Juliet was trying to get the man off herself, but every time she landed a blow from the ground, he would instantly punch her face. By now, she was more than simply dazed: she was fainting.

Blood rushed to her ears, beating them like drums, while every other sound was being drowned by her ears whistling. She could feel the rustling and tearing of her clothes, dampened by the ringing, but still with a tragic rhythm in synch with the blood in her ears.

She heard a boom on the side and barely saw Frederick trying to use his magic before getting restrained by four enemies. They held his head down, but he still managed to get it up enough to scream toward Juliet.

Juliet wished she could actually hear what was being said. She knew that she was being stopped by terror more than anything else, but she was helpless. She did not know what else to do.

She Joseph was still on his feet, but he was sweating buckets and panting. Even if his fighting style was broadly superior to everyone else’s, his body still had limits.

She could put her eyes everywhere but on John, the monster on top of her, who had already removed most clothing from her upper body.

It was the end of things. All the other followers were mostly dead or too injured to move. A couple of them had managed to back up to the 2nd room, but they would be found soon.

She did not know how civilization had come to this, how humans had turned to such beasts in barely a day. Maybe they had been like that all along, and their old civilization had been very good at keeping them at bay. Now, though, the beasts were unleashed.

She felt John’s hand get to the rim of her jeans, tearing through the seams like a hot knife through butter…

Many tragedies would happen in this new wretched world. People would soon realize that no one would come and save them, that people were not nearly as good as they thought before. Neighbors would kill each other, brothers would turn against parents, and parents would leave their homes alone, hoping to make it without the weakest link in the chain.

In such a pathetic world, heroes were nothing but a fancy word for people who still retained some decency, for saving people took much more sacrifice than anyone would ever imagine.

Books on Earth always made legendary sound feats somewhat cheap. Fiction had told people that the hero saving the day was the most common scenario, the one to expect. It was going to be a brutal awakening for many who would die with their eyes opened wide and pointing up, waiting for salvation.

Some people were going to try and save others. And they would die. They would die terrible deaths or just come short of the feats they had envisioned. Either way, they were not going to change much.

Earth had told everyone comforting tales of heroes since time immemorial, even when people still died for the most stupid reasons. And even then, people told myths and fables of great Heroes and their deeds. Why? Why would they do something like that?

The truth was that some Heroes did exist; they were just few and far between. For example, even if Achilles and Odysseus did not exist, some great warriors and generals still did; and based on the real ones, others would model legendary stories to tell kids and adults alike that hope should never be lost, never.

And right when Juliet’s eyes were going dark, she felt it.

The Ancestral Bond rippled with a searing wave of pain and anger.

…

With force similar to an explosion, the water parted, and a figure stumbled upon a platform.

Everyone, including John, stopped to look at it.

It was the kid that had fled the scene at the beginning. But for some reason, his clothes were rags and multiple wounds crisscrossed on his body. Water had washed away some blood, but his body opened the gates once again and flooded his skin with the red and viscous liquid, giving him the look of a demon.

He looked over the scene of his friends' defeat and started breathing again, wheezing, really. In his hands laid a sword.

The sword was azure and had the shape of a very common saber.

“Ah! Look, the kid found a sword! Get it from him! We only found axes and spears so far!” John broke out of the daze, too focused on his current deed to be distracted for a second more.

The kid could barely stand, and every breath of his was a wheeze. John had worked in a hospital as a nurse, and he had seen emphysematous patients in better shape.

As soon as a person got close to the kid to disarm him, everyone felt a shockwave impact them. Only John, who was already crouching, did not fall on his ass.

It was unknown to them, but Jacob never had the strongest body, nor the strongest aptitude for magic. He had been good at Alchemy and Inscriptions, but only by virtue of experience and time. Even his Time Domination Cultivation Technique complemented his primary weapon, a simple amplifier of a greater talent.

See, even when he was just a little cockroach in his old life, there had been one thing he had been good at.

Swordsmanship

He had discovered it by chance, wielding a sword much more quickly than anyone else on the first try. It was one of the things that had let him survive the ordeals while he was weak, and it had also been the thing that had allowed him to challenge the Black Dragon while being much weaker than the Monster himself.

He could not project his Soul Force because of his weak body. He would go through the same thing he had just experienced in the secret room if he did. To project a killing aura, one would need a body strong enough to resist and more.

If Joseph had a quite strong Martial Style… Well, as they say, it was like comparing Heaven and Earth.

Jacob slowly exhaled air and blood with his wounded windpipe, but the easy-grip on a sword handle kept him on his feet. So that’s how it was supposed to be, how he was supposed to face the world.

He slowly put the sword in front of himself, a few centimeters from his body, before whispering the words of the style he had personally created in his past life.

The Martial Style you could only use with a sword, the primary tool in his box.

The Blade Tyrant Martial Style, 1st stance – Cut