Reincarnated Hero System

Leoniel erected a curved earthen wall to block Evan’s attack, and when the golden aura slash shattered it, the debris gathered mid-air and formed humanoid golems that dropped to the ground and charged Evan from several directions.

Evan tapped his foot lightly, and just as they closed in, spears of elemental light burst upward beneath them, piercing their bodies and riddling them with holes.

“One batch of earthen skewers ready for serving,” Evan said.

‘Just how many skills does he have?’ Leoniel asked internally. ‘More importantly, why can’t I sense their activations?

I can tell they are skills due to the magic power they give off, but I can’t sense the energy usually released when a skill activates.

Some of his skills must operate differently.’

From observation alone, Leoniel deduced one of the effects of Evan’s Mystic Eyes—the ability to conceal Mimicked Skill Activations—though he made no comment on this.

He waved his hand, raising an earthen barrier to block the sword Evan threw. Then he spun, coating his left fist in earth and using wind beneath his elbow as propulsion to meet the punch of Evan, who teleported behind him.

But unlike Evan’s earlier silent teleportations, this time Evan appeared with a burst of spatial law energy that slammed into Leoniel’s body and knocked him backwards.

“This… was that just spatial energy, or another skill?” Leoniel muttered as he flipped through the air and landed on his feet.

He crossed his arms above his head to block Evan’s descending axe kick, then reached out and grabbed Evan’s leg, hurling him toward the ground.

Evan planted his arms on the ground to avoid landing face-first, then used his free leg to kick Leoniel’s hand off his leg and free his limb. He used Blink right after, teleporting behind Leoniel and landing on his feet before sending a high kick toward him, which Leoniel countered by spinning around and raising a high kick of his own to meet it.

As their legs pressed against each other, Leoniel said, “I suppose that was enough for a warm-up.”

“Ha! I was wondering if you were ever going to get serious with me,” Evan replied with a scoff.

The clash of magic power between their colliding legs intensified, earth and ice law energies colliding in a grey and crimson gold flash, and the surrounding ground crumbled beneath the elemental struggle for dominance.

With neither side gaining the upper hand, they eventually pulled their legs back at the same time and put some distance between themselves.

Leoniel lightly clenched his fists, and his arms became coated in a grey metallic layer, a sight that seemed to surprise Evan.

“Metal?” Evan asked.

“When you work with earth long enough, you learn to control the metal within it,” Leoniel replied, stopping the metallic law energy coating when it reached his elbows.

He clenched his right fist and formed his left hand into a knifehand, extending it forward as he assumed a combat stance.

“You’re going to need your sword for this,” he said with a confident smile.

Evan chuckled dryly. “Oh, you have no idea what you just asked for.”

Extending his right hand lightly to the side, Evan called out, “Wake up, Vanquisher. Time to play for a little bit.”

With a golden flash of light, magic power and an unseen energy that none present, not even Evan, could sense condensed into his hand, and the Unforged Vanquisher appeared.

The instant he gripped it, Leoniel’s eyes narrowed as his instincts screamed DANGER.

Eliza, watching from a distance, raised an eyebrow, sensing that something about Evan’s sword was fundamentally different from the last time she’d seen it.

Kayla, standing not far from her, quietly muttered under her breath, [It’s reawakening.]

Ice swirled around Vanquisher, creating a small Vortex, and Evan drew the blade back, pointing it toward Leoniel, as he said, “En garde.”

By the time the sound of his words reached Leoniel’s ears, Evan was already thrusting his blade forward, unleashing the Vortex upon Leoniel.

◇　◇　◇

“Unbelievable,” Countess Grace muttered, her eyes wide at the sight before her.

The island Evan and Leoniel had chosen as their battlefield now had a massive crater several kilometres wide at its centre.

The surrounding land had collapsed, metallic projectiles sticking out of the ground, and fragments of shattered ice scattered everywhere.

And in the middle of it all, the two responsible continued to clash, sword against fist, each collision sending sparks into the air.

“He’s matching him,” Gideon murmured, astonished that Evan was keeping pace with their lord.

When Leoniel had told them weeks earlier aboard the Voyager that Evan was the closest person to Transcendence in the world, they knew he wasn’t lying.

Still, a part of them clinging to common sense couldn’t reconcile the 18-year-old before them with near-transcendent power.

