Reincarnated Hero System

The Broodmother had no offensive capabilities whatsoever, but in exchange, its base defensive power was equal to that of a Superior Transcendent.

No wonder Artemisia and Beatrix had dealt Zero Damage.

“We’re not getting through with standard attacks,” Arthur said as he drew more energy from his Pseudo-Origin core, while Evan glanced at the timer for BoD, quickly calculating how much time he had left.

“Our Destruction Law energies can bypass its durability, but let’s be real—you’re the only one here with a shot at taking it down, Arthur.”

At those words, Arthur tightened his grip on his sword without saying anything.

Though Evan could bypass part of its durability, the actual damage he could inflict was only a fraction of the creature’s immense health due to the gap between their Existence Realms.

It was crucial to note that Evan wasn’t bypassing all its durability, just a portion. The main power behind his strikes would still be heavily reduced.

Put in game terms, the Broodmother had tens of millions of HP, while Evan’s attacks only dealt hundreds of thousands of damage.

Just as the six of them regrouped, new threats appeared.

The Broodmother spawned Sovereign Realm Swarm creatures that charged at Arthur with terrifying speed.

Each one moved like a mobile fortress, faster and stronger than anything they’d encountered in the swarm so far.

Arthur clashed with the Sovereign Swarm, his blade striking with enough force to crack the ground, while Evan fended off multiple Legendary Vanguards, the Broodmother clearly targeting them for their destruction powers.

Though Evan’s prismatic flames broke through their shells, the time it took gave lesser swarm members the chance to regroup and press the attack.

Meanwhile, the Broodmother was covered in a living shield as swarm members climbed over it, forming a protective shell. Others mimicked this formation elsewhere, creating decoy mounds to confuse and delay them.

But since Evan had used Track Down during his earlier appraisal, the ploy was useless. He instantly locked onto the real one and raised his sword.

“Guys, ignore the other mounds! That one—that’s the Broodmother.”

The origin of the seemingly endless swarm, mother of the swarm mothers, who then produced vanguards and the common swarm.

Upon Evan’s signal, Beatrix targeted it with spatial magic to teleport it away, but a dozen swarm members attacked her mid-cast. She cut them down with a spatial slash infused with Arthur’s destruction energy, which was meant to guarantee the finality of her strikes.

But something was off.

Instead of succumbing to the destructive energy, the swarm adapted. Nearby Vanguard members extended woody tendrils that latched onto the severed halves of the defeated ones, pulling them back together in a grotesque fusion.

The halves reattached, and the reformed swarm members rose, stronger than before, as if creation energy had not only resisted destruction but reshaped it into something new.

Up ahead, Evan and Arthur continued their attacks, cutting a path toward the Broodmother.

“Hell Unleashed!”

Evan spun his blade in a sweeping arc, unleashing a torrent of prismatic flames that scorched everything in their path. The flames consumed all they touched, reducing the swarm to smouldering fragments.

However, some of the charred remains that hit the ground were only half-burned, with lower bodies still somewhat intact.

Evan stepped over these and charged forward.

Beside him, Arthur carved through the enemy ranks with a towering column of silver aura erupting from his sword.

Like Evan, he moved past the fallen swarm without a second glance, expecting them to dissolve into the ground as usual.

But this time, they didn’t.

Like those that had attacked Beatrix, the fallen swarm began to fuse, the fragments of bodies reassembling into larger, stronger vanguards. Those not completely incinerated used their remaining parts to become even more powerful, forming new creatures whose strength increased with each fusion.

As Arthur and Evan advanced, the reformed swarm launched a counterattack from behind.

One massive fused vanguard, stronger and more resilient than its counterparts, lunged at Arthur from the side, but he quickly blocked with a gravity shield.

At the sight, Evan summoned the Gazebind Aegis even before Danger Sense activated, just in time to be hit by a similar ambush.

Two charged at him, prompting him to conjure an Elemental Shield to block the one on the right. Although the Elemental Shield shattered, the Gazebind held firm against the attack from the left, though the impact caused him to stagger.

As he retaliated with a sword swing, Beatrix, having regained her footing after her earlier clash, refocused her attention on the Broodmother.

She locked the Broodmother in place with her spatial powers, but the swarm, sensing her intent to teleport it, turned on her aggressively, forcing her to defend herself and break focus.

She fought back with spatial slashes, but the creatures kept fusing as fast as she killed them.

Artemisia and Crim attacked from above with a combined lightning-blood tornado, tearing through the swarm, but even that only slowed them down briefly as severed parts reformed into new bodies.

Meanwhile, Arthur, worn down from constant fighting, grew increasingly frustrated as the swarm kept merging, undoing their progress and growing stronger with each clash.

They couldn’t keep this up forever.

They had to break through to the Broodmother—and fast.

“We need one attack that can cut through all of the swarm, expose the Broodmother, and end the Broodmother in one go,” Arthur muttered, as though trying to force clarity into existence with his words.

Evan, panting as he wiped sweat from his brow, shot him a look of disbelief.

“Easier said than done, Arthur,” he replied with a grunt, cleaving through another wave of swarm creatures.

Suddenly, the ground trembled as the swarm, moving with unnerving coordination, began lifting the Broodmother.

They were dragging it away, retreating deeper into the forest. It looked as though they were trying to bury it or at least keep it hidden from view.

Arthur’s eyes widened. He wasn’t about to let the swarm put more distance between them and the Broodmother.

Without hesitation, Evan activated his Harbinger of Ice, downed a potion bottle, and unleashed a wave of crimson-gold ice that instantly froze a massive portion of the swarm.

