Reincarnated Hero System

“The prophetess is our—”

Just as the spirit began to speak, his body suddenly froze. His pupils dilated, and the colour of his irises nearly disappeared, leaving his eyes glassy and unfocused.

The moment this happened, Beatrix unhesitatingly withdrew her spear and stabbed it straight through his torso. Its tip pierced between his lungs, through several organs, and burst out through his back.

“…” “…”

Both Evan and Artemisia, who had already turned their weapons toward him the moment he froze, also froze and stared at Beatrix.

Returning their stares, Beatrix spoke with a shrug, “What? I mean, he can’t really do much with a damaged body, can he?”

Evan lowered his sword, retracting the flames that engulfed it as he laughed.

“…yeah, you’re absolutely right. Nice one, Beatrix.”

His grey irises seemed to shimmer as he gazed at the spirit now down on his knees, clutching the spear pierced through his stomach.

“Like she said, you can’t do much with a body that’s on the verge of death.”

Then, stepping forward, Evan reached down and grabbed the spirit’s head, lifting it to meet his gaze. “I suppose you, Mr. Possessor, are one of those Transcendent Elder Spirits he mentioned earlier?”

That single line explained everything that had just happened.

The talking spirit’s eyes had glazed over because someone had attempted to possess him. Noticing this, Beatrix acted instantly, damaging the body severely enough that even if the intruder had strange powers, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish much with a dying vessel.

Evan didn’t know how she realised a possession was taking place, but he found out through a combination of factors.

One, Danger Sense began blaring the same low alarm it always gave whenever a Transcendent was nearby.

Transcendents didn’t even need to act for Evan’s skill to recognize them as threats. Their mere existence within range was enough of a threat to him.

Also, Evan, as Prisma, had dealt with possession before, enough to recognize the signs almost instantly. That experience let him immediately identify what was happening and make an accurate guess.

But the moment he realized that the only reason he had caught it so quickly was because of his memories as Prisma, he froze.

‘Wait…are Prisma’s memories starting to blend with mine?’

A moment later, he realised this wasn’t the case.

‘Ah, I get it now. Whenever I go through the Prisma book, even if I’m just skimming, the contents sometimes stick. This must be one of those times.

I’ll have to be careful from now on.’

Those thoughts lasted only a second, and then he turned his gaze to the spirit now possessed, who stared back at him in surprise. The spirit’s once plain brown eyes had turned into a vivid green.

Evan met that gaze calmly and said, “Now then, Mr. Transcendent. Since you’ve gone through all this trouble to join us, would you mind picking up where your host left off?”

He tightened his grip slightly and added, “Why don’t you tell us about this prophetess of yours?”

At Evan’s words, the spirit blinked and glanced around, his eyes widening in visible shock the moment he saw the other seven spirits around him.

The situation was far, far worse than he had imagined.

The spirits had told him they were about to approach Evan, Artemisia, and Beatrix, and he had been expecting feedback. But when nothing came, and his attempts to contact them failed, he figured something must have gone wrong. So, he tried possessing one of them to assess the situation directly.

However, the moment his consciousness entered the body, he realized it had already been damaged, and badly. The only reason he wasn’t currently on the ground convulsing in pain was because Beatrix had suspended the body’s condition in time.

But that also meant she held the spirit’s life in the palm of her hand. The moment she lifted the time stop, the damage from her earlier strike would resume, and the spirit would die within minutes.

As the possessor quickly made that assessment, Evan’s voice came again.

“Silent, are you? Oh well, there are still seven more of you. I can always get my answers from the others. By the time I kill one or two, the rest will start talking.”

The moment those words left Evan’s mouth, the possessed spirit snapped upright and cried out, “Wait! Please calm yourself, boy with distorted time!”

But the instant he said that phrase, his vision blurred.

The body’s senses weren’t sharp enough, so by the time he registered the movement, Evan’s hand was already clamped around his throat.

Destruction energy flooded Evan’s palm, not only corroding the body but bleeding into the fragment of the possessor’s consciousness that had entered it.

Evan’s face remained calm, but the coldness in the air around him was suffocating.

“What did you just say?¬|

His grip tightened, cutting off the spirit’s breath, and seeing this, Artemisia stepped forward.

“Hold on, Evan. We won’t get any information from him if you kill him.”

She reached out and grabbed his wrist to pull his hand away, but the moment she made contact, something jolted through her, and she instinctively recoiled, staring down at her palm in shock.

Evan, finding sense in her words, let go of the spirit’s neck. “You’re right. Killing him now would be pointless.”

Then, noticing Artemisia’s expression, he turned to her. “What’s wrong? Wait… did my destruction energy touch you?”

“Huh? No, it didn’t,” Artemisia replied quickly, then moved her hand behind her back, almost reflexively. She didn’t even know why she did it.

Her mind replayed the reaction she had just experienced when she touched Evan’s arm.

She’d felt it before. It was the same feeling she’d gotten whenever Arthur used his Progenitor powers during their experiments. Both of them had done various tests with his powers before, so she recognized it instantly.

But why was she getting that same feeling from Evan?

For a moment, her thoughts flashed back to the conversation the three of them had over breakfast, when Evan had insisted he wasn’t a draconic human.

Her eyes widened as a new realization struck her.

‘No way… right?’

She didn’t want to believe the theory that had just formed in her mind. It felt too far-fetched. But still… what if it wasn’t?

