Reincarnated Hero System

Chapter 1280: Artificially Created, Naturally Controlled

Flaming fist collided with metallic tail in an impact that rang out like a thunderclap, while hundreds of icy swords and pressurised water spears clashed against each other in the background, and the man who’d just murdered his comrade could only stare in stunned horror.

However, his senses quickly picked up another one of his wounded comrades nearby, and as though he were nothing more than a puppet, his body ripped the spear from the chest of the dead one at his feet and immediately began sprinting toward that wounded comrade, pulling back his weapon before hurling his spear like a projectile.

"NO! DODGE!"

He shouted to the wounded man, whose eyes snapped upward, but before he could evade the spear, a hand of darkness burst from his shadow and grabbed his body, locking him in place as the spear pierced straight through his eye.

The poor man couldn’t even scream before his body was instantly crushed beneath the enormous Demonic Serpent that collapsed onto the ground after being punched in the face by Evan’s Tempest Avatar.

Evan activated two more skills and turned the humanoid avatar of lightning into the Frost Thunder Guardian to replace the previous one that had been destroyed, and after sending it off to continue causing havoc, he rushed at the serpent with his fists blazing with orange flames.

He launched a punch toward the serpent’s head, but a wall of black water burst from the ground and froze into ice that intercepted the punch, shattering on impact and sending fragments flying in every direction.

The shards quickly turned mid-air and shot toward Evan, prompting him to teleport behind the serpent’s head.

However, as though it had anticipated this, the serpent spun around and roared, unleashing a powerful breath of pressurised water that blasted him from the sky and sent him crashing to the ground.

It charged after him with full force, jaws snapping through the air with lethal intent, but Evan used Blink to evade it, leaving it biting down on empty air.

Its yellow eyes glowed as it sensed the rapid condensation of ambient spatial magic power, locking onto Evan’s destination and rushing there as quickly as it could.

Activating several skills, it tried to bite down on Evan, but the Hero moved faster than it expected, and its enormous jaws slammed shut on empty space Evan had only occupied for a split second, the impact shattering scorched earth while venom spilt from its fangs in sizzling streams that melted what remained and left smoking craters behind.

The serpent quickly sensed his new position and lunged again, but Evan avoided the lunge with ease, raising his hand and firing multiple Burst Cannon shots straight into its open mouth. Explosions tore through its throat, forcing its massive head sideways in pain, but before it could recover, Evan had already vanished with Blink to avoid its water spear barrage and reappeared above its skull, activating Pierce Guard and punching down on its metallic scale-covered face.

The impact shattered its scales and slammed its body into the ground, but it roared and pushed through the pain, trying to bite down on Evan, only to snap at empty air again.

Evan dashed toward the now-exposed central fortress, and the serpent chased after him, tearing through the fortress and crushing several low-ranked Demonic Humans as it pursued Evan.

However, Evan kept leaping off broken walls as he moved through the central fortress toward the south fortress where Leoniel was turning hundreds of Demonic Humans into stone, flipping over pressurised torrents of black water and teleporting in rapid succession to avoid the serpent.

Every failed bite carved trenches through the paths Evan led it across, while venom dripped from its fangs and burned through everything it touched.

Whenever its maw opened too wide, Evan punished it with Burst Cannon shots, and whenever it closed in too closely, he waited until the final possible instant before using Space Warp.

Each teleport via Space Warp left behind a violent burst of spatial law energy directly in its face, shredding through its metallic scales, tearing apart the flesh around its jaws, and forcing it to reactivate Metallic Scales repeatedly just to repair the damage.

Evan’s constant evasions and perfectly timed counters seemed aimed at provoking it, and soon, the Demonic Serpent’s fury reached a new peak.

Its roar turned deafening, shaking the mountains as thick demonic energy erupted from its body and mixed into the surrounding universal law energy.

High above, the darkened skies began to churn as wind currents from every direction were violently drawn together. Moisture gathered unnaturally fast, pulled by the serpent’s control over water and wind laws, while spiralling clouds folded into a massive rotating storm.

Air pressure shifted, violent winds howled louder, and ash, debris, and shattered stone were ripped upward as the sky became a swirling vortex. Black storm clouds spiralled faster and faster, lightning flashing deep within as the serpent forcibly pushed nature toward collapse, creating the early birth of a monstrous storm above the battlefield.

Evan skidded to a stop at the sight, his eyes widening in faint surprise as he recognised what the Demonic Serpent was attempting to do.

’Artificially creating a "natural disaster", huh?

Leoniel noticed it as well, and as he brushed dust off the broken bodies of the Demonic Humans he’d imprisoned in stone, he looked toward Evan as if asking, ’You wasted too much time on it. What are you gonna do now?’

Evan, however, only grinned, retracting the magic power that had been sustaining the flames around his hands, which he’d planned to use to punch the serpent the next time it lunged, then began to clap.

The sound was drowned out by the massive explosions from the many ongoing battles, but the Demonic Serpent, whose yellow eyes had turned red with rage as they locked onto Evan, didn’t miss the action, and it could only blink in confusion.

"If you unleash that thing, you WILL wipe out not just this mountain range, but the entire Kudatha region.

As such, while it is impressive that you can deploy such a powerful attack, I can’t let you do that."

[...you think you can stop me,] the serpent spoke, its voice half a growl. [You may be slippery, but even your teleportation isn’t fast enough to run away from this.]

Its eyes narrowed into slits, something resembling a grin forming on its lips as it added.

[And besides, are you going to run and leave behind your fellow Hero!?]

With that shout, the storm above the battlefield collapsed inward under its demonic energy before erupting outward into a rotating wall of wind, the air pressure dropping instantly as the hurricane expanded in every direction, dragging debris, shattered stone, and fortress fragments into its core.

The winds inside it reached nearly 1,500 km/h, strong enough to rip through mountainsides and tear islands apart, stripping everything in its path as lightning and condensed law energy spiralled within.

As the hurricane locked onto Evan’s position and descended toward him like a collapsing sky, Evan laughed and stretched out his right hand, activating a mimicked Unique Skill.

"Disaster Genesis."

The Unique Skill of the Aramisian Hero Evan had killed when he went back in time, allowing him to harness the raw forces of natural disasters, granting him the ability to summon and control these catastrophic events.

Emphasis to be placed on control.

A hurricane was a ’natural disaster’, even if created artificially, and was part of the targets that could be controlled via the skill.

Evan didn’t hesitate to use that ability, seizing control over the Demonic Serpent’s hurricane not through technique or law manipulation proficiency, but through overwhelming brute force, forcing his superior magic power capacity and the over a 100-level gap between them to override the serpent’s influence entirely.

[Guck?!]

The serpent groaned in pain as it felt its control over the hurricane’s power stripped from it, and despite its attempts to fight back, the hurricane no longer answered to it.

Its new master, Evan, turned it inward, compressing the massive storm violently around the serpent’s body and the central fortress, the winds folding in on themselves as he forced the entire disaster into a confined space.

What had been a region-wide hurricane became a crushing vortex centred entirely on the serpent, its winds now grinding down with the force capable of ripping apart mountains.

The pressure tore into its metallic scales, peeled back layers of flesh beneath, and ground against bone as the violent storm raged around it. Blood began to spill into the winds, quickly staining the hurricane as Evan turned the serpent’s creation into a continuous cycle of destruction focused solely on its body.