Hero? I've Long Stopped Being One

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Volume 1 – Chapter 7: Mouth of Destruction

The two arrived at the B-level hero's lecture room, inside the room were sitting numerous other superheroes. Not long after Lin Jie and Xiao Zhan found a place to sit, a dark-skinned muscle man appeared before the podium.

"Hello everyone, I am your instructor today, I reckon I don't need to introduce myself, after all, in H-city I have quite the reputation." The man said.

"Who is he?" Lin Jie whispered quietly to Xiao Zhan.

"B-level hero, I think he's called Black Gold^[1]." Xiao Zhan answered, "I've heard that his whole body's hardness is at an alloy level of hardness."

"Why is it that I've only come across muscled men today?" Lin Jie said, "I thought I would be able to see many beautiful women wearing skintight clothes."

"Originally there were many, but I heard there have been a lot of things happening recently, so a lot of the female heroes were hired by rich businessmen and important people as bodyguards." Xiao Zhan answered.

"What? Why don't they hire strong strapping muscle men to be bodyguards?" Lin Jie couldn't help but ask.

"Let me ask you, would you want beautiful women that are able to fight and is also visually appealing or a massive, foot-scratching man as your bodyguards?"

"Oh… I get it." Lin Jie nodded.

The two stopped talking, to listen to Black Gold's lecture.

After five minutes, Lin Jie successfully entered the world of dreams and fantasies.

After who knows how long, Lin Jie, dazed and somewhat bewildered, was woken up by someone. When he opened his eyes he saw an entirely black face right in front of him, and subconsciously jumped back in fright.

"You are the first to be able to fall asleep in my class, it seems like you have a lot of confidence in your experiences." Black Gold said to Lin Jie.

"This uh, I guess you could say I have a lot of confidence in my experiences."

"That right? Then can you answer a few of my questions?"

"This uh, go ahead and ask." Lin Jie said.

"Let me ask you when you are facing a very strong monster, what is the first thing you do?" Black Gold said, "Especially those monster that have an unknown amount of strength."

"Kill 'em in an instant." Lin Jie straightforwardly replied.

"Then when you meet the dark forces who have an unknown strength, what do you do?" Black Gold asked, "For example, when you need to go investigate criminal activity and the like, what would you do then?"

"Immediately destroy the dark forces." As before, Lin Jie still answered in the same way.

"Then, when you save people?" Black Gold asked.

"Immediately kill the enemies."

"When enemies have taken hostages to threaten you, what do you do?"

"Kill the enemies before they threaten me with hostages."

"Other than killing people what else do you know?" Black Gold's expression became a little twisted.

"Nothing else, I only know how to kill." Lin Jie said.

"You really are… really are…" At the moment Black Gold's facial expression had completely changed, "You are a good and respectable person; I admire you. You are a real man."

"Ah?" Lin Jie was stupefied by Black Gold's sudden transformation.

"Albeit childish, what you said really is the fastest solution to the issue." Saying that Black Gold gave him a thumbs up, "Back in the days I also thought the same way as you, as long as the enemies were defeated everything would be alright. Sadly, society often loves to make things more complicated. You should be a newcomer right? It looks like you have quite the confidence in your strength."

"I guess you could say I have some confidence." Lin Jie answered, "I've always believed that I was very strong."

"Then properly use your own personal ability. People good at killing only need to know how to kill." Black Gold faced him and said, "I'm optimistic about your growth, youngster. You can go back to sleep now.

"Oh."

"Even this can happen!!!" The roomful of surprised people looked at the two people.

"What is our jobs as superheroes?" Black Gold returned to the podium, and then faced the people below him and said, "Discover evil, find evil, fight evil. It's just that simple, it's that manly. During that time [Zero] was just as daring as this: he never thought about garnering fame or popularity, and never strayed from doing anything but these three things."

Obviously, the people listening to the lecture had differing expressions, there were the ones who paid careful attention, and at the same time, there were those who held disdainful expressions.

However what Lin Jie didn't know is that when the lecture ended, Miss Winter appeared in the classroom.

"What was that guy like?" Miss Winter asked.

"How to say it? This punk is not bad I couldn’t believe it when you said that he one-shot Ya Tan." Black Gold said, "However, at the very least he doesn't seem like the type of guy who would try to curry favor with the president for personal gains."

"Then that's good."

"Anyway, I heard that your Winter Clan and the Ouyang Clan have quite a number of relations, you doing this doesn't seem too good, when the times comes won't the blame come down from your Winter Clan's upper echelons…"

"You don't need to worry about that, do your job carefully and that'll be enough." Miss Winter said.

……

In the lounge, in front of the statue. Lin Jie was carefully inspecting the statue of [Zero] before him, "It doesn't matter how long I look at it, it doesn't look similar at all."

"Honestly, I feel that Zero's statue and the Zero I met before are not alike at all." Xiao Zhan said.

Right in the midst of the two people gesturing at the statue, they heard a sudden shout.

"You should no longer be a hero! If I ever see you come here to carry out the duties of a hero, I'll hit you every time I see you."

"Oh?" Following the direction of the shout, Lin Jie saw three people surrounding a man wearing glasses.

"This…" The glasses man weakly said, "I honestly did not mean to do it on purpose."

"You think that after stealing our publicity, just by saying that you 'didn't do it on purpose' the issue would be solved? For trash like you, if you didn't have the usefulness as an errand boy, you think we would've taken you into our team?" The person who seemed like the leader of the three said.

"But, If I didn't intervene, that group of people would've run away…" The glasses man said.