He tossed the empty bottle to the ground, then clenched his fist, shattering the frozen bodies into countless shards.

“Arthur.”

Evan tossed Arthur a magic potion and teleported with Space Warp, striking the Broodmother with prismatic flames.

While the attack burned away the swarm carrying it, the Broodmother itself remained largely unaffected due to its immense durability.

As new swarm creatures spawned and rushed at him, Evan teleported away again, damaging the area with spatial energy and reappearing beside Arthur, who was already raising his sword skyward, erupting with Destruction energy before bringing it down with a shout.

“Continental Split!!”

Arthur’s slash tore through the swarm and struck the Broodmother, wounding it but dealing less damage than he had hoped.

Before he could recover from the attack’s energy cost, the forest reacted. Trees from Triffid’s domain moved unnaturally fast, encasing the Broodmother in a thick wooden dome to protect it from further attacks.

“Damn it.”

Arthur cursed as Evan rushed forward, channelling Destruction Law energy into his sword and bringing it down in a powerful arc.

“World Sunder!”

The slash cut through the first two layers of the wooden shield, but the third remained firmly intact. Gritting his teeth, Evan struck again and again, yet the shield held.

Seeing the resistance, Arthur followed up with another swing, his sword blazing with energy.

“Continental Split!!”

Though not as strong as before, the attack still carried tremendous force. It smashed through the wooden shield with a deafening crack and reached the Broodmother once more. But without the full strength of the initial strike, it failed to cause critical damage.

Arthur dropped to one knee, gasping for air. After unleashing both techniques back to back, his magic reserves were nearly depleted.

Meanwhile, the swarm continued to close in, biting and clawing at him, some sinking their teeth into his arms and legs.

Annoyed, Arthur released a crushing gravitational downforce using his cosmic energy. The swarm around him was slammed to the ground with such force that they were flattened instantly.

But the relief was short-lived. The swarm was endless.

Evan teleported beside him, burning away the remnants and helping the teen godslayer back to his feet.

Arthur extended his hand into the empty air, reaching into the portal of his subspace. When it emerged, he held the shattered fragments of the divine spark from the dead Titan god they’d encountered in Iklaque.

He tossed the shards into his mouth, and within moments, they dissolved into raw energy, restoring enough power for him to stand on his own.

As Arthur recovered, Evan swapped the drained magic stones in the Energem Reclaimer and reactivated Limit Break, glancing around with a frustrated curse.

“Damn it.”

Another wave of swarm charged toward them, and both boys swung their swords in unison, incinerating wave after wave.

Arthur was about to launch another attack when Evan suddenly said something that snapped his mind into focus.

“Damn, no matter how much we cut them down, they just chaotically mash themselves together and throw everything at us.”

“…huh?”

The teen godslayer’s mouth hung open in shock, his eyes widening as a realisation dawned. His pupils dilated as his perception of time slowed, one second stretching to infinity.

Suddenly, blue temporal energy exploded from his body, enveloping everything within several hundred metres and slowing the entire world around him to a crawl. Read full story at novel[f]ire.net

‘What the—?!’

Evan, caught in the field but possessing minor resistance from EOTD’s frequent time-stopping, turned stiffly toward the slack-jawed Arthur.

Then, just as abruptly as it had emerged, the temporal energy was withdrawn into Arthur’s body, and the flow of time snapped back to normal.

‘What is even happening?!’

“I’ve got it,” Arthur muttered unconsciously, raising his sword above his head.

The silver lines running along the blade lit up, and from the hilt, circuit-like tendrils shot out and pierced into Arthur’s hands.

The Ego Weapon ‘Released’ its sealed power, flooding Arthur with cosmic energy as it did its part to ensure he succeeded in whatever it was that he had just ‘understood’.

It was aware that Arthur’s reserves were lower than usual, and it had more than enough to compensate.

The cosmic energy flowed through its obsidian hilt, passed into Arthur’s energy circuits, and immediately flowed out, merging with his other energies.

The combined forces surged violently up the length of the blade, each energy blending and converging as they travelled from Arthur’s energy core to Lostvayne’s edge.

His sword erupted with silver light, and in that instant, translucent notification boards materialised within Evan’s field of vision, drawing his attention.

|Threat of Imminent Death to Host Detected ⚠|

|Reincarnated Hero System Stored Authority Consumed|

|Activating ‘Survival Enhancement Mode’ |

|Activating ‘Survival Enhancement Mode’ |

At the sight, Evan’s gaze snapped back toward Arthur, his eyes widening as he saw the terrifying mix of forces flooding into Arthur’s sword.

|Reincarnated Hero System Advices Host to FLEE as fast as physically possible. |

‘You don’t need to tell me twice!’

Without hesitation, Evan leapt away from Arthur, the memory of his conversation with Charisse crossing his mind as he caught sight of the faint purple light buried beneath the overwhelming silver radiating from Arthur’s blade.

‘That purple…!

Is this it, Charisse?!’

Arthur’s grip around Lostvayne’s hilt tightened, and in a low murmur, words slipped from his mouth as if they came of their own accord.

|¬Extreme Nothingness¬|

Then, without pause, he swung the blade downward with all his strength, his lips parting to voice the name of the technique’s third variation.

|¬Chaos¬|

The strike ripped through the air with a deafening roar.

The slash jagged forward, its silver light carving through the fabric of space.

The chaotic fusion of powers within the blade detonated like a cosmic explosion the moment it struck the swarm. Every one of the countless creatures within range was obliterated, reduced to absolute nothingness in an instant.

Their once-chaotic, relentless forms were simply erased, as if they had never existed.

No remnants. No traces. Just… gone.