Reincarnated Hero System

After half an hour of flying, Evan paused for another break atop a new mountain, after deleting all the Level 700+ monsters that lived there, of course.

“Hmm, not a bad haul. Got a few levels out of that,” Evan muttered. “But if I want to level up faster, I’ll need to start hunting monsters higher levelled than I am.”

To put it bluntly, Evan was now looking for Level 800+ monsters to kill since Level 700s weren’t cutting it anymore.

He expanded the range of his Detection Field, scanning for monsters above Level 800, but found nothing.

‘Hmm? That signature feels familiar…’

His Detection Field picked up a presence it recognized. Curious, he turned in that direction and activated Farsight.

“What kind of weird bird is that? And it’s barely level 300… won’t even give me any EXP.”

One couldn’t gain EXP from existences below half their Level, after all.

Shaking his head, he turned back toward Artemisia’s direction, unfurled his wings, and launched off the mountain, dashing straight toward the goddess.

As soon as he got within 10 kilometres of her position, Artemisia, who had been constantly moving since Evan woke up, suddenly stopped.

‘Did she…? Pfft.’

Evan chuckled as he realised why she stopped, briefly activating Limit Break to boost his base speed and shoot forward.

Moving at 1000 m/s, it didn’t even take 10 seconds before the goddess’ figure came into view.

Evan retracted his wings and touched down a few meters away, forming a crater on impact and casually hopping out of it.

“Sup.”

“You were faster than I expected.”

Artemisia responded with a raised brow, looking just as composed as the last time they saw themselves. Not a drop of blood, or a speck of dust marred her clothes, and Evan honestly couldn’t tell if she’d been hit by the ship’s blast or harmed at all.

“So you really did stop so I could catch up…”

“Affirmative. It’s far more practical to move as a group in an unfamiliar environment, so I paused in a relatively safe location to wait.”

“Relatively…safe, you say?”

Evan glanced around the clearing where Artemisia stood.

To her left were the corpses of five unfamiliar cultivators, neatly arranged according to the colour of their robes.

To her right lay over a dozen monster corpses, stacked like sacks of grain in a barn.

He turned back to her with a raised brow.

“Relatively safe?” he repeated.

“Yes. Relatively safe,” Artemisia replied with a perfectly straight face.

‘This girl has got to be trolling me.’

Evan shook his head and activated Track Down, then said,

“Anyway, looks like Beatrix is heading our w—oh! That’s a big jump.”

Artemisia, raising her token, nodded calmly.

“She must have teleported.”

“Yeah, she can do that,” Evan muttered, calculating how much closer she was now.

Artemisia returned her token to her trouser pocket, completely overlooking the odd fact that Evan hadn’t checked his token to know Beatrix’s direction. Normally, that would’ve raised a flag for her, but given the current situation, she didn’t notice it.

“Shall we race to her location?”

Evan’s sudden suggestion made Artemisia narrow her eyes at him.

“Why do you have a habit of turning everything into a race?”

“Habit? Nah, it’s just for fun. To lighten the mood and distract us from the fact that we got caught in an explosion that should’ve killed us, blasted through space, and landed on some unknown planet filled with ambient negative energy. And come to think of it…”

Evan’s expression changed, his gaze on Artemisia growing concerned.

“How are you holding up?”

It had slipped Evan’s mind since it didn’t affect him much, but Artemisia was a goddess whose primary energy was divinity, an energy inherently positive on the polarity spectrum.

By contrast, the ambient energy around them was saturated with negativity, which usually weakened goddesses like her.

“It’s irritating, but I’m building resistance to it.”

“…Oh, right. You can do that.”

Evan’s Adaptive Evolution, which granted him numerous resistances, was a creation of future Artemisia’s Royal Evolution Authority, which stemmed from her Queen of Evolution Skill. It seemed the current Artemisia had something similar for herself.

“That’s good, but I don’t think Beatrix has that kind of ability now, does she?”

“No. She doesn’t.”

Artemisia replied shortly before turning toward Beatrix’s direction.

“Let’s go.”

Without waiting for Evan’s answer, she launched off the ground and dashed forward, making Evan chuckle quietly.

‘She’s really worried, huh?’

Evan jumped up and unfurled his wings, beating them to propel himself forward, dashing after her.

He had to go full speed, otherwise, he’d lag behind Artemisia whose travel speed was far faster than one would expect for her level.

For starters, her base Agility stat was higher than Evan’s, despite being over 30 levels below him. On top of that, she could boost her stats with her Evolution abilities.

Not more needed to be said.

Evan kept his detection field active, scanning for monsters as they moved. He caught up to Artemisia, who was running ahead while steering clear of any areas dense with presences, monsters or cultivators alike, and spoke.

“This place gives more EXP than usual, so I’m killing every monster I spo—!”

**BAMM!!!

“?!”

Artemisia flinched at the sudden noise, her feet skidding across the ground as she came to a halt and turned toward Evan, who had stopped abruptly.

A small crater had formed around his feet, a natural result of him suddenly nosediving toward the ground at over 1000 m/s.

“…What’s wrong?”

Evan’s expression darkened, and Artemisia instinctively scanned the area with caution.

“…Something’s following me.”

His eyes turned upward, and there, at the edge of his detection field, was the same bird-like monster he had spotted back at the first mountain where he’d stopped.

His detection field had warned him about this recurring presence, and by now, it would be strange if Evan didn’t sense something was off.

“Three times. This is the third time I’ve detected that particular bird. And twice before, it was always lurking at the edge of my detection field…”

What made it more suspicious was that Evan had changed directions multiple times while hunting monsters.

