First Duel I [REWRITTEN]

"So, you know all about the bullshit the previous seven pulled and the restrictions they received because of it huh?"

"Hmm...?

Unfortunately, yes, I do. It would seem our history books have been praising the wrong people."

Both Evan and the princess sighed in exasperation. The actions of the previous seven heroes were just that bad.

"Oh yes, call me Laurene from now on, being called 'princess' by another one of the heroes irritates me for some reason. Probably the influence of the memories I received; the previous hero disliked royalty."

Even though she had lived for eleven years as 'Laurene Hayes', the sudden influx of memories from a being who had lived at least three times her age was enough to cause some changes to her personality.

"Whatever you say, Laurene."

Being someone who lived in a democratic society, the aristocratic system was too much of a hassle for Evan. He was happy he was a duke's son; this limited the number of people he had to be respectful towards.

"I'd also just call you Evan. So, what are we gonna do now we've confirmed ourselves to be heroes?"

"Nothing much we can do for now, so we'd go back to our daily lives.

We also have to find a way to conceal our statuses as heroes, at least till we're strong enough to protect ourselves, we can't save the world if we can't even save ourselves after all."

"Save ourselves? From what exactly?"

"A certain group of people ready to sacrifice anyone or anything on Aidos in order to bring the demons' date of entry forward even by just a few minutes.

If they discovered the existence of us new gen heroes, I don't doubt they'd try to...end us."

Laurene was initially confused upon hearing Evan's reply to her question, however, one quick look through the memories in her head and she instantly understood what he meant.

"We should really wipe those guys out when we are strong enough. Our hero titles allow us to be stronger against 'Invaders' and 'Enemies of Aidos', so that'd make things easier. More so for you who's the leader, your damage bonus is twice mine.

Or rather, we could see if the empire and a few other allied nations could come together to take them out.

The only problems are finding out their exact location and explaining to my dad why I know of their existence."

"Going after them with numbers is futile, they have a high-ranking necromancer who'd just turn any of our fallen soldiers into their own."

"Huh? How'd you know that?"

Hearing Laurene's question, it was then Evan realised that he had accidentally said something from the game without realising it.

"Just call it one of the perks of being the 'Leader'.

Anyway, that necromancer would be taken care of, provided that I can get strong enough to brave Cheverton's dungeons by the time he starts taking action."

"What's gonna happen in Cheverton?"

"To put it bluntly, a vyi~#@:3e32vrti---!"

""Huhhh???""

The two young heroes simultaneously let out surprised voices. Evan could hear some kind of garbled static-sounding noise along with his words, and Laurene who only heard the weird noise.

However, this was not something both of them were unfamiliar with. To be specific, it was something the heroes whose memories they possessed were familiar with.

"It seems that there's some kind of restriction on the information I was about to pass across."

"Indeed, there is."

'Why? Is it because it's one of the major events of the game?

If the game was a simulation of the future, then knowing the events of the game is the same as knowing the future, or at least part of it.

It would make sense that I might not be able to talk about it.

But I was able to talk about 'that guy' earlier so it is not like I can't say anything about the game, just that what I can say is limited.

Oh well, I have a lot of time to experiment.'

"Evan?"

Hearing Laurene's voice, Evan was pulled out of his sea of thoughts, shaking his head and dismissing the previous matter.

"Anyway, on to things we CAN do. We should try searching for the other seven heroes to the best of our ability, provided their powers have awakened.

Let's hope they don't get possessed by the previous bastar,- I mean, heroes."

"Yes. Hopefully, they don't get possessed by the previous basta-, I mean, heroes."

The search for the heroes would only be possible when the heroes have reached a sufficient level of strength, at that point the crest of the heroes would appear in their eyes.

This would happen when their unique skills reach Stage 1.

Currently, both Evan and Laurene's mystic eyes were still Stage 0's, as such, they would need to level up to level 35 before they can awaken stage 1. As Evan recalled this information, Laurene spoke up.

