Become Overpowered CEO of Hero Clan

Become Overpowered CEO of Hero Clan – 188

Company Outing (4)

A black curtain with a radius of about 30m unfurled.

It was the result of Isaac’s delicate manipulation of the Shadow King. The thick layers of shadows acted as a blackout curtain.

Although to outsiders, it looked like an unidentified strange phenomenon.

Boom!

‘Magic wave?’

The heroes, busy with close surveillance, drew up their mana.

Isaac belatedly realized that his ‘night effect’ for ambiance had been perceived as a threat by them.

He had forgotten his position while trying to cater to the members’ mood.

Isaac sent a telepathic message to the S-rank heroes all around.

―There’s no need to be on guard. It’s just to block out the sunlight.

With Isaac’s urgent response, the magic waves that had been stirring all around gradually subsided. At this rate, even taking a break felt uncomfortable.

‘They should have received word from the Machine Commander. The impact of the rampage must have been significant.’

But what else could he do? He was just trying to do his best.

Isaac was a bona fide ‘hero’. One who risked his life to fight against strange phenomena and protect citizens.

Yet, the result of all that struggle was being treated as a potential disaster. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t bitter.

Whoosh!

The campfire blazed up. It was the work of Ifrit, the blue-flamed sparrow that had perched on his shoulder at some point.

The color of the flame was a plain red. It seemed he hadn’t breathed blue flames, considering the effective action of the fire-gazing powder.

“Hello, Ifrit.”

Flap.

In response to the curious Gil-seong’s wave, the blue sparrow flapped its wings once.

Perhaps because Ifrit’s reaction wasn’t bad, the mechanic girl revealed a long-held ambition.

“Do you think we could make our Ppomi into a summon like this one someday?”

“Well, it’s not impossible.”

It’s possible if spiritual development occurs or if contaminated by negative energy, beating extremely low odds.

However, in the case of Gil-seong, who has no talent for summoning, it would be better to modify the Pomeranian into a bio-magitech mount.

‘So she was serious.’

I think I heard something similar at the pet cafe. She must have some kind of fantasy about fighting alongside a pet.

Isaac decided to look into turning pets into summons later, and plopped down in a chair, melting into the campfire atmosphere.

Crackle.

“Wow! It’s beautiful.”

“How fascinating.”

The campfire, infused with fire-gazing powder, was imbued with aurora-like colors.

Placing the beautiful flames in his hazy gaze, he lets his mind drift while feeling the cool autumn breeze.

Taking a sip of the warm coffee brought as dessert, his body quickly became languid.

[You have consumed caffeine.]

[It seems some stress has been relieved.]

He feels drowsy, like sleep might come soon.

Just as he was about to let go of any sense of purpose and slowly empty his mind,

“Leader.”

Hwang Man-deuk put on a serious face. Come to think of it, there was a reason for this gathering. Didn’t they say they wanted to play a truth game?

The reason he had agreed to that sudden proposal was, in fact, because it seemed easier to give up.

What’s the use of being chosen by a transcendent intelligent being to play the role of a hero if you end up dying anyway?

Isaac wanted to share his circumstances before meeting an untimely death somewhere. At least to the members he had been with all this time.

“Why have you been so good to us?”

The tone that could potentially lead to misunderstanding became a broadcast-friendly question with the calmly following elaboration.

“At that time, we weren’t even A-rank heroes. And there weren’t many other heroes with outstanding potential either.”

He’s trying to satisfy his personal curiosity under the guise of the World Association’s secret mission to gather information on Isaac.

A thin smile spread across Isaac’s face, who had been mentally preparing himself.

“Because you’re the talent I chose.”

Isaac needed to nurture the members for his own survival. Without their achievements, he couldn’t even fill his battle gauge.

‘Now, well.’

But now, even that meaning had faded. Isaac himself had become strong enough to self-supply his battle gauge.

The caliber of enemies rushing in was no joke either. Although individuals could perform at the level of S-rank heroes, they were helpless before Tier 2 monsters.

