Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1199 - 1199: Unease

After a moment, Mallory slowly raised her hand, lightly clenching her fist as faint wisps of divinity leaked out and coiled around her fingers.

“Any responses yet?”

Her words didn’t seem to have context, but Aphine knew she was asking about the messenger sent toward Kirone’s location, so she responded accordingly.

“Negative. Because of the Dimensional Lockdown, we’re currently cut off from mainstream space. And given the distance involved, the messenger likely hasn’t arrived yet.”

The Dimensional Lockdown Aphine referred to, both then and the day before, was a procedure she’d enacted in response to Mallory’s severe injuries.

For obvious security reasons, she’d completely isolated the entire Dimension.

It had been a good decision, but the increased security provided by the lockdown came at a cost.

While it prevented any further attacks on Mallory, it also completely severed all connections with the outside, including the telepathic link that Mallory and Kirone had always maintained, along with their ability to sense each other’s locations.

That second part wasn’t entirely cut off, but it was heavily interfered with. As a result, pinpointing the other’s exact location would be difficult for either of them.

The issue was that unless they actively tried to use this ability, neither would immediately notice the interference.

So unless Kirone, wherever she currently was and whatever she was doing, actively tried to sense Mallory’s location, she wouldn’t realise something was wrong. And unless she tried to send a message through their telepathic link, she wouldn’t notice that the artificial dimensional gap created between the barrier of Mallory’s dimension and the mainstream fabric of space would disrupt transmission.

Mallory had put perhaps a bit too much thought into security.

“Should we disable the lockdown?” Aphine asked.

Mallory went silent for a moment before shaking her head. “No, not yet.”

She rose to her feet and moved forward, activating her authority as the master of the dimension and teleporting directly to a restricted access area, the same region where her vault was located.

She then sat down, taking the time to properly assess her condition, as well as the state of the one thing that wasn’t her, which she hadn’t purged from her existence.

Because of the virus that had been genetically engineered specifically to take her out, Mallory had been forced to purge every alteration she’d made to her existence over thousands of years.

Every modification to her abilities, every change to her innate traits, and even the artifacts and items she’d fused with or soul-bonded to had been expelled.

All except one.

Nested deep within her soul remained the Seed of Endless Evolution.

Only three people besides Mallory were aware of its existence, and only two knew what it actually did.

One of them was, naturally, the one who had created it and given it to her.

The existence known as the Eternal of Space and Reality.

When Mallory was a teenager, she’d been involved in a Nexus event and had taken actions that ultimately resolved it.

Had she and her companions failed, the universe would have been set on a timeline leading toward destruction.

Amused and entertained by their struggle, the EOSR had offered everyone involved a single wish, promising to use his power over reality to grant it.

There was a caveat, of course. There was an invisible ceiling to their wishes, one he never told them about because he found it more entertaining to watch them struggle to stay within limits they didn’t know of.

Mallory’s wish had been for the Seed of Endless Evolution, an item that allowed her to break free from the conventional limits imposed by each stage of her law comprehension and the Authority she held over the Law of Evolution.

Even without it, her affinity and innate talent already placed her limits far above average. With the Seed, those limits expanded further, and the stronger she became, the more that expansion grew.

This was one of the reasons she could modify her body thousands upon thousands of times while keeping her soul’s original structure intact, and even adjust her existence to compensate for conflicting powers or abilities.

Mallory would have preferred for this to be something ingrained directly in her soul, rather than an artifact she could fuse with and separate from.

Unfortunately, the teenage Mallory had been far too weak to withstand such power. As a result, the Seed was made into an artifact, one she kept secret and used externally until she became strong enough to fuse with it fully.

Of the others who knew of its existence besides the EOSR, one was naturally Kirone. She knew of it and understood what it did.

The last person who knew of its existence was another Eternal, the Eternal of Time and Destruction, but he only knew it existed, not its function, having only sensed that something created by a fellow Eternal was present in Mallory’s soul.

Now, using the Seed of Endless Evolution, Mallory began repairing her Royal Evolution Law Origin Core, the source of her Authority over the universal Law of Evolution, which had been directly targeted by the virus and damaged when she forcibly purged her existence of all prior modifications.

After that, she isolated the remnants of the virus still clinging to the edges of her soul and began experimenting on them, creating spiritual antibodies tailored specifically to it. She then worked on simulating variations of the virus, attempting to generate antibodies for those as well.

All of this was so she would never be affected by something like it again.

There was a reason whoever was behind it had claimed it would only work once. They knew that if it failed to kill Mallory, it would never succeed again, because she would find a way to adapt, even if they didn’t know how she would manage it.

Experience was the best teacher, they said, and Mallory’s first-hand encounter with the virus had given her far more insight than any external sample ever could.

Due to the virus’s unique nature and the rarity of some of the materials used in its creation, she could only simulate three variations, a number barely acceptable by her standards. She succeeded in generating spiritual antibodies for all of them, ensuring that her soul would never again be threatened to the same degree.

Only after all of this was complete did she finally order Aphine to release the dimensional lockdown.

