Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1118 - 1118: Rising Stakes
The one responsible for the sudden attack on Arthur fixed his gaze on the other three, freezing the teenagers in time with a glance.
Then, turning back to Arthur, he stomped down on his chest with his left foot, cracking ribs and driving shards of bone into his lungs. His right foot followed, smashing Arthur’s wrist with a sickening crack as he tried to force him to release Lostvayne.
Still, Arthur held onto Lostvayne with a death grip, refusing to let go.
‘I can’t let him use that sword’s power. Not like what he did on Toverus.’
The man crushing Arthur’s wrist knew of his exploits on Toverus, where Lostvayne’s power had partially been unleashed against the Angels.
Determined to prevent a repeat of that scene where Transcendents died to a single sword slash, he tried to force the sword from Arthur’s hand, destroying every bone and muscle in the process.
But the sword still didn’t leave Arthur’s hand, as if it refused to be parted from its wielder.
‘It matters not if he’s dead, anyway.’
Without hesitation, he shaped his left hand into a blade, a crimson cosmic sigil forming on the back of his palm as he infused it with destructive energy and thrust it toward Arthur’s forehead.
|Adaptive Evolution has been triggered.|
|Temporal Resistance has increased greatly.|
At that moment, those lines appeared in Evan’s vision, and he instantly regained mobility, immediately pulling his left hand out of his inventory and bringing the already open Akashic Page with it.
“Spell Number 4: ABSOLUTE DEFENCE!”
A dense shield of magical energy materialised instantly, forming a barrier between Arthur and the incoming strike. The man’s knifehand struck the barrier, but the moment it did, his eyes widened in shock, and he immediately leapt back, a split-second before the force of his own strike rebounded violently against him.
Wiping the blood from his face, he turned toward Evan, eyes widening as they fell on the book in the boy’s hands.
“What the?! He has a cosmic artifact, too?!”
The man clearly assumed Arthur was the only one in the group with such an item. He had no knowledge of Evan possessing one as well.
Since Evan had only used the Akashic Page three times since arriving in the past, and the man had never been present for any of those instances, he was caught completely off guard.
Evan naturally didn’t give him a chance to regain his composure, immediately casting three more spells.
“Spell Number 13: Judgment of the gods: Convergence!
Spell Number 9: Einherjar!”
‘Delay Magic—World Magic: Spell Number 10!’
Evan’s Einherjar appeared as a colossal beam of destructive light descended from the skies, the attack reaching its target almost instantly.
Despite the speed of the attack, the man managed to snap out of his shock and raise his left hand, conjuring a cosmic energy shield in time to block it.
Evan’s Einherjar struck simultaneously, but the man calmly extended his free hand, effortlessly catching the blade and releasing a pulse of destructive energy that instantly blasted it to bits.
As the fragments of the Einherjar dissipated, he furrowed his brow, sensing something unusual.
‘These are spells, aren’t they?’
He had seen the magic circles of Absolute Defence, Einherjar, and even Judgment of the gods high above in the sky, all of which he had either blocked or destroyed.
However, Evan continued casting another set of spells as if completely unaffected by the backlash he should have suffered.
Enormous amounts of ambient magical energy were being drawn toward Evan’s grimoire, forming a magic circle in the space before him.
Before it could activate, however, the man exerted his time powers, halting Spell Number 13’s descending beam mid-air.
Then he closed the distance between himself and Evan in a single step, his left hand tearing through the Nuclear Magic Circle and shattering it like fragile glass.
At the same time, his right hand gripped Evan’s left arm, twisting it at the elbow with a sickening crack that echoed through the air, while his left hand moved to seize Evan’s neck.
Their eyes locked in that instant, and despite how close he was to grabbing Evan’s neck, the man couldn’t help but notice the complete absence of fear in the boy’s gaze.
Instead of fear, it felt more like…
‘He’s baiting me!’
The moment that realisation dawned, the Grimoire pressed against Evan’s chest absorbed all the magic energy from the shattered Nuclear Magic Circle, while simultaneously a storm of cosmic energy erupted behind him.
The ground beneath them split apart as fissures radiated outward from the storm’s centre for miles, the density of the energy warping the surrounding space.
|¬Weapon Authority: Soul-Devouring Oblivion!¬|
A streak of light shot toward the man from behind at hypersonic speed, accompanied by a Faux True Voice’s declaration.
|¬Extreme Nothingness!¬|
“!!”
The man sensed the incoming cosmic destruction power behind him and immediately categorised it as a threat greater than whatever Evan was planning.
He turned his head, about to counter, but the moment he did, Evan unleashed his World Magic.
“Spell Number 10: Severance of Reality.”
At such close range, he had no chance to evade the energy blast unleashed from the Grimoire hovering in the small space between him and Evan.
The sigil on the back of his left hand flashed as both attacks struck simultaneously—Evan’s Severance of Reality from the front, Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness from the rear.
The effects were instantaneous.
Reality fractured, and the man’s left arm disintegrated into fragments of cosmic energy. The stump was unnaturally clean, devoid of blood or gore, as if his arm had been wiped away by an invisible eraser.
