Summoned as an Infinite Evolution Hero with My Yandere Stepsister

The colossus was on his knees in the middle of the square.

One hand clenched at his throat, he snatched at his air in fits, his breath whistling, his eyes wide on something only he had seen. No need to ask how it had ended on his side. He was the one who had died, back there, in the city that time had just rebuilt around us, and he came back from it with the memory of his own end still intact.

Around him, the other heroes rose one by one, pale, each bringing back the same disquiet in their eyes.

"We’re... back," said the mage, the one with the mana of flame. "The city fell exactly as it did before."

"The loop turned because one of us died," I said. I looked at the colossus, still on all fours, a hand at his throat. "The System sends us back to the start with every failure. As long as a hero falls, we begin again from the beginning."

No one contradicted me. They had all seen the same thing, each on their own side of the city — the attack, the breach, and at the end, death, their own or someone else’s.

It was now or never.

"All right." I stepped toward the center of the group. "We’ve already wasted a whole loop charging in each on our own. This time we’re going about it differently, starting with the simplest thing: let’s introduce ourselves. I’d rather know who I’m about to fight alongside."

The colossus, finally getting his breath back, lifted his head toward me.

"Tch..."

But he didn’t leave, this time. He stayed. Death at least had that merit: it beat a great deal of pride out of a man all at once.

"Gabriel Sinclair," he finally spat, hauling himself to his feet, still a little green. "Kingdom of Khemaris."

The youngest, the one who’d followed him the first time, jumped in at once, almost relieved to be getting it over with.

"Leon Falk. Khemaris as well."

Across the circle, the mage uncrossed her arms.

"Evelyn Graves. Zarukhan."

Beside her, the lean, composed man inclined his head slightly.

"Gu Yanshu. Zarukhan also."

Then came the turn of the woman with the katanas, the one I hadn’t let out of my sight, the one with the thread of mana above her head. She looked at us one after the other, that same calm settled on her face.

"Hwang Seorin. Kingdom of Norelia."

"Kuro, and Alice." I closed out the round. "We’re from Pangracya."

Against my arm, Alice confined herself to a small smile, as if none of those names were worth her while.

"Good," I went on. "Now, what each of you saw out there. Everything, even what seems unimportant to you."

And this time, they talked.

Little by little, by cross-checking what each brought back from their sector, a picture took shape. The attack came from everywhere at once, but it was above all in the north that everything gave way — a giant, a mass as tall as the wall itself, that ended up bringing down a whole span of it and opening the way for the rest. No one had held that wall long enough.

And there was something else. A detail that, the more we pooled it, took on all its weight.

"I found someone, on my side," said Evelyn. "A woman. She was already fighting a demon when I arrived — a big one, a real monster, not rabble. She told me to go warn the others, that she’d faced their like before."

"Same for me," said Gu Yanshu. "A man, farther east. Facing another of these demons."

Gabriel gave a jerk of his chin.

"One in my sector too."

I ran the count in my head, and something didn’t add up.

"Three." I looked at them each in turn. "You each crossed paths with a hero of the past, holding their own against one of these great demons. That’s three heroes, and three demons."

"It’s supposed to be their story we’re replaying," Seorin said in her calm voice. "The fall of this city. It stands to reason the ancients would be here."

"That’s just it." Evelyn frowned. "I read a book about this war, a long time ago. The Fall of Akhartenzia. And it said there were four heroes who fought here that day. Not three."

I fixed my eyes on the north, where the giant was meant to stand.

"Four heroes, and we’ve only seen three. So where’s the fourth?"

Silence answered my question. No one had spotted him. Not in the north, not anywhere.

"We’ll find him along the way, or we won’t," Gabriel cut in, that kind of mystery clearly irritating him more than it worried him. "In the meantime, we’re not going to stand around counting who’s missing. Each of us takes a sector, and this time we hold."

For once, he wasn’t wrong.

"I’ll take the north," I said.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"You sure about that? The northern wall is where everything caved last time. The demon that casts the great black spell, the dome — he holds that side, and no one’s gotten near him without dying for it."

"That’s exactly why. It’s in the north that there’s the most to do, so I might as well be the one who goes." I paused, then decided to give them something to trust me on. "That demon, up there — I’ve fought him before. In our present, before all this. I know what he looks like, and I know he can be held."

The group took that in silence. The fact that I already knew this demon settled the matter for them — no one argued the northern sector anymore.

"Take Seorin with you, at least," said Gu Yanshu in his level voice. "If that’s where it all comes down, three of you won’t be too many. The rest of us will cover the other sectors, two apiece."

No one found anything to object to. Seorin came over to our side with a silent step, and so the split was made: Evelyn and Yanshu on one side, Gabriel and Leon on the other, each heading back toward the demon and the hero they’d already met. To the three of us — Alice, Seorin, and me — went the north.

