Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 927 - 927: Hi, Maude… Again

The explosion was deafening, unleashing a colossal shockwave that rippled outward. The ground splintered, sending jagged shards of black sand and stone hurtling in every direction.

A blinding flash of white light consumed the landscape, and the roar of the inferno drowned out all other sounds.

When the flames finally subsided, a massive smouldering crater remained, its edges glowing with residual heat, while the surrounding tombstones were charred and crumbling.

“The fuck?! Faldo was NOT this powerful!!”

Evan yelled, narrowly evading the frenzied assaults of the resurrected demons charging at him with reckless abandon.

“Did I not tell you I was enhancing their Attack Potency?

I can also use my skill ‘Death’s Embrace’ and my ‘Undead Regeneration’ technique to heal the damage you deal to them.

Also, my ‘Dark Empowerment’ skill enhances them too.”

Idrilla spoke as she spun her scythe and pointed it forward, activating a torrent of spells and skills.

Dark Empowerment on the Reborn Adversaries to amplify their strength and speed. She followed up with Deathly Aura, enveloping them in a life-draining field.

Spirit Barrier provided extra defences, drawing upon the souls harvested through her Soul Harvest skill.

She activated invoked Unholy Resurrection, summoning the corpses of other Outsiders she had slain over the years. Their souls were bound to serve her indefinitely, their loyalty cemented through the Eternal Servitude skill.

Next, Idrilla spun her scythe and activated Necrotic Surge, further enhancing the combat abilities of the undead at her command.

This act served as a command, sending thousands of undead and Reborn Adversaries charging forth, their eyes ablaze with a maddened light, ready to besiege the four teenagers.

Arthur found himself surrounded by hundreds of monsters of different shapes and sizes, each one a proof of the battles he had fought and won throughout his seventeen years.

Among them were thousands of Aramisian soldiers, their faces twisted in deathly fury—the same ones he’d killed during his six months on this Prime World.

Arthur wielded his sword, infused with destruction energy, unleashing a powerful slash that obliterated the first wave of monsters into dark mist.

He manipulated gravity, crushing hundreds of foes into grotesque balls of flesh and blood that immediately dissolved into magic particles.

Teleporting across the battlefield, his movements were precise and lethal, as he shattered a god’s spine with a kick, cleaved an undead soldier with an upward slash, and impaled a ghoul with a downward thrust.

His destruction law energy emitted pulses of erasing energy, disintegrating clusters of Reborn Adversaries.

Despite blasting them apart in droves, the enemy seemed endless, their ranks replenishing as quickly as he could cut them down,

Arthur had no idea how many monsters he had slain, let alone the thousands of Aramisian soldiers since his arrival, but it was enough to create several armies.

In search of a new strategy, Arthur expanded his spatial perception to assess the full extent of Idrilla’s Bounded Field. But his expression darkened as the scale became apparent.

‘The level of spatial expansion is wild!!

I’ve scanned 15 kilometres and it keeps on going!’

He pulled his energy back, questioning whether Idrilla had cast a Domain Declaration and not a Bounded Field. A Bounded Field of this size was anything but normal.

◇　◇　◇

Backtracking a few minutes, to the moments right after the four teenagers had separated after Faldo’s breath, Evan was having some reunions he’d rather not have.

[BASTARD!!!]

He heard a familiar voice scream out and the boy immediately used Space Warp, escaping a moment before two metal staves landed on the floor where he stood.

The spatial energy released upon teleportation blew the attacker away, creating enough distance for Evan to see them face to face.

It was a woman with hazel eyes and chestnut-coloured hair wielding two staves that emanated eerie energy.

At the sight of her, Evan chuckled and removed his mask with his left hand, smiling brightly as he raised his right hand and greeted her.

“Hi, Maude.”

[DIEEE!!!]

The deceased Demonic Hand’s Ninth Finger, summoned back from the realm of the dead and granted a chance at avenging herself was NOT in the mood to deal with Evan’s bullshit.

She charged at him with her twin staves, using her Stoneheart’s Embrace skill as she swung and released a cross slash.

However, Evan just put his mask back and teleported out of the way, appearing behind her as he spoke.

“That’s not nice of you. I was so happy to see you again, and yet you’re being so vi-“

Evan bent backwards, dodging the sweeping arc of her first staff, before twisting his body to the side to avoid the downward arc of the second.

Maude’s fury only grew as Evan dodged her attacks with ease, his casual demeanour adding fuel to her rage.

She spun her twin staves and lunged; one staff aimed for his midsection while the other came crashing down in an overhead arc.

Evan twisted away, ‘narrowly’ avoiding the crushing blow. He then spun on his heel, sidestepping the follow-up strike that sliced through the space where he had just been standing.

The boy continued to dodge, his feet a blur as he swayed and sidestepped, almost gliding through her attacks.

He dodged one staff to the left, then ducked under another as Maude unleashed a furious barrage, her face twisted with hatred.

“You know, I never got the chance to tell you—”

Evan started speaking, grinning beneath his mask, but his taunt was cut short as Maude’s eyes narrowed.

She feinted a strike at his head, and as Evan tilted back to dodge, she suddenly reversed her grip and slammed her staff into his ribs.

A jolt of numbing pain shot through him, followed by another sharp blow to his shoulder. Evan winced at the strikes, chuckling despite the pain.

