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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The stench of chemicals, fear, and scorched metal was suffocating inside the SMILE Factory. Chaos reigned: frantic workers loaded crates ont
The stench of chemicals, fear, and scorched metal was suffocating inside the SMILE Factory. Chaos reigned: frantic workers loaded crates onto the Number Five ship under the screams of the remaining officers. Baby 5, transformed into a mechanical crane, hoisted SAD concentrate containers with feverish precision. Buffalo spun like a wild top, hurling crates toward the deck.
At the center of this storm, leaning against a heat-warped metal pillar, Doflamingo struggled to breathe. The deep wound in his back burned like liquid fire, held together by taut strings. His bloodshot eyes, hidden behind tinted shades, were fixed on the wrecked entrance.
He didn't have to wait long.
A silhouette appeared in the twisted doorway, bathed in the red glow of Dressrosa's flames. Mihawk entered with a slow step, as if strolling through his castle gardens rather than the smoking ruins of a bioweapons factory. His long black coat bore no scratches, no trace of the fury he'd just walked through. Yoru rested casually on his shoulder.
His golden eyes swept the scene with chilling indifference before settling on the warlord.
Doflamingo straightened with visible effort, pushing the pain behind a forced grin. A hoarse, joyless laugh escaped his lips.
'Fufufu… Always so punctual, Hawk.' His voice was rough but carried a feigned arrogance. 'Took you a while to deal with my little puppets?'
Mihawk stopped a few meters away in a debris-strewn clearing. He didn't respond to the sarcasm. His gaze remained steady.
'It's over, Doflamingo,' he said simply.
Doflamingo's eyes widened behind his shades. A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw.
'Over?' he repeated, his voice rising, laced with barely contained rage. 'Fufufufu… You're arrogant, Mihawk! You show up on my island, slaughter my men, threaten my empire… for what? To play hero?' He spat the words like venom. 'I know you. You've never had such qualms. So why?'
Mihawk's golden eyes didn't blink. 'I need a territory. Dressrosa interests me.'
The statement hit like a guillotine. Doflamingo froze, as if he hadn't understood. Then a new laugh burst out, shriller, more hysterical than before. He leaned forward, a hand pressed to his stomach.
'FUFUFUFUFU! A territory?!' He straightened abruptly, the laugh choking into a pained growl. 'You?! The Lone Wolf of Kuraigana?! You want to be a *king* now?! That's your grand plan?!'
Scorn and disbelief twisted his face. The idea was so absurd, so far from what Mihawk stood for, it felt insulting.
Mihawk didn't flinch. 'You're looking at a future king. Dressrosa has potential. Under… more efficient management.'
Doflamingo's fists clenched, his knuckles whitening. The implied insult fueled his rage. 'King? Management?! You're mad, Mihawk! Or suicidal!' He pointed a trembling finger at his foe. 'You think Kaido will let his main SMILE supplier be taken without a fight?! You think the Marines, who've turned a blind eye to my business for ten years, will let you set up here as a pirate?! You'll have a Yonko and the entire World Government on your back before you can repaint the royal palace!'
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving. 'You're signing your death warrant, fool!'
Silence followed. Mihawk tilted his head slightly, as if weighing the words. Then he lifted Yoru from his shoulder, holding it firmly before him.
'I have no time for chatter,' he said, his voice calm but laced with murderous intent. 'Your reign ends here. Now.'
That was the spark. Doflamingo's last shred of control shattered. Fear, rage, despair, and monstrous arrogance fused into a devastating torrent.
'YOU WANT WAR, HAWK?!' he screamed, arms spread wide. 'I'LL GIVE YOU WAR!!! AWAKENING: THREADS TO WEAVE… THE WORLD!'
The explosion of power from Doflamingo was apocalyptic. It wasn't just his body turning into strings— the entire environment did. The factory's concrete walls liquefied, tearing apart into a tsunami of glowing white filaments. The floor surged, becoming a roiling sea of living steel cords. Giant machines disintegrated into writhing, razor-sharp thread coils. Even the air thickened, saturated with the mad Haki of the Usurper. The factory's structure, then adjacent buildings, began to ripple, deform, swallowed by the raging white ocean.
Mihawk vanished instantly under the titanic wave. Thousands, millions of strings—each capable of slicing steel, piercing rock, crushing flesh—converged on him from all directions, above, below, sideways, forming a perfect trap, a dimensional shredder.
'It's… impressive.'
That was Mihawk's thought as his eyes tracked the deadly trajectories with superhuman precision. 'Luffy overcame this? In the canon? Absurd. He lacked the mastery, the power needed. That triumph was narrative nonsense, a twist of fate.'
A faint scorn crossed his mind. But the analysis stopped there. Intellectual admiration for his foe's strength changed nothing about the outcome.
'Regardless, let's end this quickly. Prolonging this fight isn't strategic.'
