I Became the Hero While Paving a Flower Path for My Niece - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Hero Who Became One Through a Cousin’s Flower Path — Episode 001
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Rain of fire fell upon a world enveloped in darkness.
Yet no screams of terror could be heard, nor the sound of fleeing feet.
Because everyone was already dead.
In this place of nothing but corpses, only Alex remained,
Crash! Bang!
and the Demon King and the Hero locked in battle far across the wasteland.
But neither the Demon King nor the Hero knew Alex was here.
Because Alex existed as a ghost.
‘Leo!’
His cry calling out to his cousin, the Hero, went unheard,
‘Damn that monster!’
as did his curse against the Demon King.
If his voice couldn’t reach them, how could his body ever make a difference?
Shriek!
Even when he threw himself before the Demon King’s onslaught to shield Leo, his form passed straight through—only to strike Leo anyway.
Again and again, this happened.
The ghost Alex could only follow helplessly as his cousin Leo was battered by the assault.
And yet.
‘Leo! Get away!’
Even if they couldn’t hear him,
‘Curse it all!’
even if he couldn’t shield him,
with deep golden hair streaming behind him, Alex threw himself before Leo’s attacker again and again.
So that Leo, left alone after all his allies and friends had fallen, would not fight in solitude. So that at least Leo might triumph and return home alive.
Perhaps by some chance, just once, he might manage to block the Demon King’s strike.
But.
“Ugh!”
The gods did not grant Alex’s wish.
<Leo….>
Or rather, they could not.
Even Sollenius himself was pouring his power into the Hero, resigned to his own annihilation in the process.
The Demon King, who sought to slay every living thing on the continent and make them his own, was a force of such terrible strength.
“I’m… I’m all right….”
Leo could barely manage to breathe.
The radiant golden hair that once drew all eyes had turned white, and one of his two jewel-bright azure eyes hung closed, bleeding.
“Hah.”
The artificial arm gifted by the Mage Tower Federation on his left side was beginning to malfunction, its movements growing sluggish and unreliable.
The Age of Ruin.
An epoch where fear of death—arriving at any unknown hour—was treated as destiny itself.
Leo Sollenius, the Hero of this age, had fought his way here with his entire body shattered against foes of terrible power.
‘Run, Leo!’
Alex made his futile plea again, though he knew it could not be heard.
‘Leave this continent behind, leave the Last City—just run!’
What did any of it matter?
You are all that is precious to me, Leo. You are all I have left.
But the Hero rose once more, grasping the Holy Sword. He stood straight, though not a single part of him seemed intact.
‘Damn it!’
If his cousin would fight, then his uncle had no choice but to help.
Even if it meant the annihilation of his soul, it was worth it for Leo.
But as if separated by another realm entirely, Alex’s efforts availed nothing.
Bang!
He could only let the Demon King’s strike pass through helplessly.
“Now it ends, Hero.”
As those words fell, the pristine skull embedded in the Demon King’s chest rippled with sickly green flame.
Both Alex and Leo tensed at once.
Whenever that skull shimmered with that greenish light, a torrent of overwhelming magic would follow.
And just as they feared, spells erupted from the void itself.
Leo dodged what he could and deflected the rest with his Holy Sword, pushing forward toward the Demon King.
Burning every ounce of Holy Power he possessed, and his very soul along with it.

The god Sollenius poured his strength into Leo as well.
Even if his own existence were to vanish, he wanted to be of help to the Hero he had chosen.
Crash!
The Hero, gathering all his power, struck at the Demon King.
‘No, no, no! Someone stop him! This useless body of mine!’
Alex, still in spectral form, threw himself desperately in the way of the Demon King’s attacks he could not block, darting back and forth through the air.
“Vanish, Demon King!”
Hero Leo became a single ray of light, hurtling toward the Demon King. He had poured everything into this one attack.
Boom! Crash!
Piercing through multiple layers of defensive barriers, Leo drew closer to the Demon King.
His grip on the radiant Holy Sword tightened.
Leo seized the Holy Sword with both hands and thrust it straight through.
And in that same instant.
A pristine white Skull embedded in the Demon King’s chest began to glow.
Sickly green flames.
The harbinger of Magic that all had feared.
But Leo did not retreat. Instead, he gritted his teeth and poured even more power into the Holy Sword.
Then.
From the Skull, a beam of sickly green light shot forth like a colossal arrow.
‘Leo!’
