The pain was almost unbearable. He dredged up the effort and managed to open his eyes. A soft blue light flared for a moment and for a moment the pain receded before it slammed back into him again forcing him to almost groan. Almost. He wasn’t going to let those bastards get the satisfaction of his agony from him. When his sight finally focused he saw the five of them standing before him – Tera, Sols, Kaban, Dreal and Kava - smug looks on their faces, and on looking down he saw why. All of their swords were stabbed into him at various points, all holding him up on the wall and essentially immobilizing him. He finally looked back up at one of them and with a weary look of acceptance shook his head.

“Why Tera?” he asked before he started coughing up blood. It took a few moments before he was finally able to stop coughing.

“Of all the things he asks us is ‘why?’” she replied with a disgusted look on her face. “It’s simple, we are the heroes and you are the Demon lord we were sent to kill.”

With that everything fell into place in his head. The looks he had gotten from them when he was summoned. The disgust he thought he saw on their faces when they thought that he wasn’t looking. He had passed it off as just him over thinking something but now he saw their true colors.

“I’m no Demon lord. I even sacrificed everything to kill him,” I replied as I used the last of my energy to keep focused. The loss of blood was starting to affect me now.

“Hell, heal him before we lose him. I have yet to gloat over him enough.” Tera smirked as Dreal moved forward to start healing him. As Dreal began healing him, Tera spat in his face. “I’ll have you know I detest everything about you. We never needed you but the alliance insisted on summoning a *hero* from another world. We were the strongest and then all of a sudden we were nothing. Now we will be the heros and you will be the Demon Lord. We all came here to defeat the Demon Lord, only to realize that it was already dead and had been for some time. Instead we came to realize that there was someone in the background giving all the orders, a new Demon Lord if you will. And on the throne we found your mana imprint, linking the new Demon lord to you. Oh don’t worry, the throne was destroyed by our fight so there’s no way that anyone can dispute our version of events.”

I just stared at them and then slowly a smile appeared on my face. Sols frowned and started mumbling under his breath.

“Ha, Ha Ha ha!!!” I started laughing until tears started rolling down my eyes.

“And what are you laughing about?” Tera said as she grabbed my hair to pull up my head.

“Thanks for healing me,” I smirked, “hope you enjoy my last moments. It’s been a blast.” I replied as my eyes started glowing

“Shit!!! Run, he’s blowing his mana core!!” she screamed as she turned to start running.

The explosion decimated the Demon Lord’s mountain and essentially leveled the ground. It was heard around the world and many countries felt the earth tremble at the blast. As for me, Hiro (yes my name was essentially *hero* - laugh it up if you will) I was now sent into oblivion. Or so I thought. One moment I saw the beginnings of the blast and then the next I was in a white room, seated before two men and two women. I scratched my head as I pondered what went wrong.

“No, nothing went wrong. At least you blowing your mana core up didn’t go wrong.” Said one of the guys with a laugh.

“Zero, quit teasing him.” Said one of the women as she tweaked the guy’s nose.

“Ahh, ouch that hurts. Who the hell tweaks a god’s nose like a child’s?”

“Then grow up Zero.” She laughed as she moved to stand before me. “Hi, I’m Astra, he’s Zero, she’s Oris and he’s …”

“Tavs,” I cut in.

“Oh you’ve heard of us?” she smiled.

“The four Gods of Revastia. Yes, I’m familiar with the folklore.” I replied as I looked them over.

“Folklore!! We’ve been relegated to folklore?!!” yelled Tavs.

I just shrugged. “You have no temples or churches and knowledge of you is only spread by word of mouth. What did you really expect to happen?”

Oris huffed and slumped in her chair, “Damn when you’re right, you’re right. I told you that we should have put more effort into this planet.”

“Yes well, I wasn’t the one who kept insisting on free will and all that. Damned hippy mentality if you ask me.” Blurted Zero.

“What’s done is done. Now we have a chance to fix it” replied Astra as she looked at me. Soon enough the others started looking my way. A shiver ran down my back as I saw four smiles directed at me. This was not going to be pretty.