Reincarnated Hero System

There was a loud boom as the sound barrier shattered, caused by a streak of white-gold light tearing through the clouds at a speed imperceptible to the ordinary eye.

By the time the masses on the ground, monsters and sentient humanoids alike, registered the sound, the one responsible was already long gone, kilometres away.

But those strong enough to perceive the figure flying through the sky saw a massive white dragon, head to tail spanning around 20 meters, with a single pair of broad white wings stretching roughly 40 meters across.

This dragon was naturally our resident Rogue Hero, Evan, currently conducting a field test of his newly acquired powers while heading toward Artemisia and Beatrix to meet up with them.

After a few minutes of high-speed flight, Evan reverted to his base humanoid form, free-falling from the clouds as he opened the Reincarnated Hero System interface to review the completed calculations.

He had asked the system to use the same function that calculated his Stat Boosts and Damage Bonuses to categorize the enhancements he now received in his upgraded dragon forms, in order to understand the scope of the improvements.

Previously, his Draconic Human/Half-Dragon form granted him a flat 10% boost to his Strength, Durability and Agility Stats.

Now, those boosts had increased slightly.

|Half-Dragon Form Stat Boosts;

Strength: +12.5%

Agility: +12.5%

Durability: +12.5%.|

Upon assuming his newly acquired Full Dragon Form, his stats improved further, though not uniformly across the board. His Strength and Durability saw a significant boost, but his Agility decreased, and there were new boosts to Intelligence and Health.

|Full Dragon Form Stat Adjustments;

Health: +10%

Strength: +22.5%

Agility: – 15%

Durability: +22.5%

Intelligence: +10%.|

Evan wasn’t too surprised by these numbers. He understood that his full Dragon Form, being significantly bulkier, would sacrifice agility for raw power and defence.

Also understandable, was the absence of any boost to his Energy stat. These stat boosts weren’t coming out of thin air, after all.

They were fuelled by his energy reserves, so they actually drained his energy instead.

His draconic human form consumed a flat 2.5% of his max energy to activate, and additional energy was consumed to sustain the boosted stats. His Full Dragon form did the same, only doubled.

The energy cost would have been a major issue, if not for the fact that his Dragon Heart’s Energy regeneration efficiency had also improved in his Full Dragon form. As a result, he was passively replenishing Energy almost as fast as it was being consumed to sustain the transformation.

That said, this only covered passive maintenance. Any other skills or abilities Evan activated in that form still consumed Energy as usual.

Moreover, he discovered that he couldn’t use certain abilities at all in his full Dragon form. Specifically, those that required the anatomy or motion of a humanoid body.

‘It has both boons and banes as expected…’

After completing his calculations, Evan closed the Reincarnated Hero System interface, then assumed his half-dragon form, spread his wings, and right before he hit the ground, flapped them hard, launching himself back into the sky and heading in the direction of Artemisia and Beatrix, whose locations he’d confirmed earlier.

His movements were too fast for the group that had been trailing him for the past few days to keep up. They were maintaining a wide enough distance so Evan wouldn’t detect them, but that same distance made it nearly impossible to keep up whenever he suddenly accelerated like this.

Occasionally, they completely lost track of him, forced to move blindly across dozens of kilometres before finding him again, sometimes atop a mountain, other times in the middle of a remote forest.

They couldn’t understand how, despite their perception skills, Evan continued to vanish from their senses.

The reason, of course, was Lethe.

Each time Evan rose above the clouds, he activated Lethe, disappearing from nearly all forms of perception, and only deactivated it when he descended to rest or make a light snack for himself.

Now was one of those times.

The moment he rose above the clouds, Lethe activated, confirming that there were no existences within range who had any awareness of him.

Then, he dropped just below the clouds and continued his flight through the air, heading towards the two girls.

It had been 2 days since his battle with Azzonnin, the Soul Devil who had tried to steal his body.

That fight had left him completely exhausted. His soul had been damaged, and though that damage had since healed, his physical body still needed rest.

He spent the following day recovering his strength, making sure to use his Mystic Eyes frequently so the operation efficiency of his newly regenerated eye return to normal.

Then, he began testing his new and improved dragon transformations, leading to the current scene of him dashing through the sky at supersonic speeds.

When he checked Track Down earlier in the morning, he noticed that Artemisia and Beatrix had reunited. More accurately, Beatrix had made her way to where Artemisia had already been.

With that, Evan set off in their direction, to regroup, exchange information, and decide on their next steps.

◇　◇　◇

Though the journey was fairly straightforward, it still took Evan until evening to reach the region where the girls were, mostly because he occasionally stopped and rested to recover the energy he was expending on flight, just in case an unexpected fight broke out.