“Alright, that one hurt—”

Before he could finish, Maude’s left staff came crashing down onto his right arm.

A wave of stone-grey energy surged from the point of impact, spreading across his arm like an infection.

The eerie aura sank into his skin, solidifying into a hard, petrified shell that locked his limb in place. As Evan’s right arm hung there, stiff and heavy, Maude smirked triumphantly.

“Got you now, you bastard!”

Maude shouted as she drove her staves towards his head to try and finish him off, but Evan teleported and reappeared a few feet behind her.

He looked down at his petrified arm, then back at Maude.

For a moment, he just stared, as if in mild curiosity. Then, with a casual motion, he flexed his arm, causing the hardened layer of stone to crack and shatter, pieces of grey crumbling away to reveal his skin beneath.

He shook the last bits off, dusting his sleeve as if it were nothing more than dirt.

“Yeah… that didn’t work.”

Evan spoke with a smile behind his mask, his voice light and almost teasing.

“Anyway, my turn.”

Maude’s smirk vanished as Evan’s crimson-gold aura surged and before she could react, Evan disappeared from sight.

Her senses picked up on the threatening sensation Evan’s destruction essence gave her at the last moment, and she turned around, joining her two staves into one and swinging it to block the upward arcing slash of the hero’s sword.

‘Earthquake Strike!’

She split her staff in back two and whilst pushing back Evan’s sword with one part, she used the other to take a swing at his exposed torso with a skill.

The power surging through the weapon was unleashed upon Evan with tremendous force, causing immense kinetic energy to transfer into his body.

If it was Evan from his first encounter with Maude, then he would have taken a good amount of damage and even been sent flying with the knockback.

But the current Evan was so much stronger that Maude’s attack couldn’t even get past the defences of his Titanium Body Skill, much less reach his body’s actual durability.

A patch of grey began to spread from where her staff made contact, but Evan used his yellow flames to burn the petrification away before it could spread.

‘Blade Cannon.’

Evan swung the Unforged Vale and sent a dozen fist-sized aura bullets at her, each one accompanied by a slash of his golden aura. Seeing this, Maude slammed her palm and activated a spell, summoning a towering earthen pillar from beneath her.

‘Rising Ground!’

It propelled her upwards, effectively avoiding the onslaught of the blade cannon. Then, from above, she conjured an array of earthen projectiles and launched them towards Evan at sonic speed.

‘Earthen Rain.’

Sighing, Evan swung his hand and used his sword to deflect every single one of the projectiles. Each one of them exploded upon contact with the ground, giving rise to billowing clouds of dust and debris.

‘Heavy Armoured Guard.’

Maude used another technique and the ground cracked open, from which the upper body of a massive warrior-like golem of stone emerged, brandishing a gigantic great sword.

The massive golem’s sword came crashing down with all the force of a landslide, casting a looming shadow over him.

Yet, the boy didn’t seem bothered. He just raised his left hand and with an almost indifferent motion, Evan caught the edge of the colossal sword in his bare left hand.

The ground cracked beneath him from the force, but his stance didn’t waver an inch as he stopped the large weapon, meant to cleave him in two, dead in its tracks as if it had hit an immovable wall.

“Really? This again?”

Evan muttered, almost amused. He remembered Maude using this during their last confrontation.

Shaking his head, he released a faint pulse of crimson-gold energy that crept along the surface of the golem’s sword and within seconds, cracks began to spiderweb across the blade.

They were thin at first but rapidly widened as Evan’s destruction energy ate through the stone and metal, making the entire sword, as well as the golem wielding it crumble to dust.

Before Maude could react to the destruction of the golem, Evan moved. The distance between them became zero in an instant and he struck her squarely in the stomach with a Fracture.

The impact was explosive, sending shockwaves through the air as Maude’s body folded around his fist. She flew backwards, her breath ripped from her lungs, skidding across the ground before crashing into the rubble behind her.

Quickly forcing herself to her feet, she glared at Evan while screaming out his name hatefully.

[EVAN!!!!]

She attacked Evan with them and the boy used his Blink skill to dodge, before reappearing behind her and sending a kick to her side.

The force sent her flying but she flipped around and landed on her feet, slamming the staves on the ground.

The ground her staves came in contact with instantly turned from sand to stone, as well as everywhere within a five-metre radius of her feet.

She tightened her grip around the weapons and charged back at Evan, focusing more on speed than strength.

However, Evan dodged all her attacks with ease and even had the leeway to pay attention to other battles going on around him.

Spotting Arthur throwing a punch towards Faldo, Evan called out.

“Faldo has Annihilation Law essence! His Unique Skills! Be careful!!”

Arthur only scoffed as a surge of powerful negative energy condensed around his fist.

To him, Evan’s warning was unnecessary; there was no way Faldo’s ‘bootleg Annihilation law energy’ could ever harm him.

Proving his confidence, Arthur’s gravity-charged punch rocketed toward the dragon’s skull, crashing into it with a bone-crushing impact.

The force of the blow sent shockwaves rippling through Faldo’s body, but before they could even spread, Arthur teleported to Faldo’s side and delivered a powerful sidekick, sending the dragon staggering.

He reappeared below, his fist rising in an uppercut that shattered Faldo’s jaw.

Arthur finished the sequence by teleporting above, delivering a final, crushing blow to the dragon’s skull.