Reincarnated Hero System

“We are NOT fighting that!”

Before his words could even echo, the creature slammed its fist into the ground with terrifying force. The impact unleashed a wave of divinity that surged through the earth, causing it to rumble ominously.

Evan’s danger sense spiked again, this time from below. He acted fast, jumping into the air and pulling the two girls with him onto a hastily formed Void Step platform.

A split second later, they heard a terrible noise that sounded like a zipper being ripped off its track and the ground beneath them deformed, warping into jagged, tooth-like rocks that spun violently, shredding everything in their path.

The small plant Artemisia had been holding moments ago was caught in the spinning maw and pulverized instantly.

“HA…HAAAAAUUGH!”

A deep, mournful groan rose from the monstrous earth itself, echoing like a lament for the meal it had lost.

Evan jumped off the void step platform he was standing on and activated Harbinger of Ice, freezing the jagged deformed mass on the ground, turning it crystalline and cold in a second.

Then he snapped his fingers, detonating the frozen ground into a thousand razor-sharp shards and the creature stumbled, its body reacting as though it had taken a direct hit.

It stumbled, but didn’t fall. Not even close.

The three of them landed on the floor, and just as Beatrix summoned her weapon, Evan grabbed her hand and spoke, his voice subconsciously laced with his Intimidation Skill’s power.

“Did you not hear me the first time? We are NOT fighting that!”

She looked at him, eyes wide with confusion, but didn’t resist. Correction, she couldn’t resist as he forced her weapon down.

Evan’s danger sense was blaring alarms in his head that fighting this thing right now would NOT end well. He could sense the amount of energy it possessed now that it had released its divinity and it was clear as day that he possessed more energy than it.

Sure, that didn’t guarantee him being inherently stronger, but it was a very huge factor.

He was with both Artemisia and Beatrix and even with them taken into the calculation, Danger Sense was still blaring an alarm that fighting it right now was a bad idea.

This meant that there was something that was missing. Despite it seeming like a creature that he could overpower if he went all out, he might not be able to kill it, and he might even suffer great damage.

Time Difference activated and his perception of the world around him slowed to a crawl as his thought speed spiked.

Immediately, Evan began thinking of the possibilities.

‘Could it be faster than it looks? No. Compared to us, its movements are sluggish…

Then does it have another form? Could It transform into something even more dangerous?’

The creature was too malformed, too broken. Whatever divinity had warped it, it didn’t seem like it was about to transform into something more dangerous. At least not physically.

‘Something else… knowledge. It’s what I don’t know that’s the threat.’

There was something that he didn’t know about and that thing was the real danger here.

His realization snapped into place just as the creature roared again, its guttural scream reverberating through the trees.

It charged, its massive hands tearing through the dense forest like it was made of paper. Twigs and branches exploded in all directions, scattering like debris from a wreckage.

The flaps of its skin still attached to his face, squished and squashed with every movement that it made.

Evan wanted to fly away, but they were still within a labyrinthine forest, so using his wings would do more harm than good in this situation.

The monster’s fist slammed into the ground again, and another surge of divine energy coursed through the earth.

The ground beneath them began to shift, contorting into grotesque shapes. Teeth-like rocks jutted from the ground, gnashing as they tore the earth apart, ripping through the once lush greenery like it was nothing.

This time, Evan didn’t need to pull Artemisia and Beatrix. They instinctively jumped high up in the air and avoided the danger.

Evan pushed his hand forward and fired an energy blast, shattering the deforming earth below, and as expected, the creature recoiled, its body taking on the backlash damage. But this time, it didn’t stagger or slow down and kept running towards them with reckless abandon.

Its divinity bubbled up on its wounds and they were mended in an instant, a sight that made Evan curse out loud.

“Fuck… it can regenerate. Perfect!”

Then the monster clenched its fists again, and just when they expected that it was going to throw its fists to the ground, it punched the air instead.

Its punch caused the air to warp, twist and distort as a violent vortex of wind began to form, bending the tall trees and snapping them like twigs while ripping the earth from the ground and sucking them all into the growing whirlwind.

The force of it grabbed at them, dragging them toward the spiralling vortex and despite their strength, the three teenagers found it hard to resist.

And at the core of it all was a dense column of wind so fierce it shredded everything in its path.

