Reincarnated Hero System

Evan’s entire body went cold, and control slipped from his grasp. An overwhelming instinct screamed at him, demanding that he leave here as fast as possible.

It demanded he got back to the surface of a planet.

Somewhere, anywhere, as long as he couldn’t see this endless interstellar void stretching before him with his naked eyes.

STOP TRYING TO RESIST!!!

The feeling was irrational, but the logical part of his mind kept him rooted in place. He was in space—he couldn’t go anywhere without Jamie’s help anyway.

His fingers clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his skin, breaking it. Blood dripped down his palm, but he barely registered the pain.

Despite the migraine intensifying with every thought, he continued to question himself.

‘This isn’t just about Aidos…ever since Earth V, I’d always doubted the existence of the Universe, deep down…

WHY?’

DON’T TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHY!!!

‘And what the hell is that thing in the back of my mind, telling me NOT to think about it?!’

DON’T! STOP! CEASE! HALT! QUIT! REFRAIN! DESIST! ABANDON! AVOID! FORGO!

DON’T! STOP! CEASE! HALT! QUIT! REFRAIN! DESIST! ABANDON! AVOID! FORGO!

DON’T!—

Evan’s hand shot up, and before Arthur or Jamie could react, he slammed the heel of his palm against his forehead with a forceful *BAMM!*

His eyes squeezed shut as a low, frustrated growl escaped him.

The sudden jolt of pain wasn’t enough. His frustration boiled over, and his icy energy flared—gold-lamé particles shimmering within the frost as his Unique Skill, Harbinger of Ice, activated.

In an instant, frost spread from his palm, crawling across his forehead and engulfing his entire head, encasing it in a glistening layer of ice.

Mist coiled off him, his hair and skin now glistening under a frosty sheen.

Arthur and Jamie froze, watching in stunned silence as Evan remained still, allowing the cold to smother the storm raging in his mind.

Then, just as quickly, the ice shattered and evaporated. Evan’s hand fell to his side, and he took a deep, measured breath, his head clear, the chaotic storm of thoughts now calm.

Blinking a few times, he let out the last of his frosty breath and turned to Arthur and Jamie, his gaze calm.

“Alright. I’m good now.”

The distant ringing in his ears faded into a dull hum as he focused on Jamie and asked.

“Can you take us outside the Galaxy? I want to confirm something.”

As soon as he asked that question, a chorus of voices began screaming in his mind.

‘THERE’S NOTHING THERE!’

‘TURN BACK!’

‘YOU WON’T FIND ANYTHING!’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

Evan dismissed the voices with a mental shove, then refocused on Jamie in front of him.

That was when Arthur’s loud voice finally reached his ears.

“Outside the Galaxy? Dude, you look like you shouldn’t even be outside your bed! You have zero idea how pale you are right now!!”

Concern laced Arthur’s words, but before Evan could reply, Jamie placed a firm hand on Arthur’s arm, shaking his head in quiet insistence.

“Let’s take him.”

“…what?”

Arthur turned to Jamie, eyebrows shooting up in disbelief, his expression screaming Are you crazy?

“He’s got months to stay in the past. He can see outside the Galaxy on another day. You literally just said something similar a few moments ago.

What’s so different now?”

True—Jamie had said something like that earlier, assuming Evan’s interest in the black hole was just curiosity.

Now, it was a bit different.

A small magic circle formed in front of Jamie’s eyes, glowing with golden fate law energy.

“What’s changed is that this isn’t just curiosity. Something’s gnawing at him, and I think it goes deeper than we realize. He might not get another chance to confront it like this.”

“Might, you say?”

Arthur narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t a matter of probability anymore.

After all, Jamie had pulled out the law of fate here. Arthur was sure Jamie had seen something that made him change his mind.

He wasn’t wrong. Through his Authority, Jamie saw Evan’s fate standing at a crossroads, two paths branching before him.

Going down one path led to no changes in Evan’s fate. But the other was obscured by golden clouds.

Not the dark omens of misfortune, but the luminous mist of fate’s elevation.

Simply put, if Evan took this path, his fate would become unreadable to anyone lacking a certain level of Authority over the Law.

Jamie could also see a ripple effect—Evan’s Universal Influence would rise.

