Chi-Woo offered the entire bottle of divine water, which was said to be difficult to even find, much less gain a drop of it. And after three days, one or two heroes began to awaken their energies. Although there existed the method of awakening one’s energy by establishing a contract with a god, the original way of achieving this was by reaching a ‘realization’ after great effort, similar to how a mage lived decades near water and learned its nature, or how a martial artist built their inner cores through breathing exercises.

And from this event, Chi-Woo learned the difference between a ‘traditional’ hero and a ‘modern’ hero. And there came the famous nonsensical question of what came first: the chicken or the egg? There had been a popular debate in the same vein in the Celestial Realm, about whether a person was born a hero, or made one through many external circumstances. With the exception of extremely rare cases like the Twelve Families who lit up the Celestial Realm, the latter seemed to be true. After all, the origin stories of heroes were all quite similar. There were those who only revealed themselves in times of desperation, as humanity was approaching the brink of extinction. And after going through countless trials and tribulations, these people grew in strength; those who survived among them continued to become stronger and stronger until they gained a power that surpassed their species. People called those superior beings who saved their species from extinction, ‘heroes’.

Yet heroes from these days were different. First of all, they were all summoned without much distinction, and above all, they easily gained privileges that would have normally taken a great amount of effort...