Reincarnated Hero System

‘Wait a sec…what if ‘Cavern of the Frozen Harbinger’ is the true name of Harbinger of Ice’s pre-set bounded field?’

That thought suddenly sprouted in Evan’s mind, but the gryphon gave him no time to dwell on it as it roared, unleashing a devastating ice breath towards Evan.

The force of the breath sent him skidding back a hundred meters, his feet gouging deep trenches in the ground. The icy breath obliterated everything in its path, freezing monsters and structures alike.

When the icy dust settled, Evan stood unscathed amidst the frozen carnage.

‘Oh my, looks like I have no choice but to use flames.’

Evan knew that using ice against an ice monster would only prolong the battle unnecessarily, as such, he decided to use Mesarthim, restricting its power to RED flames alone.

But first, he made a show of activating his ‘Frozen Inferno,’ to mislead that person into thinking his sudden use of flames stemmed from that skill.

“Frozen Inferno: Frostfire Blast.”

Raising his palm, he unleashed a simple energy blast…with the power to flatten a small mountain.

The blast struck the gryphon in a second, obliterating half its torso and its right wing. However, the gryphon’s flesh bubbled and reformed grotesquely, and before it could fall to the ground, it regenerated the damage and flapped its wings, taking to the sky again.

“Regeneration?! Is that a skill?!”

Evan quickly appraised the gryphon, and his mood turned sour just as quickly when he saw that its regeneration was not the result of a skill it possessed.

“Tsk…”

He clicked his tongue in irritation, only to realise that the Artificial Monster summoner had disappeared while he was distracted by the gryphon.

‘Track Down.’

Activating his skill, Evan spotted the monster and kicked off the ground, bounding across rooftops in pursuit. He condensed icy energy around his fist and launched it forward, freezing everything in his path.

Just as he prepared to deliver the final blow, the gryphon swooped down from the sky, attacking with its beak.

The gryphon’s beak shattered his ice and split the earth, creating a massive fissure that divided the road in two. Evan leapt to avoid it, creating a foothold with Void Step before activating his intimidation skill.

[?!]

The gryphon flinched instinctively, and in that brief moment, Evan blinked and teleported to where the monster summoner was. His fist connected with the summoner’s jaw, cracking bones and spilling black blood onto the ground.

Yet, the punch wasn’t enough to finish the job.

Evan wasn’t surprised, as he had long since discovered that the monster had buffs to enhance its vitality, so he unhesitatingly swirled flames and ice around his fist, throwing another punch at its skull.

In the split second before his punch landed, a hazy black entity shot out from the cracks in a nearby building’s wall and slipped into the gap between his fist and the monster’s face, transforming into a shield that absorbed over 70% of the power.

The remaining 30% was enough to destroy its flesh and spill blood, but it wasn’t enough to kill the monster and only knocked it into a building.

‘What was that? It felt like punching a cushion?’

Evan wanted to chase after the monster again, but the gryphon was hot on his tail, firing countless icy spears which he was forced to evade.

The monster roared and swiped at Evan with his claws, but he blocked it with the Gazebind Aegis and used a shockwave to blast it away.

Still reeling from the knockback, it wasn’t able to do anything against Evan’s fist that landed on its chest and gouged a hole out.

Evan blinked to its back, stomping on it and activating Collapse on the monster’s body. Its feathers were blasted off and its flesh was ripped apart, revealing its bones which Evan grabbed and ripped off.

[KIRAYAAKKK!!!!]

Ignoring the screeching gryphon, Evan prepared to use Collapse once more when a mass of icy energy surged from the monster’s body, pushing him off its back and giving it time to heal.

As its wounds regenerated, the monster released another icy breath, but Evan blocked with the Gazebind Aegis and charged at it with flames swirling around his fist.

The monster swung its talons to meet his strike, but Evan’s power was far greater than it could resist. His punch connected, blowing off the monster’s leg in an explosion of ice and blood.

Yet, before the leg even hit the ground, the gryphon’s regenerative abilities kicked in, and a new leg formed almost instantaneously.

The beast swung its other leg at him, but Evan ducked under the swipe and retaliated with a flaming uppercut, sending the gryphon reeling back.

Elemental skewers of fire emerged from the ground, piercing the monster’s wings and pinning it down. The gryphon roared in pain and fury, thrashing about to free itself, managing to break one of them, but Evan had already reached it.

He coated his fists in both flames and ice, delivering a series of rapid punches that cracked the gryphon’s beak and sent shards of ice and embers flying. The devastating combination of extreme temperatures overwhelmed the monster’s ability to regenerate fast enough to keep up with the damage.

“Did you know…if you rapidly heat something up, then rapidly cool it, it becomes brittle?

[KIRAKKK!!]

“Seems you didn’t learn that in Gryphon school!”

The gryphon attempted another icy breath, but Evan raised the Gazebind Aegis, the shield absorbing the brunt of the attack. He followed up by slamming the shield into the monster’s face, dazing it momentarily.