Though he knew he could not stop it, Alex threw himself into its path. Just as he had done hundreds, thousands of times before.
And at last.
Alex’s wish was granted.
‘…!’
The beam of sickly green light was halted by Alex’s form, suspended in midair.
‘I stopped it! I actually stopped it!’
But the joy was short-lived.
As if to mock the rejoicing Alex, the sickly green beam—which had paused only for an instant—continued on as if nothing had happened, piercing straight through Alex’s body.
And then it passed through, embedding itself directly in the chest of Leo Sollenius behind him.
“…Urgh!”
His heart.
The place where his heart had been was torn away entirely.
Yet Leo Sollenius felt no pain.
Just moments before.
When the sickly green beam had paused ever so briefly, he had glimpsed a figure appearing faintly in the light.
A young man with deep golden hair and pale green eyes.
“…Uncle?”
His uncle, who had died twelve years ago—why was he here…?
‘Leo!!’
He could almost hear a voice calling to him.
“Ha… ha….”
Thud—!
Leo, who had collapsed limply to the ground, found himself laughing without meaning to.
‘Our Leo!’
‘Uncle!’
Memories of his childhood—brief but happy—surfaced in his mind.
Those days when, knowing nothing, barely a teenager, he had lived under his uncle’s protection alone.
‘…I wanted to do so well.’
Leo’s breathing grew shallower, dimmer with each moment.
‘…I’m sorry, Uncle.’
Finding the parents his uncle so desperately wanted to see, protecting his companions and allies, defeating the Demon King—
None of it had he accomplished.
‘I… truth is….’
He wanted to tell his uncle.
The uncle who had been his only protector, the only one he had ever relied on.
‘I was so scared… of everything….’
Fighting enemies, watching his companions hurt, being hurt himself, protecting people, safeguarding the continent,
…and being betrayed.
Of course, it was what a Hero ought to do, and it was what he’d wanted to do as well.
But fear had been there too.
The kind of fear anyone would naturally harbor—the kind you could only speak of to your uncle.
‘…I missed you, Uncle.’
Even if it was a phantom conjured by the Demon King, it was enough.
Even if it was his own delusion, that was fine too.
Leo, grateful to see his dead uncle one last time, shed a small tear and closed his eyes.
The death of Leo Sollenius, the last Hero of the Sollenium Continent.
‘I… stopped him… finally managed to stop him….’
Alex tried to lift Leo’s cold, lifeless body with trembling hands, cradling it carefully.
But a spirit could not touch a living body.
His hands passed right through, and Alex slammed them against the ground in despair.
‘You should have run!’
Alex’s voice shook as he cried out.
‘What does being a Hero matter! What do people matter! What does the continent matter! You—you should have lived….’
Alex tenderly brushed Leo’s body, hollowed through at the heart and covered in wounds.
‘You foolish idiot….’
Why Leo, of all people?
There were skilled knights aplenty, nobles with vast wealth, priests brimming with Holy Power—so why had the Demon King chosen Leo, a commoner and an orphan, to be the Hero?
He understood it, though.
Leo was a good child.
The kind of child who drew people’s regard simply by existing, who won their affection without effort.
And he had talent besides—a prodigy who grasped ten principles from a single lesson, and he’d worked relentlessly besides.
Even Alex himself would have trusted the world to him.
‘But this… this isn’t right….’
Then he should have let him win. Let him triumph.
‘He should have lived and been happy, lived long and well! You accursed, wretched god!!’
Alex knew the Heavens had done everything in their power to aid Leo, yet he couldn’t help but rage against them.
Because Leo was only eighteen years old.
Even compared to himself, who’d died at twenty, Leo was still so young.
‘Damn it all!’
Alex, who had been screaming, collapsed to the ground with a thud.
It was all over now.
After sorrow and fury came hollowness, washing over him.
‘…But why won’t I fade away?’
If there was a world for the dead, he wanted to meet Leo there.
To tell him it must have been hard, that he’d suffered so much, and to curse out all those who’d betrayed him and the wretched god besides.
‘You didn’t even know I was always with you, did you?’
From when Leo was six until now, eighteen years old.
For twelve years, he wanted to tell him that Uncle was always at your side.
‘Do you think Sister and my brother-in-law are there too?’
Leo’s mother and father, who’d left on a mercenary contract when Leo was an infant and never returned, must long since be dead.
‘Then it’s been a while since the family’s been together. I should go soon too.’