At the heart of the white storm, Mihawk moved. Yoru became an ebony whirlwind, a perfect defensive vortex. Clang! Schling! Tchik! The sharp, dry sounds of severed strings followed at a frenetic pace, forming a metallic symphony of death. Each wrist flick, each slight shoulder turn, deflected, sliced, annihilated hundreds of strings at once.
He didn't dodge; he parried. Every attack, every thread tendril, every projected blade was intercepted, neutralized, reduced to nothing before it could touch his coat. He advanced, slowly, inexorably, through the unleashed chaos. He didn't seem strained, but the constant effort, the absolute focus required to maintain this perfect defense against such a deluge, was immense.
Doflamingo, perched on a writhing mass of braided strings that pulsed like a giant serpent, was drenched in sweat and blood. His fingers moved frantically, controlling the flood, launching wave after wave, complex traps, sudden bursts of strings. He saw Mihawk advance, cutting through everything, unchanged, unshaken. Rage mixed with growing terror.
'How?! How is he resisting?! NOTHING should withstand this!'
'YOU'LL DIE HERE, MİHAWK!' he roared, his voice raw with effort and hatred. A new wave, denser, faster, surged, incorporating molten metal shards and concrete debris turned into thread-like spears.
'Doflamingo,' Mihawk's voice carried, clear and cold, cutting through the deafening roar of the strings. 'For the power you've shown… I grant you a privilege. The privilege to witness something extraordinary. Before you die.'
Doflamingo, gasping, stared, a mix of scorn and unease in his hidden eyes. 'Empty words, Hawk! Your last breath?!'
Mihawk! ignored the taunt. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Then, while parrying the endless flood with hypnotic fluidity, he began to speak.
> 'Effortless blade, cutting without desire,
> The supreme path, where all expires.
> The horizon split, the void subdued,
> By the Sovereign's breath, illusion is undone.
> I am the cyclone's eye, calm in the void,
> The ultimate truth… the moment.'
At the last word, Mihawk's eyes snapped open. A radiant, pure golden light blazed from his pupils, outshining even the glow of the steel strings. His aura shifted.
It wasn't just Armament or Observation Haki. It was something deeper. The absolute sovereignty of the blade incarnate.
'Shihai no Ichigeki: Mu no Sekai.' (Supreme Strike: World of Void)
He didn't make a grand gesture. He simply lowered Yoru, its tip aimed at the string-laden ground, in a motion of disarming simplicity.
And the world… erupted in slashes.
It was't a giant blade or energy beam. It was a silent, absolute explosion of cuts. Thousands, millions of invisible, intangible blades, each perfectly sharp, burst from Yoru and the very space around Mihawk. They targeted nothing specific. They simply *were*. And they cut.
Schiiiiiiiiiing…
The sound was singular, high-pitched, crystalline, stretching into an infinite breath. It swept away the roar of the strings like a purifying wind.
Before Doflamingo's horrified eyes, his string ocean, his transformed world—his ultimate expression of power—disintegrated. Not chopped into chunks but reduced to infinitesimal steel dust, as if every atom of every thread had been severed from its neighbor by a flawless edge.
The titanic wave vanished over dozens of meters around Mihawk, turning into a harmless silver cloud that settled slowly, like fine metallic snow. The factory, freed from the strings' grip, partially collapsed in a low rumble, revealing the fiery night sky. The silence following the crystalline sound of the absolute cut was deafening, heavy with crushing finality.
Doflamingo was still perched on his mass of strings, but it, severed, swayed precariously. His tinted shades slipped slightly, his mouth agape, silent.
He had just seen the impossible. He had seen the embodiment of cutting perfection, a power transcending all he knew.
Mihawk raised his eyes to him, Yoru calmly pointed his way. There was no hatred, no triumph in his gaze. Only the inevitability of the end.
Doflamingo had no time to react, to issue a final challenge, to attempt a desperate escape. The air between them quivered.
Fssscht.
It wasn't even a cutting sound. Just a faint whisper of displaced air.
Doflamingo stood frozen for a moment. Then, slowly, like a puppet with its strings cut (the cruel irony didn't escape him in his final moment of consciousness), he tipped backward.
He slid down what remained of his string mass, crashing heavily against the still-standing wall of a control room at the back of the ruined factory.
He slumped against the cold concrete, legs splayed before him on the floor littered with steel dust and rubble. His arms hung limply at his sides. His tinted shades had fallen, his eyes shrouded in darkness, drained of light, staring into the void with stunned expression.
On his body, dozens, hundreds of fine gashes appeared simultaneously, as if drawn by an invisible artist. Across his arms, torso, face. Perfect, clean lines, from which scarlet blood slowly beaded, stark against the tattered white of his pink suit. None were immediately fatal alone. But their number, their precision, and the cutting energy that inflicted them had obliterated his body from within.
Don Quixote Doflamingo, the Joker, the King of Dressrosa, the former Warlord, was dead.