And yet, it was still there.

“Artemisia.”

“?”

“Give me a smoke screen.”

At his request, Artemisia snapped her fingers, and a two-ringed magic circle expanded beneath their feet, followed by a deafening explosion that shook the land.

Smoke and flames surged into the sky, and within the chaos of the blast, Evan’s presence vanished completely.

Once again, the devil-bird trailing him lost track and began searching around in confusion, only for a hand to suddenly materialize from thin air and seize it by the neck.

[KIIARK—!!]

“As I thought…It’s the exact same bird.”

Evan’s eyes glowed, and just as his grip on its neck was about to tighten, another screech rang out, pulling his gaze toward the side where he locked eyes with a charging creature.

“What kind of dinosaur-looking motherfucker is this?”

Well, this dinosaur-looking motherfucker was Level 750, so unless Evan wanted to be knocked out of the sky, he had to take it seriously.

Time Difference activated automatically, stretching the moment as Evan activated Track Down. He released the devil bird and used the same hand to draw his sword, swinging it at the charging monster.

The devil-bird hurriedly flew back the way it came, its small frame buffeted by the shockwaves unleashed from Evan’s strike against the dinosaur-like creature.

Barely a second after Evan’s sword connected with the monster’s claws, a jagged bolt of lightning tore through the sky, crashing down on the creature’s head and eliciting a screech of pain from it.

Artemisa snapped her fingers, using her Unique Skill to amplify Evan’s attack power just as his flame-wreathed sword carved into the monster’s side.

The prismatic flames consumed its body in an instant, and Artemisia followed up with another concentrated lightning blast that blinded it in both eyes.

The collision of fire and lightning triggered a volatile reaction, erupting into a brilliant explosion that ripped through the creature’s flesh, leaving deep, smoking wounds.

She bombarded it with another wave of lightning strikes, keeping the monster stunned while Evan shot upwards to gain altitude.

When he reached a suitable height, he pivoted mid-air and shot back down. Folding his wings mid-descent, he spun and delivered a drop kick straight to the monster’s skull, activating his Six Skill Strike on impact.

‘Electroflame + Fracture + Adamantine Might + Pierce Guard + Permeating Wave + Time Bomb.’

The monster’s head was obliterated in a burst of energy, its lifeless body collapsing onto the ground below.

Landing on the ground, Evan checked his status and clicked his tongue.

“Still not enough for one level? Sheesh.”

“I levelled up, though.”

At Artemisia’s quiet mutter, Evan turned to her with an accusatory look, pointing as he exclaimed.

“You… you stole my EXP!”

Artemisia just rolled her eyes, before turning her gaze towards the direction the devil-bird had flown.

“Why didn’t you kill it?”

“So it can lead us back to its master.”

Understanding his intent, Artemisia nodded, then turned her gaze toward Beatrix’s direction.

“Let’s continue then.”

“Mhmm…” Evan replied, eyes narrowing as he formed a mental map of their surroundings, following the bird’s trail in his mind.

‘Tsk…maybe I should have risked fighting that woman…’

◇　◇　◇

After thirty minutes of constant movement, Evan was treated to the sight of Beatrix barrelling into Artemisia at supersonic speed, knocking the other girl right off her feet and onto the grassy plains.

“ARTY!!!!!!”

Her voice echoed only after the two had already tumbled a few meters, and Evan simply watched the scene unfold with a faint smile while sipping on a strawberry juice pack.

His eyes turned toward the mountains in the west, and once again, his Danger Sense reacted the moment he looked in that direction.

Shaking his head silently, he finished his juice and tossed the empty pack back into his inventory.

“Evan!”

Again, the sound of Beatrix’s voice lagged a few seconds behind her actions, as he’d already been pulled into a hug by the time he heard her voice.

“How’re you holding up?”

“You and Arty asked the same thing. I’m fine… just need to burn off some excess energy, then recharge it.”

“??”

Evan raised a brow at the odd response, but Beatrix didn’t elaborate and simply looked in the direction he’d been facing some moments before.

“What were you looking at?”

“Hmm? Oh, those mountains over there. Come to think of it, you were closer to them, weren’t you? Did you go check them out?”

At Evan’s question, Beatrix shot him a deadpan look.

“Really, Evan? Did you really think I would believe it wise to explore a mountain radiating transcendent-level energy on my own, especially after our spaceship literally exploded and sent us careening through space onto a random Apex World?”

“Pfft! I didn’t. Definitely didn’t,” Evan responded through stifled laughter.

Beatrix narrowed her eyes at him in silence, and Evan, in an attempt to steer her away from the obvious truth—that he had assumed she could do something that reckless—held up his torn mask.

“Can you fix this for me? I’d rather not have my face open while we’re here… for future reasons.”

She glanced at the mask, then back at Evan, then at the mask again.

“This looks awful. Just how roughed up did you get?”

“I woke up hanging in a tree with my elbow bent in the opposite direction.”

“…ouch…”

Beatrix winced and instinctively rubbed her own elbow, as if she could feel the pain herself, a sight that made Evan chuckle.

“So… the mask?”

“Oh, right.”

Beatrix twirled the piece of fabric around her finger, and just like a movie being played in reverse, the scorched cloth was restored to the condition it had been in minutes before their ship exploded.

“Thanks.”

As Evan took the mask and put it on, Beatrix was already dashing back to Artemisia, throwing her arms around the other girl once more in another enthusiastic hug.