Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1194 - 1194: Evolution’s Bitter Pill I

The Seed of Endless Evolution.

An artifact that accelerated the evolutionary process of the user it was fused with, allowing her abilities to continually grow and develop beyond conventional limits, ensuring infinite potential over time.

A powerful artifact, it was.

Only one of its exact kind existed across the Cosmos.

The existences who knew of its existence could all be counted on one hand, with fingers left over.

But Evolution was not without consequences or setbacks.

What if someone created a virus that targeted the law of ‘Evolution’ itself, combining several universal laws and even elements of pseudo-nonexistence to create an ‘Anti-Evolution’ virus?

A virus that forcefully resets the effects of ‘Evolution’, returning one to the base, default state of their existence?

A virus, created specifically to target the goddess who possessed the Seed of Endless Evolution.

🌹

Arcs of magical power curved through space, forming into a magic circle with ten concentric rings of light surrounding its centre.

Before the symbols at the heart of the circle could fully manifest, a hand tore through the glowing construct, shattering it, then clamped across the face of the one who had conjured it.

The grip crushed their face with such force that their skin began to tear, and with overwhelming strength, the spell caster was hurled through several asteroids, ripped through an atmosphere, and smashed down onto the surface of a massive rocky planet.

Their scream of agony was drowned out by the roar of collapsing land beneath them, white blood spraying into the air as their pairs of white, feathered wings were crushed beneath their own weight.

Arrows tore through space and reached the impact site at near light speed, but the one responsible for leaving the Angel spell caster half-dead with a single strike teleported away with ease, evading every shot.

Descending through the breach in the atmosphere came an elf with blood running from his forehead, drawing his bow once more as his eyes glowed, pupils darting around rapidly while tracking the erratic flashes of golden light that was his target, loosing arrows aimed directly at both the figure and their projected trajectory.

The golden flash of light evaded both volleys of arrows, but the instant it did, the elf released another shot toward the space they’d escaped into, forcing them to finally halt as they blocked the arrows of light.

“!”

The elf’s eyes widened when he saw what had stopped the attack, since it wasn’t the arms or legs of the humanoid he was fighting, but a pair of arthropod limbs extending from that person’s back.

“Arachne’s legs?! Is she a goddess or a fucking chimaera?!”

That question left his mouth aloud, and hearing it, the one he was facing finally turned toward him, her blank expression unchanged as she muttered.

“Chimaera? How rude.”

The arthropod limbs levelled in his direction as divinity flowed through them, but before that energy could be released, the goddess snapped her head aside, her right arm sweeping across her face to block the incoming fist of a giant bipedal bear that was twice her height and size.

The shockwaves from the collision shattered the planet’s fabric of space, and the planet itself followed in ruin, the force sending the goddess crashing towards the celestial body orbiting the now destroyed world at light speed.

Before she could crash into it and reduce it to dust, she flipped in space and shot back toward the white-furred bear beastman who’d punched her, her fists coated in a mix of dense brown fur and draconic scales as she returned his blow with twice the force.

The bear’s body tumbled through the vacuum, smashing through fragments of the ruined planet before being hurled into the system’s host star, and in that same moment, the elf was assailed by beams of light firing from the arthropod legs extending from the goddess’s back.

He veered aside to evade them, but as soon as he slipped past the first wave, the goddess appeared before him in a flash of light, her left hand catching his bow and shoving it away while her right fist smashed into his chest, cracking his ribs and sending bone fragments piercing into his organs.

Blood spilt from his mouth, but she didn’t care as she followed with another punch to his torso, sending him flying toward a distant gas giant.

His body slammed through the gas giant, bursting out the far side and crashing straight into the surface of one of its rocky moons, blood streaming from his eyes and nose as he choked and vomited bone fragments.

As his vision blurred from pain and blood, he recalled the words of the one who’d told them the goddess would be in this region, and who’d urged them to attack her for the sake of their grand plan.

[The only reason this plan would work was simple. She was investigating the disappearances of the Olden god Kings allied with her father, and because of that, she wouldn’t fight you with the intent to kill.

She’d want to take you alive so she could extract information from you, and that’s the only reason you’d even have a chance against her.]

Those words echoed in the elf’s mind, and as his body regenerated, he spat out blood and cursed.

“Fucking hell! Not fighting with intent to kill, my foot!”

He had a Deity Level of 900, and she’d still broken his physical and spiritual defences, dealing massive damage to both his body and soul with only two punches, and she wasn’t even going all out?

“Bullshit!”

Forcing himself upright, he hurled himself back into space, where several flashes of light were colliding again and again, each impact warping space and sending shockwaves that knocked celestial bodies out of orbit.

Just as the elf closed the distance, an armoured Human King wielding a sword appeared behind their target goddess, his blade coming down with overwhelming force.

The elf fired arrows, joining the others in attacking her to keep her from blocking the descending slash, but despite the combined attack, she still turned and punched the swordsman’s torso behind her, a pair of white angelic wings erupting from her back and flapping once, their feathers firing outward like projectiles that intercepted every incoming attack.