The Universe itself would shield his fate from manipulation, safeguard his past from alteration, and, most importantly, it would become less resistant to his will.

Universal Influence was an abstract concept, but one that could not be taken lightly.

It was, in fact, one of the reasons Jamie had dissuaded Evan from his earlier attempt to eliminate Beatrix upon discovering she was the one responsible for sending him back in time.

The future Beatrix, as a god Queen, possessed an extraordinarily high Universal Influence. As a result, the current Beatrix—the one in this time period—was protected from most external forces that could alter her past.

If Evan, an external factor from the future, were to kill her, the Universe would forcefully eject him back to his original time. The laws of time would revive Beatrix, and worse—she would likely retain the memory of dying at Evan’s hands.

It didn’t take a genius to realize the catastrophe that would bring upon Evan in the future.

This was how dangerous Universal Influence could be, despite its abstract nature.

‘And if Evan takes the second path, his Universal Influence is bound to spike. I’m rather curious…’

Jamie mused, eyes narrowing slightly, while Arthur shot him a suspicion-filled look.

Arthur then turned to Evan and the little bit of the boy’s expression he could see was one of unshakable determination. It was clear he wouldn’t back down despite the obvious mental strain.

“Fine,” Arthur finally agreed, waving a hand dismissively. If Evan wanted to push through the strain, that was on him.

Evan took a deep breath, his gaze drifting toward the band of starry light in the distance.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he would find beyond the stars, outside the boundaries of the galaxy—but he knew one thing: he needed answers.

The persistent gnawing at the back of his mind—the questions, the doubts—demanded clarity.

The only way to get what he wanted was to face whatever it was that these voices were trying to deter him from seeing.

Seeing that they had reached an agreement, Jamie snapped his fingers. His Authority of Space activated, and a Cosmic Gate formed beneath them, rising in a swirl of cosmic energy and swallowing the three whole.

◇　◇　◇

Evan blacked out.

He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but when his eyes fluttered open, he found himself surrounded by nothing but darkness.

The instinctive fear of it gripped him, sending his heart racing as his head jerked around in search of something—anything that could anchor him in this void.

Then, a familiar voice shattered the silence.

“Hey, you’re finally awake.”

Evan spun toward the sound, his movements sluggish, as if he were moving through water. There, floating upside down with his arms crossed, was Arthur, his tone dry and unimpressed.

“Took you long enough.”

Before Evan could respond, another voice chimed in—lighter, more playful. Jamie’s voice.

“Come on, Arthur. The only reason you’re perfectly conscious is because you’re a Sub-Cosmic being,” Jamie said, his tone light but matter-of-fact.

“Evan doesn’t have Cosmic Superiority, so the abrupt change in pressure after we left the barrier knocked him out cold.”

Evan blinked, shaking off the lingering grogginess before refocusing on the direction their voices were coming from.

The darkness wasn’t as thick as he’d first thought. A faint glow illuminated their figures, revealing a tiny orb of light hovering between Arthur and Jamie.

As his eyes focused on the orb, Jamie followed his gaze and grinned.

“Oh, you can see us well now? That’s good. The light from it should reach your eyes any moment now.”

Evan furrowed his brow, confused. He opened his mouth to ask, “…light from what?” when suddenly, a faint glow caught his attention from below.

He instinctively froze.

Every fibre of his being screamed not to look down. The sensation clawed at his gut, warning him, pleading with him.

But, of course, Jamie had other ideas.

“Why don’t you look down and find out?” Jamie teased, his voice laced with mischief, a grin pulling at his lips.

Evan swallowed, his heart pounding in his chest. Slowly, he tilted his head downward, every muscle stiff with tension.

His eyes, at first, registered only a mass of light—brilliant, overwhelming, almost blinding.

But then, as his vision stabilized, the enormity of what he was looking at came crashing down on him. It wasn’t just one massive source of light.

It was billions.

Billions of stars.

Billions of glowing orbs, some fiery orange, others icy blue, all of them swirling together in a hypnotic spiral. The lights merged, split, and twinkled like gems in the dark fabric of space, all flowing in elegant curves, swirling around a massive orb of multi-coloured light and cosmic dust at the galaxy’s centre.

