Heroes Must Be Raised Strong
Heroes Must Be Raised Strong
Moonlight Cult Leader Cheon Wol-hwang.
The founder of the Moonlight Church, a faith devoted to the Moon God. His goal was to connect another dimension to Earth, summon its gods and monsters, wipe the slate clean, and create a new world.
In the Original Work, he had the Moon Priestess turn Seoul into a wasteland to raise his own notoriety, then finally opened a dimensional gate through his research and brought down monsters from another dimension.
And it all began with the Moon Priestess's first terrorist attack.
After that, she was repeatedly used as a tool by the Moonlight Cult Leader and forced to carry out terrorist attacks, until she finally died at Stardus's hands.
And it was during this scene that the Moon Priestess's secret was revealed.
That she, too, was nothing more than a victim exploited by the Moonlight Cult Leader.
'Cough. Just... kill me, please...'
Stardus, who had never been able to approach the magical storm the Moon Priestess summoned, finally destroyed every debuff magic circle and reached the eye of the storm.
At its center was the Moon Priestess, under the Moonlight Cult Leader’s control.
Though she had never wanted to hurt anyone, she had been forced by the Moonlight Cult Leader to carry out terrorist attacks all that time. At the end, she told Stardus to kill her—that only by killing her could all of it end.
In the end, Stardus killed her, and the attack that had destroyed half of Seoul finally ended.
And when the Moonlight Cult Leader heard that the Moon Priestess had died, his response was—
'Is that so? Then I won't be able to conquer beyond Seoul, I suppose.'
That was it.
That response was possible only because he had never once treated the Moon Priestess as a person, merely as a biological weapon.
Anyway, this episode was one of the most heavily criticized by fans.
The heroes were helplessly cut down without achieving anything, the Moon Priestess appeared not once but twice, three, four, five times—endlessly—and even the ending left a bitter aftertaste. Seoul was already ruined, the Moon Priestess died a pitiful death, and the Moonlight Church was still alive and well. On top of that, the protagonist Stardus was powerless throughout the whole episode and then simply fell into depression at the end—a feast of frustration that made fans cough up blood.
It did end on a somewhat hopeful note with Seoul being rebuilt, but that was it.
It was an episode that brought nothing but tears the whole way through.
The Han-eun Group giant weapon episode at least wrapped up in a few issues, but this episode dragged on for over a dozen volumes. For months on end, all we saw was Stardus struggling in misery. As a Stardus fan, it was a stretch of days where my tears never dried.
But.
Things were different now.
"Big bro, what are you going to do about these magic circles?"
"For now, let's just leave them."
In the Original Work, the Association begged and pleaded with America and eventually brought in an American Exorcist to get rid of them.
But I had a collaborator in Korea.
Vine Witch. I'm counting on you...!!
And so, having identified the locations of the magic circles—the most crucial requirement for taking down the Moon Priestess—I breathed a sigh of relief.
Once we dealt with this too, it meant we'd avoided the grimdark trigger for a while, right? That was how it worked, right?
And for that, there was one thing that mattered most.
The Moon Priestess. I needed to take her with me if at all possible.
....
As someone who'd bawled his eyes out when she told Stardus to kill her in the Original Work, that much was a given. That girl needed a chance to be happy!
And because I had the divine healer Lee Ha-yul with me, the curse the Moonlight Cult Leader had placed on her should have been manageable to some extent.
***
Just like that, while I was making various preparations, time flew by in an instant.
The preparations for the magic circles were nearly complete. All of them had been tampered with using sorcery so that every function treated me as an exception. Was that what having a solo cheat mode felt like?
For now, I only made myself the exception. Just in case.
Of course, all kinds of villains kept pouring into Seoul during this time, but every single one of them was taken down in one blow.
I mean, Stardus had grown much stronger than I'd expected. She was defeating every villain in a single blow, regardless of who they were.
It wasn't that I wanted to see Stardus struggling desperately, but I hadn't expected this either.
...At this rate, she's going to lose her edge as a hero.
A hero needed a certain amount of grit, but lately, watching Stardus turn into an overpowered protagonist had started to worry me.
This can't go on. There's no sense of tension.
...Yeah. Next time, I guess...
Like that, I spent my time thinking about this and that, making preparations, managing the Stardus fan cafe, and enjoying a rare stretch of ordinary life.
Before I knew it, that day had arrived.
"Do your best out there."
"Got it, big bro."
"Ha-yul, did you pack everything? You didn’t forget anything, right? Check your exam admission slip again. And your ID. You brought a watch too, right?"
"Yes, big sis. I've got everything."
Ha-yul went and took the college entrance exam.
...Honestly, I did wonder what university even meant in this world. We could simply hack the exam scores anyway, so did she really need to go through all this trouble? But Ha-yul said she wanted to accomplish something with her own hands, so I let her do as she wished.
Her results were about what she usually scored—slightly higher, in fact. On the day the exam ended, we all gathered for a celebration party.
Ordinary moments like that. But considering what the original world was like, they were precious times.
"Big bro. Feeling at ease?"
"Yeah. It's nice."
"But big bro's fans don't seem very at ease."
*
[When the hell is Egostic coming back??????]