But as they say, seeing was believing.

Watching Evan and Leoniel battle without either gaining the advantage left them no room for doubt.

Leoniel hadn’t overestimated Evan, nor had he misjudged him. His conclusion had been based on what he sensed.

Eliza, sitting a few meters away, thought silently, ‘Evan is holding back. He’s only using enough power to match Marquis Leoniel’s output.

Not that the Marquis is fighting seriously either. This island would’ve been gone long ago if he were.’

She remembered the day Evan released his power concealment and revealed to her just how much strength his misadventures 10,000 years back in time had granted him.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration for her to say that Evan was currently the strongest individual on the planet, though Evan himself would beg to differ because of the existence of Rosaline Keasatra.

Eliza continued watching the fight, focusing on Leoniel, trying to search for any hint of inhumanity in him.

However, the man’s humanoid transformation was flawless, and there was nothing off about him she could pick up on.

There was nothing unusual in his life signature, and since his power exceeded hers, she couldn’t see as deeply as her Uncle George had once seen with Evan, noticing connections between body and soul and similar details.

Just as she had that thought, she sensed someone appear beside her and turned to Kayla, who had long since abandoned using her younger, childlike form.

‘So much has happened in the past few years,’ Eliza thought. ‘Kayla, who we believed was just a young Great Spirit, turned out to be one of the oldest beings in existence. A star incarnated as a spirit.’

Those thoughts crossed her mind in seconds, then she looked up and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Without beating around the bush, Kayla went straight to the point.

[If I told you that one day you’d need to give up your weapon to empower Evan, would you?]

Eliza’s expression instantly turned strange at the question.

“Give up my weapon to empower Evan? Where’s this coming from?”

[Your staff-spear, it’s called the Memory of the Vanquisher, isn’t it?]

Eliza nodded silently.

[And Evan’s sword is the Unforged Vanquisher.]

“Yeah. They’re part of a series,” Eliza said, recalling another Vanquisher Series weapon, which was in the hands of the Seventh Finger of the Demonic Hand, Kethryllia Keasatra.

Kayla turned to the two fighting in the distance before speaking.

[What if I told you these weapons, at their cores, were originally fragments of a single weapon? The original Vanquisher.] She turned toward Eliza as she continued, [Every weapon in the Vanquisher Series was crafted using shards of one broken blade as a core.]

For a moment, there was silence as Eliza looked towards Evan, remembering the words he’d spoken when he summoned his sword some minutes earlier.

He hadn’t called it the ‘Unforged’ as he had for years before going back in time. He’d called it the ‘Vanquisher’.

“Evan’s former life…” Eliza finally said, “That was his weapon then, wasn’t it?”

Kayla nodded.

[It was broken at some point,] she continued. [Artemisia gathered as many pieces as she could across different worlds and brought them here, then had them crafted into new weapons to preserve their power.

Unfortunately, the location where she kept them was destroyed during the war 1000 years ago, and they were scattered.

One piece, the Core Piece, so to speak, ended up in Geto City, where Evan retrieved it from that spider’s dungeon.

He was drawn to it instinctively. Despite knowing about hundreds of other weapons with superior stats and abilities, he went after the Vanquisher with no hesitation.]

Hearing Kayla’s explanation, Eliza understood what the spirit was getting at. Raising her hand, she summoned the Memoria into her palm, and as she gripped the staff, she asked, “So for Evan’s sword to regain its true power, the fragment inside this has to be removed, right?”

Kayla nodded silently.

“And my staff would lose its power?”

[If done properly, you wouldn’t lose it entirely, but its strength would decrease. Some functions might disappear, like its ability to turn into a spear.]

Eliza’s eyes widened at those words. “Wait. The blade of the Memoria’s spear tip is…”

[Part of the original Vanquisher’s blade,] Kayla said, finishing Eliza’s statement.

Eliza had a hard time believing what she’d just been told.

Her staff’s ability to turn into a spear was something she used whenever she wasn’t in full support mode, and she had grown to rely on it over the past few years.

Now, she was being told that the bladed tip of the staff that appeared whenever she changed its modes was a fragment of the original Vanquisher’s blade.

Thinking of the ‘Pledge of the Vanquisher’ that Kethryllia possessed, which was a true spear, she asked.

“Is that one’s spear tip also a fragment of the original sword?”