Tragedy of the Greatest Heroes

Chapter 18: A Newfound Determination

Violet slowly traversed the ruined city, carefully navigating past the fires and floods towards the border.

‘2348, 2349, 2350, 2351’

At some point, Violet had begun counting numbers in her head to distract herself. Around her, Roland and Mark walked in their pitiful silence.

Roland’s eyes shifted constantly, looking side to side as though he were searching for someone with no end. His previous height that once towered over Violet now seemed meek and small. His eyes, once blue, now dimmed into a dusty shade.

Mark carefully held Vivian in his arms. Compared to Roland he seemed to be faring rather well. Every step he took he carefully eyed Vivian, ensuring her the best possible comfort on their journey to the border of the ruined city. Yet Violet couldn’t help but feel that Mark swayed unnaturally as if his very soul was imbalanced.

Violet checked her counter, something she hadn’t done since she entered the ruined city.

75%

‘It went up…’

The counter only went up for three reasons. The first was that the counter naturally went up as a result of how the sealing method operated. The second was when Violet received brain damage or suffered from a mental failure. Depending on the severity, the counter could barely rise or jump massive amounts upwards. The third, was whenever Violet suffered a moment of emotional distraught.

Violet looked at her hand, still covered in dried blood from April’s abdomen before she died. As she lifted her hand she felt her arm shake, as though bearing its weight was the limit of its strength.

Violet began to closely examine the blood. It wrapped around her hand nearly perfectly, with only some spotted parts of her skin peeking through. The dried blood had made it hard for her hand to move as she began to curl her fingers inwards. The blood flaked and cracked, causing some petals to float down to the ground.

Violet could still feel April’s body, cold and lifeless. She could hear Carson’s screaming cries. She could hear his questioning of the gods will. She had done the same thing not so long ago.

“In the future, you’ll be thanking me.”

Jerricho’s words still rang in Violet’s ears. Each word held a monumental weight, each word acted like a breaking straw on the camel's back.

‘It’s my fault.’

Violet knew that nobody would reasonably blame her for April’s death. But she had wanted to be a hero, she knew that healing was an essential part of a hero’s skillset. Yet she had barely trained in it before the application. Maybe if she had Mark’s skill level, or just a tiny bit more than the skill she had, April could still be alive. Knowing that April was doomed to die on death row provided no comfort to Violet.

She didn’t cry, Violet simply didn’t feel like crying. It was slow, but Violet realized her sadness was being replaced. She looked at her hand again, and she felt nothing but contempt.

‘It’s my fault.’

Violet pushed psychic energy outside of her hand and the blood shattered. Her hand was now clean again and she could move her fingers once more. Violet gripped her hand tighter and tighter and soon blood began to pour out of her hand.

‘It’s not enough. It just isn’t enough… Not again. Not again.’

Violet’s vision began to blur with water as she continued to push her nails into her hand further and further until she was left with a horrific bloody gash across her palm.

…

“We’re here…” Roland said.

Violet stopped on the edge of the city. The destroyed buildings behind them vanished and were replaced with small buildings acting like walls. In front of them, the path curved into the distance out of view.

Violet let her hand finally hang down by her side and allowed her fingers to relax. She felt her bones crack after having been placed under strain for so long. She allowed her wound to heal but the psychic power she used was limited. When the wound healed a soft textured gray line ran across her hand. An impossible-to-repair injury that tainted her otherwise nearly imperfectionless body.

Mark set Vivian down on the ground and began to rouse her. He gently shook her and Vivian began to open her eyes.

In Vivian’s eyes, a dead glass reflection shined. Her jaw hung slack and she slowly stood up. As she stood, Vivian’s legs began to shake weakly and her mouth quivered.

Violet saw the world darken as the sun was blocked by an oppressive cloud. Drops of water began to rain from the sky as the four teammates stood together silently.