Evan gritted his teeth, summoning his sword and thrust it forward, using his own Vortex to counter the creature’s.

The two forces collided with a deafening explosion and the impact threw both them and the monster backwards, tearing apart the ground between them.

On the good side, it created more distance between them and the monster.

But before Evan or the others could take advantage of that distance, the creature had already flipped back onto its feet, landing upright and slamming its fists into the earth again.

The ground beneath them erupted into jagged, spinning stones—another deadly trap ready to tear them apart.

They leapt just in time, narrowly avoiding being shredded by the stone spikes that churned the ground beneath them like some monstrous blender. The jagged rocks screamed as they spun, just missing their legs as they vaulted through the air.

But there was no time to rest.

As they were in mid-air, the creature punched the air and unleashed its wind vortex again. This time, it aimed to knock them off course, to drag them back into the churning grinder below.

Beatrix immediately commanded the world around them to freeze, and everything went still—the vortex, the spinning rocks, even the dust hung motionless in the air.

All three jumped away, landing on solid ground just as time resumed and the sound of the wind roared back to life.

However, they were out of its deadly grasp and the two attacks—spinning earth and ripping wind—collided where they had just been, missing them by a hair’s breadth.

Evan clicked his tongue and tightened his grip on his sword. He still didn’t want to fight this thing, but the situation left him no choice. The creature clearly wasn’t going to relent.

He teleported halfway across the distance between him and the monster, before using Space Warp to cover the remaining distance.

As he materialized right in front of it, golden spatial attributed magic burst from his body, slamming into the monster and sending it reeling.

Then he thrust his blade forward, unleashing a point-blank Icy Vortex. The freezing wind wrapped around the monster’s flesh, hardening it into brittle ice as it crashed into the trees with a sickening thud.

Artemisia’s fingers snapped, and lightning speared down from the sky, crashing into the beast with a deafening crack. At the same moment, Beatrix summoned glowing spears of light from the ground, which shot upward and impaled the creature’s body.

It should have been enough to stop it—any normal enemy would’ve been shredded.

But this thing wasn’t normal.

The monster roared, unfazed as it clenched its fists and in the next breath, it launched multiple swirling wind vortexes directly at them.

The invisible attack whipped past Evan as he avoided it and it hit the ground, drilling a gaping chasm in the earth, so deep that the bottom was lost to shadow.

He ignored the devastation and teleported right behind it, his sword aimed for its neck.

The blade came down fast and hard, but just before impact, a violent gust of wind swelled around the creature, forming a wind barrier that blocked his strike mid-swing.

Beatrix’s hand shot out, and her spatial power flooded into Evan’s sword, making his blade phase through the wind barrier and reach the monster’s neck.

But instead of the satisfying slice of severed flesh, his sword barely scratched its hide. The impact reverberated through his arms, but the thick skin held firm. It wasn’t even a wound—just a dull thud.

He’d failed to do any visible damage despite actually being serious about that strike!

The monster then twisted its body and threw its massive left fist towards him, but Evan teleported out of its trajectory, then reappeared in that same spot and slashed at its arm.

The moment his sword made contact, a portion of the monster’s arm turned to stone, solidifying under his strike.

Evan created a void step in the air and spun on his heel, flames igniting around his leg as he delivered a fiery kick that shattered the stoned limb. The monster’s arm snapped off cleanly, the heavy chunk of stone and flesh crashing to the ground with a grotesque splatter of blood.

“NGUAAARRRGGHHH!!”

The creature roared in response and the shockwave that followed tore through the forest, uprooting trees and sending debris flying. Evan teleported away in the nick of time, barely escaping the blast as it tore through the space he had just occupied.

When Evan reappeared, what he saw made his breath catch in his throat.

The monster used its right hand to rip off the remaining stump of its left arm, and before his eyes, the flesh twisted and melded with the muscles reknitting themselves in a grotesque display of uncanny regeneration.

“What the actual fuck?”

Evan cursed, unable to hide his shock and beside him, Artemisia and Beatrix shared his alarm.

The one they had fought the day before hadn’t been able to regenerate like this. This was something entirely different, and whatever this abomination was, it was far beyond what they’d encountered yesterday.

And if this one was different, there could be more.