other hand, seemed to not mind any of that, and he ended up in a mess because of that. I heard that Althea nearly killed him and shit, if it wasn’t because she had mercy on him.

I haven’t talked to him much since then, mostly because he’s been taking it easy now, and only does the minimum for magic while trying for more traditional classes that can be used at the National University for a normal degree.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Steveeeeen!” shouted my mom from the lower floor, bringing me back from the video I was watching about the heroes.

“Whaaaat?!” I shouted back.

“Don’t shout at me!” she shouted, and I sighed since she was the one that started. “Come here!”

With another heavy sigh, I stood up from my chair and hurried downstairs. Our home was rather small, so as soon as I stepped out of my room, I was already walking down the stairs. Mom was in the kitchen, busy making soup. The kitchen—like everything in the house—was also small, and the stove only had two burners, both already occupied.

“What is it?” I asked once more.

“Can you go deal with that thing, that stuff with the debt at the bank now that you’re getting aid for being a mage?” she asked without turning to look at me.

“Uh… does it have to be today? Can’t I do that tomorrow?” I asked, scratching the back of my head in a lazy manner.

We were very poor, as you could see by the cement floor and brick walls, but ever since I started going to the institute for my magic talents, I’ve been getting support from the government to have a better living. So right now, we were steadily paying for our debts, and slowly building some savings.

‘Why can’t you do that online’, you ask? Because my mom refuses to do so. She insists that I go to the bank every month to do that personally, and who am I to argue with her about it? Even with a magically empowered body, there was hardly anything I could do when she threw a slipper at me. Sometimes, I even wondered if she also knew magic, because she never missed.

“No, if we wait for another day, they’ll start charging interest. Go now,” she commanded.

“Fiiine,” I replied with a heavy sigh.

* * *

I stepped outside of my house and looked around. This wasn’t a particularly good neighborhood, but since we’d been living here all our lives, people didn’t bother us. They already knew we lived here and the few bad people there were would usually turn a blind eye to me and mom.

But that didn’t mean that there weren’t people who would want to pick on me, so after making sure that there wasn’t anyone shady around, I quickly walked down the hill that our small house was on, right next to a bunch of other small houses that stood side by side without a garden or anything in between them, all of them looking similar to ours.

I always appreciated the view of the city from up here, which was one of the very few nice things in this place.

“Yo! If it isn’t Stevey,” someone called out to me from a shady house between all the other houses.

I quickly turned to look at who it was and immediately felt uncomfortable. He was some dude that I was pretty sure belonged to a gang in this place. He was about my same height, skinny, with a bunch of tattoos all over his body, and a shaved head which he covered with a hoodie.

“Yo,” I replied, trying to walk away from him, but annoyingly, he decided to board me.

“Where are you going?” he asked, and I felt the stench of some drug mixed with alcohol emanating from him.

“I’m just running some errands for my mom,” I replied, hoping that he would leave me alone.

“Ah… is that so? Yo, I heard that you’re a mage and shit,” he said, wrapping his arm around my neck. “That’s really cool bro, like really cool. Yo, you up for a gig? It pays really well, and you know our boys, we don’t play games.”

“Ah, I don’t know. With the institute and training, I don’t really have the time for anything else… sorry man,” I quickly replied.

I could feel how he was trying to stop the pace at which I was walking, but thanks to my magically empowered body, he wasn’t able to do that at all.

“Tch, man, don’t be like that. We can give you all you want, man, we can look out for you, man,” he insisted, wild movements on his other arm.

“It’s okay, man,” I said, hoping he’d go away, but knowing how these guys were, they were going to insist if I didn't say it straight. “Listen, I really have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” he replied, finally letting go of me. “How about you give me a little something for the cause?”

‘The cause’ being alcohol, judging by the motion he was making with his hand, as if he was drinking a beer. Without thinking too much about it, I reached my hand into the jacket’s pocket, pulled out whatever coins I had there, and passed them over to him.

He smiled, taking the bunch and gesturing to me for a fist bump. “Good shit.”

“Yeah, all good,” I replied, quickly and unwillingly returning the fist bump.

Having done that, he quickly returned to the place that he was, and I quickened my pace as I tried to forget about that uncomfortable interaction.

After about twenty minutes of walking, I was finally at the nearest mall to our house, where all of these transactions were easier to make. Curiously enough, it was a pretty nice place; rather well taken care of despite the location that it was placed, surrounded by mostly lower class houses and buildings.

I quickly made my way to the bank, and heavily sighed when I saw the queue of people waiting. But like them, I had to queue as well, and so, I went… and I waited.

* * *

A few minutes later—that felt like hours—I was finally outside the bank. The errand had been done and I was free for a while now. Seeing that it was still kinda early, I decided to have a look around the mall, and maybe buy a couple of snacks for me and mom.

It was while doing that, that I saw someone I knew from my old school walking out of a currency exchange house. It was a short girl with the same light tan skin color that I had and long straight black hair that seemed to shine. Without thinking too much about it, I decided to greet her.

“Hey, Kathy,” I said, causing her to turn to look at me with a bit of surprise and confusion.

“Oh! Haven’t seen you for a while Steven!” she happily replied once she realized who I was, getting closer to me to give me half a hug and an exchange of pecks on the cheeks as one usually greeted girls that one knew.

I never did that with Althea or Reeta though. One was completely unapproachable and the other one… I was just too shy to do that with her.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I turned my eyes to the exchange house.

“I was just exchanging some money for my mom. She’s going on a trip this weekend and asked me to do this for her,” she said, giving a slight nudge to her backpack.

“Ah, I see. I was doing something similar for my mom just now too at the bank,” I said, then looked around. “Going home now? I was planning on going home too, so we can walk together since it’s in the same direction if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah, that would be great, thank you!” she exclaimed, and I smiled in return as we walked for a while.

We didn’t talk about any deeper things. Just about what we were doing, and how things were going. Usually, with these things, it was just saying that everything was fine.

She was currently going to the National University, which was pretty nice. She had always been a pretty smart girl. And I told her I was going to the magic institute, which caused her to look at me with surprise.

It was while walking on the sidewalk outside the mall while talking about these things, that suddenly, a couple of dudes in a shitty motorcycle pulled up next to us.

In one quick motion, the one on the back grabbed Kathy’s backpack that had been hanging from her shoulder the whole time. She screamed as they tried to run away with it. My heroic instincts kicked in and I jumped ahead to grab the bag from the criminal. The one at the front turned annoyed to look at me. It was the same dude that talked to me after I left home.

“Yo! Let it go!” he shouted, but I refused to listen. I couldn’t let them get away with this.

It was then, without me realizing it, that the man who I was struggling with pulled out a gun.

“What the fuck are you—”

With a loud bang and something that felt like I was punched on my head, everything suddenly went black, and everything around me went quiet.

I couldn’t feel the world around me anymore, and I couldn’t sense anything. It was all darkness now.

I guess that this is how I die… was all I could think in that moment, since even my mana was slipping away from me. But there were still a lot of lingering regrets in my soul… like becoming a hero, becoming strong enough to save people, to… to save myself, and most importantly of all…

Who’s going to look after mom now?