Chapter 37: Chapter 36: The manifestation

The lore of the world tells us of many powerful men and women who have wandered through the days of our history.

Great champions and craftsmen and wandering spirits of many kinds and forms, taking many shapes and using many methods of living. These people have achieved things of incredible note in our world. But whether this success is because of a divine seed, planted into their spirits at their time of birth, or because of who they simply grew to be by chance, or even through direct intervention by the gods themselves, is impossible to say.

— Apart from one exceptional category.

'The true hero'; sometimes referred to as the ‘summoned hero’, given that they are often sourced from regions that scholars have never heard of. Colloquially, they are often simply titled as ‘the hero’.

The true hero is a favored soul, brought to us by an otherworldly power. Each time a true hero rises, a great threat is here to be vanquished. The gods never summon a hero without strong reasons.

This event, this threat, happens every hundred years, when a crisis manifests itself on the surface of the world.

A true hero is a person of incredible physical and magical might. The least renowned of them far surpass even SSS-Ranked, noble-blooded champions.

The first true hero that we know of, Azimuth of the Torn Sky was an orcish woman, like any other. Prior to her divine ascension, she was but a simple chicken farmer. Then, after her ascension, she was a feared and powerful creature, granted might by her divine birth-right.

Why did the gods choose her to fight the first crisis? What did they see in her that they saw in no other man or woman in the world?

We simply can not say.

Perhaps, however, it is good to sometimes remember that amongst the most common faces who we see every day, are also perhaps hiding incredible potentials, which are only waiting for the stars to align so as to reveal themselves.