Reincarnated Hero System

The man’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he refused to let Evan’s cryptic remarks distract him from the matter at hand.

“Why? You’re a Hero meant to protect your world, are you not? So why would you side with the Gozonians to invade another?!”

By the end of his question, his voice had turned into a near-shout, filled with anger and disbelief.

Evan raised a brow, genuinely confused as to why the man even cared to ask before a fight. In his mind, they’d be trying to kill each other soon enough, so why waste time on pointless chatter?

“You know, you’re not the first guy to ask me this. And like the last guy I have zero replies for you.”

A second passed before realization flashed in Evan’s eyes.

“Ah. I guess that technically counts as a reply.”

He seemed almost amused by his own observation, and his nonchalance made the man’s brows twitch in irritation, but before he could interject, Evan kept talking.

“Anyway, unlike most days, I’m not really in the mood for a talk this time. Can we skip ahead to the part where we start trying to kill each other?”

Though Evan suggested that, his opponent didn’t seem eager to comply.

“Did the Gozonians destroy your planet and force you into servitude?”

“…and now this guy is just randomly assigning me a backstory.”

Evan rolled his eyes as he muttered under his breath, but the man continued speaking, asking question after question.

“Do you now wish to inflict that same destruction upon others?”

At this point, Evan had to intervene.

“Okay, hold up. Why are we even assuming my planet got destroyed in the first place?”

“A Rogue Hero is someone completely severed from their home world. How could you possibly be a ‘Rogue’ if your planet is still intact?”

The quick retort made Evan pause, and he couldn’t deny that the guy had a point. Seeing the hesitation, the man’s eyes lit up as he seized the moment, pushing forward.

“The Gozonians’ rule is one of endless conquest. They bring nothing but destruction, leaving grim futures in their wake. Entire civilizations reduced to ruins, entire cultures wiped away. They take what they want and leave worlds broken.”

He shifted his stance slightly, his gaze softening as he tried to appeal to Evan.

“You must have been forced into this. It’s the only explanation. Whatever binds they’ve placed on you, it doesn’t have to stay that way. The gods can free you from their control.”

The man took a step forward, his tone growing more earnest.

“Join us. Resist the Gozonians and their tyranny. Help us push back against their encroaching rule. You can live here, in our world, and be a true hero again. Protect something worth saving.”

Evan blinked at the man’s impassioned plea, his expression completely deadpan.

“…No.”

The single word hung in the air, its bluntness leaving the man momentarily stunned.

“No??”

He parroted Evan, his confusion evident.

“Why? I’m offering you a chance to—”

Evan stepped forward, and with that movement, BoD’s 2nd Activation’s Destructive Resonance Field expanded outward. The pressure was immediate and suffocating, his aura flaring with the volatile energy of the law of destruction.

“From the moment you brought ‘gods’ into this, you lost me.”

Evan said as he raised his sword, and the man frowned at this. Frustration was evident on his face, and he spat.

“Must it always come down to violence?”

Hearing him, Evan scoffed, raising an eyebrow as though the question itself amused him.

“What are you trying to be? A pacifist? Wrong universe, pal.”

With a light chuckle, Evan continued.

“Being a pacifist in this fucked-up universe only earns you an early grave.”

Sliding his palm across the blade’s edge, Evan ignited it with prismatic flames that danced violently along its length.

“Enough talking. Let’s start trying to kill ourselves, shall we?”

With that, Evan kicked off the ground, the force of his launch tearing apart the terrain beneath him as he dashed forward at supersonic speed.

The man, forced to react quickly, raised his own sword, channelling his ice law energy to brace for the impact.

The collision of their blades sent a shockwave rippling outward, shaking the air and land alike.

As their swords locked, the man prepared for a contest of raw strength. But Evan had no intention of playing that game today.

He activated his shockwave skill, unleashing a sudden burst of force that blew the man backwards. However, his opponent deftly flipped mid-air and landed on his feet with ease.

In the next moment, an array of razor-sharp icicles materialized around the man, launching toward Evan at supersonic speed.

Evan dashed forward, ducking to avoid the first, before leaping to the side to avoid the second. Danger Senese did its usual job and instantly, Evan, twisted his head to avoid the third to sixth ones that pierced the space his head was in a moment ago, with one brushing past his left ear.

Extending his left hand, Evan caught one of them mid-flight, and without killing its momentum, he spun it around in his grip, activating Harbinger of Ice to hijack control of the projectile.

With all of his arm strength, he hurled it back to the sender, forcing the man to cancel his charge and leap aside to avoid the returning projectile, which slammed into the ground where he had stood moments earlier.

