"Haaa haaa haaa" A man was standing among the ruins of a castle. His armor, which was large and powerful, had cracks all over the place. In his hand he held a very worn out great sword, made from the finest materials and enchanted with the best enchanters.
"You did well, I cannot remember the last time someone had drawn my blood in thousands of years. You should feel honored to die by my hands."
Another man stated. He had a dark purple skin that had harden and roughen over thousands of years of battle. His body was like one seen on a Greek god. On his forehead laid two large demonic horns that pointed towards the sky. On his hand were claws that could cut steel as effortlessly as the air. Eyes black eyes was said to be able to see the soul of a man with but a glance. He was the great demon king from the netherworld, he had been sealed for over ten thousand years, now he was released.
"As if fucker!" The human said, he grabbed his sword and swung it sideways. Aura coated the sword with a bright blue glow. It wasn't like the liquid of an advanced aura user. Or the mud like aura of an expert. It was the brilliance of a grandmaster.
The aura left the sword and formed an air type slash. The demon king moved to the side dodging the slash despite it moving two times faster than sound. Ruined castle now had another large gash on the side.
"When will you learn that continuing this is nothing but a waste of our time?" The demon king asked as if he was asking about the weather. He just waved his hand. Like one would to rid themselves of a fly.
The human jumped to the side. The next moment five large claw like marks was left on the ruins of the castle. Each of which larger than the slash the human had unleashed, the castle is not made of ordinary stone, but of Marvel Stone. A wall of Marvel Stone can brush off an elder dragon's all out attack. This was a testament of both the human's and the demon king's strength.
The human unleashed a barrage of attacks. Each of which more deadly than the last. The demon blocked each attack as if they were just flying buzzing around. He punched the air. But from the punch a large shockwave sounded out. The shockwave punched the humans slammed into a wall, broke through the wall, and continued flying through another three wall, each wall was well over five meters wide.
In the last wall that the human was slammed into lay a crater that dug three meters deep. The man got out of the crater, his breastplate had shattered and fallen to the ground. He leaned on his sword, using it as a crutch.
The demon king walked through the holes in the walls. His movements slow, and full of confidence. The human thrusted his sword forward. A bright light shine where the holes were.
The demon king just blocked the aura like it was a small breeze. But what he didn't know that the attack was a distraction. The human was then next to him. He swung his sword towards the demon king's neck. Aura coated his weapon.
The strike landed, but it only drew a bit of blood. The muscles of the demon king's neck managed to stop the sword along side the aura. Even though he could crush mountains with his fist the demon king was too strong, in fact, it was said that the many races in the past all offered three of their own saint tier heroes.
And even after that it took a fight over the course of two weeks, and even then it took the sacrifice of all of the heroes just to seal the demon king. The demon king was still weakened as he had just recently escaped his seal. But he still couldn't do any more than a few scratches.
The human gathered all of his strength he lifted his weapon and slashed down with all of his might. The resulting slash had split the castle ruins as well as the city it was in. It had created a huge ravine, much larger than most natural formed ones.
But the demon king just caught the attack with his bare hands. The sword was right in his palm, being held in place by his five fingers. There but there was quite an amount of blood. Much more than before, but five drops increasing to thirty drops didn't really matter. In the end, it was but a slightly deeper scratch,
"Once again, impressive, human to be able to draw this much of my blood, while only a grandmaster, truly a marvelous achievement you have done here. Let me ask you for your name?"
"Alexander Mill." The human said between deep heavy breaths. His face was tired, one of his eyes couldn't even fully open. But at this answer the demon king narrowed his eyes a bit.
"Not the name you go by, the name you consider yourself to be." The demon king stated. Sporting the lies that the human had told himself and others. This caused the human to widen his eyes a bit. Before he chucked to himself a bit.
"My name is Izuku Midoriya, remember this as I send you back to hell." The human, no, Izuku said. He then used his Aura ability. The one he got once he entered the realms of a master.
Sacrificial Burn.
This ability would burn through his life force to increase his power temporarily. He could scale the amount according to his will. He had never used it much. Only about eight times in his whole life. Life force is a fickle thing. It can be summed up to as the amount of life left in a man. An old man would not have a lot of life force, but a man in his prime would. A sick man would not have much life force but a healthy man would. Life force could be recovered, but it is a slow process.
And everything is thrown out the window once magic and aura are introduced. Magic and aura can increase one's life force. So an old man with wrinkles on his body and arms as thin as a stick could have hundreds more life force than a huge man in his prime, having muscles that looked like it could break branches with a single punch.