As her fist collided with the swordsman’s body, he exploded into a shower of bright blue liquid, soaking the goddess faster than she could conjure a shield to stop it, and for the first time since the battle began, her eyebrow lifted in surprise.

‘Oh? A water clone I couldn’t see through?’

She spun immediately, the wings at her back sweeping through space and releasing waves of divinity that blasted her attackers away, and with her right palm shaped into a knifehand, she sent it piercing straight through the chest of the real swordsman who’d tried to attack her from behind, enduring the storm of feathers she’d already unleashed.

Her hand tore through his back, blood spilling from both sides and drifting through the vacuum, and before the eyes of everyone present, she crushed the still-beating heart clenched in her palm.

“I suppose I only need one or two of you to get the information I want,” she muttered, golden lightning beginning to crackle down her arms.

“The rest are…unnecessary.”

Before she could discard the body of the human she just ended, his left arm moved and grabbed onto hers, and despite his heart being destroyed, he lifted his head and shouted.

|I’M NOT DONE YET!!!!|

‘This…the Second Life Skill!!’

The goddess immediately realised why he still drew breath, but with her right arm still through his body and her left arm seized by his grip, she was fully restrained and unable to stop the sword in his right hand from coming down on her.

—is what would have been the case were this any other goddess.

But faster than his blade could fall, even from such close range, she released a burst of divinity-laced lightning that erased his left arm completely, freeing her hand, which she raised with incredible speed to seize his wrist and crush it under her strength, while two arthropod limbs erupted from her back above the angel wings and knocked his sword aside.

“Wha…?!”

“That’s enough out of you,” the goddess said as her fist smashed into the human’s face, sending him streaking through space and into the newly formed sea of asteroids, the shattered remains of planets destroyed in the earlier clash.

Then, rousing her divinity, she dyed the entire star system in her colour, a golden flash filling their vision as the surrounding vacuum turned white, pure, and seemingly endless in its reach.

And then, she spoke three words,

|Royal Evolution Authority.|

The aura she emanated multiplied several times over, an immense mass of divinity churning around her like a violent storm, and a massive lightning avatar manifested behind her, its humanoid upper body mirroring her movements in perfect synchrony.

Just before she could bring the avatar’s hands down, the bow-wielding elf summoned a strange knife, stabbed it into his own hand, and screamed, “Sacrifice!”

Simultaneously, the eight other Race Kings she was fighting each summoned knives with glowing runes carved into their blades, and without hesitation, they slit their own throats, blood spraying outward, washing over the runes and staining the white floor of her domain.

It went without saying that the goddess was stunned by the sight, since even the most composed individual would’ve been left speechless by their enemies suddenly choosing collective suicide.

The elf tried to slice his own throat as well, but before the blade could even move, the goddess closed the distance, caught his hand, and with a brilliant flash of golden lightning, burned his arm down to charred bone.

The man screamed as the knife slipped from his grasp, and she immediately slammed him back into the floor, demanding, “What did you just do?”

There was no reason she could conceive for her enemies to end their own lives without purpose, and she needed to know exactly what they’d done.

Instead of answering, the man started laughing, a deranged grin spreading across his face as he said, “It touched you, didn’t it? The liquid from his water clone.”

At those words, the goddess’s brow twitched slightly, and still laughing, the man went on, “And you used it, your Unique Authority.”

The moment he said that, the goddess’s instincts screamed ‘DANGER’.

She rushed to shut off her Authority, but by then it was already too late. It had only been a few seconds, but her Authority had already been active for ‘too long’.

The liquid that had splashed onto her earlier seeped into her skin the instant her Authority activated, and now the goddess was hit by a sharp pain in her chest.

She stumbled back as she clutched her chest, her expression contorting in pain as black markings spread like lightning across her face.

The giant avatar behind her cracked apart and collapsed, its structure breaking down as the energy composing it forcefully dispersed.

Her heart thundered so loudly in her chest that she could hear it in her ears, golden blood spilling from her nose and splashing onto the white floor as she dropped to one knee.

Seeing this, the elf burst into laughter and said,

“I had my doubts since he said it was only a one-time thing, but it looks like it really works just like he claimed!”

At those words, the goddess snapped her gaze upward, her eyes glowing as she swung her hand through the air, creating a massive arm of lightning that seized the elf and crushed him as she shouted, “What did you do?!”

But the moment she shouted, she choked, her energy destabilised, and the lightning arm shattered, releasing the man as he fell back to the floor, laughing all the while.

“Careful now, Miss goddess of Evolution,” he said with a mocking grin.

“Those evolution-acquired powers of yours don’t seem very stable anymore, do they?!”

He tried to rise, but failed as his legs had been broken when the lightning arm had seized him.

Even so, the mocking grin on his lips didn’t fade.

“This Anti-Evolution virus was genetically engineered specifically to kill you, Artemisia Delgasso,” he screamed, laughter spilling from his lips.

“There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it!”