The roar of the distant crowd that he once had was a memory now—just an echo in Archer Irving's mind as he sat before the dying fire in his Grand Canyon cavern. Three months had passed since the fall of the great calamity Frostjaw Reiken, three months since he'd severed all ties with the world that once worshiped him. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to travel back to the moment everything changed.
At eighteen years of age, Archer Irving traded his multi-belt gym gear for a crisp blazer and a stack of casebooks. He hade chosen for Stanford Law School—hallowed halls of justice—beckoned him with the promise of intellectual battlegrounds as fierce as any fighting ring. He arrived on his first day on campus as he had every arena of his life: confident, prepared for what will come, and already convinced of his own destiny.
First came orientation Week.
Fellow freshmen classmates looked up at him in simultaneous awe and intimidation. He answered every ice-breaker question with ease—favorite Supreme Court case? Marbury v. Madison, naturally. Greatest intellectual inspiration? Thurgood Marshall. The auditorium buzzed: here was the kid who could charm judges and out-debate professors by lunchtime, then break down doors by sundown.
But on Archer's second year on campus, murmurs rippled through news feeds worldwide: a weird, alien type monstrous rift had opened in Osaka, a leviathan was slaughtering Brazilian favelas, and satellite images revealed spear-shaped shadows moving beneath the Atlantic. Within the first forty-eight hours, governments declared martial law. Stanford's dean addressed the community in somber tones—law school would be indefinitely postponed, as the newly formed Nightguard Corps sought all capable fighters.
Archer did not hesitate for one second. For Archer, the choice was instantaneous. He packed his books, pressed them into a his locker, and signed up for the new found night guard corps. His fellow recruits—a motley crew of firefighters, ex-Navy SEALs, Olympic gymnasts—looked at Archer warily. The headlines had already anointed him "America's Finest," but on the training field, he was just another candidate for the world's most desperate campaign.
When the first trial-by-fire exercise unleashed a Level 3 Thunder Draconid into the sealed hangar, Archer was in his suit and sprang into action. His sword—an heirloom of family legend—whistled through the air like a scythe. With a series of lightning-fast strikes, he severed the beast's wing-spines and felled it in under thirty seconds. The doors whirred open and a stunned general stepped inside.
One month after his trial he became the first captain of the Nighguard Corps after defeating the first Level 1 monster on his own.
"Captain Irving," she said, then hesitated. "We've never had a captain so young."
He bowed slightly, adrenaline still coursing. "I won't fail, ma'am, Earth is in good hands."
That day when he beat the level 1 monster, he was sworn in as the Corps' first-ever Captain, entrusted with assembling Division 0, an elite squad designated for the fiercest monsters on Earth.
Archer hand-picked his own three specialists:
Sousa, the tac-comm explosives expert, fearless beneath fracturing catacombs.
Micheal, a precise sniper whose gauss rifle could fell leviathans at a miles and miles away.
Ramos, a former psychic operative with mind-shields wrought from steel will.
Together, they trained in underground trainingrounds made by the American goverment, their exercises were hard and fierce. They were shadowed by holograms of fungal titans and plasma storms. Archer drilled them hour after hour. Just like his parents did with him, forging them into a single, seamless unit.
Their baptism of fire came against a Level high 2 Ice Maw in the Siberian taiga. Fights after Fights lashed the night, and monstrously cold breath froze steel. The monster looked the same as Forstjaw. Division 1,2,3,4 and 5 squads fell back in terror as the Maw's jaws almost snapped the whole continent of Asia in half. Division 0 waded into the blizzard, Archer's voice crackling in their comm-heads.
"Guys we need to stay tight. Sousa, plasma charges on my mark. Micheal, suppress its eye-nerves with your sniper. Ramos, field-block its echo-scream."
It was a textbook takedown method they always used to defeat those monsters—and the world watched enthralled. In the aftermath, headlines lauded them as "Archer's Avengers." Yet beneath the triumph lay the first shadow of cost: Micheal´s shoulder had been shattered by icicle shards, and Ramos's mind-barriers bore the imprint of the Maw's psychic shriek.
The Disintegration of Brothers
Over the next five to six years, Division 0 hunted the monsters that governments feared most. They only responded to level 2 or above. But the scale of sacrifice soared.
Sousa perished first beneath the crushing tendrils of a fungal behemoth in brazil —his final radio transmission, a whisper: "Go on without me, i will see you guys in heaven
Micheal was the second one to die. He evaporated in a rogue plasma nova that turned half of the state Texas to light.
Ramos was the last one to die. He fractured his psyche blocking a Level 2 terror's mind-breach, his final goodbye was a message humming in Archer's ear. He never told anyone what Ramon said.
By the time he turned twenty-five, Archer stood alone amid Division 0's empty squad rooms. "We shoudl call it Archer's Division now" was whispered as a funeral procession, each mission a chapter of loss after loss for Archer. He carried on with a lot of guilt, iron-bodied and guilt-ridden, bearing humanity's shield while his own heart cracked.
Titles and Tributes
Governments lavished him with medals:
"Greek God" for physique and grace of our humanity
" Reincarnation of Jesus" for miraculous survivals after his battles against countless level 2 and 1 monsters
"Strongest Swordsman to ever exist" for unmatched blade-mastery
"Protector of Earth" for halting apocalypses single-handedly
Monuments rose one after another in his honor and grace; The US army marched under his banner. Crowds worshiped him, children dressed as him on Halloween. Toys were made of him and sold. Yet each accolade deepened his isolation and depression. No one dared approach him in social settings. No one dared to ask a picture or a signature, and other Captains in the Nighguard Corps other then Karu Arakizawa always kept a respectful distance—afraid to become the next name on his long casualty list.