It is a complex subject but to simplify it, a life force is how healthy, powerful, and time left a thing has left, you add them all up and you have a person's life force, of course there are a few things you would add on, but these three are the most important.
By burning his life force, it was really his health and time left, his power stays the same, mostly. The past few times he used it, his body would receive a backlash, so he didn't use it much, but now he would die soon anyways so he burned everything he could.
His body was burning, his cells started to wither. He stepped back and pulled the sword from the demon king's hand. He then swung the sword down, it was too fast for the demon king to properly dodge.
The strike had struck his shoulder. Broke the shoulder bones, cut the muscles and tendons, severed the aura or mana veins he had, cut into his lungs and broken some ribs. The sword was stuck in the demon king's body. He coughed up blood, it was purple and black by nature, but this didn't make the demon king react much. Like it was a small wound.
Izuku on the other hand was dead, he had burn through all of his life force and put everything he had into the last strike. His body still held the sword, but the body was withered, like it belonged to an old man.
But the grip on the sword was still strong, in fact, his body was still standing, the armor he wore was not light, even if the breastplate was no longer a part of it, the armor weighed well over a thousand kilograms. The sword was at least five hundred kilograms, but his withered and lifeless body still stood tall.
"How amazing, you humans never cease to amaze me, to respect you, I shall bury you in your human traditions." He took the sword out of his body, blood started to spurt from the wound, but the wound just started to heal itself, reattaching his body back to peak performance. It was like he was never injured. The only sign on one was the slightly darker skin that was where the wound was, but it was barely darker, it was hard to catch if one wasn't looking for it.
He closed the eyes of the still wide eyed human with a small brush of his hand. He then carried Izuku with telekinetic powers, he moved into the royal graveyard, the graveyard of the royalty in the kingdom of Domana.
After that, with a wave of his hand the earth stared to move and shift. It created a hole large enough for Izuku to fit in with a laid down position. With his armor still on and his hands together on his chest, still holding his sword which now pointed down. The demon king lowered the body into the grave, he then buried the corpse and created a gravestone.
'A human who fought until the end, giving his life for his kingdom, even if it meant burning his life away. Alexander Mill.'
The gravestone read. The demon king just flew off into the distance, deciding to eradicate the kingdom last.
But with Izuku, who was now drifting through the abyss. 'What a wonderful life I had, at least compared to my last. What a fucking joke.' He thought to himself. It was actually true.
In his last life, he was born as a quirkless boy. After his father knew about that, he left the family for another woman, even though his mother tried to hide the fact that that he did Izuku figured it out, in his second life.
His mother was the kindest woman in the world, she would buy any All Might merchandise he desired. Made his favorite food often. Read bed time stories to him, though he grown out of it in his fifth year. Watch shows with him. Played with him. She was basically his best friend. She was the only one that was kind to him.
His former friends turned into bullies. They would beat him up daily. Katsuki Bakugo was the leader of this group of bullies, he and his friends would bully anyone they wanted. And the school even supported them. Hiding their tracks, placing the blame on the other students, teaching them that the others were inferior.They did all sorts of things to encourage the bullying.
Out side of school, public life was at better, for most, they only cared if you could get them profits, if a quirkless person could give more profits than a quirked one then they would pick the quirkless person. But the problem is that quirks did often help increase one's profit.
Someone with a mutation type quirk that increase strength could carry more stuff than a normal quirkless man. A person that can create fire can help save gas bill in a restaurant, a person with a speed quirk can type faster than others.
So quirkless people normally only did the jobs no one wanted, news paper delivery, plumbing, trash disposal, basically they did odd jobs that most quirks don't help with. At least in the eyes of the law, they are equal, quirkless and quirked are equal, that was at least something good.
But that is in court. Many police place quirkless under quirked people. If two crimes that were the same, but the victims were one quirked and quirkless, ninety percent of the time they would instantly choose the quirked person and another five would debate with themselves before choosing quirked, the last five percent would choose it after debating.
He figured that out once when he reported a mugging. Once they learned he was quirkless, the man openly shooed him away. Not even caring someone was getting mugged. Life, was hard as a quirkless, basically being treated as second class citizens, for something they couldn't control.
But in his new life, everyone was basically the same, just with talent. Something less noticeable than quirks, but still not so good. The talented were praised and helped, the talentless were shunned. But they were not as cruel, mostly because they didn't have time to care about others when they need to care about themselves.
