Surviving as a Broken Hero

He pointed down towards a section of the city I could see smoke rising over the rooftops from even from the safety of the city square.

“Last I saw them, they headed that way in search of more survivors that might need help.”

That made sense. From what I had recalled, the two had mentioned that they were on a “quest” to save people who had been trapped in the dungeons of unexplored territory. I had thought it a foolish mission at the time, especially when considering their level and party size…

But they seemed true to their ideals, helping the citizens of a city that they had no allegiance to when they could have just run for the easy XP from the system.

…Which brought another question to my mind: Why would the system want people to run from a dungeon break?

The system was usually known to have people confront and defeat dungeons, not have them run away at the slightest sign of danger.

I shook the question away for the moment. I would need to find the two of them again before the opportunity vanished.

***

Following the direction that Alikr had pointed, I was able to witness the destruction firsthand.

Many houses and structures that weren’t made of stone had been burned and were still smoldering, letting off lingering smoke. Mages cast water spells to put out still-raging fires, and even sturdier stone foundations had crumpled from the impact of something.

If the monsters that had once been awakeners had retained some of their awakener skills, then it wasn’t too hard to imagine them being able to crack stone and set so much of the city ablaze, especially when aided by those imp-things.

I continued to walk towards the largest column of smoke still rising into the sky.

As I got closer to the source of the smoke, I could see that it was borne of the ruins of a section of the city that had been constructed mostly of thin wood and untreated earth.

The small, square-like building burned and spread the fire easily, yet against the raging fire there was a steady, localized raincloud hovering above that soothed the flames somewhat.

—A water mage.

Velle came to my mind again and I remembered seeing her cast a wave of water at the fire of the forest that I had started my accidental awakening in. It was likely that she and Bernard were somewhere in that chaos, doing their best to stop the fire from spreading.

Before long, a survivor limped out from behind one of the destroyed buildings.

I watched the frail, soot-covered man stop against the intact wall of one of the building closer to me.

Cough, cough.

He supported himself against the wall as a hacking cough went through his body, causing him to double over.

I would have liked to help him if I could, but I had no way of fighting against such an affliction or providing any aid, and I didn’t have the time to escort him all the way back to the plaza.

He would have to fend for himself.

At least he had provided me with a direction.

Around the building that he had turned from, I heard a man’s voice yelling through the steady downpour of the localized raincloud.

“Velle! I think we have almost all of them! Just hold it for a little longer!”

It was a familiar voice—Bernard’s.

I hurried over to where I heard him yelling, navigating through the broken debris in the narrow street between the crumbled houses towards the raging fire of a larger, combined building—a series of square structures that had been put together into a larger structure.

The artificial rain picked up and soaked me more the closer I got to the fire.

Wsshhh.

I heard him again.

“Damn it!”

Crash.

I saw him as he swung his large sword into the side of the building, accompanied by the cries of people within, begging to be saved, suffocating in the smoke of the fire.

Velle stood next to him, holding a crystal in her hand, eyes shut in concentration.

It was a mana crystal.

Mages often struggled with mana problems, especially with larger spells that could be channeled for various effects or that grew in strength over time. To account for that weakness, it wasn’t uncommon for special crystals to occasionally be found within monsters or dungeons that could store mana for later use to be used.

They were so prohibitively expensive that they were only usually used for large-scale warfare spells or in decisive moments to take down a dungeon boss.

It at least explained how she was able to keep such a powerful rain spell up over such a wide area.

“Bernard?!”

* * *

Reaper Scans

[Author – Farlight]

[Proofreader – Harley]

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* * *

I approached him still swinging his sword at the side of the building, trying to force a gap large enough for those inside to escape through.

He whipped his head towards me, eyes lighting with recognition despite my mostly ruined and completely soaked suit.

“Kid! Help me out here! There are some people still trapped in the building!”

It was a good opportunity to try out my new ability, if nothing else.

I jogged up to the side of the building where he had been swinging his sword, looking at the splintered wood from successive sword strikes. It looked like he had hardly made any progress—it would require many more such swings before the gap would be wide enough for someone to just barely crawl through…

And at that point, everyone inside would likely be dead.

Looking at how the inside of the building and the people clamoring to be saved could just barely be seen through the small slit created in the wall by the sword thus far, an idea came to my mind.

There was only the question of if I had enough stamina to enact my plan.

I stepped within range of where Bernard had already done damage to the wall.

Then, I let the fiery energy surge through my veins from my core, summoning the earth with it and turning it into a gauntlet around my fist again. I slammed my fist into the corner of an imagined square around the gash in the wall.

Crack.

A flash of white light erupted from my hand at the moment of impact. My hand impacted the wall and left behind a smaller hole, just smaller than the size of my fist itself, that cut clean through to the other side.

More smoke leaked from the hole left behind by my attack.

I felt the pull of fatigue and concluded that I should have enough within me to repeat the process on the three other corners of the imagined square.

Crack, Crack, Crack.

Finally, after all four holes had been completed, when sweat was running down my back despite the rain, I spoke to Bernard, who had been watching me with a quizzical expression on his face.

“I need you to hit the center of this as hard as you can with the flat of your sword, use any skills you have that might be able to increase the impact of your attack.”

He nodded at my words, seeming to catch on to what I was doing.

“Hey! I need everyone to step aside for a moment!”

I yelled towards the building, doing the best I could to make sure they heard me through the holes I had made in the structure of the wall.

As we stood on either side of the area on the wall, he held up his sword and took a deep breath…

Whoosh.

The sword swung through the air, the blade directed towards the wall for maximum speed, before Bernard twisted his grip on the weapon and hit it with the flat of his blade at the last moment.

Then, just before his blade struck…

[[«Strike»]]

I used up the last of my energy in a mana-fueled strike on the blade, imagining a concussive strike rather than a piercing one, trying to mimic the final blow that I had dealt to the Snake.

Flash!

A blinding flash of white light erupted again when my hand struck the blade, sending it those last few inches into the side of the building with destructive force. The flash was the same as when the Snake had been knocked away from his ritual.

Boom!

The sword slammed into the building with enough force to cause the air to reverberate around us.

For just a moment, the flat of the blade stopped against the wall…

Then it continued through, taking the chunk of the wall with it, the wood ripping roughly away from the holes I had created around the points to weaken the structure—similar to how poking holes along a paper would make it easier to rip along the holes.

Bernard’s sword continued even as it was sent flying out of his hands by the blow, spinning through the air and clattering to the floor inside.

“Come on, everyone out!”

The people inside clamored to get out, crawling through the hole we had created in the wall, coughing and taking in the fresh air.

After everyone was out, Bernard leaped into the building and grabbed his sword again before coming back out just as quickly.

I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. It was just a sword, and the building could have collapsed at any moment. It wouldn’t have been too costly to replace.

He smirked at me, catching my gaze.

“This blade and I have a bit of a history…”

—Sentimental value.

Seeing that we had succeeded in rescuing everyone, Velle let the rain spell go with a loud exhalation of breath.

The rain stopped immediately, the last drops of rainfall coming down in a single sheet before the clouds simply vanished into thin air as the sun was revealed again, lighting the area that had been darkened by the clouds.

Bernard pointed the way to the city square for the survivors and they left along the path I had taken.

As they left, Velle dropped the mana crystal to the ground. It was cracked and empty, revealing that she had been on the dregs of her own personal mana before we had rescued the survivors.

We left for the square as the fire began to pick up again and the building crumbled behind us.