Once criminals were released and committed crimes again, heroes gained not only another bounty, but also another opportunity to make money.
In this system, criminals became renewable resources.
Executing them was the same as slaughtering a hen that laid golden eggs—a short-sighted loss.
Even the most aloof and powerful superheroes understood one immutable truth:
Never make enemies with money.
This world had always operated on balance.
Without demons, there would be no Buddhas.
Without chaos, superheroes would be unnecessary.
Once the heroes realized that every captured criminal could continuously generate value, those who had once criticized the Captain's restrained law-enforcement philosophy immediately switched sides.
They didn't just support Sebastian's governance model.
They embraced it.
Some heroes knew full well that confronting criminals might injure them—yet they still held back from lethal force.
Why?
Because injuries healed.
With physiques far beyond ordinary humans, even serious wounds only meant a few days of recovery, or at worst a short hospital stay costing tens of thousands of dollars.
But criminals?
If a criminal injured a superhero, the lightest sentence was ten years of hard labor.
Serious cases meant life imprisonment.
That single criminal would then generate nearly two hundred dollars a day in prison value.
Multiply that.
Ten criminals meant steady income.
A hundred criminals meant financial freedom.
With enough "inventory," a hero would never worry about money again.
This was exactly what Sebastian wanted.
How much could a lone hero earn by himself?
Even running missions' day and night, grinding until his feet smoked, at best he might afford a tiny apartment in a big city.
True wealth required structure.
Subordinates.
Systems.
Leverage.
Let others fight, capture, and bleed—
while Sebastian sat behind the curtain and counted the money.
A single person could never form a forest.
Of course, superheroes understood they were being exploited.
But exploitation with benefits was still better than starvation.
For many, kneeling to make money was far preferable to standing proudly with nothing.
Soon, heroes across the country sharpened their senses, actively hunting criminals with unprecedented enthusiasm.
In the early days of Hero Prison, arrests surged dramatically.
Any suspicious behavior could result in immediate detention, trial, and transfer—often within twenty minutes.
Hero Prison expanded rapidly.
Prisoners were fitted with time collars, devices personally redesigned by Sebastian based on suppression technology from other worlds.
The collars served multiple functions:
Neural shock punishment for violent resistanceLethal toxin release upon escape attemptsContinuous monitoring of vital signs
But the true terror lay in their time system.
Each collar contained two countdown timers.
The first represented remaining sentence time.
The second was linked directly to the prisoner's personal time wallet.
In Hero Prison, everything cost time.
Food.
Clothing.
Medical treatment.
Entertainment.
Even companionship.
Time continuously decreased.
If either timer reached zero—
death was immediate.
Prison guards were incentivized to drain time aggressively.
For every hour of time they reclaimed from a prisoner, the guard earned a one-dollar bonus.
Prisoners could extend time in two ways:
Recharge – One hour of time cost $100, yet only purchased goods worth about $10 in prison value.Labor – Completing a one-hour task earned two hours of time. Failure earned only fifty minutes.
Time could not be transferred between prisoners.
This prevented extortion, bullying, and monopolization by powerful inmates.
Thus, a closed economic system formed.
Time became currency.
Labor became survival.
Efficiency became morality.
Oppression inevitably bred resistance.
There were still superhumans who refused to surrender their privileges, who believed they deserved wealth without kneeling.
Some viewed Sebastian as weak.
After all, hadn't he withdrawn the Rating Bill when pressured?
So conspiracies formed.
Certain superhumans openly opposed the Superhero Council. Others—jealous of heroes receiving rewards—stirred chaos in the streets.
Sebastian remained silent.
The rules were clear.
If you didn't like them, you were free to leave.
But those who made trouble were dealt with differently.
They were labeled super criminals.
And suppression was handled personally by Homelander.
One appeared—
one was beaten.
Without exception.
Every rebellious superhuman was ultimately sent to the dimensional farm.
Those unwilling to contribute to Sebastian's system were recycled instead.
Their powers were absorbed.
Their existence dissolved.
Their abilities became fuel.
This was never merely about maintaining order.
The true purpose of the Superhero Council had always been clear:
To catalog, control, and ultimately reclaim every superpower in the world.
And with each reclaimed ability—
Sebastian took one more step
toward godhood.
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