Evan's initial surprise quickly gave way to calm as he finished reading the Catalyst's potential and classification and sighed.
'Arch Dragon, huh? When I used Faldo's heart, the draconic and human factors in my body beca imbalanced.
I corrected that by ranking up my Human side, but if I absorb this… I'll throw everything off again.'
That imbalance could bring problems later, one of the biggest being his increased vulnerability to Dragonslayer techniques and powers.
"Hey, RHS. Use only enough Dragon Factors to bring my draconic factor concentration just right above the lower limit of the Arch-Dragon level. Do not go beyond that point.
If it's impossible, then use all the soul material to heal my soul and shut down Adaptive Evolution.
That's an ORDER¬|
|…|
|ORDER Received|
|Adaptive Evolution is extracting Dragon Factors|
|Reincarnated Hero System is absorbing remnant spiritual material for Soul Restoration|
Without delay, the System and Skill got to work, dissecting Azzonnin's soul and stripping it for parts.
50% of the soul devil's dragon factors were extracted by Adaptive Evolution, while the RHS claid 20% along with the material of his soul.
But before the RHS could begin processing it, the massive core of Evan's soul hanging in the sky changed hues completely, then pulled in the remaining 30% of Azzonnin's dragon factors, breaking it down into pure energy and absorbing it to strengthen itself.
Evan wasn't surprised at this.
He had thrown Azzonnin's spiritual body at the core, so it made sense that part of the soul devil's actual soul would be consud.
As for the countless other souls comprising Azzonnin's existence, they had ford the Spiritual Material the RHS had been talking about.
Each one was broken down into raw energy and rerouted through the system for other functions.
"Speaking of the system…I want to see it."
Evan wanted to see exactly what the construct future Artemisia had embedded in his soul looked like, and at his will, the field of corpses beneath him turned translucent, revealing the structure embedded into the walls of his soul.
It was a massive circuit board. The sight reminded Evan of the internals of a high-end gaming PC. That was just how complicated it looked.
In one corner, he spotted sothing resembling a giant battery and imdiately assud that was where the RHS stored its energy reserves.
'All the energy for Survival Enhancent Mode and the others… it's probably stored there.'
Moving around, Evan noticed a component that looked like a CPU. Curiosity piqued, he crouched down and reached out to touch i—!
[…0010111000101110001011100101000101110101101100011011011101110100110100110111101101011011000111001011011011000110010101101110011001010111001101100101011011000111100101101111001000000110010101110011011100110110010101101110011001010110111000101110001000000100000101101100011010110110111101100011010111010001101001011011100110011100100000011001010110111001100101011011010111001001100111011001010111001001111001011001110010000001100001011101000110100001100001011010110110001101101011101000110100101101111001000000111010001101111001000000111001001100101011100000110000101101001011001110010000001100001011000110110010100110010001000000110000101110010011000010111001100101110…]
"Ack!"
Evan flinched, nearly toppling backwards as his eyes widened in alarm at the stream of binary numbers that poured into his head.
"Well… that's definitely a System," he muttered.
He'd expected sothing, but a flood of binary numbers he couldn't decipher wasn't what he had in mind—
"Wait… I can understand it."
The boy blinked in surprise, staring at the processor-like structure as an instinctive understanding of the string of numbers washed over him.
"...Quantifying essence yield... Allocating energy packets to repair damaged areas..."
If his interpretation was right, the RHS was doing its job properly.
"Is this Language Comprehension? Binary is a kind of language, isn't it?"
He received no response, so he simply got up, crouched again, and quietly watched as the system continued its work, repairing his soul.
After a while, the bleeding from his eye ceased. Soon after, he began to feel like his flesh was writhing inside his head.
Gradually, his vision returned to his left eye, blurry at first, but slowly sharpening.
|Soul Restoration Complete|
"Good to hear."
|Adaptive Evolution requests permission to begin Draconic Factor infusion|
"…right. There was that."
With a sigh, Evan let his body collapse to the ground as he gave his response.
"Begin."
◇ ◇ ◇
How many hours had passed?
Evan had no idea.
What he did know, was that his existence had changed on a fundantal level.
"The increase in dragon factors, perhaps?"
He sat up, glancing around at the crater he was in.
"It's evening? Just how long was I out?"
He pushed himself to his feet, looking towards the Unforged, which was still stabbed into the ground a tre away and surrounded by the faint imprint of a humanoid body etched into the ground.
'Soul devils don't possess physical bodies like normal existences. They use materialized astral bodies as substitutes, allowing them to interact with the material world…'
But now that Evan had absorbed Azzonnin's soul, the source of that astral body, there was nothing left of the soul devil's existence.
