Reincarnated Hero System-Chapter 261 Aftermath, Decision, And Culprit

The merchant guild did try to source out some benefits from the situation, claiming damages, among other things, but Evan's mere presence and his stance of siding with the Viscount limited the actions they could take.

When he saw how wary the merchants were of him because of his power, and his 'ability', to inflict wounds that could not be healed (Terence's shoulder), the young hero's eyes flashed with a strange glint as multiple thoughts flashed through his mind.

The mages guild which had been silent since the beginning of Terence's saga, remained as silent as ever, however, the Viscount's men caught sight of them gathering information from here and there.

As for Terence himself, the man had long regained consciousness and naturally tried to break free, but Evan just coated his sword in the aura of destruction and cut Terence's tendons to permanently disable him, with Greed breaking off their contract and cutting off access to his idiosyncrasy.

"Our contract was for me to give him the power to take revenge, and he had his revenge against his former companions long ago.

I was only using him to acquire a few things that would increase my skill's power boost.

There're no problems for me if I break the contract."

"And you also wanted to play king too, right Lil bro?"

"Guh!"

Evan ignored the two demons poking fun at each other before leaving the prison and moving over to the bar district where the battle between him and Terence had begun.

Along the way, the young hero received a lot of mixed gazes, warm gazes, looks of gratitude, indifference, and some filled with dissatisfaction and glares filled with anger.

Naturally, the last two were from the owners of the properties that Terence and Evan had destroyed in their ensuing battle. There was no way that they would be happy to see Evan, even if he did defeat the person who was extorting them on a weekly basis.

However, as if it was protected by some force of nature, the bar had not been destroyed despite the two buildings on either side taking severe damage.

The Viscount hadn't wasted time to begin the reconstruction activities, enlisting the mages in the city, especially those with the earth affinity, to speed up the process.

As such, the rubble that was left of the crumbled buildings from the affected districts had been mostly cleared out within the week.

"That's a lot faster than I had expected."

Evan remarked as he downed the entire glass of juice in his hands, before placing the glass on the counter and looking at the almost empty bar.

"Business isn't good, huh?

Well, that's mostly my fault, though."

"If I don't have to pay off more than half my monthly earnings to those goons just so they won't bash my store anymore, a few days of bad business is nothing."

The bartender replied as he refilled the young hero's glass, causing the boy's eyes to widen in shock as he didn't know that Terence extorted that much money from business owners.

He placed a hand on his chin as he sunk into his thoughts for a few minutes, before grabbing his glass and speaking.

"I happen to have a truckload of monster corpses in good condition inside my inventory. How about I send them to the adventurer's guild so they can be used to generate funds for helping out with the city reconstruction?

For both the recent destruction and the one caused by the previous subjugation force's battle.

Majority of them are C-rank monster corpses so they should fetch a hefty price."

After drinking the contents of the glass, he then leaned forward and spoke with a slightly lower voice.

"Now then, can you do me a small favour and spread this news around? I'm not planning to make an anonymous donation after all.

I want the people of Osto to know I'm responsible for it, but I don't want to be the one telling them."

Hearing the boy's words, the man's eyes widened for a moment before narrowing to slits in the next.

"What's the goal, kid?"

"Improving my reputation in Osto.

A meeting with the merchant guild's higher-ups a few days ago made me realise a few things pertaining to having great Influence and public opinion.

So, I'm taking an action that is sure to increase the positive feelings of the people of Osto towards me.

It's a little test for when I begin my major movements in the future."

'I can also do something similar using the Dullahan incident.'

After a short talk with Evan before the boy left, the bartender then went on to discuss the news of Evan's 'Donation' in a tavern with a few of his friends who lived in other districts, saying he heard it in passing when the reconstruction in his district was ongoing.

The young hero also got the Viscount to help with this, even going as far as to leak a part of the list of C- rank monster corpses he was 'donating', letting the people understand just how much he was putting into the city reconstruction.

He also sold a few to the merchant's guild, using them to experiment on just how much his current influence in Osto was. 𝒇𝔯e𝚎𝘄𝑒𝑏𝙣𝑜𝚟𝗲𝑙.c𝘰𝚖

The merchants sent off carriages to other villages and the neighbouring County, carrying the monster corpses that could be used as materials for armour creation, magic tool manufacturing, alchemy, magic potion making and many other things.

The young hero couldn't help but burst into laughter when he passed a group of merchants discussing how they were going to basically scam the people of the neighbouring county into buying the stuff at higher prices.

After overhearing that weird conversation at the merchant's guild, he returned to the Viscount's estate for dinner, before retiring to his room.

"Hmm? You're here, Liz?"

"Yeah. Was with Kayla but she ended up dozing off on my lap."

The battle priestess gestured towards the young spirit that was sleeping with a smile on her face, making Evan chuckle lightly as he remembered how guarded Kayla initially was against Eliza.

"It's been how many months since then now? ten, eleven?"

"Somewhere around there.

You really acted like some edgy teenager when we first met. Not that you're any better now."