Taking advantage of its disorientation, he summoned another wave of elemental skewers, this time infusing them with both fire and ice, and they pierced its left leg, pinning it in place once more.

The gryphon lashed out desperately with its other leg, but Evan deflected the attack with his shield and countered with a devastating flaming punch that shattered the limb.

Evan jumped in the air and threw a punch to the top of its head, cracking its skull, yet before the second one could land, a black haze slipped in and took the brunt of the damage for the gryphon.

‘It’s that thing again!’

The Hero frowned beneath his mask and landed on the floor, looking around and scanning the area with his aura for the source of the monster’s hidden helper.

‘I should be able to see Incorporeal Entities…but does that only apply to things like dematerialized spirits?

Why the heck can’t I see these damn ghosts?’

The problem wasn’t that Evan didn’t know what was interfering, but that he couldn’t see them.

Meanwhile, the gryphon, realising that Evan wasn’t an opponent it could beat currently, sought to gain more power.

It turned around and beat its wings, taking to the skies and heading in the direction where most monsters and adventurers were congregated.

Without hesitation, it swooped down from the sky and opened its large beak, ripping off the head of one monster, before proceeding to attack the adventurer it was fighting.

“Dude, Over here!”

The compulsion effect in Evan’s words forced the gryphon, along with nine other monsters, to turn their heads towards him.

“I only wanted 1 but I got 9 extras. Skewers for you guys. Some lightning too.”

Evan activated his skills as he spoke, sending a mass of lightning hopping around from monster to monster while spears of Frostfire light emerged from below and riddled their bodies with holes.

He dashed towards the gryphon, activating Kayla’s Electroflame on its body, before throwing a punch with his Fracture skill activated.

The lightning on Evan’s fist hit the monster’s side at the same time the lightning from Electroflame, with the two energies combining and distorting the air before flashing back for a second impact that destroyed its wings and a huge chunk of its torso.

Blood spilt on the ground as the monster was knocked through ruined buildings, nearly crushing a few adventures in the process. Luckily, Master Levels were tanky enough to survive a few buildings to the face so they didn’t die.

“Can I take the kill on this one?”

Eliza, seated on one of her Divergent Wards, floated over to Evan’s side and asked. In response, Evan bowed and gestured for her to have at it.

“Thanks.”

Recently, Eliza had encountered Tisha Zylwenys, the gravity mage whom they had met in Cheverton two years ago and she had received a crash course on gravity magic.

Fusing her gravity powers with her life magic, Eliza had unlocked an Ultra-Rare skill that Evan did not hesitate to Mimic.

“I’ve been wanting to test out this skill.”

With those words, Eliza held out her hand towards the monster and spoke the skill’s activation words.

“Gravilife Convergence.”

Magic flowed from her body and formed a vortex of gravity, drawing in nearby monsters, as well as the gryphon which was regenerating from the damage Evan dealt to it.

“No regeneration allowed.”

Eliza released a pulse of life energy with her declaration, sealing any and all regenerative abilities within a kilometre radius of her position.

The gryphon panicked when its wounds stopped healing, and it tried to flap its wings to fly away, but the gravitational force pulling it was too strong for it to resist in its wounded state.

Suddenly, the ground beneath it caved open a massive fist of stone erupted from the ground, seizing the gryphon in an unbreakable grip.

Ensnared by the earthly fist, the gryphon was subjected to an overwhelming pressure that crushed its body and drained its life force. What’s more, it was afflicted with the ‘Withered’ debuff, making it leak out life energy which Eliza absorbed and used to apply more buffs on the nearby adventurers.

The monster couldn’t even thrash around, twitching silently as its life was drained away.

To finish the work, Eliza snapped her fingers and used her Child of Life’s Unhealing.

All the wounds Evan had dealt to it over the course of their fight, which it had previously regenerated, were suddenly reopened. Its flesh ruptured and blood spurted out into the air, creating a gruesome scene as the gryphon died instantly from the accumulated damage.

[Level Up]

‘I didn’t even get to use Lethality Manipulation. Oh well…’

Eliza shrugged and turned around, gazing in the direction Evan had run off to just in time to witness an eruption of magic power as a giant wyvern took to the skies.

‘Didn’t he kill the summoner?’

Her internal question mirrored the very actions Evan was carrying out at that same moment.

Evan grabbed the monster summoner by its jaw, slamming its head down on the ground and dragging it across the road and carving trenches out in the ground.

He slammed the back of its head into a wall, pulling it back and turning it around before slamming its face into the same wall. Following up, Evan stomped on its back, activating Limit Break and Adamantine Might.

With uncanny arm strength, Evan ripped the monster’s head right off its neck and then froze it, before shattering the ice into a thousand pieces.

As the ice crumbled, the soul of the monster materialized before his eyes—a grotesque mass of numerous orbs fused together, all shining with an ominous black light. This soul flew directly towards the wyvern it had summoned before its death.