The scale of the world view had already entered Season 2.

“Besides, the faster you get stronger, the less I have to struggle, right?”

“Ugh. Give me back my emotion.”

Even Gil-seong, who currently just flies around, will be able to ‘materialize’ large battleships in reality once she undergoes her second awakening.

Fundamentally, the strategy RPG called Clan of Heroes is a game about nurturing heroes to take down the villains of each season.

“Will we ever be able to become strong enough to replace you, Leader?”

From Seo Eun-ha’s question, Isaac realized how absurd his own journey had been.

Isaac in Clan of Heroes was not a hero position, but a director position. He didn’t even appear as an attackable entity on the battlefield.

Although he had made meaningful contributions with ‘combat skills’ while absorbing various unique magic stones, those were just at the level of activating skills by clicking a button when the gauge was full.

Of course, the combination of ‘leader skills’ that consumed a large amount of battle gauge and ‘combat skills’ that consumed small amounts was important at the top ranker level, but still.

Isaac answered, pressing his true feelings deeply.

“Of course.”

“Huh…!”

The leader, who never said things he didn’t mean, had been saying all along that they would become stronger. As the squad’s growth rate was indeed at an absurd level, the members were once again filled with an indescribable sense of elation.

It was none other than their leader who had declared it so dryly. Even non-existent confidence was about to grow rapidly.

Crackle.

Centered around the multicolored campfire, heartwarming talks continued afterwards. Isaac steadily built up the image of a ‘leader who seems cold on the outside but is actually good when you get to know him’.

This was helpful both for broadcasting purposes and for personal mental stability.

As the atmosphere ripened appropriately, the members’ expressions became peculiar. They had all noticed that it was time to enter the ‘main part’ of the truth game.

“To be honest, Leader, we didn’t really trust you in the past.”

“Instead of long-term contracts, we’d be grateful if you could bind us with lifetime contracts next time!”

The members opened up about their true feelings in a way that didn’t seem like they were interrogating the director.

As they built up to a point where it wouldn’t feel like they were cornering Isaac, once again, it was the thick-skinned Gil-seong who took the lead.

“Leader, where did you come from?”

It was ‘the’ question that had been the subject of all sorts of speculation.

From mythical heroes of the past to theories about beings from outer space, all kinds of conspiracy theories about Isaac’s origins had once been trending in online communities.

It was an issue that everyone had been too afraid of Isaac to ask directly to his face.

“……”

Isaac’s gaze, which had been filled with a subtle smile, suddenly turned cold.

The members, whose hearts skipped a beat, wanted to blame Gil-seong for asking such a sensitive question first, but if it weren’t for her, this gathering wouldn’t have even been possible.

“First, everyone turn off your Akashic Records. I want to share this truth only with you.”

It was Isaac’s chilling story that changed the atmosphere. ‘Truth’. The weight of the word was different.

“Huh… A-Alright.”

The members hurriedly turned off the recording function of their Akashic Records. Everyone thought that what they were about to hear could never be for broadcast.

“……”

The leader seemed to be deep in thought for a while, holding back his words. As the silence continued, the members who had to carry out their ‘secret mission’ felt their mouths going dry.

Then, at some point, a faint emotion sprouted in Isaac’s eyes. He must have made up his mind. To reveal what he called the ‘truth’.

“I came from a parallel universe. In other words, I’m from a different Earth than this one filled with strange phenomena.”

It was a rather shocking declaration.

However, in a world where evil spirits and monsters run rampant, being from a parallel universe wasn’t necessarily too shocking compared to being ‘from an absolute being from outer space’.

For the members to accept, it just felt like he came from ‘somewhere far away’.

But the Isaac’s next statement caused considerable dissonance.

“To be precise, I ‘played’ this world as a ‘game’. As a user, I raised heroes and defeated great evils over many seasons.”

What on earth does this mean? Did they hear that right?

