Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1113 - 1113: Pursuit
It took only an instant for three attacks to tear through the air, each one brimming with lethal intent.
But the two swords and the staff struck nothing but empty space, missing their intended target entirely.
The assailant who had incapacitated Artemisia was suddenly a hundred meters away from their initial position.
[Oh, you’re faster than I estimated? Still not an issue, though.]
They commented as they glanced at the faint tear in his clothing where Arthur’s sword had grazed them, their expression completely unbothered.
Only then did the trio properly process their appearance.
A tall man with long black hair tied into a ponytail just below the back of his head, his facial features objectively above average, with black eyes and a trace of stubble on his chin.
He was clad in the black uniform of the Gozonian Army, but none of them for a moment believed he was a demon, or any sort of ally to Gozon.
Rather, they couldn’t discern what he was.
Not even Arthur could.
And that wasn’t the most alarming part.
This man had bypassed Arthur’s Future Sight and Evan’s Danger Sense, incapacitated Artemisia with a single blow, and avoided their combined strikes so effortlessly that the most they had managed was a shallow graze on his clothes.
They couldn’t measure his Existence Realm.
They couldn’t sense his energy.
Even with him standing directly before them, his presence was barely perceptible.
It felt as though the moment they looked away, he would disappear completely.
And that was something that simply COULD NOT be allowed.
◇ ◇ ◇
The man, entirely unfazed by the three teens who had just attacked him, turned his back on them as though preparing to leave.
[I’ve gotten what I came for. Time to head—]
Before the words had even fully left his mouth, a crimson spear tore through the air toward where his head had been a moment earlier.
He tilted his head slightly, narrowly avoiding the destructive projectile, but as it passed, the spear detonated violently, engulfing the area in a blaze of destructive energy.
He immediately leapt clear of the blast radius, questioning thoughts flashing through his mind.
‘He attacked without regard for her? Does he have selective destruction?’
His gaze shifted toward Arthur, the one who had unleashed the spear, but instead of finding Arthur standing there, he was met with the sight of Arthur’s sword slashing toward his eyes.
From the other side, Evan’s blade swept for his throat, while Beatrix’s spatial blades converged from every angle upon his body.
Simultaneously, her spatial power gripped Artemisia, attempting to wrench the unconscious girl from his hold.
Reacting instantly, the man’s left fingers twitched, and a burst of magic shattered Beatrix’s spatial hold on Artemisia.
His right hand shifted, deflecting both Arthur’s and Evan’s blades in the same instant before he dropped to the ground. Without pause, he launched himself forward, a trail of sonic booms echoing behind him as he shot into the distance.
But Arthur and Evan had no intention of letting him escape.
Arthur lifted his hand, and the gravity in the area multiplied a hundredfold. The ground shook and collapsed under the crushing pressure, with rocks and debris hurled into the air.
Naturally, his body was dragged downward, weighed down by the immense force. But even so, magic power erupted from him, straining against the crushing gravity.
He pushed through, his movements slowed heavily but not completely halted.
Once again, Beatrix seized the chance to warp Artemisia away from him, but the man’s left arm, still gripping Artemisia over his shoulder, radiated strong magic, repelling her power yet again.
The ground beneath him burst apart as fiery spears and crimson-gold chains shot upward, coiling around his limbs, but he shattered them effortlessly with another explosive burst of magic power.
Before he could gain further distance, a hand cloaked in Destruction Law energy lunged for his throat. He spun, meeting it with his own hand, but as he parried, two blades, one from the front and the other from behind, pierced toward his chest in unison.
Arthur and Evan’s flawlessly synchronised strike looked certain to land, yet when their swords reached their target, they passed straight through, meeting nothing at all.
‘Spatial Intangibility!’
The realisation hit them both simultaneously.
An instant later, the unknown man’s figure disappeared, employing the same elusive movement method that had allowed him to ambush Artemisia without warning.
But the moment he reappeared in the distance, Evan’s eyes immediately locked onto him.
“That way!”
The words had barely left Evan’s mouth before Arthur shot through the air at hypersonic speed, closing the distance in less than a second as his sword slashed toward the man’s side.
His eyes widened in genuine surprise, unprepared for how easily he’d been tracked.
What he didn’t know was that Arthur had anticipated this.
He knew that against an opponent this elusive, Evan would inevitably use his Track Down skill to mark the target.
So when the man vanished, Arthur looked into the future, glimpsing the direction Evan would turn, and was moving toward that spot before Evan’s own body had even begun to react.
In this fight, Arthur, Evan, and Beatrix were at a significant disadvantage.
Arthur, most of all, was heavily restrained.
He wanted to unleash his full power, but the danger of injuring Artemisia prevented him from doing so.
Although he could use Selective Destruction, it was not something he could apply to every attack.
Some of his Techniques were still far too powerful for him to control with that degree of precision, but his instincts warned him that defeating this opponent would demand attacks on that level.