The core pulsed with radiant energy, sending waves of brightness rippling through the spiral.

ONE

Evan’s breath caught in his throat.

He knew what he was looking at. He had seen diagrams and pictures of this in his textbooks back in school on Earth V, but seeing it with his own eyes was something else entirely.

The sheer scale of it—the enormity—was staggering.

Despite his knowledge, the question spilt from his lips before he could stop it.

“Is that Orithya?”

Jamie’s laughter rang out, bright and full of amusement.

“BINGO!” he responded, throwing his hands out theatrically. “That is your one and only home galaxy of Orithya.”

“…”

Evan’s mind reeled as he continued to stare. From here, from this vantage point, Orithya was just another spiral in the vast sea of galaxies, no more or less significant than any other.

‘Wait a second,’ he thought, ‘galaxies are enormous things…’

His gaze locked onto Orithya’s majestic swirl of stars and dust, and the realization dawned on him.

Earlier, he, Jamie, and Arthur had travelled thousands of light-years to reach the Star of Lightning, and even then, they were still over a hundred thousand light-years from the centre of Orithyia.

Which meant Orithyia had a diameter of at least 200,000 light-years.

And yet… he could see more than half of it from here.

‘The closer you are to something big, the less of it you can see. But the further away you are… the more it all comes into view.’

As such, Evan questioned how far away they were for him to see this much of the galaxy. To capture over half of it in his field of vision?

The question tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“How far away are we?”

Jamie smirked, as though anticipating the question.

“For you to catch all of that in your field of view…”

He paused, the mischievous grin spreading wider across his face.

“…you really don’t wanna know.”

That answer told Evan everything. They weren’t talking in thousands of light-years or even hundreds of thousands. They were far, far beyond that.

Before he could process the enormity of the distance, Jamie continued, his tone shifting into something more serious.

“Now, as for why you passed out…” Jamie gestured to the space around them.

“The cosmic energy concentration inside a galaxy and outside it is like night and day. The abrupt change was too much for you to handle.”

Evan blinked, starting to piece things together as Jamie’s words sank in. He had blacked out because of the drastic shift in the cosmic energy he couldn’t sense.

“The only reason you just passed out,” Jamie went on, “is because you were within my cosmic energy bubble. Otherwise…”

He trailed off, letting the implication sink in before grinning.

“If you stepped outside that bubble, well, forget passing out. Your body and soul would be crushed into space dust by the pressure.”

Evan wasn’t even sure he could imagine the kind of force Jamie was talking about, but he knew it wasn’t something he wanted to test.

He glanced at Arthur and Jamie followed his gaze, adding on.

“Even you can’t survive here alone despite being Sub-Cosmic, Arthur. Not unless you were a Deity.

Worship me, for right now, I am your only lifeline.”

Jamie puffed his chest in mock grandeur, but Arthur didn’t give him the reaction he wanted. The godslayer just crossed his arms, unperturbed by the implied danger.

“I’ve got my Cosmic Teleporter,” he said, shrugging. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll bail.”

Evan didn’t have that luxury, though. He was entirely dependent on Jamie’s protection.

The vast emptiness of space outside the galaxy suddenly felt a whole lot more dangerous, and yet… he couldn’t stop staring at Orithya.

For a moment, the sheer beauty of the galaxy drowned out the fear of what lay beyond it.

It wasn’t just mesmerizing—it was demanding his focus, as if something was compelling him to keep all his senses locked onto it.

‘Why? Is there something I need to see?’

No. That wasn’t it. It was the opposite.

‘It’s trying to stop me from seeing anything else.’

Convinced that was the case, Evan forced himself to pull his focus away, while nearby, Arthur and Jamie floated aimlessly, laughing at the odd shapes of galaxies.

“Jamie, that one looks like…”

“….name it… Galaxy Splash.”

“…a lopsided….”

Their voices began to blur as Evan shut them out, pulling his senses away from Orithyia. He could still tell they weren’t moving, but their conversation only reached him in fragments.

“…you regret ordering…”

“…it? A three….”

“…mangled squid…”

Gradually, their voices faded back in, and as he pieced together more of their conversation, his focus drifted away from Orithyia.