Arthur and Evan gave Idrilla knowing smiles and this caused her expression to finally crack.
"Arthur, Evan...fuck you two."
This was simply her expressing her anger, and the two of them knew this, but Evan reacted as if he took her words literally.
"Hell no! Why would I do that when my fiancée exists?"
"Fiancée? You’re engaged?"
Arthur and even Artemisia were more concerned with this detail that Evan let slip with his words than the fact that they were still in Idrilla’s Bounded Field.
"Yeah. Got engaged like a week before I got sent here."
Evan shrugged, looking down at his left hand where his ring was ant to be. It didn’t get lost, though. He just took it off.
"That’s rough..."
"Tell sothing I don’t know..."
As Evan responded to Arthur, Artemisia narrowed her eyes at him and posed a question that she honestly could have asked later.
"Was I there?"
She wasn’t specifying what event it was, but Evan knew she was talking about what led to him getting sent into the past.
Turning to her, he replied.
"This is the wrong Ti, Place, and Occasion to ask that, Artemisia."
"..."
Artemisia said nothing else, having already gotten all her answers from that reply. Evan was not one to blatantly avoid answering a question like this. If she wasn’t present, he would have just simply said NO, like how he told Beatrix that he didn’t know her.
So, the fact that he started chiding her about Ti and Place—
’ans the future ’’ was there, huh?’
She had only asked the question to sate her budding curiosity, not expecting that she’d get such an answer.
"Are you guys done talking? ’Cus it seems like she’s done summoning whatever she’d been cooking for a while now."
Arthur interrupted their conversation while pointing at the Saintess of Death who now had a staggering amount of Death energy seeping out from her.
"Huh? She’s done?"
Evan turned his gaze around, and the silent Beatrix who re-joined them around the ti with Artemisia finally asked.
"Why are you both waiting for her to finish her summoning?"
In the short ti that Evan spent talking about his fiancé and Artemisia questioned him, the two of them could have taken the chance to attack Idrilla and disrupt her summoning, but they did not.
Arthur and Evan looked at themselves, and they turned towards Beatrix and replied.
""Because it’s fun?""
The two girls facepald and sighed at this reply, while Arthur and Evan just laughed and turned around to see Idrilla swinging her scythe to cut the ground.
The Saintess consud a huge chunk of her reserve harvested souls, transforming them into the fuel she used to rebirth these ’Notable Adversaries’.
’Spirits of the mightiest fallen, heed the command of Death’s Saintess.
Rise from the abyss, join this final stand, and avenge yourselves by Death’s Decree.’
The earth began to tremble, and the remaining tombstones around them shattered into fragnts of light, dissipating into the air.
Sensing this, Arthur’s lips curled up lightly.
If Idrilla could resurrect with those he had slain, there was one she would undoubtedly summon—it hadn’t been long since their battle, after all.
The strongest opponent Arthur had killed to date.
Evan, Artemisia, and Beatrix felt the tremors and sensed the colossal energy building beneath them. Without hesitation, they leapt away to distance themselves from whatever monstrous entity Idrilla had summoned.
Suddenly, the ground beneath Arthur cracked open, revealing a giant maw lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth, threatening to clamp down on him.
Arthur sprang aside, drawing his sword, his gaze locking onto the massive dark green eye that glared back at him.
"I’ve been waiting for you, Crarox!!"
[DIVINE DEMONNN!!!!!]
The ’Legacy of Yedrist’ bellowed a roar of rage, returning from the afterlife to drag Arthur down with him. His full 2 km long body erged from the ground, spiralling into the air as he faced Arthur and rapidly condensed energy in his open maw.
Without hesitation, he unleashed a deadly breath attack.
**VVVRRRRRMM-THOOOM!!!
Faced with an oncoming mass of power, Arthur didn’t back down, infusing his semi-transparent blade with Extinction law energy and swinging it down powerfully.
"Cataclysmic Divide!"
The spatial rupturing slash surged from Arthur’s blade, splitting the breath attack in two and creating a rift that absorbed all its energy before dissipating harmlessly.
However, that was just the first one.
Arthur’s ti-accelerated movents allowed him to launch two slashes in quick succession, and the airborne Crarox couldn’t evade the second strike in ti.
The second slash hit ho, shattering scales and drawing blood as the attack nearly blinded one of Crarox’s eyes.