Hwang Man-deuk, the leader, was about to question the Isaac’s mental state, but when he met Isaac’s eyes filled with intense emotion, his head started spinning.

“I maintained the position of ‘top-ranked player’ among numerous users for years. Because of that, I think I was forcibly incarnated into this world after being ‘chosen’. The entity that chose me is a ‘transcendent intelligence’ that governs the fate of the universe, something that can be understood as a kind of ‘god’.”

“W-Wait a minute. This is too… Uh, rather than absurd… Um, preposterous? No, no. I don’t mean I can’t believe it…”

For Seo Eun-ha, who was considered one of the most rational in the squad, it was truly a bolt from the blue. Her rational mind made the reasonable judgment that the leader must be suffering from a mental illness.

Didn’t he recently show signs of going berserk when his mental barriers collapsed?

“It’s natural that it’s hard to believe. That’s why I haven’t said anything until now. But now… Yes. I seem to be tired. To the point where I want to share the worries I’ve been carrying alone.”

Crack.

Whoosh—

The campfire was still burning vigorously. Sparks flew with vitality. The colorful flames seemed to be preaching to the members that this was reality by burning themselves.

“Wow! You played this world as a game?! Then, then, did you know about things that would unfold in the future and stuff?!”

There are differences in personality.

She was born as a ‘manifestation-type hero’ who believed that her dreams would become reality.

Gil-seong, who had readily accepted Isaac’s outlandish background, jumped up from her seat and fired off questions enthusiastically.

It was so immediate that Seo Eun-ha, who had almost finished thinking in terms of mental illness, seriously considered whether she should reverse her judgment.

“To some extent. But at some point, I deviated too much from the route of the game I knew. Still, you can understand that I know all the major things. In terms of background knowledge, I have much more in this head than even the ‘Demon Kings’ of the demon race.”

“Wow! So that’s why you were so composed. I thought you had gained a ton of experience in the hidden world.”

She accepts it and even marvels at it.

Seo Eun-ha, looking at Gil-seong like that, embarked on an objective self-evaluation with the theme ‘Am I the weird one?’, but she was quickly blocked by the ‘wall of common sense’.

‘But he seems normal.’

The confusion only intensified. The director’s mental state appeared to be fine. His behavior, speech, and the vocabulary he used were all within the range of a normal person.

Above all, Seo Eun-ha herself was in a support position. She could intuitively grasp a colleague’s mental state better than anyone else…

“T-Then…! What about us? Did you know about us?!”

A user was thrown into the game world they had been playing.

And he said he was the top-ranked player in the game. Moreover, if he used the expression of raising heroes, could the heroes the director raised possibly be ‘us’?

Surprisingly, Yeo Jin-soo, who had readily accepted Isaac’s background like Gil-seong, was the first to wonder if the leader had raised them.

The boy’s sharp intuition had been whispering to him unknowingly. That in the director’s attitude towards them, he had been showing something akin to paternal affection.

Soon, from Isaac’s mouth, it was revealed that this was true.

“That’s right. You were the ‘best’ hero squad I raised. That’s probably why I’ve been able to endure. The heroes I encountered in the game became reality. For me… It was overwhelming in itself.”

It was an expression they had never seen before.

The members could glimpse the face of a vulnerable young man in Isaac’s expression.

Come to think of it, if what the director said was true, it would mean that an ordinary citizen who was good at games became a hero overnight and fought against disasters.

‘Ah! Could it be then?’

As her stalled thoughts began to flow again, Seo Eun-ha almost accurately estimated the point of Isaac’s incarnation.

It must have been the very day when the leader, who used to treat employees like slaves and was known for his harsh scolding, suddenly changed.

Recalling fragments of the past, Seo Eun-ha could finally accept that what the director said was true.

“Leader … Was it hard for you too? No. It must have been incredibly difficult. It surely was.”

Unlike her, Yeo Jin-soo, who had already accepted the situation with his body and heart, walked steadily towards the leader.

The boy’s eyes were turbulent, like a child who had found a long-lost father.