Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1254 - 1254: Relics of a Dead Hegemony

“I’m just dying to know how.”

That was the first thing Leoniel said the moment Evan opened the door, and without any context behind those words, Evan couldn’t help but look confused.

“Dying to know how what?”

“How you killed that monster,” Leoniel replied, gesturing toward the frozen Artificial Divine Messenger visible through the window.

He sat on a chair opposite the bed where the unconscious Zara lay, inside her room within her fortress on Zera, and he had remained there for the hours that followed Evan bringing the ADM’s life to an end.

The remaining monsters still had to be dealt with, and the corpses had to be cleared from both the ocean waters and the island shores, which were tasks that would take a significant amount of time.

In fact, Zara’s subordinates had only just finished handling the former and were only now beginning preparations to deal with the latter.

“I told Zara this earlier,” Evan said as he closed the door behind him and stepped into the room. “It’s an issue of compatibility.”

“Compatibility, you say?”

“Yeah. That monster just happened to be a bad matchup for me.”

Evan walked over to Zara, appraising her to check her condition, before turning back to Leoniel and continuing, “You should know I’m not a pure human, and aside from my obvious dragon traits, I’ve got some other racial factors.

One of the three racial factors I possess is the ‘Anti-Divine’ factor.”

Leoniel’s expression was naturally one of confusion, as he had no idea what this factor Evan had just spoken about was.

“To put it bluntly, existences with the ‘Divine’ factor can never be at full power when they’re within my range.”

“Divine factor? You mean divinity wielders?”

“Yep. The magic my body naturally radiates is attributed to my ‘Anti-Divine’ factors, and when it comes into contact with the body of a Divine Factor possessor, it suppresses the divine’s power, reducing their Stat Parameters.

By like 10-15%.”

The number Evan added at the end brought a reaction of surprise from Leoniel, but he didn’t interrupt Evan and allowed him to continue speaking.

“Those Anti-Divine Factors make divines weaker in my presence, they also make my attacks deal more damage to them and make them take more damage from me, both with a maximum I remember to be 15%.”

Evan then raised his hand before Leoniel, putting a finger down with each line he added, “So note this: My attacks are already buffed by 15% against them, then they take 15% more of that already buffed attack, and then, the cherry on top, is my Pseudo-Authority of Destruction.”

He clenched his raised hand into a fist, crimson energy momentarily surrounding it. “If there’s anything about the power of Destruction that everyone would love to have, it’s the ability to ignore a certain level of durability.”

Pointing out the window, he said, “That monster wasn’t the most durable around. That’s why it had that divinity barrier around its body to compensate for its low durability.

That barrier was also something that could only be broken by Pseudo-Authorities like mine, and then, when you add my various buffs and all, you get the end result of me one-shotting it.”

Evan clapped his hands as he finished his explanation, before turning to the unconscious Zara and adding, “That’s why I told her it was a compatibility issue, not a power issue.”

Leoniel stayed silent for a while after Evan’s explanation. He looked out the window, staring at the frozen corpse before asking, “What is it called?”

“Artificial Divine Messenger. It’s a relic of the old world.”

“Relic of the old world, huh?” Leoniel muttered.

Returning his gaze to Evan, he asked, “You know how my power level came to prominence, right?”

“Hmm? Ah, I get what you want to ask, and yes, the monster that you fought 52 years ago was also an Artificial Divine Messenger,” Evan replied, walking over to an empty chair and dropping into it.

“If I had to guess, the volcanic eruptions that happened before it appeared destroyed the dimensional realm it was slumbering in, waking it up.”

He raised his hand, generating a hologram of Aidos with several spots marked in red, one of which was their current location, the Zeraxes Archipelago.

“The people of the old world didn’t just rely on Heroes to protect themselves. They created monsters like that and stationed them around the planet.

But the people of the old world are dead, and they died along with the controls for the ADMs, who went into hibernation.

However, since those control parameters died with their creators, when the ADMs awaken now, they just target the strongest existence in their range.”

