EPISODE 3: Talent and Responsibility

Three years had passed since the incident on that dusty training ground.

Time had moved like an arrow, and at fifteen years old, Zenoda Blanco had grown from a quiet little boy into a young man whose bearing drew admiring looks from everyone around him.

His shoulders had broadened, his posture was straight and composed, and his muscles had formed with perfect definition — substantial without being excessive. His thick black hair was left slightly longer now, framing a handsome face that always radiated absolute calm. The dark eyes that hid their scattered shimmer of cosmic stardust were sharper now, holding a wisdom that far outpaced his age.

In Kaigan Village, secrets could not be kept forever.

Despite Brunt and Mirida's determined efforts to conceal their son's impossible abilities, the wall of ignorance among the villagers had slowly crumbled. But something touching happened in the wake of that: rather than shunning Zenoda or selling his secret to the royal military, every resident of Kaigan Village agreed, without exception, to say nothing. They regarded Zenoda as the village's golden child — a secret guardian sent by the gods to watch over their little coastal community.

And how could they not love him?

Zenoda was a remarkably hardworking young man who devoted himself to helping anyone who needed it.

In the early mornings, when a thin mist still clung to the wheat fields on the hillside, Zenoda was already there. It was a sight that left the old farmers shaking their heads and pressing their fingers to their foreheads in disbelief.

"Hey, young Zeno! Slow down! Those sacks weigh fifty kilograms each!" called out Uncle Gregor, one of the oldest farmers in the village, puffing thoughtfully on his tobacco pipe.

Zenoda, strolling along the muddy path, glanced over his shoulder. On each of his shoulders, he had stacked five grain sacks — ten in total — piled high into the air, without producing a single drop of sweat. He walked across the waterlogged ground as though he were carrying a basket of cotton.

"It's no trouble at all, Uncle Gregor," Zenoda replied with a thin smile. "The sun will be high soon, and if we carry them one at a time, the grain will get damp. Besides, this is good practice for my balance."

It wasn't only the fields. Around midday, when the brief dry season hit and the main well in the village square began to run low, Zenoda would show up on the pretense of "clearing algae from the bottom." With a subtle flick of his fingers where no outsider could see, his water elemental magic would surge quietly downward, filling the well back to the brim with clear, fresh water until it practically overflowed. The villagers would pretend they hadn't noticed, cheering and offering thanks for the "natural miracle" that seemed to occur every time Zenoda happened to be nearby.

In the afternoons, he had another routine.

He often went to the edge of the Wrathwood, where a group of young would-be adventurers around his own age liked to gather. Although Zenoda wasn't officially registered with the Adventurers' Guild, his abilities were acknowledged without question. He taught them how to read tracks, how to tell the medicinal Silverleaf apart from the poisonous grass it resembled, and most importantly, how to survive in the wild.

For Zenoda — who had once been the sovereign of every cosmic dimension in existence — teaching mortal humans to hunt felt something like teaching an ant the fundamentals of walking. And yet he genuinely enjoyed it. He found real pleasure in the interaction. He was beginning to understand what it meant to belong to a community — something he had never once experienced during the billions of years he had spent sitting alone on the throne of Zenith.

But the peace of Kaigan Village was never truly permanent. Danger from the outside world was always lurking.

That particular day, the sun was blazing. Zenoda was in the backyard of their home, helping his father chop firewood for the winter months ahead. Brunt swung his axe with labored breathing, while Zenoda split enormous blocks of wood with casual, unhurried swings — yet each strike was precise enough to rival the edge of a master swordsman's blade.

Then, without warning, the sound of frantic footsteps and desperate shouting tore through the village's calm.

"It's bad! Help! Someone, please help!"

A young man Zenoda recognized as one of the guards from the watchtower came stumbling and sprinting toward the healer's clinic. His body was covered in dust and his face had gone completely white.

Brunt set down his axe, brow furrowing. He and Zenoda stepped out into the village lane to see what was happening. Residents were already gathering.

"What's going on, Rian?!" called Garrick, the thick-bearded veteran adventurer, who happened to be nearby.

"U-Uncle Garrick! On the overland route — at the border of the Wrathwood!" Rian pointed with a trembling hand toward the narrow path that cut through the dark forest to the north. "There's a large merchant convoy from outside! Their carriages were ambushed by a pack of Ironclad Bears and Shadow Wolves! Their guards are being cut down one by one! If no one goes now, they'll all be killed and eaten by those monsters!"

At the mention of those names, the color drained from Garrick's face and the faces of every adult man nearby. Ironclad Bears were mutated bears with hides as hard as forged iron. Shadow Wolves were magical wolves of terrifying speed.

"Round up the Class C and B adventurers! Bring your combat gear! We move now!" Garrick bellowed, taking command.

