Hey everyone,
I've just started posting my original webnovel on Webnovel.
The story follows a guy in a medieval world who gets a system that lets him summon heroes and legends from history — Arthur, Jeanne d'Arc, Leonidas, and many others. It's an empire-building isekai with a heavy focus on strategy, leadership, and the weight of commanding legends.
The first 8 chapters are already live. If you want to read ahead, I've made up to 5 chapters available for free on my Patreon.
If you check it out and read a bit, I'd really appreciate your honest thoughts. Feedback helps a lot, especially in these early chapters.
Title: Hero Empire System
Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a chance!
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New chapter release ! We are on 160+ chapters on patreon, join us!
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Join discord, we are already 100+ members!
https://discord.gg/BxkGNRz9am
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The acrid smoke and glowing dust still swirled in the saturated air of the ravaged avenue. Doflamingo slowly lowered his arm, his grin widen
The acrid smoke and glowing dust still swirled in the saturated air of the ravaged avenue. Doflamingo slowly lowered his arm, his grin widening at the sight of the smoking crater. Gladius, struggling to his feet, chuckled as he wiped blood and saliva from his lip. Pica, an impassive monolith, fully emerged from the ground.
"Fufu… That should've shaken him up. Even he couldn't…" Doflamingo's laughter caught in his throat.
At the center of the crater, where only void should have remained, a figure stood motionless. Mihawk. Not a scratch on his black coat. Not a speck of soot on the silver pommels of Yoru, casually resting on his shoulder. His cold, golden eyes pierced through the dust, locking onto the trio. Around him, a barely visible dome of Armament Haki faded with a faint ripple in the air.
"Impossible…" Gladius whispered, his predatory smile replaced by a mask of horror.
Mihawk gave them no time to process the unthinkable. He was on them like a sudden gust. Gladius saw him coming, a shadow slicing through the last wisps of smoke. Instinct made him raise his left arm, already swelling into an explosive bubble. Too late. Yoru traced a black arc too fast for the eye. A sharp whistle cut the air, followed by a dull metallic chunk. Gladius stared, disbelieving, as his right arm—the one that triggered the apocalyptic blast—left his body and hit the pavement, a crimson geyser spurting from his severed shoulder. A primal scream tore from him, mixed with the shocks of his own bubbles exploding uncontrollably around him.
"GLADIUS!" Pica roared, his stone voice warped with rage. The giant melted into the ground, then erupted like a living avalanche behind Mihawk. A rocky fist, the size of a house, crashed down with earthquake force. Mihawk spun, Yoru carving a perfect vertical line. The black blade's cutting gust sliced through Pica's fist, arm, and massive torso as if the stone were mist. The stone giant froze, a clean, gleaming crack splitting him from head to pelvis. A deep rumble, like a dying mountain, echoed from him. Then, with a titanic crack, Pica's two halves collapsed into a heap of inert, smoking rubble on the shattered pavement. The silence that followed was heavier than the collapse's roar.
Doflamingo had leaped forward, fingers twitching like a mad pianist, unleashing a web of razor-sharp strings toward Mihawk's back. "SHREDDING STRINGS: WAVE!" Mihawk, without turning, spun fluidly. Yoru met the deadly strings in a black flash. The steel threads snapped like butter, glinting briefly before falling in harmless tatters. The counterattack was instantaneous. A horizontal slash, too fast to see. Doflamingo felt a searing pain streak across his back, tearing through his pink cape and slicing deep into his flesh. He grimaced, blood trickling down his spine.
Doflamingo staggered back, his smile now a grimace of pain and barely contained fury. His eyes, finally visible behind his tinted shades, burned with a dangerous glint. His fingers twitched again. From the rubble-strewn ground, spectral figures made of tight white strings materialized. Five, then ten. Perfect replicas of Doflamingo, with his crooked grin, arrogant stance, and menacing fingers. The Black Knights, his string clones.
"Keep him busy!" the real Doflamingo hissed, as his clones rushed Mihawk with superhuman agility, their limbs morphing into sharp blades, whips, and thread-like projectiles. Doflamingo seized the growing chaos to slip into the shadow of a side alley. He cast one last glance back: Mihawk, already among the clones, was slashing and shredding with lethal precision, reducing the replicas to tangled heaps of string as fast as they reformed. But it would be enough. He needed time.
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At the Corrida Colosseum, the arena, usually alive with the crowd's roars and clashing weapons, was cloaked in oppressive silence. The stands were empty, the spotlights off. Only the damp, foul-smelling underground corridors echoed with sinister sounds: creaking bars, muffled moans, and the heavy steps of guards.
In a cramped cell filled with wounded, chained gladiators, Rebecca gripped the rusted bars tightly. Her armor was dented. Kyros, her father, now a legless toy, tried to comfort her with his high-pitched, mechanical voice. A lofty, disdainful laugh suddenly echoed down the corridor.
