CHAPTER 4: A Hero Still Standing
Hero Takiro Valen, Rank 200, folded the resignation letter with careful hands.
The paper felt heavier than it should have—like it carried the weight of every life he had failed to save.
His wife hadn’t argued.
She hadn’t cried.
She had only said, “If you leave hero work… you might live.”
That should have been enough.
Yet even as Takiro stepped onto the ruined avenue leading toward Hero Headquarters, the city refused to let him go.
The streets were no longer streets.
They were graves.
Concrete slabs lay piled like broken tombstones. Burnt steel jutted from the ground like bones. Smoke still lingered in the air, carrying the bitter smell of loss. Families gathered wherever the rescue teams hadn’t reached yet—kneeling, praying, screaming names that would never be answered.
Takiro slowed his steps.
He saw a woman clutching a scorched helmet.
A boy shaking rubble with bleeding hands.
A father standing in the middle of the road, shouting into the void.
“Please… anyone… help us.”
Takiro stopped.
The man rushed toward him the moment he recognized the insignia on Takiro’s coat.
“A hero—please!” the man cried, bowing so hard his forehead struck the pavement. “My daughter… she’s still under there. We don’t have the money to hire private rescuers. If we wait for the government—”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
His voice broke.
“She’ll be gone.”
Takiro’s chest tightened.
He thought of his own daughter. Her laugh. The way she slept with one hand curled into his sleeve.
“I was on my way to—” Takiro started.
Then he stopped.
The resignation letter burned inside his coat.
“…Show me where,” he said.
The house had collapsed inward, crushed beneath the shockwaves of the battle between the former Number One and the main villain.
Takiro stood before the wreckage, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
His power stirred.
Aeris Dominion.
That was the name passed down through his bloodline—the ability to compress air into invisible blades, to shape pressure itself into a weapon. His grandfather had been a hunter who used a sword to guide the wind. His father, a surgeon, taught him precision—how even the smallest cut could decide life or death.
Takiro inhaled.
“Just one clean sweep,” he whispered.
He swung.
AERIS ART: THOUSAND VEINS.
The air screamed.
Invisible blades tore through rubble, slicing concrete into manageable pieces. The debris cleared—fast, efficient—
Too fast.
Cracks spider-webbed through a neighboring structure already on the brink of collapse. The building shuddered… then fell apart in a thunderous crash.
Takiro froze.
Even now…
I still can’t control it perfectly.
His grip tightened on the sword.
“This power won’t matter soon anyway,” he muttered.
Then he heard it.
A cough.
Takiro dropped to his knees, tearing rubble aside with his bare hands.
There—beneath a slab of concrete—was a small girl.
Alive.
Her breathing was shallow, her body bruised, but her chest was moving.
Takiro lifted her gently, shielding her from the dust as he emerged from the ruins.
The father saw her first.
His legs gave out.
The mother screamed—not in grief, but in disbelief.
They clutched their daughter, sobbing, bowing, pressing their foreheads to the ground.
“You’re a god,” the father said through tears. “You saved our world.”
Takiro stepped back.
“I’m just a hero,” he said quietly.
But the words rang hollow.
As Takiro walked away, his chest felt heavier than before.
If I can still save even one life…
If I can still do something…
The image of the villain burned in his mind.
The towering figure.
The glowing hand that erased power itself.
The way the former Number One had died—untouched one moment, gone the next.
Takiro stopped.
He turned toward Hero Headquarters.
“…At least I can give them the truth,” he said.
The resignation letter remained in his pocket.
For now.