There were no such interruptions along the way, and by the time the sky had started to darken, he’d reached the area.

But instead of heading straight to them, Evan made a last-minute detour.

This was, of course, because he’d spotted a small devil outpost from above, one of the many scattered across the continent.

He had flown past several others earlier, but since he’d been focused on moving forward, he hadn’t paid much attention to the ground and ended up missing them.

Now that he’d slowed down and drawn closer to the ground, he finally took notice of one and decided to drop by.

Naturally, the sudden descent of a five-ton dragon into the middle of their camp was not part of the Infernal Devils’ daily expectations.

It would honestly have been much stranger if that wasn’t the case.

Regardless, between having an Infernal Devil disguise herself as a spirit and approach him on Day 1, likely with shady intentions, being attacked by a group of Infernal Devils and dragons on Day 3, being attacked by a Soul Devil trying to steal his body on Day 4, Evan didn’t exactly have a favourable impression of the devils on this planet.

So, he chose a rather aggressive way to get the information he needed from this group of devils.

He descended directly into the middle of their camp in his full dragon form, his Intimidation skill on full blast.

There were only about two dozen infernal devils stationed here, and like many others across the continent, they had disguised themselves as spirits.

With Evan’s sudden descent, and the destruction energy pouring off him, instinctual terror immediately gripped them all.

Looking them over, he spoke with a calm but threatening tone.

“Don’t move, or die.”

Two simple options.

And then, continuing in the same tone, he added, “Now then, you will give me the answers I require.

Exactly why do you disguise yourselves as spirits? Is it some kind of infiltration strategy? A tactic to earn others’ trust and lower their guard? Or is there some deeper arrangement between you devils and the spirits on this planet?”

As he spoke, one of the infernal devils, the one who had been the quickest to react to his sudden descent, gripped his spear tightly.

Though his legs were visibly trembling, he gritted his teeth and let out a harsh roar, trying to drown out the fear building in his chest.

He charged at Evan, still shouting as if to summon the strength to resist, but he never even made it halfway across the space.

Faster than he could even think, Evan’s tail moved, piercing clean through his back, ripping out his heart and hosting his lifeless body into the air.

And then, still as calm as ever, Evan turned to the others and asked again.

“Now then, are you going to answer my questions, or are you going to choose death?”

But before he could even finish speaking, the rest of the devils charged at him while shouting defiant cries, firing magic spells and skills.

Sighing, Evan murmured, “So you have chosen death, then.”

With that, he opened his mouth and unleashed a torrent of flames that turned the camp to ashes in an instant.

Stepping out of the fire and brushing soot from his shirt, was Evan, who had reverted to his humanoid form.

But before he could take another step forward, the space in front of him distorted, and a figure came crashing into him with enough force to knock him off his feet and send him to the ground.

“EVANNN!!!”

On this part of this planet, there were only two people close enough to greet him in such a manner, and of the two, only Beatrix would tackle him to the ground in the middle of scorched ruins.

She immediately began patting his body down from head to toe, as though trying to confirm that every piece of him was still in place. The relief on her face when she realized he was unhurt was very visible.

It was a stark contrast to their previous reunion, because unlike back then, when the spaceship had exploded, everything happened too fast for anyone to make heads or tails of the situation, but this time, it had clearly been a planned attempt on their lives by a group of Infernal Devils, and they still had no idea why.

What worried Beatrix more was the consequences of that last dragon’s attack, which had interrupted her teleportation at the last split-second.

She understood better than most just how dangerous interrupted teleportation could be. For those in the middle of being teleported, the risk of falling into a broken spatial channel or being swept into a spatial storm was high, and if that happened, the damage could be catastrophic.

Evan had fallen into a broken spatial channel and came dangerously close to being swallowed by a spatial storm.

It had been even worse for Beatrix since she was the one who cast the spell. She had already been pushed to her limits at the time, so the backlash from the interference had nearly crippled her.

For the first day after their separation, she could barely move. It was only after recovering a bit of magic power and using her Light of Restoration skill that she could regain enough strength to properly search her Inventory for healing items.

Artemisia hadn’t come out unscathed either. Though her condition was less severe than Beatrix’s, she still suffered her share of injuries from the incident.

However, Artemisia was the type who liked to mod her body, and in the past, she had given herself the regenerative abilities of several monsters. Thanks to that, her arm, which had been bent in an odd direction, along with the various cuts and tears caused by unstable spatial energy, had all healed cleanly. Now, she looked nearly fully recovered, save for a few scars that would fade with time.