He took a deep breath and stepped forward, only to stagger slightly as his sense of balance felt wacky.
'Did I get taller? My centre of gravity is off…'
He paused to reorient himself, then continued with a slow walk.
The Unforged rose from the ground and floated to his side, and at this, Evan glanced at the sword and let out a tired sigh.
"Thank goodness Artemisia isn't nearby. I might've taken a swing at her just to vent my irritation at her future self's actions."
He removed his torn shirt, tossed it into his inventory, and pulled out a fresh one.
"She actually put this guy in my path, knowing I'd likely go after it in reality. Or was I simply the one drawn to it instinctively?"
He put on a new pair of trousers, then used his Inventory's Apport feature to send the torn ones underneath into the Inventory.
"Whatever. Not like I can do anything about it right now."
Evan really couldn't do anything about it. Still, it was only natural he felt like future Artemisia had pulled his strings, especially after what just happened.
And what happened was simple.
When the Unforged floated up to his side monts ago, it hadn't done so on Evan's command, but of its own accord.
◇ ◇ ◇
Evan returned to the original battlefield, where the village Azzonnin had created as a lure once stood.
Scattered across the still-burning wreckage were the corpses of the devil dragons he and his Einherjar had taken down.
At the sight, Evan shut his eyes, then raised his left hand to cover his left eye.
A mont later, he opened them and spoke.
"Factor Mimic."
A stinging pain shot through his eye, similar to the pain his energy circuits felt whenever he tried to push more energy through them than they could handle.
He staggered slightly but kept his eyes open, forcing the newly created link from his soul to his eye to stretch wide enough to accept constant energy infusion.
"…I need to have Artemisia keep quiet about this."
Evan was absolutely certain that if she saw him anyti soon, she'd instantly notice the changes in his eye using her Evolution powers.
'Can't have her future self telling Liz and the others about this…'
He rembered how Eliza had reacted the ti he lost an arm, and he definitely didn't want to find out how she'd take the news of him losing an eye.
'If the system hadn't helped restore it properly, I might've ended up one-eyed permanently… or had to rely on Beatrix or Arthur to rewind ti.'
Both of them were far away, and there was a high chance the window for reversal would've passed before he could reach either of them.
"Oh well, I'm just glad I'm not permanently blind in one eye. Still… I need to tell the others about this side effect."
He made that decision just as the ambient magic power rapidly gathered, finally forming his Factor Mimic.
"Retrieve all the dragon corpses."
The mimic turned and walked off without a word, while Evan pulled a chair from his inventory and sank into it, leaning back with his eyes closed.
After a few monts of silence, he opened his eyes, narrowing them slightly as his pupils darted to the right, where the ruined mountain range was.
'I'm being watched.
Who… more devils? I'm in no condition for another fight right now.'
Evan slowly expanded his detection field, sensing five presences hidden among the mountain ruins.
His inventory opened, and his hand slowly reached in to grab the Akashic Page.
Just then, his Factor Mimic returned, dragging the devil dragon corpses behind it with Everlasting Chains.
"Loot acquired."
Evan stuffed everything into his inventory, then stood up and sent the chair in after it.
He then tapped the ground, using Hologram Creation to conjure a four-ringed magic circle he couldn't actually cast.
Turning toward the site of his battle with Azzonnin, he activated Farsight, zooming in on the area.
Then, with exaggerated theatrics, he shouted with a raised voice.
"Greater…Teleportation!!"
His voice echoed as he activated Blink, disappearing in a flash of light.
◇ ◇ ◇
"Greater…Teleportation!!"
"?!"
The group of five widened their eyes in disbelief as the boy vanished in a burst of light.
"All that, and he still had enough energy for Fourth Rank Teleportation Magic?!" one of them exclaid.
The others said nothing, simply narrowing their eyes.
"…we only ca to check after seeing the pillar of multicoloured destruction, but this…"
Another stood from his crouched position, sweeping his gaze across the devastation that spread in every direction.
"Dangerous…
If he's already this powerful without being Level 800, I don't even want to imagine what he'll beco after surpassing that level..."
They considered his words in silence, lips pressed into thin lines, until a sixth figure stepped onto the scene.
"It doesn't matter how strong he is. Our orders are to bring him to Tír Síorghlas, and that's exactly what we'll do."
At his words, the original five turned toward him, offering slight bows of respect.
He returned the gesture with a nod, then stepped forward, surveying the devastated landscape, the lingering destruction energy, and the scattered flas.
The sky began to darken, thunder growling in the distance as rain started to fall.
And yet…
"His flas are still burning, even under magic-infused rain…"
His expression turned grim as he bit his lip in silence.
'This mission… isn't going to be as easy as we thought.'
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