Shit looked to be getting super real in chapter 252 of Hero? I Quit That a Long Time Ago because the arc's villain -- eldest brother -- fulfilled his contract of a Black Warrior Chapter or whatever (basically the same kind of thing that let Zero become super strong) by killing his biological sister and almost of all his monk "brothers", along with his master... which seemed like a build-up for one hell of a fight. Then 253 happens and I'm not sure what's going on any more. The super-strong swordsman (or will be super-strong in the future, but right now he's just... well, he's plenty powerful) jobs to the eldest brother in a very quick fight, then Zero stops the eldest brother from doing away with the swordsman. Eldest summons this giant construct and Zero immediately dispatches it, after which it looks like the guy just fucking collapses. WTF?
Then there's this Q&A thing at the end which I'm not sure whether they were the original author notes or the scanlator's notes. I don't know what to make of that, but if that's the end of the arc, that's kinda bullshit. 252 had perhaps the biggest build I've seen yet in the series and I'm going to be annoyed if the guy completely jobs to Zero. *Granted*, this is supposed to be comparable to the future timeline and, under some unknown circumstance, the swordsman must have originally won that fight so... it's possible that this jagoff wasn't actually that strong? Maybe he hadn't got very far into using the chapter to train or something. However, it's ridiculous that they tease something like this since the series has gone out of its way multiple times now to establish that as the source of Zero's power (at least initially). It would be like if we learned in a Superman comic that there was another survivor from Krypton and then he's somehow only as strong as... idk, Blockbuster, Mammoth, or some other super-strong guy who is far above normal humans but a complete jobber beyond that.
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(\/)(\/)|-| There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.