"We'd have to use the academy's expeditions to level up a lot."

"Huh? Why wait that long?

That's gonna be in 5 years, we can go level up before then. We have a boost of 200% efficiency in levelling up, best to make use of it."

The seven heroes possessed a 200% levelling-up efficiency that allowed them to level up two times as fast as the average person.

"Evan, we're both high nobility and royalty, there's no way they'd let us regularly go deep into dungeons to level up, even more so while we are not even twelve years old.

My dad's gonna be the first to refute that."

"True, I also haven't been allowed to do any sort of levelling up ever since the Duke had brought over a couple of weakened monsters for me to train with.

We need to convince them to let us go somehow... Ha! I have an idea."

He then whispered his idea of how he would convince their parents to let them level up in dungeons; prisons created to trap excess monsters to prevent them from overpopulating and taking over the land meant for mankind.

After hearing his plan, Laurene looked at him weirdly and asked with a heart full of doubt.

"Is that really gonna work?"

"About 50/50"

At his unsure reply, she sighed before calling over a servant and asking them to go to the castle to get the required attire for his plan.

Evan also went over to his room to get changed. He put on his training outfit which consisted of a pair of brown trousers, with a similar coloured shirt and leather boots.

He then walked over to the knight's training ground and asked the knights to clear up space for him. Although they had questions, they stopped their training and cleared out the area.

The Duke and the Emperor could see this from the Duke's office on the third floor of the mansion and they wondered why Evan should have been with Laurene, was in the training ground.

Not long after, the servant sent out by Laurene arrived with her training attire and her magic staff, to which she quickly changed into and moved over to the training centre.

Upon seeing this, the Duke and the Emperor finally realized what was about to happen and began making their way over to stop it, however, they arrived too late.

With a knight unwillingly acting as the referee, the first part of Evan's plan; the sparring match, began.

◇ ◇ ◇

"Begin."

The moment the knight's voice rang out, Evan dashed towards Laurene who had already finished casting her magic.

Now then, it stands to reason that Evan did not have the same level of sword skills as the original owner of this body, who had picked up a sword ever since he was five years of age and practised almost every day since then.

Nevertheless, Evan had already taken kendo and fencing lessons in his previous world for a period of almost 5 years, courtesy of his eccentric father.

This, coupled with the movements ingrained into his current body by the original owner and the effects of his weapon control skill, it was possible for him to fight suitably with a sword.

Now then, when the memories of the previous 'Second' he possessed were added to the mix, it took his skill to a whole new level.

"I have to continue the training that this body's owner started. Otherwise, my status effectiveness would drop.

That'd be really bad."

Those were the thoughts going through the young hero's head as he dodged the golden bolts of lightning that shot towards his head, while his feet moved forward, closing the distance between him and Laurene.

He was about to raise his blade to attack when his enhanced visual prowess caught something at the corner of his eye (Mystic Eye Skill holders all have Kinetic Vision).

"Hah?!"

It was a bright yellow flash.

Evan's eyebrows raised as he saw the flash of light heading towards his forehead, with his senses instinctively realising the extreme danger.

It wasn't just fast, but had enough power behind it to wreak havoc on his body if it hit him in a defenceless state.

However-

**KAKINNG!

-Evan was a level 20, and deflecting the magic bullet of a mage less than half his level was easy, and exactly just that.

His sword cleaved the magic bullet into two pieces, with his blade shining beautifully as it split the flash of light apart.

However, the person who produced the scene was stiff.

It was because the repulsive force transmitted through his palm was quite strong, despite the good amount of strength he used.

"Oi, this isn't the strength of someone with an Energy stat of F!"

"The staff's an artifact, triples the strength of magic fired with it."

That said, that was not the only problem.

'Tsk...I was caught!'

Despite the unpredictable nature of this attack, it was still a 'basic' magic attack, one that even a level 10 mage like Laurene could use consecutively.

Laurene fired off another Magic Bullet straight away, with the yellow flash of light emerging continuously like a comet, giving Evan no room to breathe.