Arthur’s Extreme Nothingness tore a semi-circular wound through the right side of the man’s torso, though the severity of the damage was slightly mitigated as he twisted his body at the last moment.
Despite sustaining these catastrophic blows that eradicated his left arm and rent his torso, the man roared in rage, unleashing a burst of cosmic destructive energy that hurled both Evan and Arthur backwards.
His eyes blazed with fury as the Sigil of Time appeared on the back of his right palm, calling upon the law of time to mend the damage.
But despite his efforts, his left arm remained lost to reality, and the hole in his torso refused to close.
‘Those cursed Cosmic Artifacts!!!’
The man seethed with rage as he understood that while the attacks themselves were capable of hindering healing, their success relied entirely on the mediums through which they were delivered.
Arthur’s Cosmic Sword of Destruction and Evan’s Akashic Record Fragment.
Both Cosmic Artifacts carried the ‘Authority’ to bypass his defences and impair his ‘regeneration’.
As the man fumed, both boys struggled to their feet, breathing heavily, sweat streaming down their faces.
Evan apported a potion from his inventory with his right hand, pouring it over his left arm after realigning the broken bones. The pain should have been excruciating, but he felt nothing, having burned his pain receptors with his flames to maintain a clear mind.
He summoned another potion, this one to restore magic, downing it to recover the energy he had expended as quickly as possible, while his dragon heart thumped at incredible speed to pump more magic power through his body.
Arthur, on the other hand, felt an intense heaviness in his right arm, both physically and metaphorically.
His sword’s ‘Weapon Authority’, Soul-Devouring Oblivion, true to its name, allowed it to consume souls and transform them into raw power stored within the blade.
By ‘Releasing’ the sword, Arthur tapped into a fragment of its true Cosmic Weapon power, exponentially increasing his overall strength, though only temporarily.
That duration depended on how many souls he had allowed Lostvayne to consume during the time he had owned it.
Once those souls were exhausted, Lostvayne would begin devouring Arthur’s own soul to maintain its Release, and once that path was taken, there would be only one possible outcome for him: True Death.
That was a worst-case scenario no one could afford.
Arthur said nothing of this as he turned his gaze toward the two girls who had been freed from their opponent’s time stop by the eruption of cosmic energy from his sword, which, incidentally, had also nullified the neutralisation of his Pseudo-Authority.
The shockwaves from his and Evan’s simultaneous attacks had blasted the girls backwards, leaving them wounded and sprawled on the ground, though still conscious. Artemisia’s buffs on Arthur and Evan remained active, sustained only because she herself was still conscious.
Right as his eyes caught them in the corner of his vision, their assailant erupted in fury once more.
He had lost two of his bodies in what he had assumed would be a straightforward task.
Kidnap one as bait, forcefully teleport the others, incapacitate them, and conduct the ritual to absorb their powers—clean, simple, and efficient.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
But not only had two of his bodies been destroyed by these teenagers, they had also inflicted severe damage on the third.
To make matters worse, Lostvayne’s ‘Release’, which he had been desperately trying to prevent, had successfully occurred.
And as if that weren’t enough, Evan had a cosmic artifact of his own, not to mention a Deity-level shield for some universe-forlorn reason.
Nothing was going his way, and his fury boiled over.
Cosmic destructive energy erupted from him in a cascading storm.
Simultaneously, Arthur and Evan moved, Arthur with his sword and Evan with his Grimoire.
Raising the glowing Lostvayne, Arthur swung it downward.
|¬Continental Split!¬|
The blade tore through the fabric of space-time, slicing through the immense mass of cosmic energy the man had unleashed.
The sword descended toward the man’s head, but even though he was battered, missing an arm and with a gaping hole in his torso, he wasn’t out of options.
His remaining arm erupted with destructive cosmic energy, a Destruction Reinforcement activating as the sigil on his hand blazed.
‘Gigant-Stärke!’
The energy coated his hand as he intercepted Lostvayne mid-swing. The collision of destruction-infused cosmic energies sent tremors through the air, splintering the surrounding space.
Shockwaves radiated outward, reaching the wounded girls, but Evan dashed in front of them, activating Spell Number 4 again. Though the shield eventually shattered, it absorbed enough of the blast to shield them from the worst of it.
As stated earlier, the eruption of Lostvayne’s cosmic energy had temporarily disrupted the neutralisation effects of the opponent’s Time and Destruction Sigils, but this was temporary and was only effective within Arthur’s (Lostvayne’s) range.
Beyond it, their powers would again be sealed.
Beatrix, unaware of the finer mechanics, simply knew her time powers had returned, granting her the ability to activate her Unique Skill to aid Arthur.
Without hesitation or concern for her injuries, she declared,
“Chrono-Space Dominion!”
Pressing her hands to the shattered ground, her divinity expanded outward, shimmering brown lamé particles filling the air. The man immediately noticed her growing domain, his gaze snapping toward her, but with Arthur wielding Lostvayne before him, he had no choice but to focus on the greater threat.
