Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1114 - 1114: The Bait is Taken
As the fragments of energy from the man touched Artemisia’s head, a torrent of broken images flooded her mind, like a filmstrip unspooling at blinding speed.
The shock jolted Artemisia awake.
Her eyes snapped open, wide with horror as she processed the visions she had just witnessed.
She coughed up the blood that had pooled in her mouth from earlier injuries, her body trembling with instinctive fear.
The scattered time-law energy had fused fragments of the man’s ‘time’ with her consciousness.
Through these fragments, she glimpsed flashes of his past, piecing together his motives for capturing her and his intended destination.
‘I need to warn them!’
Panic gripped Artemisia along with the thought.
‘I need to warn Arthur!’
She lifted her head, locking her gaze onto Arthur as he swung his sword downward, releasing a slash of silver law energy.
Summoning all her strength, she screamed.
“HE’S BAI– mmpfh!!”
Before she could finish, the man’s left hand clamped over her mouth. His magic flooded through her nose and mouth, overwhelming her brain and forcing her body to shut down in self-defence.
She went limp, unconscious once more.
This act ignited Beatrix’s fury. Divinity erupted from her as she charged forward, unleashing a barrage of spatial and temporal attacks.
Time Bombs, Spatial Blades, Spatial Chains, Spatial Collapse.
All four struck simultaneously, and faced with this combo, the man first narrowly avoided Arthur’s slash.
He then phased through the Time Bombs, warped space by distorting time to deflect the spatial blades, and used his superior temporal control to halt the spatial chains and collapsing space before leaping out of their reach.
As he landed, Evan launched an attack from the side, seeking to exploit any opening in his defences.
In response, the man unleashed a new ability from his arsenal.
[Law of Slaughter: Blutbad Täuschung!]
Immediately, an intense wave of bloodlust erupted from him.
Its intensity triggered an instinctual, primal reaction in Evan, Arthur, and Beatrix. Their senses, both physical and spiritual, were overwhelmed, perceiving the bloodlust as a tangible, lethal threat.
Evan instinctively summoned his shield, Arthur activated Stellar Guard, and Beatrix quickly retrieved a defensive artifact from her inventory.
For a brief moment, all three were frozen in dread, their movements halted by pure survival instinct.
This was no ordinary bloodlust.
It was the kind that could only emanate from someone who had slaughtered millions—no, billions.
R̸̹͂̃E̸̘̘͔̽̍͊͐͝Ṱ̸͓͔͂̒̀̒͒̕S̶̤̕Ä̸̡̧̻̜M̸̭̩̱̍̋R̵̨̭̖̿̓̑́̿̌U̸̯̞͗́́̚̕͜T̷̲͋̂̐͑̂̈́H̴͍̺͛́͂R̴͚̜͉̣̾͊͑̎̾́Ą̷̛̣̥͖̟̔̒̀!̷͖̒͗̋͑̿̓!̴̼͔͍̰͖̮̍̓͛͠͠!̵̧͕̞̍͗̂͘͜!̵̡̞̺̤̻̞̖͓̝̾͐!̸̫͗́̍̉̚!̵̗̘̣͇̯̌̏̈́͂̂̇̾̌͜͝͝ͅ
Suddenly, a screeching noise ripped through the air, a piercing, unintelligible sound that drilled into the ears and minds of the three teens.
The noise snapped them back to reality, shattering the instinctive terror that had held them in place.
Only then did they realise they had been deceived. There had been no actual attack. It was a psychological strike, a manipulation of their survival instincts.
Arthur’s black sword had done something to snap them out of it, but in that fleeting second they’d been caught, the man had already gained kilometres of distance.
Clicking his tongue in frustration, Arthur reminded himself that this bloodlust was nothing compared to his mother’s fury, while memories of ‘Prisma’ flooded Evan’s mind unbidden, granting him the composure needed to remain unfazed in the presence of such overwhelming bloodlust.
Beatrix, meanwhile, struggled to keep pace, her body trembling as she employed repeated teleportations to catch up to the two boys.
Still, her determination burned brighter than her fear.
The only thing keeping her moving was her unyielding desire to save her best friend, a drive that overpowered the instincts screaming at her to flee from this killer of billions.
Evan and Beatrix, racing ahead at supersonic speed, pushed their minds to the limit as they tried to figure out what Artemisia had been attempting to say.
Whatever it was, this man clearly didn’t want her to say it. That was why he had stopped her.
But both of them drew blanks, having far too little information to work with.
Arthur, seeking more information to act on, activated his Temporal Pseudo-Authority as he flew through the air, immediately noticing that the man’s temporal existence was riddled with fractures.
Even more concerning, the shattered fragments of his ‘time’ had merged with Artemisia’s due to their proximity while he carried her over his left shoulder.
Recalling the moment he had locked eyes with Artemisia, understanding instantly dawned on Arthur.
She had glimpsed fragments of this man’s past and had been trying to warn them of what she saw—that was his conclusion.
Time snapped back to its normal speed in Arthur’s perception, and with gritted teeth, he channelled his power over time, accelerating his movements to close the distance.
But the man’s head start, gained through his Blutbad Täuschung technique, was too significant.
Arthur was left with no choice but to resort to an ability he seldom used.
It was a gamble, particularly in a situation where he couldn’t gauge the opponent’s existence realm or law Authorities.
Arthur drew on the surrounding cosmic energy, channelling it into his Time Pseudo-Origin Core while tapping into the 0.2% of Low-Rank Time Law Comprehension he had attained.
