1 Miles Flameheart - A Heaven-Defying Talent!

"The talented progress at a terrifying rate when compared to your average people."

This was common knowledge both before and after the Second Coming.

With the arrival of the Second World, everything on Earth revolved around it.

Countries fell, and Empires were born.

So, this era was also called the Second Empire Era.

Where everything related to their battles took place in the Second World.

Earth was finally at peace.

At least, on the surface.

Until, the first person had hit level 100...

Every year, on December 31st, the System starts a new world with completely different maps than the others and lets people who had turned 16 that year, or on that day, into the map. After being protected by it for a year, it would merge with the real world.

After this, a person had managed to create a machine that could detect a persons Ability and username.

Abilities had tiers to rate them. Since these Abilities defined everything about a person in the Second World, these would help institutions keep track of criminals, since there was no way to lose track of a machine when they had the number of machines manufactured with them. The person who manufactured these machines was basically under house arrest for life. And unfortunately, people couldn't die nowadays. It helped that Earth was also constantly expanding every year.

Earth was basically ruled by Eleven Powers now: The Holy Empire, The Ancient Kingdom, The Dawn Kingdom, The Freedom Alliance, The Archipelago, The Oceania, The Persian Empire, The Tundra Empire, The Ancestral Empire, The Nature Kingdom, and The Southern Nation.

And in one of these Powers, there lives a person called Miles, who will later shake the whole world.

To be exact, it is the Ancestral Empire that he lives in.

And this person, ignorant of his fate, was dreaming about that very fate. A fate in which the whole world depended on him and raised his laurels, singing his praises.

Well, as an orphan, there wasn't much hope for him in a world filled with hierarchy.

A world where nobles ruled everything, one where commoners had next to no rights in reality.

And commoners couldn't leave the country without a noble's stamp, so they couldn't emigrate, either.

So, all he could do was dream - that's what he believed.

And now, daydreaming about this surreal fate, he walked into his class, where he was awakened to reality quite harshly - every gaze at him was filled with unkindness.

Well, it was expected - he might be an orphan now, but the blood of nobles flowed through his blood - he was the successor of a fallen house.

The Marcal household of Flameheart. His original name was Miles Flameheart, but he was stripped of his last name once his house had fallen with his parents' death. And unless he could prove his overwhelming strength required to reinstate the house, he couldn't regain his lost name.

And for that, he required a powerful ability. Yet, the predictions showed that his ability fluctuations weren't strong. It had something to do with changing his constitution, that's it - and constitutional Abilities started at the rank of E at best. Their potential was also rated only B - it wasn't enough to get the name of a Marquis, although he could probably get the name of a Count. At least, he was better than those who lacked noble blood - due to the lack of Etherite in their bodies, their awakened abilities at best had G-Rank potential. They began at L-Rank - they weakest ones. They probably had something like <1% increase in affinity with fire element.>

The Power's rankings were simple. They were as follows -

L-Rank - Slave

K-Rank - Servant

J-Rank - Commoner

I-Rank - Citizen

H-Rank - Prime Citizen

G-Rank - Squire

F-Rank - Knight

E-Rank - Baronet

D-Rank - Baron

C-Rank - Viscount

B-Rank - Count

A-Rank - Marquis

S-Rank - Duke

SS-Rank - Royal

SSS-Rank - Crown Prince

Anyone who ever got to SSS-Rank immediately would become a Crown Prince and would soon become the Emperor, but other than the First Emperor about 200 years ago, who was now spending all his time in Second Realm, no one had ever gotten the famed Highest Rank.

But that day, the world would change - and their ranking system would also change.

For the one who facilitated this change was someone talented beyond compare.

And this person was right now digging his ear while waiting for his turn on the Awakening Machine.

And finally, after what felt like a year, his name was called out.

"Miles!" The distaste was obvious in the teacher's voice. After all, he considered Miles to be just a Citizen, and only Nobles were allowed to go to the school. Because he was a former noble, his contract was still valid, so they couldn't expel him.

"Yes, ma'am." A voice that screamed, 'I don't care about you because I don't have time' answered her, and the sixteen-year-old boy whom it originated from stood up lazily. After walking upto the Awakening Machine, commonly called the Awakener, the simply laid inside. The capsule closed on its own, and it started whirring.

Meanwhile, inside, Miles was in an absolutely dark space, where nothing could be seen. Slowly, the place began brightening up, and Mark saw a tiny star in front of him. Something in him told him to wait for a while and adjust to the brightness, and once he did, he began to notice something weird.

'Why is there only one star?'