We broke up there in the square, each making for their sector, and I set off northward with Alice and Seorin.

First we had to find the hero meant to hold that sector, and we didn’t have to look far.

She was waiting for us in an alley off the tumult, motionless in the middle of the chaos as if none of it touched her. A woman in religious garb, a long pale robe, a white band knotted over her eyes. Blind, by the look of her. And yet she turned her face toward us at the precise instant we came out into the alley.

"Hello, dear Kuro." A soft smile crossed her lips. "I’ve been waiting for you a very long time."

I stopped dead.

The tower’s characters weren’t supposed to know that kind of thing. Not my name, not that I was coming. They were shadows of the past, replaying a battle centuries old — not people capable of recognizing me.

"Hello to you as well, Alice, Seorin."

I stood speechless a moment, then finally stammered.

"You... who are you?"

"Ooohoooh, how rude of me." She tilted her head, amused. "I am Chloé. One of the heroes of old. The one who bears the class of Oracle of Time."

"Oracle of Time?" A thought struck me. "Is that—"

She cut me off, as though she’d heard my question before I asked it.

"Yes, unfortunately. I do not live in a single time at once. My class is bound to space and time: I can see it, and in very rare cases, like this one, affect it."

It was Seorin who spoke this time.

"A class that can be a blessing as much as a burden."

"Exactly." Chloé’s voice took on a note of sorrow. "And you’re well placed to know it. Whether now, or in what is to come."

Seorin said nothing, but something passed over her face.

"In any case." Chloé turned squarely toward her. "You’ve seen and heard quite enough, haven’t you?"

She raised a hand toward Seorin’s brow, and spoke in a clear voice:

"Angelic Word of the Mind."

And I saw it, with my own eyes: the thread of mana above Seorin’s head came undone all at once, cut clean, before dissolving away.

I understood before I even asked, but I asked all the same.

"So it really was a mind-control skill?"

"Yes." Chloé nodded. "Bound to the hero who isn’t here. His class is that of Puppeteer." Then she turned toward Alice, and added more quietly, "It was not for nothing that I used that skill in front of you."

She said no more. But Alice had grasped something, for she nodded slowly.

Meanwhile, Seorin was gathering her wits, the shock plain on her face as the pieces fell back into place in her own mind.

"I... I have to return to Norelia." Her voice trembled. "Lucas has taken control of everything..."

At those words, everything came clear to me as well. The Puppeteer’s skill, the kingdom of Norelia, Lucas — the other hero who had arrived at the same time as her in this world, the one who’d declined the tower’s invitation because he "had other matters to attend to."

The kingdom of Norelia had fallen under a hero’s thumb. And the thread I’d seen above Seorin’s head, as above the passengers on the train, was his hand, pulling from afar.

"Unfortunately, you cannot leave the tower in the middle of a trial, Seorin."

Chloé’s voice, grieved but firm, cut through my thoughts.

"You will have to finish this first trial before you can leave it."

Panicked, Seorin seized Chloé by the shoulders.

"But... but I don’t have the time. I can’t... I can’t make them wait."

"I know it’s hard." Chloé gently laid her hands over Seorin’s. "But you’re going to have to pull yourself together. This first trial will do you good as well, if you see it through. Don’t be too hasty — otherwise, for all your class is worth, it will be the thing that leads you to your ruin."

Her class again. A burden, she’d called it. And here she was coming back to it, as to a thing that could kill the one who bore it. What on earth could this woman’s class be?

"I see..." Seorin murmured, before dropping to her knees.

And as I watched her bowed there, powerless before something she could neither flee nor change, it was the memory of myself before Sylwen that I saw again.

I crouched beside her and set a hand on her shoulder.

"Let’s do our best, together, to get through this trial as quickly as we can."

She lifted her head toward me, and a smile came back to her, fragile.

"You’re right. Thank you." She drew a breath. "There’s no use moping like this."

A cold sensation ran down my back. I knew exactly where it came from. But I couldn’t decently let this woman fall apart without offering her at least a hand.

Passing over the murderous aura rising slowly at my back, I turned once more toward Chloé.

"And now, what do we do?"

"Unfortunately, there’s nothing more for me to do here. My purpose is already fulfilled." She stepped back. "Go find the hero of the north."

"Huh? Weren’t you the hero of the—"

Before I could finish my sentence, she scattered into a wave of golden dust, and the alley stood empty where she’d been.

Incredulous, I turned to Alice. She shrugged and looked away, a pout on her lips, just to make plain what she thought of the way I’d tended to Seorin, before setting off walking.

"Anyway. Let’s go find him, this hero."

Damn it — why does everything always slip through my fingers, when all I want is to do things right?

On that thought, I fell in behind Alice, in search of the hero of the north.