Reincarnated Hero System

"Pursuers from home?"

Pride repeated Eliza's words quizzingly, prompting the blonde battle priestess to give a short explanation.

"My parents miss me so much and regret giving me permission to be an adventurer, so they sent people to find me and tell me to quit adventuring and come back home but I refused and the gua-, I mean people, tried to take me by force.

I didn't wanna injure them since I knew them so I beat them up while healing them at the same time.

I ended up using the unique skill's power for hours on end and by the time I realised it, I had another unique skill."

Her explanation lacked so much detail that Evan and Pride didn't even know where to start questioning her.

"Enough about me, what about you? How do you have four?"

"Well, I created one. Got one from some weird dude that's friends with the Artemisia, got another from Artemisia and the last one is the one 'I' was born with."

This time, it was Eliza's turn to be gobsmacked. Pride on the other hand who pretty much knew where his skills came wasn't paying much attention to the conversation anymore and was discussing something with Amy.

"I'm not even going to ask how you even created a unique skill. As for the one you were born with, that's understandable.

However, the goddess gave you a unique skill and her 'friend', who I'm gonna assume is some sort of god too, gave you another one."

"Yep!"

Evan replied with a smile on his face, in contrast to the weird expression on Eliza's face. The battle priestess' next set of questions, however, wiped that smile off his face.

"Dude, you're really involved with a lot of gods. I bet you're closer to the gods than the church is, I mean, goddess Artemisia descended personally just to talk to you.

Just what are you to her?

Friend?

Ally?

Servant?"

Eliza was only just calling the possible 'relationships' that a mortal could possibly have with a goddess like Artemisia, however, the moment the word 'Servant' left her lips, Evan's entire demeanour changed.

His gaze towards her turned cold, sending shivers down her spine as she instinctively backed away.

Pride who wasn't originally paying much attention to the conversation, noticed something wrong after all, she had experienced this before when she inadvertently called Evan a 'puppet' of the gods.

Upon hearing Eliza offhandedly ask him whether he was a 'Servant' of Artemisia, a goddess, she instantly understood that Evan had been 'triggered' again.

However, before she could even say a thing, Evan spoke up, his voice completely calm, contrary to her expectations.

"I'm fine, Pride."

And indeed, he was.

He was not sure if it was because of his newly acquired mental resistance, but he did not flip out as he did before.

He even recovered the memories of how he had acted the last time he flipped out when he and Pride were talking in the Graveyard of the Arrogant.

Emotions he could not understand sprouted from the depths of his soul. There was this uncontrollable hatred towards gods, which was weird considering he had only met a single god and that was Artemisia.

Speaking of Artemisia, his feeling towards her were complicated, bits of suspicion mixed with appreciation and some other emotions.

It was at this moment that his status board suddenly opened up before him and some of the concealed letters on the race tab began to slowly unfurl themselves.

The first two letters revealed themselves to be 'E' and 'L', but Evan did not know any five-letter race names starting with 'E' and 'L'.

The race tab was not the only one with changes, as his unique skill tab also had some changes too.

A new unique skill appeared on the tab, and although most of the letters were censored, Evan could make a guess on what those letters were.

If Pride had seen it and made the same guess as he did, then her question of why she felt fear towards Evan from her soul when he raged that time in the Graveyard of the arrogant would be answered.

Just as Evan was about to open up the skill's description, the skill suddenly vanished, and the letters on his race were covered up once more.

One didn't need to be a genius to figure out who was responsible.

'Artemisia, you have a lot of explaining to do.'

[The goddess 'Artemisia' uses her right to remain silent.]

'Bullshit, you're telling me everything.'

However, before that, he had to put a certain blonde-haired teenager at ease.

The moment he thought that, his body had already moved and he closed in on Eliza faster than she could activate her barrier.

Just when Pride thought Evan was not 'himself' and was about to grab him and pull him away, he suddenly spoke up with his normal voice and the cold gaze in his eyes disappeared.

"Hey, Liz.

Even though I really like...care about you a lot, there are some things I can't put up with-not even for you.

Just don't say anything or ask about me being the 'servant' of any god again, it pisses me off for some reason and honestly, I don't want to know what it is right now.

I have a lot on my plate already, so let's just avoid such situations in the first place."

He slowly rose his hand and pulled the locks of golden hair that had stuck to her face and tucked them behind her ear before continuing with a small smile on his face.

"We cool, right?"

"...mmh."

_{𝑓r𝘦𝘦𝘄eb𝒏𝙤vel.c𝙤𝙢}

Eliza nodded absentmindedly and Evan chuckled a bit before flicking her forehead.

"OW! What the hell dude?!"

"You were spacing out. Was my smile that mesmerizing?"

Hearing his teasing words, a faint blush crept up to Eliza's fair face as she screamed out in denial.

"No, it wasn't!"

"Really? It looked that way to me..."

"No, it didn't!"

The two began bantering again like normal, with the previous strange atmosphere being completely dispelled.

'Why did I even bother?'

The Demon of Pride asked herself this question as she went back to her discussion with Amy about how the two could synergize their dark flames and wind magic to achieve increased damage against enemies.