Slowly, her gaze returned to Evan, who had just pulled a chair from his inventory and was now seated in front of the kneeling spirit.

“All right. Tell it all. Start from the beginning.”

As Evan commanded him to speak, the spirit gasped, clutching at his throat and wincing from the searing pain where Evan’s grip had burned into his skin, blood trickling slowly from the scorched mark.

‘I don’t know how the situation got like this, but it’s worse than I imagined. If we can’t get him to cooperate, this could end in absolute disaster.

Is there even a way to salvage this?’

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, then looked up and spoke.

“My name is Caeril. I am an Elder of Tír Síorghlas, the Order of Spirits governing this half of the continent of Iohodis.”

Evan raised a brow at his introduction.

“Tir Siglo…?” Evan repeated, then waved his hand dismissively. “No, I’m not going to bother trying to pronounce the name of your… house.

Anyway, if you’re an Elder, then you’re either the one, or one of the group, who sent these guys to stalk me for the past few days, right?”

As he spoke, a small dagger of ice appeared in his hand, which he began to idly spin around his finger.

“That wasn’t very polite of you.”

“…”

Caeril’s gaze dropped to the spinning dagger, then slowly lifted back to Evan. After a brief silence, he finally spoke.

“Our world is at war with the Infernal Devils, though the bulk of the conflict takes place on other continents, as ours lies quite far from them.

However, one of the Infernal Archdevil Commanders eventually turned his attention here. When he arrived, he discovered something, something that, if he managed to claim it, would tip the scales of the war heavily in the devils’ favour.

The Infernal Archdevil Commander I speak of is called Vonun, the Infernal Verdant. He’s the one who led the attack on you and your companions a few days ago.”

The word ‘Verdant’ immediately reminded Evan about the Archdevil with flower-patterned eyes he’d seen with Farsight during the volcano dungeon attack. He was the one who had commanded the black dragon to unleash the final breath attack that destroyed Arthur’s barrier and disrupted Beatrix’s teleportation out of the volcano on the 6th.

He assumed that Archdevil was likely Vonun.

Meanwhile, Artemisia, arms folded across her chest, spoke up.

“You didn’t let the owner of that body finish answering our question. Who is this Prophetess of yours, and how did she know about the attack?”

Caeril took a deep breath before replying.

“The Prophetess is one of the Highest Ranked Spirits in Nature’s Dwelling, the Order of Spirits located on the far side of the Chasm.

She possesses the gift of divination and has long used it to foresee threats to our kind, as well as devise plans by which we may respond to them.

It was she who foresaw your arrival in our world… and it was she who saw the calamity that will come if the Infernal Devils are not stopped.

Her divination is so strong that she can perceive intricate details of the future with remarkable clarity, knowing exactly where someone will be at a specific moment, seeing the hidden interactions between enemy forces, and even manipulating causality itself to avoid the backlash that would normally come from looking too far ahead.

With such overwhelming foresight, she predicted your arrival long before you ever set foot in our world. She also saw that you do not belong to this time period.

And based on everything she witnessed with that incredible power of hers, she gave us a direct order, to earn your cooperation and enlist your help in ending the threat of the Infernal Devils once and for all.”

When he finally wrapped up his long-winded explanation, Evan, now seated with one elbow resting on his knee and his chin balanced on his palm, spoke with a dry tone, “That’s so? Cool power.

Anyway…”

He moved on without fanfare, treating the entire elaborate revelation like it was barely worth a passing thought.

The Elder Spirit blinked in disbelief and interrupted him, “Wait, wait—That’s it?”

“That’s what?” Evan asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

Silence fell as Caeril stared at him, clearly stunned by the complete lack of reaction.

Evan was momentarily puzzled, but then he realized why Caeril was acting that way and scoffed.

“Oh… you thought I was gonna be amazed by her grand divination powers and all that?”

That reaction, or rather, the complete lack of one, was exactly what the Elder Spirit hadn’t expected from Evan.

Ordinarily, when someone hears that a being they’ve never met predicted their location and timing with perfect precision on a planet they’d crashed into by pure accident, the usual responses are shock, awe, suspicion, or wariness.

Most people, upon hearing something like that, would instantly grow wary at the implications, since a person who could foresee them so clearly could also lay traps for them just as easily.

But Evan reacted like someone who had seen a stone lying on the ground on a random Tuesday.

From the way Caeril had spoken, there was an unmistakable trace of pride in his voice. Even amid the tense situation, he couldn’t hide it completely.

Pride in the power of the Prophetess, and pride in the fact that someone like her belonged to his people.

Realising this, Evan just chuckled in amusement.

“Ohhh,” he muttered, like he’d just solved a minor puzzle. “That’s what this is.”

Then, his demeanour suddenly changed, and he leaned in slightly, speaking in a quiet tone.

“Let me let you in on a little secret, little spirit…”

Caeril’s brow twitched at the condescending address, but Evan ignored the reaction and went on.

“You already know I’m from the future, don’t you?

I’m the kind of person who lives with the future shoved in my face every waking second of my life. I wake up knowing what’s coming. I sleep, and I dream about what’s coming.

Heck, I know the future of the entire damn universe for thousands of years to come.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not exactly awed that some ‘great prophetess’ on a random planet, in a random corner of the Infernal Dimension, in just one of countless galaxies, happened to foresee that I’d get into an accident, fall into this dimension, and then sent people to where I would be to rope me into some war against devils I have absolutely no reason to care about.”