Reincarnated Hero System

While Beatrix was bear-hugging Artemisia, Evan silently adjusted his mask over his face, then activated Track Down to find out Arthur and Hibiki’s current locations.

‘If we head straight south, we’ll run into them soon.’

They were still a good distance away, but since Arthur and Hibiki were heading in their direction, it wouldn’t be long before they crossed paths.

Expanding his detection field to check what obstacles lay between them, Evan noted that the grassy plains they were on ended at the base of a mountain range.

Beyond that stretched a few kilometres of barren terrain, followed by a dark forest that looked like it had been ripped straight out of a horror movie from Earth V.

He pulled another juice pack from his inventory and took a sip while estimating the distance mentally, then checked the time.

‘Now that I think about it, how many hours are in a day on this planet? The system time hasn’t shown any changes…but then again, I’ve never visited a non-24-hour world while using it, so I don’t know if it would act differently.’

His eyes drifted toward Beatrix for a moment before he shook his head, deciding Arthur was the better one to ask.

Arthur was the guy with a Pseudo-Authority over Time, after all.

“Alright, you two.”

Turning around and gesturing toward the mountains ahead, he called out,

“Shall we get moving?”

And get moving, they did.

After Beatrix recovered her energy via the cultivation technique she received on Denerth Prime, that is. The results were quite…crazy, to say the least.

Evan once again suggested a race, and unlike Artemisia, Beatrix immediately jumped at it, and the two were soon streaking through the sky at nearly 1500 m/s.

They dashed across the plains (butchering every living thing in their path), soared over the mountain range (bifurcating every airborne entity they flew above), and crossed the barren expanse (decapitating every organism they passed by) before gradually slowing down near the edge of a forest that oozed unease.

Twisted trees stood before them, their trunks coiled in dark, slithering vines that crept along the ground like something alive.

“Damn, it’s actually the evil forest,” Evan muttered.

“The what now?”

“The Evil Forest. From Dead Evil. It’s this movie about five uh, friends, who thought spending a weekend in a cabin deep in the woods was a great idea. Naturally, they end up getting hunted by the friendly neighbourhood demons living there.”

He gave a brief rundown of the movie, and Beatrix blinked before replying,

“…that doesn’t sound smart.”

“Of course it doesn’t. They were all fucking dumb, I tell you.

I could barely sit through the movie. Their idiocy was one thing, but what really threw me off was when one of them got assaulted by a possessed tree.”

Evan visibly shuddered at the memory, and his retelling made both girls’ expressions turn sour.

“That scene alone got the movie banned in a bunch of countries. But the geniuses in mine decided not banning it was somehow the right call… so yeah, I ended up encountering that abomination.”

As he spoke, he took out a chair from his inventory, set it down, and sat before turning to the two girls, both now giving him confused looks.

“What?”

“What do you mean ‘What?’ Aren’t we going?” Beatrix asked.

Evan looked at her, then at the forest, then back again before responding,

“After everything I just told you… do you really think I’d walk into that forest on my own two legs?”

At that, both Artemisia and Beatrix facepalmed in perfect sync.

“Dude, it was just a movie. And I’m pretty sure you’re strong enough to wipe out anything in that forest anyway.”

Evan thought back to the Infernal Archdevil he’d encountered the day before, then shook his head.

“Nahhh. Not risking it. Besides, Arthur’s already on the other side, so we might as well just wait for him to—oh, sHIT!!”

Evan suddenly cursed mid-sentence, sprang up, and grabbed his chair, shouting to the two girls while he moved.

“Both of you, get the fuck outta there, now!”

Though they were confused, the alarm in Evan’s voice was genuine, and they didn’t need long to understand why.

The ground suddenly trembled, and then a massive pillar of crimson-silver light blasted out from the forest canopy, punching through the clouds above.

In the next moment, it fell forward, cleaving through everything in its path and reducing it all to nothing.

Trees, blackened earth, and even the eerie mist that clung to the forest were all obliterated by the devastating slash of destruction energy that carved a straight path through the woods.

Artemisia and Beatrix stood blinking in stunned silence, while Evan simply shook his head and lowered himself back into his seat with a sigh.

“Well then, how about we take a seat and wait?”

He gestured to the two extra chairs he had just pulled from his inventory, and without a word, the girls quietly followed suit.

A distant sonic boom soon reached their ears, and moments later, a familiar figure zoomed along the freshly carved path at hypersonic speed, reaching them in seconds.

Sure enough, it was Arthur, with a dizzy-looking Hibiki floating beside him.

“Told ya.”

“Oh wow, it was actually Arthur,” Beatrix muttered, still processing the fact that the forest had just been nuked into a straight line.

“Indeed, it is I, my fair lady.”

Arthur dropped Hibiki, who wobbled slightly, still dazed from the hypersonic flight. Then, as if on cue, he launched into his usual theatrics, offering Beatrix an overly dramatic bow.

“I have missed you so much.”

Beatrix quickly played along, donning an exaggerated expression of deep yearning.

“I feel the same, my dearest.

Every moment without you has felt like an eternity, and I’ve longed for your presence for seven endless days and nights.”

Off to the side, Artemisia watched the scene unfold and deadpanned, shaking her head.

“We just got here yesterday.”

