Reincarnated Hero System

"Elemental Destruction Fusion."

His void step vanished, making his body succumb to gravity's pull and drop down to the ground.

But the instant his feet touched the floor, he dashed forward, leaving a small crater in the earth as he appeared in front of Maude and delivered a straight horizontal slash.

She tried to use a telekinetic barrier to slow his attack, perhaps block it, but Evan's destruction aura nullified that attempt, forcing her to bend her upper body backwards to avoid the slash.

Unfortunately, the tip of Evan's sword, coated in Mesarthim's flames touched the tip of her nose.

"AAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Maude's piercing wail rang out as the prismatic-hot flames, mixed with the icy cold and the essence of destruction that bypassed durability all latched onto the upper part of her face.

From the corner of his eyes, Evan saw the scene of Pride slamming Dreneth's head into the ground, using enough power that the floor cratered.

She then stomped her boot on the other demon's head and activated her white flame skill, gracing all their ears with another agonized scream of the pain that came with one's head being set ablaze.

Dreneth tried moving her hands to launch a spell towards Pride, but the high demon only snorted and spoke.

"Did I give you permission to use magic?"

Her jet-black blade coated in those holy looking white flames sliced Dreneth's hand off her wrist with the ease of a knife cutting through butter.

Back on Evan's end, Maude stomped her foot onto the ground and the nearby earth around her feet was split into boulders of various sizes, which were lifted into the air and sent flying at Evan with great force and speed.

Her left hand was held over her face, using her life magic to try and heal the wound Evan had inflicted on her with his flames to no avail.

Evan struck down the first boulder with his sword, but it exploded on contact, unleashing a huge terrestrial blast he had to dodge with Blink.

Maude moved her hands and telekinetically controlled the rocks to follow him, whilst using Seismic Strike to mess with his footing.

However, Evan just teleported into the air, stood on a void step and used elemental weapon projection to shoot down all the boulders chasing him.

"Blade Cannon." x3

Maude jumped away to avoid the fist-sized aura bullets and their accompanying slashes, but that was precisely what Evan was aiming for.

"Hollow Magic: Hollow Cannon."

The woman's eyes widened in shock when she heard the words Evan spoke. A part of her refused to believe that it was the same hollow magic she knew, but when she sensed the non-attributed magic power condensing into a swirling sphere right in front of Evan's outstretched palm, that thought vanished like smoke.

The time lag between him firing it and the spell reaching was almost non-existent, a devastating impact on the ground right beside her that blasted it apart, sending her body hurtling through the air due to the resultant shockwaves.

Dust, dirt and stone fragments swirled around in a distortion in the air where the cannon hit, but Maude could not pay attention to it because of what happened next.

In her imbalanced state from being knocked airborne by the explosion, Evan blinked right behind her and delivered a downward arcing slash, aiming right for her shoulder.

**SWISH!!!

"GAAHHKKK!!!"

The Elemental Destruction Fusion on his sword seamlessly tore through her stone skin, penetrated her durability and blasted apart her actual flesh, before going on to cut her bone with zero resistance; separating her left arm from the rest of her body.

Evan then let go of his sword and grabbed the back of her neck, pivoting on his foot and slamming her face down into the ground.

**BAAMMM!!

The ground cratered, and earthen chunks were sent flying into the air, along with her blood, yet Evan wasn't done.

"Burn."

Maude screamed for the nth time today as the prismatic flames engulfed her head, incinerating her chestnut coloured hair and rending her skin underneath.

He lifted her up and slammed her back onto the ground, after which he spun around and sent a fracture right into her chest, the electric explosion of energy breaking her rib bones and making her cough out blood and broken bone fragments.

Evan deactivated his skill trio, picking Maude up by her head and facing her in the direction where Pride was, making sure she witnessed the sight of the High Demon beheading her contractor with her remaining good eye.

Whilst he did this, he activated another skill, one he had taken from Suzanne earlier last year.

'Track Down.'

The boy then flung Maude's body aside like a discarded rag, casually walking up to his sword while the woman writhed in pain from the burns, her severed arm, shattered bones, and the death of her contractor.

[Master, would It not be best for you to have finished her off?]

Kayla asked this question with a suspicious look on her face, as she felt that Evan was cutting back on his attacks, especially with Mesarthim's flames.

The young hero, however, only gave her a mischievous grin in reply, before picking up his sword and walking towards the fallen Maude in style.

"To think I've become strong enough to kill a Demonic Hand executive. 'That person' was right after all…"

His words pulled on confused glances from all those present, but the young hero ignored their gazes and silently rose his sword overhead.

It was then that his eyes caught onto a shiny object in Maude's palm, widening in shock as he kicked off the ground and dashed towards her with BoD activated.

However, the wounded Demonic Human activated her Seismic Wave skill, using the generated shockwaves to fling her own body into the air and further away from Evan.

A second later, Evan's sword crashed down on the empty ground, blasting a human sized hole in it, but Maude was already out of his attack's effective range.

She then crushed the crystal in her palm faster than he could pull the weapon out of the ground, causing a spatial light to wreathe her body and warp her out of the Boss Room.

The moment after Maude vanished from the room, Evan deactivated his skills and took a deep breath before saying words no one expected to hear after he had let a Demonic Hand Executive escape.

"She escaped. Good. All according to plan."

He popped open a potion bottle and downed the contents in one gulp, belching lightly as he turned to look at the dumbfounded faces of his companions.

"…mind if I ask, what plan exactly?"

Pride dropped the hand she had held up at the last moment with the intention of interfering with Maude's teleportation, but was stopped by Milena who had not taken any action since the start on Evan's orders.

"From the get go, I never had any intentions of killing Maude.

Defeating her; yes, but not killing her.

I intended to let her escape from the start, so I can find her later."

"…what? Why?"

Eliza who was still very confused asked, and Evan stretched his arms while replying.

"The Demonic Hand has some bases that not in my Archive, meaning I don't know where they are.

One of said bases, is the Ninth Division's HQ. I know it's somewhere in the GEE, but I don't know where exactly in the GEE it is.

The one I know about is in Blealand, but it's just a normal base."

In the game, Maude was not someone who had much screen time, so players weren't told much about the woman's story, why she was with the Demonic Hand, and other related stuff.

When she was encountered in combat after being ousted as a Demonic Hand Executive in Blealand, she tried to 'escape to the HQ', but since the player defeats her before she can escape, the 'HQ' she spoke of is never explained.

The Kasteblum Grand Mage who assists the player in that battle only mentions how the coordinates in the teleportation stone seem to land somewhere around the GEE, but the stone was damaged so he could not get the exact ones.

"So, I let her go to that HQ so I can track her down later when I'm much stronger and kill her there.

The wounds I gave her would not let her be mobile for a while, so I'm sure she'd still be there by the time we're done in this country.

I also intend to wipe out every single Ninth Division member, the new Tenth Finger who'd most likely be in that HQ as well, and their new subordinates."

He generated a map of the Alpha Continent with a light magic projection, pointing at a spot on it as he continued.

"If Laurene attacks Franta City as planned, then the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Divisions of the Demonic Hand would be officially defunct.

Three Divisions down, and Three Executives down.

The 'World Formation' the Demonic Hand is using to harness the blood of all those killed during the 'Disasters' to break the rift on the Dark Continent would have lost 3 of its nodes, and would be 30% less efficient."