He spun the globe hologram around, pointing at a red dot on the Beta Continent as he said, “That’s why when the one near Isolon awakened, it headed straight to Isolon. It detected your power, classified you as a threat and wanted to eliminate you.”

The globe spun again, and pointing at the red dot on Zeraxes, he continued his explanation, “That’s why this one was focused on Zara alone, until you attacked it and it detected you.”

Evan’s explanation of the ADM’s reason for their actions made Leoniel frown lightly, as if Evan’s words held true, then the land and infrastructure destroyed 52 years ago when that monster broke out might have been partly his fault.

“The people of the old world created those things to eliminate threats, and those threats were powerful.

Which is why now, in this state where their controls are down, their systems are bugged and degraded after thousands of years of inactivity, they automatically mark the strongest thing they can detect as the ‘threat to eliminate’.”

“How many of these ADMs exist?” Leoniel asked, and Evan shrugged right away.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t part of the old world, so I don’t know how many they made,” he replied.

“But considering that these are the same people who were able to place a magic formation across the surface of the entire world and use it to do everything from bending the planet’s weather and climate to their will, to controlling the gravity of the entire planet, then it’s safe to assume there are a lot of them lying dormant, and when the circumstances happen to align, some of them can awaken.”

The two examples Evan mentioned were only two of the uses of the fully powered World Formation, which allowed the Aidosians during the planet’s hegemony days to harness and store all available energy of the planet.

“Controlling the entire planet’s gravity? The amount of energy required for that is astronomical…”

Leoniel was an existence who could manipulate the planet’s ambient laws, so he understood how much more energy manipulating a fundamental force like gravity required, even on a small scale.

Because of that, he could also infer the absurd amount of power required to manipulate the entire planet’s gravity.

“Zeraxes is quite lucky,” Evan said, pulling Leoniel out of his thoughts.

“I had my contracted spirit do some recon on Solen’s dungeon before I came here, and during that, she discovered the awakening of the one beneath the dungeon.

Its awakening is likely what caused the dungeon break.”

“It came out from the dungeon’s entrance, so did it break into the dungeon and force all the monsters out?” Leoniel asked, already somewhat certain that was the case, and Evan nodded without speaking, confirming his words.

He turned back to Zara, who was unconscious since her body recovered the energy spent regenerating her arm, then said, “Can you have someone inform me when she wakes up? We have much to discuss.”

Turning around and making his way toward the room door, Evan grinned and spoke.

“Zeraxes is about to come under new management.”

◇　◇　◇

Zara’s awakening came not long after Evan left, and the woman wasn’t exactly pleased with the first discovery she made.

The discovery that the ‘contract’ Evan had finalised before killing the ADM was a combination of contract magic and a Unique Skill she was very familiar with.

The same Unique Skill she used to place a leash on her Pirate Lord subordinates to prevent potential betrayals.

But before Zara could even feel annoyed about Evan using her Dominator’s Decree skill on her, she froze as a realisation came to mind.

‘Wait, how could he even use Dominator’s Decree?’

Dominator’s Decree was Zara’s Unique Skill, one she had long before Evan was even born.

What were the odds that Evan was also born with her Dominator’s Decree skill?

‘That would make sense,’ she thought, ‘given how quickly his influence is rising, he could have been using his Dominator’s Decree skill on people.’

But the moment that line of thought appeared, it was cut off by another.

‘No, wait, why am I assuming that he had the skill in the first place? Dominator’s Decree is my Unique Skill, and while it’s not a Series Skill where there’s a 100% guarantee that it’s impossible for anyone else in the world to have that same skill as far as I do, it’s still a Unique-Grade Skill, and Unique-Grade Skills are classified that way because of their power and because of how rare it is for another person to have that skill, a chance so low it’s almost zero.

If that’s the case, then what are the odds that Evan Eris just happens to have the Dominator’s Decree skill as well?’

Zara had already answered her own question with her earlier thoughts. The odds were so low that they were almost zero.

‘Then how did he have the skill?’

All these thoughts about skills brought to mind another detail she had come across during her research about Evan, the fact that he was known to have many skills.