Though the Reborn ’Notable Adversary’ Crarox was more powerful in death than in life, he wasn’t the only one who had grown stronger since their fight.
Arthur too had grown stronger—much stronger.
Just as Arthur had wounded Crarox with ease while he lived, he could now do the sa to his resurrected form.
◇ ◇ ◇
At the sa ti, Evan was facing his own set of ’Notable Adversaries’. In his case, he did not have one ridiculously powerful being, but three suitably formidable ones.
His lips twitched involuntarily as he stared at the three enormous figures, each glaring at him with unrestrained hatred.
First stood a towering wyvern, its eyes glowing a nacing yellow. Its gleaming black scales shimred under the light, and its wings stretched wide.
Next was a majestic bird, its feathers as white as snow and adorned with intricate silver patterns.
With a wingspan nearly a hundred ters wide, it exuded an aura of regal strength. Its piercing gaze was locked on Evan, every bit as sharp as its beak and talons.
Finally, there was another white creature, one that had shown up earlier today.
Now, it had returned, empowered and more dangerous than ever.
Its pristine scales were so white they seed almost holy.
The creature’s massive body dwarfed the other two, and its razor-sharp claws could slice through buildings like paper.
A spiked tail that could pierce through any defence with ease swayed at its back, and its powerful wings unfurled to cast a vast shadow on the ground.
Its ice-blue eyes coldly gazed at Evan, blazing with intensity.
"Demonic Wyvern Craitid, Silverwing: Ice Variant, and High Dragon Faldo... I always wanted a rematch, but I sure as hell can’t take on the three of you at once."
Evan summoned his weapon and shield, setting into a battle stance as he continued.
"I’m gonna have to Break My Limits here."
His words were laced with a skill activation. The magic stones in the forearm guard on his right hand glowed as the Limit Break skill that tripled his power began draining energy from them.
Though his body was already creaking slightly under the stress of the nurous boosts, he wasn’t done yet.
’Limit Break Derivative: Overload!’
The boost surged from threefold to fivefold.
Evan’s body tamorphosed, the white highlights on his dark hair began shining as two horns protruded from the top of his head, pulsating with potent magical energy.
Translucent white-gold scales sheathed his body like battle armour, covering his chest, shoulders, and other vitals.
From his back, a single pair of large white wings stretched out, their sleek, mbrane-like structure partially adorned with opalescent scales.
Erging from his lower back was a scaled tail with a spiked tip coated in destructive essence.
His pupils morphed into vertical slits, but his irises retained their stormy grey hue, and the glowing Mystic Symbol within them continued gleaming with ethereal light.
A wild grin spread across his face, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.
"Let the long-awaited rematch...BEGIN!!]
With that declaration, Evan lunged at the three massive creatures who charged at him with lethal intent.
Far away, as Artemisia watched the massive explosions erupting across half the Bounded Field where Evan battled the three winged creatures in the air, she felt her energy depleting rapidly.
In a few seconds, almost half her magic power had been sucked out, and Beatrix who sensed this was alard.
"Arty?! What’s happening?!"
"...Evan..."
"what?"
"...Evan is using my power..."
Artemisia muttered in a daze, her gaze blank as she stared in Evan’s direction.
Artemisia had used her Queen of Evolution skill to temporarily give Evan power that was in the limbo between the Epic and Legendary realms, and Evan had activated his Limit Break skill to boost that Evolved power.
Now, he was drawing out even more of her power and evolving himself, but he wasn’t doing this consciously.
His ’Adaptive Evolution’ skill was doing this to strengthen his Vessel to be able to contain all the extra power, allowing him to fight without issues. In that process, it was also ’Evolving’ other aspects of his existence.
His Draconic side for example.
Evan initially did NOT have a tail in his Draconic form, but now, one had erged.
"I see...the power of Evolution that my future self gave him is activating, but since it cannot consu his energy as he’s in a fight, it’s taking energy from instead.
To it, both ’Artemisias’ are the exact saperson so it doesn’t matter which one it takes from."
Her analysis was spot on.
The Adaptive Evolution skill wasn’t sentient and couldn’t distinguish between the future, possibly deity-level Artemisia, and the current Epic Realm her.
And that posed a problem as the current Artemisia didn’t have enough energy to sustain the Skill’s activation for too long.
Downing a magic potion, the young goddess could only hope Evan rounded things up swiftly before the skill sucked her dry.
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