Violet saw Roland look forward, away from the city. The path turned a deep black as water seeped in. He then looked towards the sky and held himself in a position of reverence, his arms stretched open as if to beg the sky to take him away. He began to pray, his voice filled with an unnatural strength as the presence of the gods was invoked. Roland spoke the Prayer of Guidance.

“Gods, give us the strength to continue forward. Show us the the truth of the world, show us the way we must go, whether it be the most traveled or the hidden path yet unseen. Hallowed are those, creators of all, the ones infinitely present, the ones that witness all. We stand before you, your humbled servants, and ask for your help.”

Roland’s voice boomed in the air, given an unnatural reverberation. Yet nothing happened. The rain came down from the sky the same, drowning the four of them in the tears of the sky.

Violet shook her head. The gods rarely responded to prayers asking for help. Across all 58 billion people on earth, each of them praying to the gods, the Holy Church estimated only 10,000 prayers a year were deemed worthy of granting by the gods. Other than that, the gods interacted with humanity in only a few ways.

Roland set his arms by his side once more and the rain began pouring with an oppressive might. It bore down endlessly, a torrential proclamation of their failure.

“Let’s go,” Roland said.

Violet saw Mark once more grab Vivian’s hand, this time, seemingly as much for his comfort as hers. The four of them broke into a run, continuing down the path and leaving behind the ruined city.

…

Up ahead Violet saw a sign marking the 30th mile. This meant another obstacle or test would be up ahead. Violet began to pray in her heart that it would be easier than the previous obstacle. She looked at Vivian whose mental state had improved slightly, but it was only slightly. If the next obstacle pushed her too far, it could be the end of Vivian’s goal to become a hero.

Violet herself worried that if she experienced anything more then she might very well drop out of the application process voluntarily. If that happened though, there was a decent chance her father would kill her for bringing such shame to the Woo family.

As the group rounded another bend Violet saw the course widen once more. The path turned into a massive circular arena and inside multiple applicants fought against…

‘Are those evil spirits?’

Roland stopped the group some ways away from the arena. As Violet looked longer she was able to confirm that the applicants were indeed fighting against evil spirits. The spirits took all sorts of shapes and colors, glowing brightly as they ran all over the arena. However, most of them were at least vaguely humanoid.

Villains were not the only dangerous group of psychic beings in the world. Evil spirits, ghosts, cursed spirits, whatever one wished to call them, also existed. An evil spirit is formed when a person dies full of negative emotions. If their will was strong enough, their soul would return to earth and become an evil spirit.

Evil spirits that came from a person who was only C-Rank would be weak and the average person could kill one with some struggle. However B-Rank evil spirits could recall the powers they had in life to a much greater effect and while their capacity couldn’t grow, their skill could. At the highest level, evil spirits were as intellectually capable as humans and could be considered as strong as S-Ranks. There was only one SS-Rank ever seen though and it was killed during the Great War.

‘How did they get so many?’

Evil spirits, while not extremely rare, weren’t exactly common. To find hundreds, no thousands of evil spirits and move them all into an arena was insane. It would be impossible to find so many of them in anything less than a year.

“Hello, future stars.”

The principal's voice boomed through hidden speakers in the path, distracting some of the applicants mid-fight and nearly costing them.

“As you can see there are hundreds of evil spirits in this area and we have thousands more to make sure you don’t run out of any to fight. Your job is merely to make it through the course and don’t worry, we have several A-Ranks here so you don’t die. Good luck future stars.”

Violet observed how the other applicants ahead of them were doing. If she had to estimate, she was likely in about 40th place again. However, there were almost 20 applicants inside the arena actively fighting and many of them were unable to move forward. If they could get past this obstacle quickly then they could jump up 10 or even 15 places.

Violet started observing the battles between the applicants and the evil spirits. Beams of light and explosions rang out as evil spirits were killed. But for every one that died, there seemed to be at least 10 more ready to take its place. They weren’t strong but there were an insane amount of them.