"That's enough!"

However, Evan would not be qualified as the leader of the new generation seven heroes if he was caught by an attack like this.

He swung his sword in a circular motion with great speed, creating a storm which sliced apart the magic bullets approaching him.

The knights who were watching had their jaws drop in surprise as although they knew their young master was good at swordsmanship, it obviously wasn't up to this level.

That was true, as even with Evan's Weapon control skill, it was impossible for him to be that good at using a sword.

His knowledge of weapon arts from his original world was also not enough for him to use such a high-level technique.,

This was only possible due to the memories of the previous hero he had gained, as the previous hero was a near transcendent level swordsman, and Evan had inherited all the knowledge of this expert swordsman.

Even if he could not display all the abilities and techniques due to lack of training and difference in strength/power, the little he could currently use was already more than what a normal eleven-year-old was supposed to be capable of.

Laurene, who had memories of a hero just like him, recognized the technique Evan used and quickly perused her own memories for a magic spell to either serve as a counter or throw Evan off his game.

And Naturally, she found multiple, after all, the number of magic spells in the memories of a near transcendent level archmage was more than just 'a lot'.

She rose stretched out her left palm and jumped backwards while continuing the magic missile barrage, and with her right hand, she channelled her magic power into her staff.

A golden two-ringed magic circle manifested at the tip of the staff as she silently pointed it towards Evan.

Although she had no need to call out the name of the spell, to increase the chances of success of their plan, she still did so.

"Tier Two Magic: Lightning spear."

ꕥ ꕥ ꕥ

Bourne Residence

##### Country

AD 3100

Earth V

At the same time that Evan and Laurene were having their duel, a certain black-haired and grey-eyed man walked into his house, visibly exhausted after a rough day at work.

Closing the door behind him, he tossed his keys into the key basket with the other two bunches of keys there belonging to the other two residents.

After pulling off his jacket and tossing it over his shoulder, he took his shoes off and hung them on the foyer's little shoe rack, right next to two other pairs that belonged to others.

"I'm Back!"

"I know you dolt!"

Another voice shouted back at him, as a tall apron-wearing platinum blonde-haired woman came out from a door in the corridor in front of him and walked towards him while wiping her hands with a rag.

"Hmm? You're the one who's home?"

The man's gaze travelled to the apron she had on as he continued.

"And you're cooking?"

"Of course, I'm the one who's home. Who else did you expect to see, huh?"

The woman narrowed her eyes at him and pulled out a kitchen knife that was in the front pocket of her apron for some reason, making the man instinctively back away in fear.

"Can you please put down that thing that looks like the murder weapon from the last case you worked on?!"

"Pfft!

Look how scared you are. It's just rubber."

Chuckling lightly, she grabbed the blade of the knife and rolled it up in her hands, something that one wouldn't normally be able to do with an actual kitchen knife.

"Seriously, you have to stop it with your crazy pranks."

The man heaved a sigh of relief as he wiped off the sweat on his forehead, before walking towards the woman and pulling her into a hug.

"I need mental healing.

Today was so stressful, some of the lower-level managers nearly fumbled on a deal we were supposed to close after boasting about it less than an hour earlier.

If I didn't interfere, the company might have lost about fifty million. Oh, and-!"

"This sword-loving idiot! Stop spilling your company's dirty laundry to me!"

Seeing as he had begun to talk about things that she definitely was not supposed to know, the woman pulled out of the hug and smacked his forehead with the rubber knife, before grabbing the coat off his shoulder and walking down the corridor as she spoke.

"Go take a bath and come eat dinner quick, I won't reheat your food for you."

"Okayyy.

By the way, where's...?"

"Where's...?"

The woman turned around and echoed his question with her head tilted to one side, however, the man had a strange expression on his face as he could not remember who he was about to ask about.

"Where's who?"

Unbeknownst to him, as he was asking that question, one of the three pairs of shoes on the shoe rack behind him, slowly began disappearing, from the toplines down to the soles.