The Extra Who Stole the Hero's System-Chapter 36: Thousand Heavenly Piercings

The sky over the Valley was unusually clear that morning. It was the kind of blue that seemed almost painted on, too perfect, too gentle. There was no wind, no birdsong, not even the usual scent of moss and blood that had become familiar over the months of war.

Herald stood amongst the five thousand troops of Eudenia, flanked by soldiers from Calvados and Liberal. All of them, men and women alike, had begun to believe—foolishly, perhaps—that this would be the beginning of the end. The enemy was on the retreat, or so the scouts had said. Supplies were coming in regular. Letters from home arrived more often. Peace had started to feel real.

Herald stood in the second line, his sword hanging loose at his side. The blade was chipped and dulled, a veteran’s weapon. Beside him, Narell cleaned his rifle’s scope, muttering a prayer. Lio stood on the other side, chewing on dried meat. Even in stillness, the men and women of the Allied Army kept a sense of motion. It was a quiet anticipation, the calm that came before either peace or death.

And then everything changed.

A crack split the silence, not from the earth but from the sky. It wasn’t thunder. It was something else. The clouds, though none had been there began to swirl, churning in wide spirals like a whirlpool in the heavens. The blue was ripped apart, replaced by a shimmering tear in the sky, a jagged scar of pale white light. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

From that tear descended a man. At first glance, one might have mistaken him for a fallen god or some forgotten celestial angel. He wore nothing but pale silver cloth that seemed to shift like water, and his long white hair floated around him like it had never been subjected to gravity. His eyes were the strangest thing: blank, crystalline, like they hadn’t yet decided what color to be. His skin had an ivory sheen, not quite human, not quite divine. He didn’t walk—he floated. Hovering a few feet above the field, he tilted his head, almost childlike, as if confused by where he had arrived.

The entire Allied force went still.

No one raised their weapons. No one moved. Even the generals, even the steel-hearted veterans, simply stared. Something about the man, his presence froze them. It wasn’t fear, not exactly. It was an ancient, primal confusion, like looking upon something that didn’t belong.

The man looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers, then looked around the field.

"What is this place?" he said softly.

Herald felt his stomach twist. The voice was gentle, but hollow. Not emotionless, even worse, he was unaware.

The man raised his hand toward the sky and pointed one finger upward. A ripple of mana burst from the gesture. It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t even visible at first, but those attuned to mana felt it immediately. Herald’s skin prickled. The general of Eudenia, a hard-nosed man, barked an order.

"Take cover!"

But it was too late, the floating man whispered some words, that sounded truly ethereal. "Thousand Heavenly Piercings."

A thousand glowing spears, each made of brilliant white light, formed above the man’s head like stars in an artificial sky. They hovered for a second, then rained down upon the troops like judgment from heaven.

Herald hit the ground just in time to avoid being skewered. But the men around him weren’t so lucky. Lio screamed. Herald turned, he saw his friends, there were standing, arms raised, shielding a wounded girl behind him. A spear impaled them both.

Osric tried to run, only to be cut down mid-stride.

All around Herald, men and women fell like wheat to the scythe. The spears didn’t stop. A second wave formed, then a third. It was unrelenting. Five thousand had stood. Within minutes, less than two hundred remained.

And then the man spoke again.

"I see," he murmured, floating down until his feet gently touched the bloodied earth. "This form... it’s strong. Very strong. I just needed to feel the edge."

Herald staggered to his feet. His body shook, not from pain but from disbelief. Lio was gone. Osric. All the men he’d eaten with, trained with, wept with, they were all gone.

"Who... what are you?" he choked out.

The man turned his head toward Herald. There was no recognition in his eyes. No guilt. Just curiosity.

"I don’t know yet," he replied. "I was just born." He looked down at his hands again. "But I think... I was meant to serve him. I feel his calling."

The words sent a deep chill through Herald’s mind. He was terrified by the presence before him — a man who spoke as if he had existed for no more than five minutes.

Herald mind quickly scrambled for an answer to what was going on, who’s the him his referring to.

"Why did you do this?" Herald shouted. "Why would you kill them?!"

"To understand," the man replied. "To test my gift. To understand the boundary between restraint and excess."

He took a step forward and Herald quickly toke multiple steps back.

"I wasn’t sure how many I could kill before exhaustion. I still don’t feel tired. That’s good, I think."

Herald drew his sword, though it felt like lifting a twig against a mountain. The man cocked his head.

"You would strike me?"

"You murdered thousands," Herald replied.

"I learned," he said, almost defensively. "And now I can serve. He will be pleased."

The last of the generals ordered a retreat, but there was nowhere to go. The battlefield had become a graveyard, littered with the charred and impaled. Screams echoed. Some soldiers were still alive, half-buried in mud and bodies, sobbing or praying.

Herald didn’t retreat. He couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. Not from courage, his body was too full of hate to run. Everything he’d built, everyone he’d loved, every scar he’d earned in this war, it was all wiped away like dust brushed from a table.

He charged.

The sword was heavy, his steps uneven, but he moved anyway. Toward the monster in human shape. The man raised a hand and pointed.

Another spear formed, aimed for Herald chest. Within seconds, Herald felt pain and then he saw himself crashing to the ground.

More than four thousand men and women killed after the disappearance of the mysterious man, who claimed to be doing everything under the direct orders of someone.

****

Time passed.

He didn’t know how long. Maybe hours. Maybe a lifetime.

There were voices, but it was distant, there were mere muffles.

"Over here!"

"Get the stretchers! This one’s breathing!"

Boots crunched against stone and bone. Allied force scouts, those sent to assess the outcome of the operation, they moved between corpses, searching for the impossible— survivors.

They found one.

Herald.

His armor was half melted into his skin. Blood had crusted over every inch of his face. His left eye was sealed shut. His breathing was shallow, ragged. But alive.

They carried him back through the pass. Wrapped his body in blankets. Gave him something to bite when the medics pulled out the shrapnel. He didn’t scream. Not once. His voice was gone.

For three days he drifted in and out of sleep, barely moving.

On the fourth day, he finally stood up.

He walked outside the tent, looked up at the sky, and saw that the stars had returned. It was quiet. Too quiet. The others gave him space. No one knew what to say. No one had the right to speak to the last man standing.

He looked down at his hands. They trembled. Not from fear. From fury.

"I should have died," he muttered. "I was meant to die."

He saw their faces. Lio. Oric. Captain Rolfe. Jono. All of them gone. All turned to dust because of a single man who appeared from nowhere, treated war like a test, and vanished before the consequences could touch him.

He clenched his fists until blood ran from his palms.

"There is no justice. No safety. No meaning to life if it can be taken so easily."

He turned to the valley where the bodies still lay. He burned every face into his memory.

Then, in a voice low and sharp as anything he spoke :

"I will never love again. Never hold anyone close. Never forget that everything, everyone, can be taken from me in the face of pure might."

He stepped forward, the wind catching the hem of his ruined cloak.

"I will rise. I will tear through the lies of this world. I will find that man. That him. And I will break them."

His oath was not shouted. It didn’t need to be. The mountains heard. The dead heard. The gods, if they existed, heard.

From that day forward, Herald walked not as a soldier. Not as a survivor. But as an avenger being forged for lethality.

Herald, a man who only wanted to survive, who only wished for nothing more than to be with the ones he loved, he had everything taken from him by those who saw humans as nothing more than pawns in their pursuit of domination.