Reincarnation Of The Magicless Pinoy!
From Zero to Hero! : No Magic? No problem!
Encounter 1 : A loving Uncle's Last wish!
The forest of Blackfort didn't just burn; it screamed. The dual detonation of the Gerbarra Beast Roar and the Violet Singularity had turned the sky into a bruised canvas of neon blue and toxic purple. But it was the final, smaller boom—the spiteful, point-blank nuke Luke had detonated at the crater's edge—that had truly shattered the world.
The Hidden Refuge
Five miles away, deep within the damp, jagged throat of the Weeping Stone Caves, the air grew heavy. The civilians huddled together, their breathing synchronized in a rhythm of shared terror.
Lady Lirien stood near the mouth of the cave, her hands clasped tightly over her chest. She wasn't looking at the darkness of the cavern; she was staring back toward the distant silhouette of the fortress.
When the two massive explosions rocked the earth, the cave walls groaned, sending dust snowing down on the refugees. But when the third, smaller pulse rippled through the air, Lirien didn't just hear it. She felt it.
A sharp, jagged coldness pierced her heart, like a thread of silk being snapped by a rusted blade. Her knees buckled, and she gasped, her hand clutching her tunic right over her sternum. It wasn't a physical wound—it was the phantom ache of a mother's intuition, the sudden, terrifying silence where a piece of her soul used to hum.
"Rolien..." she whispered, her voice cracking.
She turned, her eyes wide and wild, and made a move toward the cave entrance. "I have to go back. He's... something is wrong. My son is—"
A heavy, steady hand clamped onto her shoulder.
"Stay back, Mother."
Elian stood there, his face streaked with soot and sweat. His grip was firm—not out of aggression, but out of a desperate, grounding necessity. His own eyes were fixed on the horizon, his jaw set so tight it looked ready to shatter. He had felt the tremor too; he had seen the sky turn that sickly violet.
"He told us to keep them safe," Elian said, his voice straining to remain level. "He told us that if he didn't come back with the others, we were the last line. You go back there now, and you're just walking into a graveyard."
"He's your brother, Elian!" Lirien cried, trying to wrench herself free. "How can you just stand there?"
"Because I have to!" Elian roared, the sound echoing off the cave walls, silencing the whimpering children nearby. He softened his voice, though his hands were shaking. "Because if Rolien is... if he's fighting, he's doing it so we don't have to bury everyone else in this cave. We have to be strong. For the civilians. For the future he's trying to buy us."
Elian looked back at the forest, a single tear cutting a path through the soot on his cheek. Please, you idiot brother... pull through. You promised.
Back at the epicenter, the world was a monochrome of gray ash.
Arden lay at the center of the final blast site. He hadn't run. He hadn't flinched. When the violet fire had erupted from Luke's hand, the veteran had thrown himself into the teeth of the storm. He had become the shield for a boy who had already given too much.
Arden's body was a ruin of scorched leather and broken steel, his face peaceful in a way it had never been in life. He had died as he lived: a wall between the innocent and the dark.
In the fading dark behind his eyes, one last memory clawed its way forward.
He was eighteen again, rain hammering the mud of the Blackthorn Fields until the ground turned to sucking mire. Blood and rainwater streamed down his face, stinging his eyes. Lirien—his older sister, heavy with her first child—had been pressed into service as one of the army's healers that day. Their father had given Arden one clear order: Protect her. No matter what.
Grand Duke Edric was far across the battlefield, leading the main charge, too distant to reach them in time. When the raiders broke through the lines at dusk, Arden didn't hesitate. The red fog swallowed him whole, and the name Mad Dog Berserker was born in blood and thunder.
He charged straight into their line with nothing but his old, notched axe and a fury that made grown men freeze.
The first raider thrust a spear toward the makeshift healer's tent. Arden roared and batted it aside, the shaft snapping under the force of his swing, then buried the axe deep into the man's collarbone with a wet crunch. The second tried to slip past him toward Lirien—Arden dropped low, hamstringing the bastard with a vicious backhand cut before driving his elbow into the raider's face hard enough to shatter bone. When a third drove a blade into his side, the pain only fed the fire. Arden bit down on the steel shaft, snapped it with his teeth like a wild animal, and rammed the splintered end straight through the man's eye. More came. He cut them down in a storm of steel and screaming, laughing through the blood, the red haze turning everything into prey.