However, using them would inevitably lead to Artemisia’s death.
Because of this, Arthur was forced to restrain himself, directing his blows only at shattering the spatial hold the man maintained on Artemisia. That same hold was also the reason Beatrix’s repeated efforts to warp her away had failed.
To aid her, Arthur activated his spatial Pseudo-Authority, imitating Beatrix’s attempts. By drawing on his superior spatial power, he compelled the man to divide his focus, hoping to open a chance for Beatrix.
The tactic worked.
Arthur’s spatial pull broke through the hold on Artemisia, and the man instantly redirected his focus toward Arthur, attempting to stop him from warping Artemisia away.
But in that moment, Arthur relinquished the spatial control to Beatrix, who seized the distraction and succeeded in teleporting Artemisia away from him.
The moment Artemisia’s body vanished, Arthur brought his blade down with lethal intent, but before the strike could connect, the man disappeared, performing the absurd feat of hitching onto the spatial channel Beatrix had used to teleport Artemisia and following it through.
He emerged directly before Beatrix, appearing beside Artemisia, and before Beatrix could reach for her friend’s body, he seized the unconscious Artemisia once again.
In the same breath, his other hand clamped around Beatrix’s neck, swinging her into the path of Arthur’s descending attack.
Arthur was forced to abort his follow-up, diverting his strength to shield Beatrix from the devastating strike that had already cleaved apart the land for miles.
The man slung Artemisia back over his shoulder, but before he could move further, a torrent of spiralling prismatic flames materialised before him.
Evan unleashed his full strength without a hint of hesitation, forcing the man to reveal yet another hand.
Spatial power erupted before him, twisting space and expanding into a wormhole that consumed Evan’s flames and redirected them toward Arthur.
Arthur, however, withstood the blast unscathed behind his Gravity Shield.
Simultaneously, a lattice of magical energy rippled through the ground, spreading outward and enclosing the space around the man.
|¬Hall of Fractured Time! ¬|
Arthur’s Bounded Field was activated, enclosing the battlefield within a domain of his control.
The man clicked his tongue in annoyance and leapt from his position, but his movements were immediately hindered, slowed drastically by the effects of the field.
To his surprise, neither Arthur nor Evan launched an attack against him in his slowed state. However, he had no time to dwell on it.
A jolt of instinctual danger ran through him, and his gaze snapped toward Arthur. His eyes fell upon something on the ground, a projection of himself, captured just seconds earlier.
|¬Chronoslash! ¬|
Arthur’s blade cut through the projection, severing its legs, while at that same instant, Evan’s sword, imbued with Arthur’s time energy, pierced its chest.
The projection’s damage instantly transferred over into reality.
The man’s legs were severed at the knees, and a deep wound split open across his chest where his heart should have been.
But before he could fall, shimmering rings of time runes appeared around his knees and chest. In moments, his legs reattached, and the chest wound sealed as if it had never been there.
Arthur’s eyes widened as realisation dawned.
‘Time!’
The man had used time laws to undo Chronoslash’s effects, not only healing his wounds but erasing his time signature altogether.
This prevented Arthur from summoning another past projection of himself, proving that the man’s mastery over time rivalled Arthur’s own.
Without hesitation, the man dashed toward the boundary wall of Arthur’s Bounded Field, magic power coursing around his hand as he tried to break through.
But Arthur was faster.
He teleported behind the man, both eyes glowing as he swung Celestia, the blade cloaked in the deep, haunting purple fusion of time and destruction energy.
|¬Extreme Nothingness.¬|
The man’s eyes widened in shock as he sensed the full lethal intent within the strike.
‘This kid doesn’t care about the girl anymore?!’
Reacting instantly, he spun around, channelling time laws into the magic power in his hand, and unleashed a temporal beam that collided with the destructive purple energy from Arthur’s sword.
For a brief moment, their eyes locked.
In that instant, the man recognised the change in Arthur’s demeanour. The boy was abandoning his restraint.
‘He doesn’t care if she gets hurt anymore. He just wants to take me down!’
Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness clashed violently against the man’s temporal beam in a storm of raw, volatile power. The man poured more energy into his attack, struggling to overwhelm Arthur, but the balance shifted quickly against him.
Clicking his tongue in frustration, he detonated his temporal energy, forcing an explosion that offset Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness, unleashing a shockwave that blasted Evan and Beatrix away as they attempted to strike from his flanks.
Arthur, sensing the imminent threat to his Bounded Field, immediately dispelled it to prevent a catastrophic backlash that could harm him.
However, doing so inadvertently released the man from its confines.
The violent clash of temporal energies sent a ripple through the surrounding time laws. The chaotic energies slammed into both Arthur and the man.
For the man, the temporal disruption caused portions of his body to fracture like glass, flaking off into shards of pure time energy. These fragments struck Artemisia, still slung over his left shoulder.
