Kaito walked. The new, troubling thought echoed in his mind, a ripple in his otherwise placid consciousness. The monsters he was now hunting—the stragglers, the lost, the enraged—were being culled by another. He'd find a pack of Jackals, only to discover them already neatly bisected. A Gloom Bruin, felled by a single, impossibly precise strike.
[Sage, someone else is here. Someone powerful.]
[The presence of another high-tier combatant is a logical variable. It stabilizes the region. Your primary objective remains containment of your own collateral influence. This development is beneficial. Maintain course.]
Sage's calm analysis was a anchor. He was right. The result—fewer monsters—was what mattered. Yet, a part of Kaito, the new, emotional human part, felt an odd sense of… rivalry? No, that wasn't it. It was a reminder that he was not the only power in this world. He was an anomaly; this other was, perhaps, a part of its natural order.
He needed to understand that order. Why was a single, powerful individual doing the work of an army?
---
Hours Earlier, The Front Lines of Whitepeak Barony
The air crackled with ozone and the stench of charred fur. A Blade Bear, its hide like forged steel and claws like greatswords, roared as it charged the crumbling defensive line. Behind it, a Skolopendra, a horror with sixty-six skittering legs, spewed acidic venom that melted stone and flesh alike. They were just two of a dozen S-Rank nightmares leading the vanguard of the horde. The Barony's army, comprised of green recruits and aging veterans, was being shredded.
"Hold the line! For Whitepeak!" a captain screamed, his voice raw with desperation. But the line was breaking. They had sent word to the capital, but the reply was always the same: The Royal Army and the Heroes are engaged with the Monster King's main force. Hold fast.
It was a death sentence.
Then, the world flashed white.
A pillar of light descended from the heavens, striking the center of the battlefield. When the glare faded, a man stood there. He wore silverite armor that seemed to drink the light, and his presence was a physical weight that stilled the chaos.
It was Kaelen. The weakest of the Seven Heroes.
He didn't speak. He didn't roar. He simply moved.
To the soldiers, it was a blur. One moment the Blade Bear was charging, the next it was in four perfect, geometric sections, sliding apart. The Skolopendra simply… unspooled, each of its segments neatly severed from the next. He wove through the monsters, a dancer of divine retribution, his dwarf-forged sword leaving after-images in the air. In less than ten seconds, the S-Rank vanguard was gone. The remaining lesser monsters, bereft of their leaders, broke and fled in mindless panic.
The battlefield fell silent, save for the moans of the wounded and the crackle of dying fires.
The Barony's Lord, watching from the walls, fell to his knees in tearful gratitude. "A Hero… A Hero has come!"
Kaelen sheathed his sword, his face a mask of grim duty. "The main army cannot be spared. The Monster King moves against the capital itself." He pointed a finger, and a complex, glowing map appeared in the air, showing the continent. A pulsating wave of red was shown spilling from the Dark Forest. "The horde is a symptom. A panic. I will cauterize the wound at its source."
His gaze locked on a small, flashing point on the map, a place his enhanced senses were screaming at him to go. His hometown. Hoshimura.
Without another word, he vanished in another flash of light, teleporting towards the epicenter of the disaster.
---
Present Day
Kaito, unaware of the divine intervention that had saved the Barony, continued his own quiet work. He found a family hiding in a root cellar, their home destroyed by a rampaging Rock-Tusk Boar. He didn't kill the boar. He used his Terrakinesis to raise an earthwork around it, a temporary prison, and led the family to safety.
He was learning. The world was not just about power. It was about people. And the people were scared, abandoned by the armies that were supposed to protect them, saved only by the occasional, fleeting intervention of adventurers… or anomalies like him.
He looked south, towards where the farmer said Whitepeak City lay. That was where the other powerful one was likely headed. That was where the threads of this disaster were being pulled. His path was set. He would go to the city, not as a king to reclaim his mess, but as Kaito, a traveler who contained a storm, hoping to find answers, and perhaps, a way to truly help without leaving only dust and terror in his wake.