But when the haze finally bled away, the cost stared back at him in the mud. Three villagers lay dead among the raiders. One was a boy no older than fourteen, caught by a wild swing when Arden's axe had flown too far in the frenzy. The mother's wail that followed still lived somewhere deep in his chest, a cold splinter that never worked its way out.
That night he burned the axe in the village fire. He sat across from Lirien inside the healer's tent while she stitched his wounds with steady hands, her pregnant belly swollen under her blood-stained apron. Elian was kicking inside her even then.
"You can't keep throwing yourself away like that," she whispered, voice tight with exhaustion and fear. "This child will need his uncle whole. I need my brother whole."
He never told her the full weight of the guilt. Never admitted how close the monster inside him had come to killing the very people he was supposed to protect. From then on he chained the Mad Dog. Became the wall instead of the storm. The steady, grim veteran who stood between his family and everything ugly in the world.
And of Lirien's three children, it was always Rolien he treasured most.
The boy had come into the world quiet, without the spark of magic that marked his siblings. Arden saw himself in that raw stubbornness wrapped in fragile bones, and something fierce and protective woke up in him. Rolien wasn't just his nephew. In the quiet corners of his heart, the boy was the son he would never have. The chance to do things right.
He started stealing the lad away as soon as Rolien was old enough to walk without falling every few steps. Arden would scoop him up before dawn while Lirien was still asleep, press a finger to the boy's lips with a conspiratorial grin, and slip into the woods.
"Uncle Arden, Mama's gonna be mad again," Rolien would whisper, eyes wide with equal parts fear and thrill.
"Worth it," Arden always answered, ruffling the boy's messy hair. "Real men learn by doing, not by sitting in lessons."
They hunted rabbits with slings and sharpened sticks. Fished in the cold streams with nothing but patience and callused hands. Arden taught him how to read the wind, how to move quiet through leaves, how to take a hit and keep standing. More than once they came home soaked, muddy, and proudly carrying a string of fish or a brace of game. Lirien would be waiting at the door, arms crossed, scolding them both with that particular fire only mothers possess.
"You irresponsible oaf! He's just a child!" she'd snap at Arden, even while her eyes softened at the sight of Rolien's beaming, dirt-streaked face.
Arden would only shrug, grin through the earful, and later that night slip Rolien an extra piece of bread under the table. "She loves you," he'd murmur. "But sometimes a boy needs more than safety. He needs to know he can face the dark."
Those stolen mornings became their secret language. When Rolien grew older and the world started calling him "magicless" like it was a curse, Arden was there—quietly proud, quietly fierce. He watched the boy take every beating life gave him and keep walking forward, and something in Arden's chest swelled with a love so deep it scared him.
That's my son, he would think, even if the words never left his mouth. Not by blood, but by choice.
Back in the ash-choked crater, the ghost of a smile touched Arden's ruined lips for the briefest moment. The red fog was gone now. No more chains to hold, no more walls to maintain.
You did good, kid, the old berserker thought as the last light left him. I bought you a little more time. Now get up and keep walking. Your uncle's finally earned his rest.
Marcellus emerged from the smoke, coughing up blood, his golden armor dull and dented. He looked at Arden's remains and let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but a low, mourning growl. There was no time for a burial. There was no time for tears.
"Rolien..." Marcellus wheezed, looking toward the ravine where the boy had been catapulted by the shockwave.
The old knight didn't look back at the retreating shadows of Luke and his reanimated thralls. He didn't care about the war anymore. He began to limp, dragging his massive sword behind him, heading toward the deep ravine where the "Magicless" hero had fallen.
Every step was a struggle against gravity and age. He reached the edge of the cliffside, looking down into the dark, tangled depths where the Jawbreaker had crashed.
"Hold on, kid," Marcellus whispered, his vision blurring. "Don't you dare close your eyes yet."
The Unknown Depths
Down in the ravine, the wreckage lay silent. The smell of ozone and burnt hydraulic fluid hung in the air.
