Reincarnated Hero System

Chapter 1307: A Silent Heart [GSL Bonus 1]

A heavy silence filled the space around him as his eyelids slowly blinked open, and a dull light slipped into his vision.

It took a few seconds for his hazy eyes to adjust to the brightness before everything finally came into focus, only for a severe headache to hit him the moment his vision stabilised.

His hand moved on instinct to his head, but the moment his fingers pressed down on his forehead, pain shot through his palm.

He flinched from the sudden jolt of pain, slowly lowering his hand to see that parts of his palm were completely scalded, the damage running deeper than skin level. Dropping his gaze further, he realised it wasn’t limited to his palm, as the same scorched condition extended down his arm, reaching all the way to his elbow.

Right before his eyes, the damaged flesh regenerated slowly, and from the speed of the recovery, he realised the initial burns had likely extended far past his elbow.

He blinked once, then lightly shook his head as though trying to clear his thoughts before lifting his eyes again to properly observe his surroundings and figure out where he was.

The area around him was packed with stack upon stack of books, shelves layered over each other without any obvious order. Books were scattered across the floor in uneven piles, others hung loosely from the edges of shelves as though they’d been left halfway through being arranged and forgotten, while entire rows leaned at slight angles under the weight of their own contents.

"A library?" he muttered, slowly turning his head to look around.

"Why the hell am I in a library?"

For a moment, he stayed still, trying to piece together what he’d been doing before ending up here, but a dull ache spread through his head and interrupted his thoughts.

"My memories are scrambled... this, huh?"

He fell silent after that, attempting to sort through the fractured fragments in his mind, but nothing aligned properly, and there wasn’t a single trace of magic power inside his body that he could use to ease the migraine wracking his head.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself upright and leaned against the shelf behind him, staying there for several seconds as his breathing gradually grew heavier.

After several minutes of silence, he finally opened his eyes again and spoke.

"Ah, I see. Prisma’s memories got scattered because of my loss of consciousness. But what was I doing before I lost consciousness?"

He paused for a few seconds as his memories slowly aligned, and his eyes widened when realisation dawned on him.

"Right, the bomb! ...I flew the bomb into space, and it exploded."

His gaze quietly dropped back to his arms, still scalded but gradually healing, and he muttered, "Looks like I’m still recovering from the damage of getting caught in the blast."

With his memories and the sequence of events finally falling into place, the migraine eased slightly, and he exhaled deeply before lowering his eyes to his body.

His clothes were now no different from rags, and his shoes had been reduced to thin strips of leather wrapped around his feet, though a woollen blanket had been placed over him, covering him from the chest downward.

It wasn’t an ordinary blanket either, because the moment he touched it, he could feel powerful magic within it, enough for him to immediately realise it had come from a powerful creature.

’There’s faint law energy too, so a Level 700?’

He was about to question who the hell would skin a Level 700 monster just to make a blanket, but stopped himself after remembering that he’d also used Level 700+ monsters as materials before, from the leather used for his shoes, now completely ruined, to the threads in his clothing that came from Level 700+ spider monsters living on an island in the southern Divider Ocean.

"I’m not one to talk, I guess," he muttered.

Evan raised his hand upward and manipulated some of the dense magic power in his surroundings, attempting to draw it into his body. However, the instant he did, intense pain coursed through him, and he immediately lost control of the flow of magic power.

"My energy circuits are damaged."

He clicked his tongue lightly in annoyance, then took a deep breath and tried again, absorbing a small amount of the ambient magic power despite the pain running through his energy circuits, and using it to activate his Inventory skill.

The moment the subspace opened, he quickly pulled out a fresh set of clothes to replace the rags on his body, along with potions to replenish his completely drained magic power.

"This is the first time my magic power’s been completely drained like this since I got my dragon heart."

He placed a hand on his chest, but only one heartbeat responded, his human heart, the only one functioning, while his dragon heart had completely shut down.

Shaking his head lightly, he said, "Well, that’s not good."

Evan pulled the blanket off his body and forced himself upright, first changing out of his ruined clothes before taking the potions from his inventory and drinking them one after another.

He started with a vitality potion to support flesh regeneration, then followed with a magic potion to restore his magic power, but even after downing four bottles of the strawberry-flavoured potion, his dragon heart was still silent.

"Clearly, this isn’t something I can fix so easily. I hope I don’t actually have heart damage," he said, chuckling lightly, before forcing himself upright again, only to stagger and fall back against the shelf behind him, causing several books to tumble to the floor from the impact.

"Sorry about that, mysterious library owner."

He used the shelf to balance himself, then took a few steps forward, his legs starting to ache lightly.

Looking down, he noticed the skin on his legs looked slightly dry, and his muscles seemed somewhat shrunken.

The same applied to his arms, something he’d noticed earlier when putting on his new shirt. He just hadn’t paid enough attention to his legs at the time.

"Man, I’m in really bad shape. I don’t think I was this bad when Vonun and the others attacked us back in the Infernal Dimension."

The memory of a past brush with death surfaced, and he chuckled lightly before adding, "Well, I guess my Tenacity skill must’ve done some work this time too."

Evan exhaled slowly after speaking, then looked to his left, where the library stretched on for several dozen meters, books stacked everywhere with barely enough space left for a door at the far end. He then turned his gaze to the right and saw a passage curving around the corner, the endless stacks of books ending just before that bend.

"So I’m guessing that’s the exit," he said.

He started walking in that direction, turning the corner and moving down a hallway, his hands resting against the marble walls for support as he headed toward the double doors at the end.

When he reached the doors and opened them, he felt his hands pass through a thin film of energy, like some kind of barrier. He immediately stopped moving, turning back to look at the hallway behind him.

’I’ve got this feeling that if I don’t leave something that can help me find my way back here, I won’t be able to return.’

With that thought in mind, he manipulated the ambient energy in the air and activated his Inventory, pulling out a random weapon and tossing it onto the floor before activating his Track Down skill on it.

He then fully stepped out through the door as it closed behind him, and looked around the space beyond the metal doors.

"A cave?"

Indeed, he was inside a dark, decrepit cave, with a soggy floor and stalactites and stalagmites filling the space everywhere, hanging above and rising from the ground below. He moved deeper into the wide, silent cave, and after a few minutes, he started noticing light coming from an area a few meters ahead.

Evan headed toward the light, the ground around him gradually becoming covered in snow the closer he got. Eventually, he reached the cave exit and stepped outside, immediately raising a hand to shield his eyes as a strong gust of cold wind blew frozen leaves across his face.

Flicking the frozen leaves away, he looked around at the snow-covered forest and said, "Unless I’ve been unconscious for months, it should be around April. And last I checked, April is springtime.

A forest completely covered in snow like this... either I’m at a very high altitude or—"

He paused, his eyes widening as another possible location came to mind.

"The Northern Forest?"