Alex wiped Leo’s sleeping face—though his hand, of course, passed through.
‘Still so young.’
Alex whispered as he gazed at Leo’s youthful features, barely those of an adult.
‘You did well, Leo. My nephew is the very best.’
If Leo could have heard him, surely he would have smiled broadly.
‘Rest now.’
No more hardship, no more worry.
‘Sleep well, my Leo.’
Alex wished that he might rest deeply and peacefully, making up for all the sleep he’d missed.
‘I wanted to make you happy….’
Then.
[It… worked…!]
A voice sounded.
[Grab… the stone…!]
The voice of some man.
‘What? What did he say?’
In a place where the Demon King had departed and he alone remained, Alex startled at the sudden voice and spun around, peering frantically at his surroundings.
In an instant.
Everything went black.

* * *
“…?!!”
Alex’s eyes snapped open, his back burning.
“…!!”
The pain was so intense he couldn’t even scream.
For twelve years in his ghostly form, untethered to any physical matter, he’d built no tolerance for agony like this.
He was already dead—yet it felt like he was dying again.
His vision blurred.
Grass and soil beneath him, soaked with brilliant red blood.
‘I’ve seen this before somewhere…’
His experience traveling with the Hero’s party—though they’d never known of his presence—had not been wasted; even drowning in lethal pain, Alex could keep his mind tethered.
If nothing else, as a ghost he’d trained his mental fortitude relentlessly.
‘So that means…’
Grrrrrowl!
At the sound of a wolf’s cry behind him, Alex’s pale green eyes widened.
He remembered.
This was when he’d been attacked by wolves, when he’d died.
He’d thought it might be the Lantern of Life Review, but the vivid pain radiating from his back felt unmistakably real.
‘Then…!’
He’d been sent to the past. He could meet Leo again—meet him alive, meet him young.
‘But why now, of all times?!’
If he was being sent back, why not send him to some other moment? What kind of idiot sends someone back just as they’re about to die?
Even as he gnashed his teeth, Alex’s mind raced for survival.
But there was nothing he could do.
The wound on his back ran too deep; breathing itself was agony.
He had no weapon to fight the wolves circling him, not even medicine to heal himself.
‘Damn it…!’
He thought he’d die again like this.
He thought he’d be an uncle to Leo who couldn’t help him, not even now.
Then.
A voice echoed in his mind, burned into his soul like a brand.
[Grab… the stone!]
‘A stone? Grab it?’
Grab a stone?
Scattered across the ground before his failing eyes were pebbles large and small. But somehow, none of them felt right.
Then something caught his dimming gaze.
A Glass Orb.
Not far away lay a smooth, round Glass Orb—and oddly, inside it swirled something like a green vapor.
Alex knew instinctively: he had to grab it.
With a body barely able to move, he crawled agonizingly forward and reached toward the Glass Orb.
‘…I’ve got it!’
Whoooosh—!
The Glass Orb erupted in a violent explosion of green flame.
‘…?!’
The emerald fire swept past Alex without touching him, engulfing and incinerating the wolf that had been about to strike him.
And the warm, lethal blood spilling from Alex’s wounds became fuel for the green flame, which burned brighter still.
In the blink of an eye.
Both wolf and blood had vanished.
Staring in shock, Alex noticed the green flame drawing toward him.
‘…!’
The emerald fire looked ready to reduce him to ash just as it had the wolf. Alex tried to scramble away.
But of course, he failed.
The green flames engulfed his entire body, and Alex squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain.
Yet no pain came.
Instead, all the wounds covering his body healed rapidly.
“…Gasp!”
As the agony faded, his breath—which moments ago had seemed about to stop—returned to him, slowly and steadily.
“…what…what is this…?”
Alex stood bewildered as the impossible unfolded before him.
[Oh! Hello there!]
[My new friend from another world!]
A bright voice rang out.
A Hero Born From Paving the Way for a Goddess
Northgrum Fusion Fantasy Novel
Author
: Northgrum
Publisher
: Kwon Tae-wan, Woo Cheon-je
E-book Publication Date
: 2026-06-22
Price Per Episode
: 100 won (Episodes 1–15 free)
Distributed By
: KWBOOKS
Address
: Room 203, Ace Artisforum, 62 Digital-ro 31-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul
UCI
G720:N+A014-20260622092
This book is published in e-book format by KWBOOKS in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder.
Unauthorized reproduction of any content in this book is prohibited by copyright law.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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