She calmly pointed out the reality, bursting their bubble of theatrical longing and earning a pouty glare from Beatrix.

“I know, come on, Arty, why are you being a buzzkill?”

Artemisia just shook her head again, her expression unchanged, as Arthur walked over to Evan with a laugh.

“So, how’s the past 24 hours been?”

He asked, extending a fist, and at this, Evan sighed deeply, leaning back in his chair as he his fist against Arthur’s.

“A fucking whirlwind. One moment I was on a ship, and the next thing I knew, it was blowing up for reasons I still don’t get. Then I wake up on what I thought was an island—but is way too big to be one.”

“Well, technically, it could be a continent by your standards, but this might actually be an island. I mean, we’re in an Apex world, and Apex worlds are ridiculously large.”

When Arthur said that, Evan raised a brow.

“So we’re really in an apex world, huh?”

“Yep. How’s the gravity holding up for you?” Arthur confirmed with a nod, then crossed his arms as he asked.

Evan scoffed in response, shaking his head.

“Not gonna lie, it was a hassle at first. I spent the first 30 minutes trying to figure out how to walk properly.”

Of course, that was an exaggeration. It hadn’t actually taken him that long, but it had still taken him noticeably more time than it usually did to adjust to other planets’ gravities since they were all less than that of this Apex Planet.

“Looks like you’ve got the hang of it now,” Arthur noted.

Evan nodded at this, then gestured towards Artemisia.

“Don’t forget, Artemisia gave me a handy ability that helps me adapt faster so that definitely sped things up.”

Arthur nodded again, his gaze drifting to Artemisia and Beatrix. He didn’t even need to ask before Artemisia, ever perceptive, replied.

“It’s not our first time in an Apex world, so adapting was easier for us.”

Arthur gave another nod, then turned back to Evan.

“Your level seems to have spiked a bit.”

“Yeah, man. Considering I’ve only been here less than two days, my level’s jumped a fair bit. The amount of EXP the monsters here give is insane.”

Beatrix and Artemisia nodded in agreement, having already taken full advantage of this world’s boosted EXP. They’d cleared out every monster horde they encountered on the way here, grinding their levels as high as they could.

“When Artemisia and I met up with Beatrix earlier, she said she tested those cultivation techniques we got from the guys on Denerth. The results were… well, crazy.”

Right after Evan spoke, Beatrix, the subject of his statement, cut in, her eyes lighting up as she shouted.

“Crazy crazy! That’s how I managed to gather enough energy to teleport toward Arty and Evan.”

Arthur listened, unsurprised. Cultivators always performed better in energy-rich environments, and this Apex world clearly qualified.

“I tried out the technique, and I nearly overloaded myself with energy. The repeated teleportations? Those were to burn off the excess so I didn’t explode or something.”

As Beatrix explained, Hibiki, who had remained quiet until then, finally stood up, still slightly out of breath as she spoke.

“That’s because you didn’t circulate it properly. You must’ve missed some key paths in your energy circulation.”

“I missed something?”

Beatrix blinked in surprise, and Hibiki gave a small nod.

“You didn’t circulate the energy well enough. That’s why your body absorbed more than it could handle.”

Artemisia, who had already come to the same conclusion earlier, added with a nod.

“That’s exactly what I told her.”

Arthur and Evan watched the girls get caught up in their discussion on energy control before turning to each other, and Evan finally voiced the question that had been bothering him since they ended up in this world.

“So, Arthur… what do you think really happened?”

Evan vividly remembered the overwhelming concentration of law energies just before the white light consumed everything—and then, nothing.

Now, he wanted clarity on what had really happened from someone he guessed would have more answers.

After a few moments, Arthur finally responded matter-of-factly.

“That thing blew our ship to smithereens.”

“Yeah, I figured that much,” Evan muttered, nodding. He’d already come to the same conclusion.

Arthur continued, “But here’s the thing: before the explosion could kill us all, I think we were sucked through the destroyed space.”

Evan’s eyes narrowed as he went silent, turning over the theory in his mind. Figuring he had something in mind, Arthur asked.

“What do you think?”

The Rogue Hero sighed then leaned forward.

“I agree with you, Arthur. Right before it all went black, I felt two distinct forces pulling at me.

The first one was you dragging me toward you, but the second… something else pulled me through space.”

Arthur watched him closely as Evan’s voice shifted to a serious tone.

“It was the same kind of force as Eon Sunder Regressio.”

Knowing exactly what that was, Arthur’s expression darkened, his eyes narrowing.

The girls, who had turned their attention to the two after sensing the sudden shift in mood, blinked in confusion. Naturally, none of them knew what ‘Eon Sunder Regressio’ was.

Beatrix, in particular, quietly made a mental note to ask her parents about it later, whenever they finally managed to get out of there.

And just like that, without realizing it, Evan had triggered the chain of events that would eventually lead Beatrix to learn about the spell she’d one day use to send him back in time—bringing him to the moment they were now living through.

Unaware that he’d just fulfilled yet another major point of the paradox he was caught up in, Evan responded to Arthur’s question of “How many survivors have you seen?”

“We’ve encountered a fair number of survivors,” Evan replied almost instantly. “Considering the size of that explosion, it feels like too many made it out alive.”

At Evan’s response, Arthur’s mind immediately went to work, forming a theory.