Hero of Darkness

As Kahn in his Byakuya persona challenged Ryuken, the Hero of Space to a fight…

Thousands of kilometers away, in a great forested region, a macabre scene came into sight.

Hundreds of burning huts within a settlement located among canyons and mountains, colored the surroundings dark yellow.

The sky turned dark from the ashes and smoke while thousands of horrifying screams echoed.

In the sky, was a warship with the insignia of a monastery that served a certain God.

The dozens of flying ships had surrounded this burning settlement and cast multiple isolation and illusion barriers that stopped the outside interference.

"What the hell is that bastard doing? Why is he just sitting there instead of joining us?" spoke a priest in white and green robes, carrying a carved artifact that represented their monastery and their god.

"Let him be. He may be tired after his battle. Besides, it's not like that fire could kill a powerful saint like him." spoke a Holy Paladin class warrior who saw this scene of a horrific massacre from the warship.

Among the burning huts, was a tall tower set atop a small peak, stemmed from the natural mountainous terrain. And on top of this watchtower, sat a man in a black cloak while wearing a black straw hat.

"Watching these people dying so helplessly… Maybe that's why Master has set limits on the kind of work we do and the kind we should avoid." he spoke despondently.

"Just a couple of months ago... I could only extract the souls of the people I have killed and use them to nourish my own to break through ranks.

The stronger the opponent, the more rewarding their soul. However, it almost lost its use because I wasn't killing saints or legendary rank monsters ever since Master's original body left.

Before… it was just me pulling souls out of corpses…

But now that I have become an Apostle… I can see them." he declared while people below were running for their lives, getting flayed alive from the fire.

"People say death is only for the mortal body… but true death is the destruction of the soul.

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Unlike before, I hear their cries and roars of anguish. Now I can feel their torment, their helplessness, and even their rage towards the world." spoke this mysterious entity clad in black.

Among these people crying for help and running for their lives… were hundreds of burning corpses.

However, even those from the warship could not see the souls of the deceased hovering over them.

"Mother… mother! Where are you?!

I'm scared… I'm scared!" spoke the soul of a human child as he stood beside his own burning flesh.

"No, brother! Don't abandon me! Help me! Somebody help me!" bellowed a man's soul as he begged for help as his body was stuck below burning logs of wood.

"My son! My sweet child!" cried a woman as she saw her corpse, cradling her newborn child.

"No! I can't die here! I have a family to protect!" screamed a man's soul who had died trying to help people run to safety.

"Is this how it ends despite all the hard work I have done my entire life?

Is this how me and my people, who have been oppressed for decades… die?" spoke an elderly man's soul as it looked over hundreds of people dying.

"What wrong did we do to deserve such a cruel death? We did not harm anyone. We were alone in these woods, cut off from the world. But why did they massacre us?

Is it just because we worshipped a different god?" he asked, his voice filled with plight.

This elderly man's soul then set its gaze on this mysterious black-cloaked man.

"It's because of you! All of this happened because of you!" he bellowed in rage and hatred towards this man wearing the black straw hat.

On the other end… the target of fury, heard those words of the dead, stunned and paralyzed by the grim side of reality.

He had his fair share of death and war… yet, it was the first time he could see the souls of the deceased.

He had been hearing and feeling their hatred towards the wrongful deaths.

"If this is how I feel and have to go through every time… what about the entity who gave me these powers?

He chose me as his Apostle and gave me his blessings, a manifested form of his powers.

So does he have to go through the same suffering and listen as well as feel everything every time someone dies and their souls are sent to the afterlife?" he questioned while lamenting.

The assassin who witnessed the current massacre and helpless cries for help was Ronin, one of Kahn's generals and his left-hand man.

In a way… Ronin was the reason behind this brutal massacre.

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It all started just a few days ago when the imperial forces gave the Misthios Mercenary Guild a top-secret commission.

This was the kind of work the imperial army did not want to get their hands bloodied with for some reason.

At the Southwest end of the Zivot Empire, was an indigenous tribe of nomads that recently came in contact with the empire's authorities.

It wasn't a completely unknown tribe to their imperial rule but unlike before, something had changed.

Just a couple of weeks ago, their spies found that this tribe somehow had a Saint. A shaman class saint at that.

Normally, raising a saint was something only done by the nobles, thriving clans, top business enterprises, and the imperial families and their forces.

So this news was a huge surprise. But everything changed after one of the spies found out that they had started worshipping a meteor that fell from the sky.

They were now treating it as a Mountain God and created a tradition to worship it such as rituals and offerings to get the blessing of the god.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Some of the imperial authority personnel speculated that this rock was the reason why there was suddenly a Saint among this indigenous tribe and the unknown energy emitted by the meteor rock was the reason.

However… this tribe of thousands and their devotion to this rock as a God was by definition… an act of heresy.

As one of the outcrying souls mentioned before… they were attacked and killed for worshipping another God.

Because an empire where everyone had accepted God of Life, Gyvenimas, as their sole god.

So a tribe suddenly starting to treat an outside entity or object as a God was blasphemy to them.

However… after deploying their own forces to deal with this matter… a bloody battle ended with their defeat.

The first time, a noble house sent their 3rd stage saint to stop the tribe from their devotion, by trying to subdue their saint and punishing their members.

However… not only did their newly ascended 1st stage saint managed to kill that saint… but also quickly broke through to 2nd-stage saint in just a week.

Next time, it was an imperial adjudicator, a 4th-stage saint summoner who was dispatched.

But just like before, he too was killed and the Shaman now ascended to 4th-stage saint rank, a virtually impossible feat because every rank ascension needed years for the next breakthrough.

Yet all of it could be explained if it had something to do with the meteoric rock. So the imperial authorities wanted to acquire and test it for themselves, to use its powers, which would greatly bolster their forces.

However, after the previous 2 deaths, no one among royalists or nobles wanted to risk their lives.

They would at least need a 5th-stage saint to deal with this matter but a person like that was a great asset and usually part of the reigning authority.

They couldn't just order them to risk their life given their status and influence.

Hence, they contacted Misthios given their recent track record as members of the Hero of Life's party during the Conclave of Heroes.

Kahn in his Legolas persona gave this task to Ronin in particular because of his true evolution form of Thanatos.

One of his abilities allowed him to basically cheat death by temporarily acquiring another body. Hence he was the most suited.

After Ronin came here… Using the Shinigami Armor and Erebus daggers, Ronin finished the job by killing the shaman and found out that it was the rock with strange powers that helped the him bypass his limits but at the cost of his lifespan.

The shaman who was originally 60 years old and appeared like a tall lion, was reduced to a scrawny rat-like personage despite becoming a 4th-stage saint.

This was the same old man who was blaming Ronin for this massacre.

But soon afterward he was done… a secret force serving the imperial family arrived and started this massacre to keep the rock's existence a secret.

Ronin's original orders were to kill the Shaman saint and let the imperial authorities take over the matter as per their contract.

So he could not have predicted that these people who also included people from the Monastery that served the God of Life, would start a wanton massacre by setting the entire settlement on fire and caging all these innocent tribe members inside isolation and illusion barriers, stopping their means of escape.

"Only fire can cleanse such foul stench of blasphemy." spoke a high priest with a holy book in his hand but an excited smile on his face.

On the surface, it was an act of heresy so they were being exterminated. But in reality, Ronin knew that this was nothing but a powerplay of greed and authority.

In the end... God was but a tool to justify the evil of Men.