Reincarnated Hero System

“I wonder…if the people of the universe realize that the one they adorn with glorious titles is nothing more than a glorified slave of the gods.”

“…” “…”

The moment Evan’s words fell, the atmosphere shifted.

Beatrix silently dismissed her hologram, while Artemisia turned to him with narrowed eyes. Her gaze alone seemed to ask why he was bringing up a subject he always avoided.

Feeling Artemisia’s stare, Evan lifted his eyes to the starry night sky and spoke.

“Stars are beautiful, aren’t they? People often see them as signs of good fortune.”

Artemisia remained silent, considering how to respond, but Beatrix simply voiced her thoughts.

“True. I am sometimes told I was born under a lucky star. Not that I disagree.”

Evan nodded with a wry smile, voicing his agreement.

“They weren’t wrong—but they weren’t entirely right either.”

Beatrix tilted her head, curiosity sparking in her gaze.

“And why’s that?”

Tracing a constellation with his eyes, Evan replied,

“Because even lucky stars can sometimes be harbingers of doom.”

Confusion marred Beatrix’s expression, and when Evan glanced down at the lake, he caught the expression reflected in the water.

“May I bore you with a tale?

One of a former Hero, born under a constellation of lucky stars.”

‘A Hero born under a constellation of stars?’

The words echoed in both women’s minds. For a brief moment, they wondered what kind of tale he was about to tell—but that curiosity lasted only a second.

They remembered who the man sitting between them was, his association with a Constellation, and realization dawned in their eyes.

This tale of his…

‘…is his own!’

One of Valmone’s greatest mysteries—The origin of the godslayer known to the Universe as Prisma.

Without hesitation, both leaned in, their voices rising in unison as they urged him to continue.

“”Go on.””

Evan could practically hear the anticipation in their voices, and a quiet laugh escaped him. He wasn’t sure why—maybe it was the atmosphere, or the eerie calm before the storm—but tonight, he felt like speaking.

A story only he knew.

He’d killed everyone else who did, after all.

“The Aries Constellation. It’s an artificial constellation visible from the Northern Hemispheres of certain planets across the galaxy.

One day, a tear formed in the fabric of spacetime in the area occupied by this constellation, caused by what I think was either galactic or universal expansion.

The tear was quickly repaired, but the process created a glitch in this constellation.

The fabric of spacetime was sewn shut in a way that caused several of the constellation’s stars to drift too close to one another, close enough that their gravities began tugging at one another.

Each of the seven stars that got too close was massive, with powerful gravity wells, and as their gravitational forces clashed, they began to rip each other apart.”

Evan casually recounted what would have been a terrifying phenomenon for any planets orbiting these stars, idly twirling his fingers as he spoke.

“Eventually, the Universe’s Error Correction Matrix contained the anomaly—but not before significant damage was done.

By then, the stars had already ripped away enough stellar mass from each other to form a low-mass star at the rough centre of their positions”

As he spoke, the goddesses tried to picture the kind of orbits these stars must have had for such an event to occur.

“The Error Correction Matrix has an odd way of handling Errors above a certain grade.

It extracts the core of the Error, forcing it to collapse inward, then embeds that core into the soul of an existence within the reincarnation path—essentially fusing the Error with that soul to contain it.

To prevent the soul’s collapse, the system merges as many additional souls as necessary, and once the fusion is complete, a living embodiment of the Error is created.

Many who understand the workings of the Universe’s Error Correction Matrix question this approach, but I can see the logic.

It’s far more manageable to confine an interstellar-scale Error within a single existence than to risk systemic failure across an entire region of space—possibly even on a galactic scale.”

Evan chuckled at the thought, recalling another bit of information.

“If the Error Correction Matrix were sentient, I imagine it would regret this method quite a bit.

A fair number of the Singularity Existences born from this process tend to be… a little unhinged, after all.”

“True. Arthur was definitely more than a little unhinged. So was Uncle Jamie. And you? You were no different.”

“Excuse me? I demand you rescind your statement. I am as un-unhinged as can be.”

“Un-unhinged? Dude, you’re not exactly making your case any better.”

Beatrix laughed, and Evan chuckled along with her. But their amusement faded the moment Artemisia’s questioning voice broke the moment.

“What happened to the living embodiment of this Stellar Error?”

“Hmm? Ah, yes. That guy.”

Evan nodded, his voice shifting back to a neutral tone as he continued his tale.

“He was born on one of the planets where this constellation could be seen, on the day the stars shone at their brightest.

In his hometown, that brilliance was considered a good omen, even celebrated with a festival.

But for him, that omen was anything but good. Because if it truly was, then how could it spell tragedy for him, two years in a row?”

Artemisia and Beatrix could already picture what had happened, and Evan’s next words only confirmed their suspicions.

“His mother, drained of most of her life force after giving birth to such an existence despite being an ordinary mortal woman, watched her health deteriorate until she finally passed a year later.

His father followed her in death the next year, leaving the boy orphaned at just two years old.”

Artemisia and Beatrix had already expected that the boy’s mother wouldn’t escape unscathed, but Evan hadn’t mentioned how the father died, leaving them unsure if his death was also tied to the boy’s Singularity Nature.