Parental Abandonment
His own parents that led to this life, having faded away after his high school and Nighguard glory, never reemerged even when Archer's legend eclipsed geopolitical crises. They just courted endorsement deals and book contracts behind his back, eager for a cut of his fame. When Archer started a lawsuit against them they finally showed up , asserting that his life wasn't for sale, they vanished again—leaving him to shoulder the world's burdens alone.
Weaponization
For nearly a decade now, Archer his life was being used as a living weapon. Nations even outside of the USA insisted he lead offensives against high level group of monsters; corporations marketed him as the face of "the modern hero." Movies were made about him. Yet nothing in his training prepared him for the hollow ache of being reduced to a tool. He fought till dawn, debriefed and cried at dusk, and found no solace in the cheers—they were dampened by the silence of genuine human connection.
Then came Frostjaw Reiken.
Three months ago. A cosmic horror of ice and gravity came to destroy earth. The Pacific ice-shelf became a shattered tableau of divine war. Archer soared into the stratosphere, his Titan-0 armor got damaged for the first time in years under Reiken's Ice powers. He carved trenches in glaciers, deployed seismic pillars, and unleashed every trick in his arsenal. Yet Reiken's twin cores pulsed invincibly.
He heard of them. Rumors of a "DemonBoy" with the cosmis fist reached Archer's comm-channel. Lucien—an ex-orphan wielding some type of cosmic power—joined the Nightguard Corps. Archer didn think much of him at first other then him being a bit more special the rest: a sideshow to the cosmic juggernaut. Then came the Forstjaw fight, under I.C.R. blast, Archer had to retrieve for a bit. Lucien dove headlong into the spear, unleashing an infernal punch that cleansed half the halo. In that moment, Archer finally saw an equal in Lucien. A mirror of his own loneliness: another soul forced into godhood.
Their Finality Sever struck Reiken's core—and as the battlefield imploded, Archer no longer felt the roar of the crowd or the weight of command. He simply fled, leaving it all to Lucien. He ran away and descended into the Grand Canyon, landing amidst rust-red sandstone and starlit sky. There, he exiled himself from a world that had loved, used, and discarded him.
Archer's life in the cavern was stripped to essentials:
A small shelter: A rocky alcove reinforced with salvaged panels from his suit.
Nutrition: Foraged lizards, desert tubers, and the occasional canyon rabbit.
Routine: Sitting all day. 1 hour a day hunting for food and searching for water.
He measured time in the pulse of the earth—sunrise's first glow, sunset's crimson aftermath. No messages blipped into his comm—no orders, no news, no human voice but the hiss of the wind.
The Weight of Objectification
In his loneliness, Archer faced the long awaited truth he'd no longer dared to deny: as the world's mightiest soldier, he had never been treated as a human. Never treated as an equal. He was forced to be a tool—wheeled out to fight apocalypses, then sanitized, rewarded, and wheeled back into action. Friendships that he thought he´d build over the years had faltered beneath the burden of his legend; love had wilted under the glare of expectation.
He mourned each fallen comrade and his only true friends—Sousa's laughter, Micheal´s grin, Ramos's quiet counse. Their absence was a knife twisting in his heart. He could no longer bear the weight of another mission, another loss. Because of that he vanished.
Present:
Archer stared into the nightsky, sweat cooling on his brow. The cavern pulsed with an otherworldly tension. Then, from the blackness above, a voice rolled like distant thunder:
VOICE (echoing): "Archer Irving."
Instinct flared: Sword drawn ready to kill, Archer pivoted to his right, eyes scanning the area.
He was in placed in a other dimension. He saw something descending to its throne, a towering figure wreathed in crimson smoke. Six horns crowned its head, each ringed with black flame. Its eyes shone molten gold.
KING OF HELL (calm yet earth-shaking): "You have hidden long enough, Captain Irving. The world revolves without you. They worship a vessel not of your forging, while you—born for dominion—cower in obscurity."
ARCHER (voice low): "Speak your piece, or i´ll kill you right now."
KING OF HELL (laughing, a sound like colliding mountains): "I am the King of Hell—son of the Creator of Gods. You can´t kill me. Where she offers Lucien the mantle of Vengeance, tempered by mercy, I offer you the crown of annihilation if Lucien won ´ t take it. Claim my throne of hell, and the whole Earth will tremble at your name. Become my successor, and you shall never be used again—no orders, no betrayals, no loneliness. Only power unfettered. You shall be the one who uses everyone for your own will."
Archer's sword trembled in his grasp as the King of the underworld continued his speech:
KING OF HELL: "They call you Protector of Earth, Savior, Reincarnation of Jezus—but to me, you are untapped potential. You wield otherworldly power and thats not because of your suit, its because your special. With my gift that i will give you now, you can cleave mountains, dissolve oceans, remold the world in your image."
A hush fell. Archer's heart pounded. The emptiness he'd buried for so long stirred within.
KING OF HELL (softly): "Make a choice. Die is this pity place… or Dominion born of Hell's crucible. Choose, and your loneliness ends."
Archer's vision blurred with distant memories: the cheers the people gave him, the losses he faced over the years, the emptiness he felt at every triumph. Archer felt the Truth of his life laid bare: weapon or ruler, idol or outcast.
He sheathed his sword into the fire of hell. Then, with a single fluid motion, he stepped forward, hand extending toward the King's ebony flame.
Archer Irving, the world's greatest weapon, readied to claim his true destiny—whatever shape it might take.