There was no movement. No HUD flickering in the dark. No "Zero to Hero" bravado. Just the sound of the wind moving through the trees and the heavy, approaching footsteps of someone—or something—moving through the undergrowth toward the crash site.
The fate of the Black Ripper was now hidden by the shadows of the valley.
Marcellus climbed out of the ravine like a man carrying twice his age. Every step sent fresh pain shooting through his battered legs, but he barely noticed. The massive sword dragged behind him, carving a shallow trench in the ash-covered ground. His golden armor was dull, dented, and streaked with blood—some his, most not.
By the time he reached the Weeping Stone Caves, the sky had turned the color of old bruises. He ducked through the narrow entrance, and every head in the refuge turned toward him at once.
Lirien was already on her feet, hands clasped tight over her chest. Elian stood right behind her. In the corner, Elara—Rolien's younger sister—shot up from where she had been tending to the younger children, her face already tight with dread.
The old knight stopped a few paces inside. The torchlight carved deep shadows across his weathered face. He looked at Lirien first, then at the others, and let out a long, tired breath.
"I reached the ravine," he said, voice rough as gravel. "The Jawbreaker was destroyed. Completely. I searched the wreckage… but I couldn't recover Rolien's body."
The word landed like a death sentence.
Body.
Silence gripped the cave for one terrible heartbeat. Then it shattered.
"No…" Lirien's legs gave out. Elian caught her, wrapping his arms around his mother as she collapsed against him. Her sobs came fast and broken.
But it was Elara who reacted like she'd been stabbed in the heart.
"NO!" The scream tore out of her, raw and piercing. Tears flooded her eyes instantly as she stormed forward. "You're lying! Sir Marcellus, you're lying! Rolien's not—he can't be—"
Her voice cracked. She swung at the old knight with everything she had, small fists hammering against his dented breastplate. "He's still alive! My precious little brother is alive! He always comes back, he promised Mama! You're wrong—you have to be wrong!"
Tears streamed down her face in heavy rivers. She kept hitting him, knuckles splitting and leaving smears of blood on the gold. "Give him back! Give me my brother back!"
Leto and Mira—Rolien's first friends in this world, his classmates since the earliest days after he arrived—moved at the same time. They had been with him through the confusion of a new life, the mockery for being magicless, and every small victory afterward. To them, he wasn't just a friend. He was family.
Leto reached Elara first, wrapping his arms around her from behind while Mira pressed in from the side. Both of them were already crying, faces wet and twisted with the same gut-wrenching pain.
"Elara… stop," Leto whispered, voice thick as he held her tighter. His shoulders shook. "Please…"
"No he's not gone!" Elara wailed, still struggling even as fresh sobs tore through her. "He taught me how to skip stones last spring… He called me 'little pest' every morning… He wouldn't leave us like this!"
Mira stroked her hair with trembling fingers, tears dripping onto Elara's shoulder. "We're here with you," she murmured, voice breaking. "He loved you so much… all of us…" The three of them clung together, crying in a tight knot—Elara between the two friends who had stood beside Rolien since the beginning.
Lirien watched them from Elian's arms, her own sobs quieting into soft, shattered gasps. Seeing her daughter and Rolien's closest friends break like this only deepened the wound. Elian held his mother steady, jaw clenched so hard the muscle stood out like corded rope. His eyes were glassy, but he refused to let the tears fall. Not yet.
Marcellus lowered his head, accepting every useless punch without complaint. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I looked as long as I dared. The blast and that damned skill took everything. He fought like hell so all of you could live."
A heavy wave of grief rolled through the refugees. Soft crying spread through the cave. The children who had woken up stared wide-eyed, sensing the adults' world had just cracked open.
Elian finally spoke, his voice hoarse but steady. "We can't risk more lives tonight. At first light, Marcellus and I will take a small party back to the ravine. We'll bring back… whatever we can find. He deserves that much."
Elara let out one last muffled wail into Leto's chest before her strength gave out. The three of them stayed huddled together, crying quietly while the torchlight flickered low.
Outside the cave, the wind moaned through the burned forest like it was mourning too.
Rolien — the Magicless, the Black Ripper, the stubborn boy who had become their impossible hope — was gone.
And his absence already felt heavier than any corpse.
Prologue ends.....