Violet saw one applicant receive a direct attack from an evil spirit, their shield shattered and soon they were swarmed. Instinctively, Violet looked away, fearful of seeing any more horrific scenes. However, when she looked back she found that an A-Rank had eliminated all the evil spirits. They picked up the defeated applicant and took them off the course unharmed.

‘I see. They aren’t going to let people get seriously hurt here.’

Evil spirits could infect people with their psychic power if they landed a near-lethal blow, possibly causing a person to become a new evil spirit when they died. The knowledge that A-Ranks were preventing this greatly comforted Violet who was still mentally affected by the previous obstacle. In this case, it was simple fighting and nobody would get hurt.

Roland turned around to the rest of the group. His face set with a solidified determination.

“Are we ready?”

Violet clenched her hand into a fist and felt the scarred tissue in her palm. She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured herself, pathetically healing April at less than half of Mark’s pace and failing pitifully in the end. Violet opened her eyes with a new hate-filled determination. She looked around at the others and saw that all four of them had the same look on their face.

They didn’t even need to speak as Roland understood everything from a single look on their face. He turned towards the arena ahead of him and began to walk forward, followed closely behind by the rest of the group.

The moment they crossed the line between the path and the arena a group of evil spirits locked onto them. They began sprinting, their strange colorfully glowing bodies, all of different sizes sprinted over. Some were as small as dogs while others were almost 12 feet tall.

Roland broke out into a sprint and led a charge directly into the swarm of approaching evil spirits.

Violet pushed psychic energy out from her hand and formed it into a sphere. It glowed brightly as Violet aimed it towards the army of evil spirits. A bright beam of purple psychic energy shot out and sliced the spirits in half, killing 7 in a single attack.

Violet smiled to herself. This wouldn’t be like the previous obstacle, this time Violet could take a starring role. As an all-rounded Mid B-Rank, this was a situation where Violet could shine. Mark’s capacity and strength were too low while Roland and Vivian were too focused in specific categories. But Violet was equally skilled in all categories and had the capacity and strength to match with it.

A purple sword formed in Violet’s hand as she sliced down 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12 different evil spirits singlehandedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Roland look at her with a surprisingly impressed look on his face.

Violet felt herself blush a little as she jumped to the front of the group and began to cleave her way through the waves of evil spirits. She hadn’t focused enough on healing, but this time it was something she did focus on during training. If there was one thing all of the strongest Woo family psychics were known for, it was combat.

Violet stabbed her sword into the ground and pulled it out again, along with a large chunk of earth. She wriggled her fingers and the earth whittled down into sharp spikes she then threw at the evil spirits, riddling them with holes. 4 more down.

Behind her, Roland had wrapped his body in flames as he began to burn the evil spirits in a raging wildfire. Vivian crushed numerous evil spirits with her telekineses and threw them into each other with enough force to cause them to splatter into beams of light. Mark offered support to them all, while he wasn’t as capable as the other three, he was still strong enough to assist.

Dozens of evil spirits fell to the ground, their bodies disappearing into particles of light before vanishing completely. Since they didn’t have actual physical bodies they didn’t bleed and would vanish completely after they died.

Unlike most of the other applicants, they were a team. The others had gotten stuck because they didn’t have enough firepower to make it through single-handedly.

Suddenly the large series of evil spirits stopped coming. While all around them numerous other applicants were struggling with their battles, Violet and her teammates were left alone.

“Get ready, AGH might be trying something on us!” Roland yelled out.

Violet reinforced her body with psychic energy. She saw ahead of her a hole in the ground open up and from it came several more evil spirits. However, these were different. Violet could sense a small amount of psychic energy emanating from them, they were B-Ranks. The evil spirits roared and began to charge Violet, coming at terrifying speed.

Violet smiled, at last, she could show her competence to AGH. She sprinted towards the incoming evil spirits, followed closely behind by her three teammates.

‘This time, I’ll be the leading force.’

77%

End of Chapter 18