Villain's Rising

"Arghh..."

In an abandoned house situated on the outskirts of academy city, a tall, slender girl with blonde hair was panting heavily to catch her breath.

It was almost as if she was trying to breathe in the air after a long period of time.

Behind the blonde girl was a huge glass container.

The glass of the container was broken, and some kind of thick green liquid was spewing out of it.

From the looks of it, this blonde hair girl had just gotten out of the glass container that was previously filled with this green liquid.

"D-Damn that motherfucker! I'll kill him even if it's the last thing I'll do!"

Yes, the identity of this blonde girl was of course, Rebekah Willburn.

Finally, after several weeks of being stuck in that glass container filled with several kinds of nerve-serving chemical toxins, Rebekah managed to break out of it.

She looked around to scout her surroundings and found out that she was still in the basement of the abandoned house that Sam was using as his hideout during his time in Academy City.

However, something was weird...

There was no one around. Not even his clones or minions to guard her glass container.

Rebekah put her hand to her chin and began thinking. The gears in her head started turning.

Was Sam careless and left her body unguarded?

No, the Sam that Rebekah knew would never make such an amateur blunder. Hell, she wasn't even sure if he could make any blunder at all.

Rebekah thought that she could manipulate him and get what she wanted out of him. After that, she would just throw him away.

But later it turned out that it was not Sam who was being manipulated. Instead, she was the one who was dancing on his palm.

No, Sam was a cunning, manipulative, calculating psychopath. He wouldn't have left Rebekah's body unguarded as a mistake.

"So he did so intentionally?" Rebekah murmured. "That means he's not here."

After coming to that conclusion, Rebekah clenched her fists and used the last of the remaining strength in her body to activate Divine Sight.

He needed to find her brother and father and tell them the identity of Progenitor. She needed to tell them that it was Sam.

After she used Divine Sight to search for her brother and father, a deep frown appeared on her face.

Her father... She couldn't find her father...?

No matter where she searched on the whole Earth, she couldn't find her father.

And her brother... her brother was in Los Angeles?

The confusion only deepened as seconds passed. She needed to see what was going on in the world.

If she could see her father using her Divine Sight, that only means one of two things.

Either Anthony Willburn, aka Starsuper, is dead or he is somewhere in the near vicinity of Samael Gracefell, the Progenitor.

Since she was naked, she went upstairs and grabbed the first pair of clothing that crossed her sight.

After dressing up and covering her bare body, Rebekah straightened her back and readied herself to activate her flight ability.

Although, according to her estimate, it has only been a few days or weeks at best, she felt like she hadn't flown in years.

-Dhaaak!

In a flash, Rebekah's figure disappeared, and a huge shockwave erupted from where she was standing.

Her body broke through the ceiling of the house as she reached the sky in an instant.

She expected a familiar sight of the Academy City buzzing with people, but instead, what she saw from the sky was... a sight of destruction.

The Academy City, the pride of Hero association, the heart of Heroes, and the most powerful city on Earth... was destroyed?

Buildings collapsed, streets were filled with rubble and debris of destroyed architectures, and dead bodies of people could be seen sporadically stuck under all that rubble and debris.

It was almost as if a storm had passed through here, leaving behind only death and havoc in its path.

With trembling eyes and a dreading look on her face, Rebekah couldn't help but mutter to herself.

"What h-... What happened here...?"

*

"I know I said it before, but I really am sorry."

"Ju...Just sh-shut up... khuuk!... Just shut up and kill me....."

Lucas was lying powerlessly on the ground.

Starsuper, with his one foot stomping down on Lucas' chest, tried to sincerely apologize since he felt like he had unintentionally wronged this kid.

Lucas, however, had no interest in heartfelt apologies now. His only goal was to see the destruction of the Willburn family.

But, in the end, he was too weak to even scratch the man before him.

He used all his strength to rip apart Starsuper's body. However, the latter merely looked at him and disabled his ability.

Without his ability, Lucas only had superhuman physique, but that was nowhere near enough to go against the strongest hero of all time, Starsuper.

10 minutes. That's the time duration he was able to fight against Starsuper. And that was Starsuper going easy on him.

Had not been guilt-tripping Starsuper all this time, Lucas would've died the very first minute after stepping into the battle with this monster.

"I hope that giving your life for an evil like the Progenitor was worth it for you," Starsuper, with his head down, uttered.

Lucas, after remaining silent for a second, parted his lips.

"Yes. Yes, every moment I spent with him and for him was worth it. I hope he brings down the Willburn family and creates a new world. A world without any hippocrates like you."

"...I see."

With nothing more left to say, Starsuper finally pulled back his right arm and balled his hand into a fist.

-Bang!

However, before he could do anything else, an invisible force hit Starsuper from the side.

The impact from the force sent Starsuper flying a few meters to the side.

Lucas, who could finally move again after Starsuper's leg wasn't stomping him down anymore, promptly got up and distanced himself from the golden-caped superhero.

"Would you mind not killing my right-hand man, Starsuper?"

A vicious, almost sadistic voice fell in Starsuper's ears as soon as he was thrown to the side.

Gritting his teeth after recognizing the voice's owner, Starsuper looked in the direction where the voice came from.

A lean young man with raven black hair and matching eyes looked back at him with an indifferent expression.

"You....!"

With unadulterated murderous intent shrouding his very presence, Starsuper looked at the person who had just barged into this scene with bloodshot eyes.

"Samael Gracefell!"

"Aye, how have you been, Starsuper?"

But in the next moment, all the blood lust that Starsuper was emanating disappeared as he realized something.

If Sam was here, that just means one thing...

He successfully completed analyzing the dragon's corpse...

That means...

"You... You can..."

A tint of fear was visible in Starsuper's eyes as he tried to choke out a question for Sam.

Seeing Earth's mightiest hero in this frightened state, Sam couldn't help but smirk.

"Yeah, the age of dragons is back."