Zenoda didn't wait to be told. He bent down, picked up the woodcutting axe still sticky with tree sap, and stepped forward to fall in alongside Garrick's group.

Seeing his son preparing to march into a bloody combat zone, Brunt's face flushed with alarm. He grabbed Zenoda's arm at once.

"Zeno! Stop!" Brunt hissed, his voice carrying every ounce of a father's authority. "You are not going there! Those aren't ordinary monsters. You could be hurt — and if you use that power of yours in front of outsiders, you'll draw the kingdom's attention! Remember Sister Niyana's warning!"

Zenoda looked at his father steadily. There was no hesitation in those eyes, let alone fear.

"Father," Zenoda said calmly — yet the quiet weight in his voice was enough to still the panic swelling in Brunt's chest. "I understand your concern. But there are human lives hanging by a thread out there. The power I keep hidden means nothing if I stand by and let innocent people die in front of me."

Brunt said nothing.

"I promise, Father," Zenoda continued. "I won't use magic. I'll only use physical strength and technique. No one will be suspicious if I simply look like a village boy who happens to be strong."

Seeing the iron resolve in his son's eyes, Brunt's resistance gave way. He swallowed against a dry throat, and released his grip. "Promise me you'll come back without a single scratch, Zeno. Your mother will have my head if you so much as graze your knee."

"I promise."

Within ten minutes, a small rescue party — Zenoda, Garrick, five senior adventurers, and three healers carrying bandages and recovery potions — was cutting through the forest route at a run. Zenoda's pace was conspicuously fast; he had to actively hold himself back to avoid leaving Garrick and the others far behind.

The sharp, metallic smell of blood reached them before the scene even came into view.

At a bend in the dirt road flanked by massive pine trees, chaos reigned. Three large carriages had been overturned. Cargo was scattered across the ground. The draft horses lay dead, their bellies torn open. In the middle of the wreckage, roughly seven hired guards in battered armor were fighting desperately to maintain a circular formation. At the center of that formation, a middle-aged man in fine clothing — the merchant — sat huddled and trembling, arms wrapped around an ornately carved wooden box.

They were surrounded by three Ironclad Bears standing nearly three meters tall, and a dozen Shadow Wolves snarling and baring saliva-dripping fangs.

Just as the rescue party arrived, one of the massive bears swung its steel-hard claw, shattering a guard's shield and hurling the man through the air like a ragdoll. The defensive formation collapsed instantly. The shadow wolves crouched low, readying themselves to lunge and tear out the merchant's throat.

"No!" the merchant screamed.

"Forward! Protect them!" Garrick roared, drawing his broadsword.

The Kaigan adventurers charged in, loosing arrows and hurling low-grade fire spells to draw the monsters' attention. But the bears' hides deflected the fire magic like stone deflects rainwater, and the wolves moved far too quickly to pin with arrows.

In that fraction of a second when despair began to close its grip around them, the combat instincts of Ursilium — buried deep within Zenoda's soul — snapped wide awake.

Not magic. Not divine aura. Pure, distilled killing art.

Zenoda moved.

His footsteps made no sound, touching the ground without leaving a trace. To ordinary eyes, the young man appeared to simply teleport. He vaulted over the wreckage of a carriage, passing Garrick who was still mid-sprint.

A Shadow Wolf launched itself into the air, jaws stretched wide, aimed directly at the merchant's throat.

Slash.

No heroic battle cry. No dramatic flourish. Zenoda simply swung his woodcutting axe in one perfectly diagonal arc. The rusted blade passed through the magical wolf's neck in midair so cleanly that blood only began to spray a full second after its head had separated from its body. The headless corpse hit the ground and nearly landed on the merchant's shoes.

The merchant stared up with wide, unseeing eyes.

Standing before him was a young man with black hair, wearing plain linen clothes, holding an ordinary woodcutting axe now dripping black blood.

Zenoda's arrival brought the movement of every monster to a halt.

Wild animals possess instincts far keener than any human's. When they looked into the young man's black eyes, a primal terror seized their souls. Their every instinct screamed at them that the creature standing before them sat at the absolute apex of the universal food chain.

But hunger and fury overrode fear.

Two Ironclad Bears roared with a sound that split the air, reared up on their hind legs, and charged at Zenoda from his left and right simultaneously.

"Zeno! Watch out! Normal iron can't pierce their hides!" Garrick shouted in a panic.

Zenoda did not give an inch of ground. His eyes tracked the junction between the bone plates at the first bear's neck. No defense in the physical world was truly absolute.

He dropped into a low stance, evading the first bear's deadly sweeping claw with a margin of exactly one millimeter. Using the rotational momentum of his dodge, he swung his axe upward from below.

CRACK.

An ordinary axe head, driven at extraordinary speed with perfect precision, found the weakest joint in the bear's protective jaw and punched straight through — the blade continuing upward until it pierced the creature's brain from underneath. The massive beast died instantly.