"Kishishishishi! What a depressing place! Like a poorly kept haunted castle basement!" Perona floated in the air, perched on her massive bat-headed umbrella, her tiny Negative Ghost, Kumashi, nestled against her cheek. She was pristine in her black-and-pink gothic dress, a stark contrast to the surrounding filth and misery. Her large pink eyes scanned the cells with overt disgust.
"You!" a burly, battered gladiator shouted. "What are you doing here?"
Perona turned her nose up. "Me? Nothing that concerns you, you crude brute! I… I was just looking for a quiet place to sulk. It's too noisy outside with all the screaming and explosions." She stole a glance at Rebecca, then quickly looked away. "Definitely not to check if a certain naive little gladiator named Rebecca is in here."
Rebecca's eyes widened. "You're looking for me…?"
"Don't talk to me!" Perona snapped, her cheeks faintly pink. She turned her attention to the heavy iron door barring the corridor, guarded by two jittery Donquixote soldiers pointing muskets at her. "But this place is just too depressing. And those guards look ridiculously negative!"
She pointed a delicate finger. "Negative Ghosts: Parade!" A swarm of small, translucent ghosts with sad faces and O-shaped mouths burst from her palms, passing through the iron door like butter. They swarmed the soldiers, who instantly dropped to their knees, overwhelmed by crushing despair. "What's the point… Everything's meaningless… Life has no purpose…" they whimpered, dropping their weapons.
Perona waved dismissively. Kumashi, her giant ghost, floated to the door and smashed it with a spectral punch. The twisted metal flew apart. "There," she said with a small shrug, floating through the doorway. "Now get out of here, you bunch of depressing losers. A big jerk with a hawk's stare is probably about to cause a bloodbath nearby, and it's going to be very, very ugly. So if you value your pathetic little lives, move it!"
The gladiators, stunned at first, exchanged incredulous looks, then rushed from their cells, breaking chains with the guards' abandoned weapons. Rebecca was carried by a gladiator, Kyros clinging to her back.
"Who are you?" Rebecca asked as she passed the spectre.
Perona flushed bright red and turned away. "WAH! I told you not to talk to me!" She crossed her arms, sulking, as the gladiators poured up the stairs to the exit. Then, as if remembering something, she floated toward a massive gladiator lingering to help a limping comrade.
"Hey, you! The big guy with the probably tiny brain!" she called, trying to sound aloof.
The gladiator turned, wary. "What?"
Perona examined her nails with feigned indifference. "Nothing important. Just… out of pure curiosity… you wouldn't know where some annoying little dwarves called Tontattas are hiding, would you?"
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At the SMILE Factory, the air was thick with the acrid stench of chemicals and fear. The machines had gone silent. Panicked foremen and weeping workers scrambled under the shouted orders of the remaining Donquixote officers. The main door exploded inward with a screech of twisted metal.
Doflamingo staggered in, his pink cape torn and stained with soot and his own blood seeping from the deep gash in his back. His face was ashen with pain and rage, but his eyes blazed with frenzied determination.
"LORD DOFLAMINGO!" Baby 5 cried, reverting to human form, relieved then horrified by his state.
"Silence!" he barked, his voice hoarse but commanding. He pointed a trembling finger at the production lines and sealed containers. "All of it! The finished SMILE fruits, the SAD concentrates, the machine blueprints! Everything!" His breathing was ragged. "Load it all onto Number Five. Now!"
Buffalo stopped spinning, looking stunned. "But… but the ship's not ready to—"
A steel thread whipped out, slicing a pipe above Buffalo's head, spilling toxic green liquid. "NOW!" Doflamingo roared, veins bulging on his forehead. "That damned Hawk… won't destroy ten years of work!"
The workers rushed as one to the stockpiles, pushing carts and carrying crates under the threat of guns. Doflamingo leaned against a wall, one hand pressing his back wound, the other gripping a taut string to the ceiling like a lifeline. His eyes fixed on the wrecked entrance, watching for the inevitable arrival of the Bird of Prey. The distant screams of his shredded clones reached him like a faint, sinister echo.
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In the avenue's ruins, the last Black Knight collapsed in a cascade of severed strings, reduced to an inert mass. Dracule Mihawk slowly lowered Yoru. Around him, the ground was littered with glistening white filaments like giant spider webs. Gladius lay unconscious in a pool of his own blood, his shoulder stump crudely cauterized by his own uncontrolled explosions. Pica was nothing but a field of rocky debris.
Mihawk turned his golden gaze toward where the real Doflamingo had fled—the SMILE Factory, its industrial silhouette looming in the fiery night, now spewing new smoke from the engines of a ship being hastily prepped.
"Time to end this," he said, stepping forward.