This power, normally reserved for Half and Low-Tier Deities, naturally drained the energy reserves of the Transcendent Arthur.
Ignoring the cost, he declared his command to the world.
|¬Pseudo-Authority of Time¬|
At the sound of Arthur’s Faux True voice, the man turned his gaze back toward the boy in pursuit, his body already shrouded in time law energy, ready to counter whatever Arthur might unleash.
But Arthur had no intention of attacking.
He extended his hand, grasping at something invisible within the fabric of reality, then retracted it as he commanded.
|¬Oh World, Turn Back. ¬|
[?!!!]
Everything froze.
A monochrome filter washed over the world.
Time came to a halt before beginning to reverse.
Arthur’s gamble, invoking Low-Rank Time Laws despite their punishing energy cost, had succeeded. The man’s temporal power was powerless against the command.
Though fully conscious, he could not prevent his body from being dragged backwards through time. In this grayscale world, where only Arthur retained colour, he breathed heavily.
10% of his magic power… per second of reversal.
The cost was immense, yet expected when manipulating Low-Rank laws.
Arthur acted without hesitation, expending 50% of his reserves to rewind the man by five seconds.
One second.
Arthur summoned his black sword, Lostvayne.
Two seconds.
He infused it with destruction energy.
Three seconds.
He stepped forward.
Four sec—KrAaNCcCK!!!
The bizarre sound echoed in Arthur’s ears, and his Pseudo-Origin Core burned fiercely, as though it were engulfed in flames.
A crack split the monochrome world, disrupting Arthur’s control and forcing time to flow forward once more.
The three seconds he had painstakingly reversed unravelled as if they had never been.
“|¬!!¬|”
Both Arthur and the man wore expressions of pure shock.
Arthur froze, unable to process what had just occurred, while the man stumbled, nearly losing his balance before quickly regaining it and continuing his flight.
That brief hesitation gave Evan the opening he needed to close the distance with Blink, sending spiralling prismatic flames toward the man.
The man was forced to defend, and the dazzling display snapped Arthur out of his stupor.
Even with lingering shock, Arthur continued his pursuit, his mind racing.
Why had both he and the man reacted with such intensity?
It was because of what they had sensed in that instant.
Arthur’s Time Rewind had been broken.
But it hadn’t been the man who did it. Obviously, it hadn’t been Arthur either.
The force that shattered Arthur’s command to rewind time was TIME itself.
The law of time had rejected Arthur’s control, which explained their immense shock.
It was as though time had been locked away from any attempt to alter its flow across the world.
Arthur quickly understood that this was the case, as well as the reason behind it, and the realisation sent a chilling wave of dread through him.
‘It’s already begun?! When?! What triggered it? This guy?!!’
The flood of questions rushed through Arthur’s mind, but even so, his body kept moving forward.
As he dashed forward at supersonic speed, an unfamiliar sensation washed over him, as though he had crossed through an unseen barrier, a film of sorts.
Evan and Beatrix, who were ahead, showed no reaction, and he immediately understood why.
The barrier wasn’t something they could sense, for it was composed of cosmic energy.
The instant Arthur crossed that threshold, his eyes widened as the truth fell into place.
Now he understood.
Now he knew what Artemisia had been trying to warn him about.
The ground beneath him began to glow, intricate runic inscriptions unfurling into a massive teleportation circle.
Arthur’s heart sank as he realised what Artemisia must have seen when the man’s ‘time’ had fused with hers.
‘He’s Baiting Us! —that’s what she was trying to say!’
The man’s true target wasn’t Artemisia.
The man’s true targets were all four of them.
Capturing Artemisia had been nothing more than a ploy, a carefully laid bait meant to draw Arthur, Evan, and Beatrix to this spot.
It was a strategic move.
Capturing Artemisia would inevitably make Beatrix’s emotions overwhelm her composure, leaving her predictable.
Targeting Arthur directly would have triggered his Memories of the Future.
Attacking Evan would have set off his Danger Sense.
So instead, the man had chosen Artemisia, certain it would bring them here without activating any of their unique abilities.
And now, they had walked directly into his trap.
The teleportation circle, long prepared in advance, was primed to activate, its destination uncertain.
What Arthur did know, however, was that it would not lead anywhere favourable.
Whatever awaited them on the other side, it had been prepared with this moment in mind.
Evan also noticed the light of the teleportation, his eyes immediately locking onto the person activating it as destruction energy poured from his body, aimed at disrupting it.
The torrents of crimson-gold energy converged on the man, but were repelled by invisible barriers of cosmic energy.
Evan’s attempt to interrupt the teleportation circle would have worked on any other circle, but not this one.
Crafted from cosmic energy, its structure eluded Evan’s perception, and he could only see its effects, leaving him unable to identify the critical point to strike.
Arthur, on the other hand, knew exactly where to strike and acted without hesitation. His sword, infused with cosmic energy, shot toward the ground, but the man, still defending against Evan’s destruction energy, immediately turned his gaze toward the descending blade.
Arthur noticed the shift instantly and understood the implication.
‘He can see cosmic energy!’
Arthur’s shock doubled as the man raised his hand, releasing a stream of cosmic energy from within his body that froze Evan and Beatrix in a temporal stop.
“!!”
The moment Arthur recognised that the man was not merely a Sub-Cosmic being but a Complete one, the man immediately leveraged the natural advantage that full cosmic entities held over Sub-Cosmics.
