Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1177 - 1177: Signal from the Sands

Deram Hester lowered his head slightly to get under the doorframe as he stepped out of the room and found a brown-eyed man waiting in the lounge.

The dark-haired demon had his legs crossed on the centre table, a small side stool beside him holding a bowl of grapes he picked from and tossed into his mouth.

Looking up at Deram, the demon spoke.

“That didn’t sound good. Let me guess, Evan Eris got to Seith, didn’t he?”

Deram was silent for a moment before replying with a sigh, “That’s likely the case.”

Hearing that, Xolgren shrugged.

“I told you that boy was bad news. The fact that Race Rulers back home were talking about him a thousand years ago was more than enough of a red flag. And he has the same name and kind of power as a Race King who’s been dead for thousands of years.

But your boss Ferrid didn’t get back to you on that one, did he?”

Xolgren’s words reminded Deram about the bit of information the Agriker demon had shared with him shortly after learning about Evan’s existence and his known powers.

Deram didn’t respond to the question, and Xolgren, picking up another grape, continued.

“I’m willing to bet he knows exactly why Evan Eris’ name was mentioned in Gozon a thousand years ago, even though five generations of the boy’s ancestors probably weren’t even born back then.

Something’s going on with him that traces back to Gozon, something connected to the Race Rulers, and your boss Ferrid knows it.

He’s just not telling you guys.”

Xolgren grabbed a wine bottle and poured himself a drink as he spoke.

“The way he has so much detailed information on your ranks and plans, along with that crap he pulled last year against the FCDs.

He facilitated the descent of a fucking god Queen. A ‘Supreme’ god Queen, at that. How do you guys not comprehend how ridiculous of a feat that is?

Evan Eris created a situation where she could act even though there are interstellar restrictions on the gods that limit their interference in affairs involving existences Level 1000 and below.”

Xolgren dropped the bottle and reached for his wine glass, tipping its edge towards Deram.

“You guys gotta take that kid out. I don’t know how you wanna do it, but you have to remove him, otherwise, your plans are going to be royally fucked going forward, even more so than they already are.

If it means siccing the Second Division on him, do it.”

Deram frowned at this, but Xolgren ignored that and continued.

“Your boss Ferrid was planning to use one of his commands to order the Second Finger to go after the Master of Dragondune when you found them, wasn’t he? Let him use one of those commands to order them to take out Evan Eris.”

“The command seals are limited. Without them—”

“Without them, the Second Finger’s not going to listen to your boss. I know,” Xolgren said, cutting Deram off.

“But the way I see it, that kid is a bigger threat than the Second Finger refusing orders. Tell your boss to send the Second after him, even if it risks damaging the World Formation. The damage’s gonna get repaired anyway.”

He finished his wine, slammed the glass down, and continued.

“Well, that’s your business. I’m focused on our own current situation right now. We’re going with Plan B, aren’t we?”

Deram nodded silently, and hearing this, Xolgren clicked his tongue.

“Tch. I can only use that thing once, and I planned to save it in case any of the Transcendents made a move.”

Xolgren was referring to his trump card, something he possessed as a member of the Agriker Family, an emergency summon that guaranteed his escape from whatever difficult situation he found himself in.

He intended to use it only if one of Aidos’ Transcendents interfered with the Tarse Plan.

Two of those Transcendents were based on the Alpha Continent, and though they’d been confirmed to be in distant regions, they might sense what was happening and try to interfere.

Xolgren planned to use his trump card in that case, but given the current situation, he had no choice but to use it against the Master of Dragondune if they appeared, since they hadn’t been able to locate them beforehand and have the Second Finger remove them from the equation.

“Is he at least sending reinforcements?” Xolgren asked, and Deram nodded.

“He said he’s sending the unsealed High-Ranks.”

This response made Xolgren’s expression brighten for the first time.

“Ah, my comrades that you lot sealed a thousand years ago.”

He stood from the couch and added,

“Who would’ve thought that one of the bastards who sealed us in stone a thousand years ago would be the same one unsealing us now and having us help him help us invade his own planet.

How ironic.”

Chuckling dryly, he stepped out of the room and muttered, “Well, I guess I’m going to see some old faces again.”

The ‘old faces’ Xolgren spoke of were the demons who’d been sealed during the war a thousand years ago.

Not all the Gozonian demons who set foot on Aidos had been defeated or killed in battle.

Some hadn’t come over to fight in the first place, and some had escaped battle and hidden in various locations.

Even after the previous Seven Heroes made a sweep across the planet’s surface, eliminating stragglers and dismantling the early Demonic Hand that worshipped the Gozonian Race Rulers, there were still those who survived the purge.

Some hid in secret locations, while others hid in plain sight, blending into Aidosian society.

Over the thousand years that followed, some had children, whose children had more children, continuing the line.

This explained the origin of some of the Contracted Demons of the many Senior Members of the Demonic Hand’s various divisions.

However, the contracted demons of the Senior Members in the higher divisions, those Level 600 and above, were not descendants of survivors or remnants.

Their contracted demons were either the remnants themselves or the second group of demons that had remained on Aidos after the war—the ones sealed during it.

The Seven Deadly Sins were not the only demons sealed. In fact, those other sealed demons were the reason sealing the Sins had even been considered.