"If they ran then they ran, still better than letting this servant steal all the publicity. You make it seem like we're not even on the level of followers," the man who seemed like the leader was shouting fiercely.

"But, if that group of people were able to run away they would bring a great deal of harm, they will bring harm to many ordinary people, citizens, hurt and suffering."

"Those ordinary people have nothing to do with me! When the time comes we'll just catch them once again." The male said, "We could just add it onto our achievement list."

……

Hearing this man speak, the veins on Lin Jie's forehead had already started to pop out.

"Quit being a hero and withdraw from the heroes association." Another one of the trio said, "Otherwise, in the future every time we see you we will hit you! You damned four eyes."

"No way, only this is out of the question." The glasses man said in an unyielding tone, "Acting like this, you guys aren't heroes at all!"

An indent of a punch was left on the man wearing glasses's face; he'd fallen to the ground after being punched, and a foot stepped down on his face.

"Listen here, buddy, we are Heroes, we have received the acknowledgment of the world government." The lead male said, "Otherwise what did you think a hero was? An idiot like Zero who's died long ago?"

This time it wasn't only Lin Jie, even Xiao Zhan's forehead had veins that seemed like they were about to burst out.

"Zero was not an idiot!" The man wearing glasses screamed, "Zero was a true hero. Completely different from a bastard like you."

"That's why he was an idiot. Why, If I was Zero I would probably be king by now." The lead male arrogantly said, "In the end, Zero did so much and for what? Helping others by being a scapegoat? Hehe, in the end when he died even his body couldn't be found."

"Zero is not dead!" (three sounds erupted at the same time.)

Lin Jie took out the Morningstar and walked to the front of the trio, "Beating up this glasses guy is something I can let pass, but you actually went so far as to insult Zero! There is absolutely no way I can tolerate this"

"Well said." Xiao Zhan also walked over, taking out his two guns, "When you beat up the glasses guy it was ok, but you insulted senior Zero, I will never let you off!"

"Can't you two give me a little consideration? Just a little consideration of my feelings?" the glasses bro said from underneath the foot.

"Tch, two E-level's shouldn't be minding our issues." The lead male said, "You know who the three of us are? We are the Golden Triangle D-level superhero team of H-city!"

"Is D-level strong?" A refined looking young man walked over, this was the third person who had just spoken, "Why don't we have a nice long talk alone?"

Seeing the person, the three people of the Golden Triangle acted as if they had seen a ghost as they retreated back.

One among the three cried out, "Living Fright!!!!"^[2]

"What's wrong? Wasn't your attitude so haughty just now? I am also a E-level hero, how about you come charge at me." The young man they called Living Fright said, "Beating up that glasses man was fine, but you had the audacity to insult Zero!?!?!?!"

"Could you guys think a little more about my feelings!"

"We were wrong, we will never dare to do it again!!" the three males were so scared they turned around and directly ran away, one of them even slipped and fell, his incisor getting knocked out but he didn't care about it he only got up and kept on running away.

"Wao awesome, bro." Lin Jie faced the young man and said.

"That was nothing, it happens quite frequently, there are few who do not fear me here. After all, I've been an E-level hero for 5 years already." Living Fright said, "In the past three years, you are the first to be able to talk so long with me."

"Doesn't that mean you have no friends?"

"Saying it like that really hurts people, I have some friends." The man called Living Fright took out a cellphone, on the screen was an anime girl greeting him.

"What? You also play this game!" Saying that Lin Jie took out his own cellphone.

"Look at how hollow you guys are?!" Xiao Zhan couldn't help but ask.

"You know nothing." Lin Jie said, "You just don't understand the feeling of watching Puella Madoka at midnight."

"Exactly my sentiments." The man called Living Fright said, "YEA!You also like that anime! Well let me tell you, I have the entire figurine set."

"For real?…You have to show it to me!"

"Alright…"

……

Just like this the two become more and more friendly as they started to converse.

"Let's make a team!" Lin Jie shouted, "This is my first come meeting such an easy to talk to person."

"Can we really? I've been a superhero for five years already, but you are the first person to invite me to their team." Living Fright couldn't help but ask incredulously.^[3]

"Of course there's no issues, I believe Xiao Zhan will also agree." Lin Jie faced Xiao Zhan who was standing at the side and said, "No problem right?"

"Of course there's no problems, of course I'd welcome a person who could scare D-level heroes like that with just one sentence." Xiao Zhan said.

"Then that's good, I'll join. In the future, we will all be part of the same team." Living Fright said to the others.

"Oh, that's right, what is your super ability?" Xiao Zhan asked.

"Oh, Bad Luck."

With a question mark on his face, he asked, "What is that?"

"I can indiscriminately afflict the people around me with bad luck." Living Fright said.

"Are you for real?” Lin Jie asked, "You're not kidding?"

"What's wrong? I am the infamous jinx of this Heroes Association." Living Fright laughed a bit as he said, "But you guys are the only ones who completely don't care and promised to be my friend, I won't have you die."

"……"

Xiao Zhan quickly retreated back to the side of the glasses bro. After Lin Jie came to his senses, he firmly slapped himself and said, "You and your loose mouth!"

Footnotes:

[1]The character is the one for gold, but it’s more of the metal meaning than actual gold

[2]神驚鬼跳: this is 'Living Fright' toned up quite a bit. The direct translation is God Scaring Ghost Jump which is a pretty insane name. This is relevant in the next chapter so I'll mention it here as well as next chapter so you can know.

[3]This part got cut off after saying his name with a comma, so it's made up to fit.

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