"This girl, isn't this the part where you're supposed to say, 'Time Flies so fast' or something."

Evan replied as he plopped down on the couch beside Eliza, leaning on the girl's shoulder as he pulled out his guild card from his inventory and began typing something on it.

"Contacting Laurene?"

"Yeah. Something is weird about Osto

I want her to be readily available so I can update her if it affects my plans for Cheverton. And I also want to know what the Emperor's reaction to my request for two of the ten great swordsmen would be.

"Are you still thinking about the monsters we encountered on the way?"

Evan gave her a thumbs-up that ended up poking the cheek of one of the ambient spirits in the room before speaking.

"I had initially ignored it, but after discovering the details of the situation where the Guild master and the B rankers left, it suddenly reminded me of two familiar enemies that worked together.

One could create artificial dungeons and summon monsters, while the other could control monsters summoned in said dungeons.

The strength of the monsters in his dungeons was around the B rank adventurer level, same as the monsters estimated to be in the dungeon the guild master went to."

"So, you think that these guys are the ones responsible?"

Eliza asked as she watched Kayla wake up, look around dazedly, wave at two of the floating spirits beside her, before going on to transform into a cat, crawl up to Evan's stomach, and continue her sleep.

The young hero just chuckled as he took Kayla's former position, placing his head on Eliza's lap as he replied.

"Not sure.

Those demons are annoying bastards, I dont want to encounter them, especially if they are together."

"They're demons?"

Evan nodded as he slowly closed his eyes and let Eliza's fingers comb through his hair, with the room descending into silence for a few minutes before a prompt appeared in front of him.

[The goddess 'Artemisia' gazes at you in confusion.]

"Long time no see, Artemisia." "Huh?"

Evan turned to Eliza who let out a confused voice, trailing her line of sight and seeing her staring at the familiar notification board he thought only he could see.

[The goddess 'Artemisia' gazes at the both of you in confusion.]

"Why so confused?"

[The 'Eternal of Time and Destruction' says she is wondering how you two got so comfortable with each other.]

"Oh..."

Eliza's eyes widened in confusion once more as she saw the next set of prompts.

"Time and Destruction? Is he the one who gave you that skill?"

"Yep."

[The 'Eternal of Time and Destruction' says he is indeed the one.]

The young battle priestess nodded to herself in understanding, while withholding the question of just what kind of existence that 'Eternal' was.

'A god?'

[The 'Eternal of Time and Destruction' says he is not.]

"Stop reading people's minds."

Evan spoke as he flicked the message board with the aura of destruction, turning it into pieces of light before asking a question that had been on his mind since the day he met Leana being attacked by Greed's thralls.

"Hey, Artemisia. Are you the one who unsealed Greed?"

[The goddess 'Artemisia' says she was not the one responsible.]

Evan's question and Artemisia's reply caused both the eyes of Evan, Eliza and Pride who had just walked in to widen in shock.

"Huh? What's wrong big sis, why are you stuck at the door?"

Ignoring Greed who was behind her, the high demon realised that she had somehow unconsciously ignored the fact that Greed was supposed to be sealed.

When Evan met Pride in the Graveyard of the arrogant, it was Artemisia who undid the seal and reforged it into a contract between the two of them.

This, however, did not mean that he did not know how to unseal Pride himself. He was fully aware as the seal on Pride was created by the previous 'Second' and Evan had all of the memories of the previous 'Second'.

However, Terence definitely did not possess said memories and did not know how to unseal Greed

Besides, they had learnt from Greed himself that he was already unsealed by the time he contracted with Terence.

"Then who unsealed Greed? Another member of the new generation seven?"

[The goddess 'Artemisia' says that no member of the 'Seven Heroes' has entered Hobha in the past 6 years.]

Artemisia's reply caused Evan's eyes to narrow. He sat up, tilting his head halfway through his movements to avoid hitting Eliza and asked Greed.

"You have any idea of who unsealed you?"

"...No."

Just when all the people present were thinking about how someone knew the method to unseal the seven deadly sins and free Greed, the indirect messaging system Artemisia used, captured and sent the actions of a certain individual as a message that was displayed to all those present in the room.

[The 'Eternal of Time and Destruction' looks to the right while whistling suspi-.]

[Message Retracted by Sender]

Although it had been retracted quickly, the eyes of all the beings in this room were fast enough to capture the message that was written on it.

"It was you!"

Evan's exclamation, came a second before the notification message glitched, with three dangerous-sounding sets of messages coming right after.

[The goddess 'Artemisia' teleports to <2$%^dfva(926 higher dimensional realm with a sword in hand.]

[The goddess 'Artemisia' activates 'Authority of Swords' on the entity seated on the black void throne.]

[The goddess 'Artemisia' uses 'Forced De-evolution' on the 'Eternal of Time and Destruction']

|Connection Terminated|

"...."

There was a long silence in the room after those three messages appeared and disappeared, with the people present being surprised for various reasons.

Eventually, Evan broke the silence with a question that definitely did not fit the current scenario.

"Soo....who wants a drink?"