Luckily he had good talent. But it was his wits that made him so successful. His talent was about one in every thousand, give or take a few hundred, not very common, but not rare. He would lead a decent life, get a wife, marry, have kids, and die eventually. Just less suffering, but still average.
He observed other people, he looked at aura users since a young age. He studied everything, from training to eating, walking. This helped him understand the world. But man was it bad. Sure magic tools made life convenient, stoves, something like a toilet, refrigerator.
But the common sense was terrible, if someone was injured, burn the wound. Sure it killed the bacteria but it could also worsen the wound. Someone had died, give the stuff to their children and bury the body. Someone was brutally maimed to death, just bury the body. No one really cared about anyone that was not their family.
The second thing was that the food was terrible, like the best it could do in the modern world was three stars, and that was being very generous. They didn't roast it, they actually cooked, but they were just bad at it.
Lastly, the training most people did were just the height of stupidity, that was not joking in anyway way shape or form. The basic way was to just stand in a standing horse stance. They would then breathe the air in, then they would basically hope that the aura enters the body and their body can adapt to the aura. They would do this after training their bodies.
It was highly inefficient. Natural aura in the air can increase healing speed. So it worked, kinda. Aura could be breathed into our bodies, after all it was in the air, but our bodies cannot contain it, so it seeps from our bodies.
So while it is in our bodies, they help heal our bodies, then they try to get used to that feeling of aura in our bodies healing our bodies. Once they do, they try to manipulate it and contain in our bodies. This is where the talented and talentless are determined, the talented would be able to naturally do so, while the talentless would never be able to.
But for Izuku, he practiced breathing and body manipulation technique he created, with this he could actually train his aura training. He would take in the aura in the air and properly store it in the body. The sea of mana for magicians and sea of Ki for aura users.
He was praised as a prodigy, having reached the intermediate tier in only a year, and advanced on the second year. If people had the proper technique then the whole kingdom would prosper, but at the same time it could fall. People are greedy by nature, if they figure that there is a way to increase their power in such a fast way then they would do anything to get their hands on it, so he kept the technique to himself, playing it off as his talent.
He advanced to the ranks of a knight, during that time he trained his body to the limit. Learning to use any type of weapon if the situation calls for it. From swords, to axes, hammers, bows, even a humble knife.
During this training he reached the ranks of master. He was congratulated as the youngest in their history, only being beaten by another young man in another continent by two months. He became a royal knight after this achievement, but his progress started to slow down, so he spent a year in seclusion, making tweaks in his technique, refining it to the best it could be, using this new technique he eventually entered the ranks of grandmaster.
For this, he became the national guardian, a seat that had been empty for the past century or two. This position gave him a lot of free time, free time he used to further his power and technique, after the fifth month as the guardian he maximized his aura technique, it was at the best it could possibly be, no tweaks made it better, in fact, any tweaks made it worse.
But he reached a bottleneck, it was at the tenth stage of the grandmaster, just half a step from saint, but he could not reach it. After accepting this, he focused on control, he would train on his control over the aura, year after year of training, he became one of the best controllers of aura.
After control was quality of the aura, which was already quite strong compared to others, but he would further refine it, it was like trying to make a very pure iron even more pure, a slow and arduous process, but he did it, becoming the best grandmaster in history despite not being forty yet. He was going to try and breakthrough into the realms of saint before the demon king's seal had eroded into nothingness.
With the seal that had kept the demon king sealed for all these years now gone, the demon king could rampage as much as he wanted. But Izuku wouldn't allow him, he prepared to attack him, but the demon king already planned to kill him as well, being the only grandmaster in the surrounding areas he was the only threat to him.
They battled for but a few hours, it ended in the demon king's victory.
It was a decent life he lived. But one that only sought power. It was an empty life. But he could not go back, he had just died, the demon king was released, he knew better than anyone that there are no saints that could possibly kill or seal him. A kingdom or empire would be considered a top rank power house if they had a saint, in fact, there are only a few saints still alive, but they are weaker than the ones of legend.
So he could only accept his own death. But he heard a noise. It was a seeping noise that he last heard on the defense mechanism of an ancient golem he once destroyed. But this one seemed modern.
It was weird, he was sure he had died, he had burned all of his life force, so why was he hearing things.
Light shone in his eyes, it was A bit painful, like the time an expert magician used a flash spell on his eyes, it was painful. His eyes opened up.