❤

“So how have things been lately? Any news on Jack’s location?”

The question was aimed at Kirone by the woman seated across from her at a table in the outdoor seating area of a café. Faced with it, the white-haired goddess slowly shook her head and answered.

“Nothing so far. The whole situation’s just messed up.

Alvey couldn’t come with me because he’s too busy dealing with those warmongering demons who want to start a war just because McEnda went missing.

A war against who?! We don’t even know who’s behind all these disappearances, and they’re already talking about war. That’d only give the culprits better cover and lead to even more disappearances than we’re already struggling to deal with.”

She finished speaking and pressed a few fingers to her forehead, and the woman across from her sighed softly as well, mirroring the gesture.

Kirone was currently on a planet far removed from the outer galactic regions where she’d gone to deal with the attack.

If it had to be categorised, she was in the transition zone between the outer and central galactic regions, on an obscure Mid-Level planet tucked away in a corner of a satellite galaxy orbiting a larger galaxy.

As for the identity of the woman seated across from her, she was naturally the person Kirone had mentioned she would visit after finishing her investigation into the home galaxies of the four Galactic Rulers who had attacked their territory with replica automations.

She was Kirone’s mother-in-law, the mother of the Supreme Demon King Alvey Sargon.

Kirone’s relationship with her mother-in-law was as harmonious as it could be.

Despite being a pure-blooded demon, her mother-in-law had no issue with Kirone being a goddess. All she cared about was that Kirone was the woman her son genuinely loved and that she was a good mother to the young man currently taking part in an archery competition with other young demons nearby.

Her grandson, Kirone’s son, Alverix.

This was where the source of Kirone’s disagreement with Mallory became clear.

Alverix had wanted to visit certain planets for personal reasons, with the journey ending in a visit to his grandmother. Mallory, however, believed that until they fully uncovered the cause behind the disappearances of their parents’ allies, and even their friends, Kirone and Alverix shouldn’t be moving around too freely, especially not into poorly monitored regions outside their sphere of influence, like some of the planets Alverix wanted to visit, where anything could happen.

After all, Zareon had vanished while investigating an outer galaxy that wasn’t under either demon or god control. His final message had been an SOS sent to his sister, which led Sigesi to rush to the location and eventually drew the Supreme Demon King Jack McEnda III there as well, where all three of them had gone M.I.A.

Another reason Mallory had been so strongly opposed to Alverix travelling was that Sigesi and McEnda’s son, Jack McEnda IV, had been attacked shortly after McEnda III left to help his wife, almost as if the attackers had been waiting for him to be gone.

Alverix, like McEnda IV, was the son of a Supreme Demon King. If these unknown figures could target one Supreme Demon King’s child, nothing was preventing them from targeting another.

However, Kirone, who wanted to grant her son’s wishes whenever possible, had pushed back against Mallory, arguing that she’d be with Alverix most of the time and would protect him. That disagreement was where their argument had begun.

Thinking about all of this, Kirone sighed again and muttered, “I have to get back to Orithyia soon.”

Her mother-in-law raised an eyebrow, but after seeing Kirone’s expression, she quickly realised something serious was happening that she wasn’t fully aware of.

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’m glad you came.”

She was always happy to see her daughter-in-law and her grandson, and she appreciated that they took the time to visit, especially considering she currently lived in a secure region deep within Demon Territory for her own protection.

After all, as the mother of a Supreme Demon King, she was a prime target for his enemies.

Turning her gaze toward her son, Kirone said, “Alverix, time’s up.”

Hearing this, the young man turned and nodded once before starting to pack away his archery equipment.

Kirone then looked back at her mother-in-law, who asked, “How are you getting back?”

“My departure wasn’t made public, so I’ll need to use some lesser-known dimensional gates,” Kirone replied. “A few days from here, there’s a gate in a galaxy controlled by some of Alvey’s subordinates. I’ll use that to connect to the closest territory to mine. From there, some teleportation should get me into my territory, and then I’ll use the gate there to return to Orithyia.”

The distances between planets, even within the same galaxy, were immense, not to mention the distance between entire galaxy clusters.

With that in mind, it was clear Kirone was extremely far from Orithyia at the moment.

Even taking into account the dimensional gates she intended to use to shorten the distance by more than 50%, there were still millions of light-years left to cross, and covering that span required time.

However, she was a High-Tier Deity and the Main Entity overseeing the Aspects of Space and Time within the universe, so the duration she needed to traverse that distance was drastically shorter than what others would manage, even with spatial Authorities, artifacts, or gates, and that was while moving at a relaxed pace. If she decided to hurry, it would be faster still.

“I know it might sound strange for me to say this to you of all people, but be careful, okay?” her mother-in-law said.

Kirone smiled faintly at the older woman’s concern and replied, “Don’t worry, I will—”

She stopped mid-word, her expression changing as she lifted her gaze toward the skies and murmured, “This presence… I know this guy.”

“Beatrix?” the woman across from her called.

Kirone barely registered the voice, her attention locked on the presence she sensed racing through the star system and on why it felt so…

“…weak.”