“The boy was placed in a government orphanage, his life as ordinary as any other orphan in the town.

But in his fifth year, everything changed.

All sorts of Seers and prophets across his home world began claiming to have received visions—warnings of an impending catastrophe.

With so many independent prophecies simultaneously surfacing from all corners of the world, the world’s rulers had no choice but to take them seriously. They convened, gathering information from these prophets, and soon discovered that the revelations all stemmed from a single source—the world itself.

The planet had sensed a threat to its existence and had chosen certain individuals with extraordinary potential as part of its defence mechanism. These prophecies weren’t just warnings of the danger, but instructions to find and prepare these defence mechanisms.”

“Heroes.”

Artemisia murmured the word, and Evan nodded, exhaling as he continued his tale.

“These Heroes were discovered in various nations, and on the boy’s fifth birthday, his quiet hometown was overrun with government officials.

Powerful appraisal skills confirmed his status as one of them, and he was taken into government custody.

From that day onwards, his life ceased to be his own.

He was raised by the government and taught that it was his duty to protect the world. That he should expect no praise, no glory, and no reward—only the fulfilment of the role he had been born into.

The other nine Heroes were raised in much the same way, each subjected to gruelling training from a young age.

But for the boy, the youngest among them, it was especially brutal. He endured the same training regimen as those thrice his age, and any complaints were silenced with even more training.

The only ‘free time’ he had was the few hours of sleep he managed at night.

He envied the children he had left behind in the orphanage, longing for the mundane life he once had.

But that was a wish that could never be granted.”

Evan picked a stone and tossed it across the lake, watching it skip over the water’s surface as he continued.

“Ten years passed like that. Then, at fifteen, the forewarned catastrophe finally arrived.

The fabric of spacetime in his world was torn apart, and through the gaping rift, monsters spilt in from another dimension.

They were far more powerful than the creatures of his own world, and the day they appeared marked the beginning of disaster. Millions perished, slaughtered by the endless waves of invaders.

Among these monsters were winged and horned beings with an appetite for violence and destruction, beings the world later learned were called ‘Infernal Devils’.

They were the dominant race of the eponymous ‘Infernal Dimension’, and they had invaded for reasons still unknown at the time.

The world had sensed their attempts to tear through spacetime and had chosen its Heroes in preparation, sending out that prophecy while resisting the invasion as long as it could, managing to do so for ten years.”

“Tenacious bastards…”

Beatrix spat the words, scowling at the thought of the Infernal Devils’ persistence even after 10 years of failed attempts, and Evan smiled wryly at her reaction.

“Very tenacious. But that was to be expected. The boy’s home world was a Prime World, rich with resources and treasures the Infernal Devils coveted.”

Beatrix pressed her lips together but said nothing. She knew how much Prime Worlds were coveted for their resources—she had a few under her own domain for that very reason.

“The war against the creatures of the Infernal Dimension and the Devils who commanded them was brutal. The boy fought alongside his fellow Heroes for years, and they eventually gained power beyond the limits of mortality.

As for the boy, he was special. He had awakened a power no other Hero possessed—the power to manipulate a seemingly invisible energy that was omnipresent in the world.

But as if the universe sensed his increase in power, the difficulty of his battles only escalated from that moment on.”

Evan’s expression slowly began to darken, something the two goddesses didn’t miss.

“The Infernal Devils suddenly changed tactics. Their invasion, once wild and chaotic, became controlled and calculated.

Multiple powerful nations fell, and it became clear that someone new was pulling the strings—a brilliant strategist orchestrating the Infernal Devils’ attack.

When they captured and interrogated some of the Devils, they learned that someone new had taken the reins from the old leader of the invading Infernal Devils.

An existence called an ‘Infernal Devil Lord’.

Under this Infernal Devil Lord’s command, the devastation only escalated. The forces of the boy’s world suffered greater losses, and soon, the World’s Unified Government realized that they couldn’t afford to keep fighting this war on their own soil.

They had to take the battle elsewhere.

But when they attempted to push back against the invaders, every strategy was met with a flawless counter. The Infernal Devil Lord always seemed to be one step ahead.

And so, the Unified Government decided that this Infernal Devil Lord needed to go.”

“How much intel did they have before making that decision?”

Artemisia asked this question with narrowed eyes, and Evan’s response made her facepalm.

“Not much.”

Evan chuckled at her reaction, already guessing what thoughts were running through her mind.

“In their defence, they did attempt reconnaissance.

They sent spies through the rift to gather intelligence on the other side. Their reports revealed that while the Infernal Dimension had a lower level of magi-technology and civilization, it held an overwhelming quantitative and qualitative advantage in military power.

They also managed to piece together an estimate of the Infernal Devil Lord’s power, both from captured enemies and field investigations.

Armed with this knowledge, they assembled an elite force, drawing combatants from every nation.

By then, each of the Heroes had reached at least the level of a Lower Deity, while the elite forces included many Half-Deities and Transcendents.

A total of one hundred top-tier combatants infiltrated the Infernal Dimension, slipping through the rift in small groups of ten. When all had gathered on the other side, they began their march toward the Infernal Devil Lord’s palace.”