I can no longer contain my fury.
At this rate, he's not showing up in Q4 either. Probably won't come until next year.
Is it even reasonable to have an average terror interval of 4.2 months?
I firmly believe we need to drag Mangostic back and make him stage an attack every week.
=[Comments]=
[Agreed.]
[I support this... send this man to the National Assembly~~!]
└[Old-man joke: 2 points]
[fr lol where are the weekly attacks?]
[Apparently if you report this to the police, everyone in this cafe gets arrested for treason lol]
└[national traitor meetup cafe lol]
[bigger problem is that without any terrorist attacks, it's just Ice Mango vs Stardus talk all day...]
└[Ice Mango is the true pairing.]
└[Nope, it’s Stardus.]
└[Stardus is the side piece lol]
└[is the Egostic x Electra faction dead or what? ffs T_T]
└[what even is Electra you weeb]
└[ffs stop fighting in my comments you lunatics]
*
"...Seo-eun. Why in the world are you reading that? Please, just stop."
"No. I'm going to keep reading until the genius hacker from Ego Stream gets mentioned."
"...But that's never going to come up, is it?"
"Seo-eun, you’ve never once shown your face on a broadcast."
When I said that, Seo-eun's cheeks gradually puffed up.
"That's exactly the problem! I've been by big bro's side the longest, but people don't even know I exist? Does that make any sense?"
"Seo-eun... being exposed to the public isn't always a good thing."
"Forget it. What I'm building right now... No, never mind. Anyway, just wait and see."
With that, Seo-eun went down to the basement.
Wait, what? What was she making? I felt seriously uneasy.
A few weeks later, when she emerged from the basement looking refreshed and never went back down, my anxiety spiked. What the hell had she made?
Even when I asked, all she said was that she'd tell me after the Moonlight Church incident was wrapped up. That was ominous...
Anyway, time passed, and the year turned.
The crisp autumn had somehow become a winter where you couldn't step outside without thick clothes.
And soon.
The day of the Moonlight Church's first terrorist attack drew near.
"To the Association President. On the day the first snow falls, there will be an attack in downtown Seoul. Please prepare in advance and evacuate the citizens... There. That should do it."
"Hey. Who even writes letters these days?"
"Now now. This isn't a letter—it's a secret communiqué."
A secret communiqué only has meaning when sent anonymously.
If I sent something like this to the Association, they would at least go on alert—unless they dismissed it as a prank.
Honestly, if I used my name, they would believe it immediately, but wouldn’t it look suspicious if I accurately predicted even the date of a Moonlight Church attack? So I sent it anonymously. Later, they would probably decide on their own that it had come from an internal whistleblower.
Anyway, I waited.
I waited for the day mentioned in the Original Work: the first snowfall, when the Moonlight Church would launch its first attack.
And at last.
Snow began to fall over Seoul.
Everyone celebrated the first snow.
And then, that evening.
KABOOOOOM.
Finally, the terrorist attack broke out.
***
[An unexplained phenomenon is currently occurring in the middle of downtown Seoul! A massive pink tornado-like storm has occupied the city center, and even with Stardus, Icicle, and Shadow Walker joining the fight, they are struggling to break through!]
All of South Korea’s heroes had mobilized for an attack that, unusually, had begun at night.
Normally, a terrorist attack like that would have been suppressed in one blow by Shadow Walker, but that time, even with two more heroes joining in, they could not stop it at all.
"Big bro. It's chaos over there. Aren't you going?"
"Hey. Weren't you the one who figured out how to stop that magic circle thing or whatever?"
At the Ego Stream Mansion, somewhere deep in the mountains.
On TV, the terrorist attack unfolding in Seoul was being covered, while Seo-eun and Choi Se-hee stared at me sprawled out on the couch as if they couldn't comprehend it.
"Ah, that. I'm not stepping in this time."
Still lying on the couch, I said it just like that.
I mean, when I thought about it, if I intervened from the very first terrorist attack, the Moon Priestess wouldn't even have time to feel guilty.
So I thought I should let her wreak some havoc and step in during the second or third incident. Wouldn't that make it easier to win over the Moon Priestess?
And also...
"This time, Stardus needs to face an enemy that's hard to deal with even without me."
This time, Stardus needed to face someone other than me who was genuinely difficult for her.
So I decided that, this time, Stardus needed to strengthen not only her abilities but also her mental fortitude—just a little, a tiny little bit.
Lately, she'd been resolving villains with basically one punch. At that rate, she might start thinking things were too easy and become complacent.
Honestly, from her standpoint, wasn't the last airplane terrorist attack the only time she faced anything genuinely difficult?
That was why. Since I'd drastically reduced the elements that could drive her into extreme despair compared with the Original Work up to that point... just this once.
"Ha-ru... just once. No, twice. Face an enemy you just can't beat."
Frustration is what makes a hero stronger!
Just this once... stay strong... Stardus!
"I'm sorry..."
Well, I mean, she should have been able to endure it at least once.
I believed in our Stardus!
***
"No! Why isn't my darkness ability working?!"
"Haah, Shadow. Just—just be quiet for a second. Huff... huff. Wow. This is bad. What do we do... Huh? Ha-ru, are you crying?"
.......