He began looking around, concentrating deeply, in hopes of finding another star. And lo and behold! - there were tens of thousands of stars behind him. As he looked through them, an extremely tiny star suddenly caught his eye. In fact, it was highly surprising that he actually noticed it, but from his birth, Miles had extremely good eyes and a perfect memory. Because of this, he went through with the swordsman route.

As he looked at it, he felt strangely attracted to it. He willed it to come close, and soon, the star 'swooshed' into his chest.

"Ability has been awakened. Checking records... Scanning... please wait for a moment. 18%... 21%... 37%... 58%...69%...98%..."

An unknown voice began ringing in his head. He slowly digested all of this as it was common to go through, and he had been informed of it before, although he never knew that if one turned back, they could find so many stars. All he knew was that you had to will the star in front of you into your body.

"100%... scanning complete. Character Set-Up complete. Please name character."

He had already had the name in his mind. Although it didn't have to be apt, he still wanted this to be his Character name.

"Blaze FlameHeart."

"Confirming... FirstName: Blaze, LastName: Flameheart. Confirm?"

"Confirm."

Blaze, a large, fiercely burning fire - this was him. No matter what anyone said, he had decided to break through all his limitations, and bring his house back - no matter what.

In fact, this was nothing so noble for him. All he wanted was his fiancé, who he had loved dearly, but had to break his engagement with due to him lacking a last name. His fiancé, Alice Undine, was from a Ducal household, after all - they weren't a common Baronet family who could get a Citizen as a son-in-law.

Not to mention, it was the last request of his father. The Flameheart house had weakened in recent years due to the death of their Guardian Beast, and he wanted his son to bring them back to the top of the Kingdom, and bring back their status as the Empire's most terrifying household.

And he had sworn to do so.

All these thoughts ran through his head within this short moment.

"Confirmed. Talent identified - Active-Passive Conversion. Base Rank - SS-Rank; Potential Rank - UEx-Rank."

A screen popped up in front of him before he could digest the information. He didn't even look at the screen before he closed it - he also postponed the rest of the work to be done during Login.

He didn't think he could concentrate. His hands were shaking - and he was hyperventilating.

Still, he couldn't believe the things that had firmly registered in his head.

"Base Rank, SS? Potential Rank, UEx? Just what..."

His shaking hands covered his face as light sobs rang out. A few minutes later, his sobs subsided, replaced by a look of pure determination and pride on his face.

"Father, I did it! I have brought our Flameheart household to the very top!"

Calming himself down, he chose to log out of the space.

When he stepped out, he saw his entire class staring at him.

"What the hell... how did that guy of all people get an SS-Rank Ability? And the Potential... isn't it an unknown rank? Just what..."

He saw the same expressions that were earlier on his face on this people, except replacing his determination and pride, there was pure fear and respect on their face.

This was the treatment the strong got; no matter who they were, if they were strong enough, he couldn't be defeated, no matter what plots he faced!

This was an unfathomable level of talent!

Suddenly, a skidding pair of footsteps could be heard outside the classroom, and the door was slammed open. A pair of azure eyes eyes flitted throughout the room before landing on another pair of crimson eyes, framed by black hair.

The boy with the black hair smiled. "I did it, brother. I upheld my oath to dad."

The blond with the green eyes closed his eyes, a large grin plastered on his face. He slowly walked forward and hugged the other boy.

This man was Aaron Flameheart, the elder brother of Miles. He was three years older, and had a fiancé. Her father was an old friend of theirs; so he didn't dissolve the engagement. His elder brother had a S-Rank potential Ability, but it was extremely hard to level up; therefore, they did not have hopes for him to break through to A-Rank.

After hugging each other hard for a minute, they let go of each other.

"You better login now. Get home. We don't want you to be powerless, so get to level fifty before logging out."

"Gotcha."

Yet, he stayed back, for his beloved fiancé was going to get her Ability awakened.

Soon, the shocking results came out - Base Rank - S, Potential - Ex!

This was another heaven-defying talent!

Immediately, she came out, and spotting Miles, ran over and hugged him. He hugged her back, and she nestled her head in his chest.

A nearly audible sound of breaking hearts seemed to echo through the room.

Alice was extremely beautiful - enough that in the Dark Ages, she would have been a beauty of S-Tier, easily ranking in the top 5 beauties in the world. And she was polite, and amiable - all the boys hailed her as their goddess, and even though they knew she like Miles, they hoped to be the one to marry her. Yet, Miles had gone on to get such a heaven-defying talent!

It wasn't actually only these two - that year, there were a total of eight people who had awakened SSS-Rank Potential or higher Abilities, three men and five women.

And all five of these women were hailed as the world's top beauties!

When Miles found out, he had one thought in mind...

'Looks like we all know what's gonna happen... a harem!'

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