It exploded in a burst of frostfire, filling the air with a dense cloud of dust and smoke.

Evan shot forward, cutting through the obscuring haze with his sword thrust ahead. The man, sensing the attack, parried the strike and immediately countered with his own.

In an instant, the two were locked in a high-speed exchange of blades. Their strikes unleashed shockwaves that cleared the lingering smoke and sent deep fissures splintering across the land.

The man delivered a wide slash and Evan ducked to avoid the wave of ice that surged from the blade, before twisting his body to retaliate with a quick upward slash.

His opponent sidestepped in time, countering with a quick thrust aimed at Evan’s ribs, but Evan deflected the blade, spinning on his heel to deliver a slash aimed at the man’s flank.

The man leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding the attack, and launched a flurry of slashes in rapid succession. Evan matched him stroke for stroke, his flames melting both the ice coating the man’s blade and the sand beneath their feet.

Mid-swing, Evan suddenly dropped his sword hand and threw his left fist forward, lightning arcing from his knuckles. The man reacted instantly, angling his blade to block the punch, but Evan activated Blink and vanished.

A split second later, Evan reappeared behind him, his fist slamming into the man’s back. The blow from Evan’s Fracture skill tore through the man’s uniform defences, drawing blood and sending him stumbling forward.

In that moment of contact, Evan used another feature of Bod’s Second Activation; Marked Vulnerability.

| —Marked Vulnerability: The user can mark up to five targets within the field with Destruction Law Energy. Marked targets become increasingly vulnerable to the user’s attacks, their defences eroding with each successive strike. The effect accumulates, causing their resistance to weaken the longer they stay marked.

Note: Marking multiple targets increases the energy cost exponentially and diminishes the erosion effect per target. |

This was a Damage over Time effect just like the Corrosion Blessing McEnda II gave him, and when combined, their effects were ‘horrible’ to put it mildly.

Right after activating it, Evan’s sword came down with lethal intent, but the man reacted in time to erect a thick wall of ice that slowed the blow.

Evan’s blade sliced through the ice with ease, but the momentary delay gave the man enough time to recover and counter. He thrust his sword toward Evan’s head, a strike Evan easily dodged.

The Rogue Hero then grabbed the man’s weapon with his left hand, stopping it cold, and swung his sword with his right.

The man conjured a barrier of ice at his left side to block, but Evan’s sword shattered it like glass. The force of the strike sent the man flying through the air, his body crashing through the battlefield like a meteor.

Evan teleported again, appearing behind the man mid-flight to capitalize on the opening. But the man regained his balance and landed on solid ground, spinning with perfect timing.

As though predicting Evan’s emergence point, he launched a powerful kick that connected squarely with Evan’s torso, sending him rocketing upward.

The man immediately frowned, his leg trembling from the impact. In the split second before Evan’s body was flung away, he swore he heard the boy laugh.

High above, Evan spread his wings, stabilizing himself in mid-air. He looked down at the man, his expression calm, his torso unscathed.

Thanks to his timely activation of Titanium Body, a skill he had taken from David, the kick had done little more than push him away.

Raising his left hand, his eyes gleamed with amusement.

“Let’s keep things ‘simple.'”

A glowing magic circle appeared above his palm as he spoke.

“Fire Magic: Grand Fireball.”

A seemingly simple Tier 2 spell.

But in Evan’s hands, anything involving fire became far from simple.

The crimson flames roared to life, swirling together into an impossibly dense sphere of heat and light. The sheer intensity of the spell forced the air around him to shimmer, and within moments, the flames compressed into what could only be described as a miniature sun.

Its radiant surface pulsed with fiery power as Evan hurled it downward with a grin behind his mask.

The blazing orb streaked toward the ground like a meteor, reaching its target in an instant. The man below reacted swiftly, summoning as much of his magic power as he could in that second.

The earth cracked and groaned as a torrent of water erupted from the ground, surging upward to meet the descending inferno. The two forces collided in a cataclysmic explosion of energy and steam.

The resulting shockwave tore through the battlefield, shaking the island to its core. Ships anchored at the island’s edge were capsized by the sheer force of the blast, their crews thrown into chaos.

The tectonic plates beneath the island groaned under the strain, causing the ground to quake violently.

Evan, hovering above the devastation, raised a brow in surprise.

The steam cloud that billowed out from the collision was far denser and more expansive than he had anticipated, rising high enough to obscure the island entirely.

Just then, Danger Sense flared in his mind, a split second before a high-speed torrent of water surged out of the smoke.

The column was massive—easily three times Evan’s height in width—and struck him with brutal force before he could react.