These powerful demons, too strong for the regions where they were deployed, had been sealed using special spells developed by the Seven Heroes—the same spells used to seal the Deadly Sins into their weapons.

Evan’s predecessor, Arlan Maddox, spread these sealing spells across Aidos, allowing Aidosians to subdue demons too strong for the combatants of a given region to defeat.

Because of this, thousands of demons, both Mid and High-Ranked, were sealed across Aidos, and the Demonic Hand had been unsealing them over the years.

How did they know where these demons were sealed? Well, Xolgren had just said it, hadn’t he? That Ferrid was “one of the bastards who sealed them in stone.”

The stronger unsealed demons were now the contractors for the Senior Members of Divisions 1-5 and the Executives who led them.

Take Xolgren, for example. He had also been sealed during the war and was unsealed several decades ago to become Deram’s contractor.

The ones responsible for keeping these demons in line, as well as making it easier for the Demonic Hand to control them, were a small group of Peak-Rank demons, which included Vaeri Valren, the Second Finger’s contractor.

Also on that list was the First Finger’s contracted demon, another Peak-Rank demon like Vaeri, though not as powerful as Vaeri herself.

After all, Vaeri was a descendant of a Demon King. The woman was quite literally built different.

On a side note, Vaeri wasn’t bound to the Demonic Hand like the others. She and the Second Finger had already been together long before Ferrid came into the picture.

“Anyway,” Xolgren said, “it turns out that your idea to start the march gradually, moving our forces bit by bit, worked in our favour.

After all, we’re now ahead of schedule and will be in position much earlier than whatever assumptions or estimations Evan Eris and his collaborators in Tarse and the other nations might have made.”

Deram followed Xolgren out of the room, the two of them heading to the balcony of the building hidden in the shadow of a dune in the Wild Lands, overlooking the camp with tens of thousands of Demonic Hand soldiers.

Casting a glance across the members of the Fifth Division present, Xolgren added, “Should we map out the rest of the path?”

Deram nodded silently, and with a small burst of spatial power, he teleported the two of them across the desert.

They moved to several points, marking locations that could serve as outposts and eliminating any monsters in the area that might slow the marching speed of their forces.

Eventually, they reached the ruins of an abandoned city, one of the remnants of Tarse’s failed attempts to expand into the Wild Lands deserts by taking advantage of the few oases there.

The energy hotspot beneath this location was the only reason the oasis existed, but the plan to settle the region had been abandoned for multiple reasons.

As they appeared, Xolgren glanced over the ruins and said, “We can have a few of the units rest here during the march so they can recuperate a bi—!”

The demon froze mid-speech, narrowing his eyes as he glanced at Deram beside him.

“Dude.”

“Don’t worry,” Deram said, turning his gaze east. “I already noticed it.”

The two-meter-tall hulk took a step forward, and the next moment he vanished, reappearing several kilometres away atop a rocky outcrop.

A beam of demonic energy shot from his outstretched finger, but before it could reach the spot he targeted, a streak of light burst from the sand, shooting high into the air and out of range of the explosion that followed Deram’s attack.

Deram turned his gaze upward, spotting the humanoid figure leaping from the ground, as well as his contracted demon appearing behind it and delivering a kick that sent it crashing back down.

“That thing’s a robot,” Xolgren said, landing beside Deram and folding his wings.

“Robot?”

Deram raised an eyebrow and looked at Xolgren, who nodded and said, “I’m pretty sure what I kicked was metal, not flesh. So unless that’s a helmet, it’s a robot.”

Just then, movement came from the crater Xolgren had knocked the unidentified figure into, and they both turned to look.

Climbing out of the crater, covered in sand, was a man wearing clothes made of some reflective material that blended with the surroundings.

Sparks crackled from the side of his head, and the reflective properties of his clothes seemed to lose potency as the images blurred.

“Definitely a robot,” Xolgren said, stepping forward.

Just then, the ‘robot’ man looked up at them, a whirring sound echoing as his pupils dilated.

Then a mechanical voice spoke.

[Targets Confirmed.]

“!”

“This th—”

[Initiating Self-Destruct.]

“—ing—huh?!”

Xolgren’s words were cut off by the mechanical voice, and before he could even finish reacting, the robot’s body exploded into flames.

**BOOOMM!!

A roaring column of fire burst outward in a sweeping wave, rolling across the sand and swallowing the dunes in a blazing rush that warped the air with heat, the explosion carving a widening circle of scorched earth through the desert.

Released in the same instant that the robot said ‘Confirmed’ was a magic signal travelling at light speed, crossing the country and going right into the open balcony of one of the many castles in the Sandfire Palace complex.

The young man inside, about to pour himself some hot chocolate, froze as the signal reached his phone, making it vibrate.

He stayed still, glancing at the device shaking on the desk, before finally speaking.

“Well, well, well. Looks like my hot chocolate’s gonna have to take a rain check.”

With that, he dropped the hot jar and grabbed his phone. Swiping across the screen repeatedly, he raised it to his ear.

“Yo. Emperor Lloris. My eyes in the Wild Lands just got taken out. The Demonic Hand’s on the move.”

Glancing at the balcony and the horizon, he added, “The wait’s over. Begin the march.”