SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 74: Epilogue

Kuroda sat on the edge of a dying star. It wasn’t the bright, blinding sun it used to be. Now, it was just a giant, dull red ball of heat, flickering like a lightbulb about to burn out. There was no air out here, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He just sat there with his hands on his knees, staring into the blackness of space.

And then, he started laughing.

It started as a small giggle, the kind you have when you remember a joke in a quiet room. But then it grew. Soon, he was clutching his stomach, his shoulders shaking, his mouth wide open in a roar of laughter that shouldn’t have been audible in the vacuum of space, yet somehow was. He wasn’t looking at a funny movie or a book. He was just looking at the empty void, laughing like he had just pulled off the greatest prank in history.

"Unbelievable," he whispered to himself. "All that effort for this."

Suddenly, the universe flinched.

It wasn’t a small vibration. It felt like reality itself had been grabbed and shaken by a giant hand. The stars in the distance seemed to blur for a second, and the very space around the dying sun groaned.

A bright light exploded a few feet away from Kuroda. From the center of that light stepped a woman. She was tall—a colossus of grace and power—and she glowed with the searing, incandescent radiance of a thousand white-hot forge-fires. Her hair was a river of molten silver flowing upward against gravity, and her eyes were vast, swirling nebulae.

She looked at Kuroda, and her face was twisted in a mix of divine anger and pure confusion.

"Kuroda!" she bellowed. Her voice didn’t come from her mouth; it resonated through the fabric of the dimension, heavy enough to crush a mortal’s lungs. "What are you doing? Stop that laughing right now."

Kuroda didn’t stop immediately. He wiped a tear from his eye, gasping for breath. "Oh... oh man. You look like someone just told you the sky is falling."

Vespera didn’t smile. She leveled the tip of her star-glass spear at his throat. "Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The Celestial Realm is in chaos. We spent centuries preparing for the attack on the Northern Gates. We moved the legions of light, we set the traps of the void, and we braced for a war that would tear the realms apart."

Kuroda turned around fully now, sitting cross-legged on the red, cooling ground. "And?"

"And you aren’t there!" she shouted, her nebula-eyes flashing with fury. "You aren’t attacking the gates. You aren’t leading an army. You’re sitting on a dead rock in the middle of nowhere, laughing like a fool. Why? What is this?"

"I told you," Kuroda said, his grin widening. "I’m enjoying the view."

"Don’t lie to me!" Vespera stepped forward, the ground of the star cracking into glass under her feet. Even as a supreme goddess, she looked genuinely stressed. "I know how your mind works, Kuroda. You don’t do anything without a reason. You’ve been playing us for eons. Every time we think we have you figured out, you pull a thread and the whole world unravels. This... this is a distraction. You’re scheming something right now, aren’t you? Somewhere else, something terrible is happening because you’ve lured us all into looking somewhere else."

Kuroda leaned back on his elbows, looking up at her with a look of mock innocence. "Scheming? Me? Vespera, I’m hurt. Maybe I just realized that fighting with you guys is exhausting. Maybe I just wanted a break."

"You’ve never taken a break in your life," she hissed. She was trembling with tension, her spear glowing brighter and brighter until it began to hum with the sound of a thousand screaming suns. "The oracles said you were looking for a way to reclaim the lost throne. And now you’re here, doing absolutely nothing. It’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done because it makes no sense."

"That’s the beauty of it," Kuroda said. "If I do exactly what you expect, I’m just a character in your story. But if I do this... well, now you’re in my story."

Vespera raised her spear high, the light from it drowning out the dim red glow of the star. "I’m not playing your games anymore. I was sent here to end this. If you won’t tell me what you’re planning, I’ll just take you back in chains."

Suddenly, Kuroda’s laughter died. He stood up slowly, and for the first time, his eyes weren’t mocking. They were cold. They were deep. They were ancient.

"The time for chains is over, Vespera," he said, his voice dropping into a register that made the dying star tremble. "Listen to the wind that doesn’t exist. Can you hear it? The gears of the clock are grinding to a halt."

Then something shifted. Kuroda’s voice no longer came from his throat. It rose from the very atoms of the dying star beneath them, a prophecy etched into the foundations of the universe, finally finding its voice.

"When the Fool mocks the dying light,

And the Lawful Eye is blinded by spite,

The Grave of the First shall open wide,

To release the King who the Heavens hide.

He who was Sundered shall be Reborn,

To herald the end of the Eternal Morn."

Vespera’s face went bloodless. "The Sundered King... no. That’s impossible. He was erased from the scrolls!"

"History is just a story told by the winners," Kuroda said, his hands beginning to glow with a dark, pulsating violet energy that ate the light around it. "And you’re about to become the losers."

"I will kill you before that happens!" Vespera screamed, her divine composure finally shattering.

She lunged, her spear a streak of pure, blinding white destruction aimed at Kuroda’s heart. Kuroda didn’t flinch. He met her halfway, his hand catching the shaft of the spear as the impact sent a shockwave that cracked the dying star in half.

When light and shadow finally collided, reality itself began to fracture.

End of Volume 1