Without pausing to recover the axe now lodged in the carcass, Zenoda released the handle, pivoted to face the second bear already mid-pounce, drew back his right fist, compressed his transcendent physical strength into a single point of impact, and drove his knuckles squarely into the Ironclad Bear's chest.

BOOM.

A deep, concussive blast rang out. The air behind the bear rippled visibly from the shockwave of the strike. The monster's heart was pulverized inside its chest without a single mark on the outer hide. A creature weighing several hundred kilograms was launched backward, struck a pine tree hard enough to topple it, and did not move again.

Watching their two massive leaders slaughtered in seconds by nothing more than bare hands and a plain woodcutting axe, the remaining Shadow Wolves yelped in terror. They tucked their tails between their legs and scattered, fleeing in all directions back into the depths of the dark forest.

Silence descended over the blood-soaked road. The only sound was wind moving through the pine branches.

Garrick, the village adventurers, the wounded guards, and the merchant all stared at Zenoda's back with expressions of complete blankness. Their rational minds refused to process what they had just witnessed. How could an ordinary village youth have put down Class B monsters in three breaths?

Zenoda shook the blood from his hand, then turned to face them with his characteristic flat expression.

"The area is clear. Healers — please attend to the wounded guards immediately. Several of them have lost a significant amount of blood."

The calm, unhurried sound of his voice broke the spell of frozen silence. The healers snapped back to themselves and rushed forward to administer first aid with bandages and healing potions. Garrick walked up to Zenoda and clapped the young man on the shoulder with a hand that trembled slightly.

"You absolute madman..." Garrick muttered, swallowing hard. "That physical gift of yours has reached a completely unreasonable level. You could become a Royal Knight tomorrow if you wanted."

Zenoda simply smiled politely. "It was just luck, Uncle. My axe happened to catch its weak point."

A thoroughly terrible excuse, naturally — but Garrick and everyone else from Kaigan chose to swallow it whole, for the sake of protecting the secret of their beloved young man.

Once the guards had been stabilized, the monster carcasses were gathered up — their hides and magic stones commanded a high price — and the surviving members of the merchant convoy were guided toward Kaigan Village to recuperate.

For a full week, the merchant's party stayed in Kaigan. The village, ordinarily quiet, was a little more alive than usual.

The merchant, who turned out to be a man named Master Vivaldi, was the head of a mid-sized trading firm with connections reaching all the way to the capital. He was deeply impressed by the warmth of Kaigan's residents — but more than anything, he found himself captivated by the young man who had saved his life.

Vivaldi quietly observed Zenoda over the course of the week. He watched how the young man helped the villagers, witnessed his beyond-rational strength, and took note of his maturity far beyond his years. Vivaldi's instincts as a merchant of long experience screamed at him that this boy was an uncut gem of incalculable worth.

The day of departure arrived. New horses and carriages had been hired, and Vivaldi's party was ready to continue their journey out from the coast toward the continent's interior.

At the village's harbor front, with the sea breeze playing through everyone's hair, Zenoda stood beside his father and mother to see the convoy off.

Vivaldi stepped forward. His fine clothing had been neatly mended, and his face radiated a gratitude that was entirely sincere. He bowed deeply before Zenoda — a gesture rarely offered by a merchant of noble standing to a common villager.

"Young Master Zenoda, my life and the lives of every one of my people belong to you," Vivaldi said with gravity. "All the gold and silver I've given to this village will never be enough to repay what we owe."

"You owe me nothing, Master Vivaldi. Helping one another is simply what people are supposed to do," Zenoda answered calmly.

Vivaldi smiled, then looked directly into Zenoda's eyes.

"A talent like yours is too great to be left to wither in a coastal village, son. A dragon cannot spend its whole life hiding at the bottom of a shallow pond."

Brunt and Mirida tensed at those words. Their old worry came creeping back.

Vivaldi reached into his coat and produced a gold badge engraved with the emblem of a scale and crossed swords, then held it out to Zenoda.

"In two months' time, the Royal Academy of Magic and Knights will be holding its open entrance examinations — open to all social classes. It is the one true path to greatness on this continent," Vivaldi paused, letting his words carry their full weight.

"Zenoda Blanco... would you consider visiting the city of Koreson? The central city where the world's wonders gather."

A gust of sea wind surged suddenly stronger, sweeping dry leaves spiraling through the air around them.

Zenoda's eyes fixed on the gold badge resting in his palm. The name Koreson echoed in his mind.

As a god, he had looked upon billions of gleaming intergalactic cities spanning the cosmos. But as a mortal young man named Zenoda, this invitation was a key — a key to opening the gates of the real world. A world full of intrigue, magic, swords, and perhaps... genuine danger capable of making the divine blood within him run hot once more.