The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1101

The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1101

Chapter 1101
The monster had a familiar appearance and claimed to be Urd. Its true form wasn’t the real Urd, of course, but instead a fake that only mimicked her power after consuming her genes.
“
Ahahaha!!!
”
It was a similar yet different entity, seeming more like a clone to Davey.
Clang!!
“As expected. Its body really is tough,” Isilid said as she blocked the charging ‘Urd.’
“Even if it’s been ten thousand years, that’s too much power to have accumulated. They can copy Urd now? What the hell did they do?”
Muttering in frustration, she shoved ‘Urd’ back with force, then placed her other hand on the hilt and slashed upward with all her strength.
Boom!!
‘Urd’ went flying away, and Isildi clicked her tongue in annoyance. “That thing is the result of multiple totrias clustered together. Even just in terms of raw vitality, it’s bound to be powerful with so much material. Looks like all the swarms protecting the hive converged and turned into Urd, but I’ll handle it.”
Thud!!
Her prediction missed spectacularly, because it wasn’t ‘Urd’ who attacked again.
“This is...” Blocking the strike with her bare hand, she frowned and glared at another Princess of the Abyss, aiming for her from behind. “So there’s more than one.”
Just as she muttered helplessly, multiple Princesses of the Abyss appeared around them. They were not as strong as ‘Urd,’ yet still threatening in their own right.
Judging by how some of them were those she hadn’t seen before, they were likely ones who’d died in the past or were swept away during the massive explosion Davey had caused in the Abyss.
“Davey, just get going.” Wiping her sword once with a handkerchief she pulled from her chest, she said, “I’ll take care of things here.”
“From the looks of it, they’re not much weaker than the real one.”
It made no sense for mere mortal beings to wield monstrous power rivaling the creations of Thanatos, but the absurd reality was unfolding right in front of them.
“That just means they’ve stored up a ridiculous amount of power. Be careful; if they manage to consume even your genes, who knows what could happen.”
“It’s fine. Unlike you guys, I wasn’t born with power,” Davey answered calmly.
As he headed toward the passage behind Urd, the Princesses of the Abyss moved simultaneously to block him.
“Not much weaker than the real thing? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just a shell.”
Slash!!
Slicing a charging Princess of the Abyss clean in half, she snorted, “I can beat down hundreds of these fakes. Just go.”
Davey was shocked by how there was such a big power gap between different Princesses of the Abyss. It seemed Isildi had truly earned her status as the highest-ranking among them.
“If even one of these things escapes, it’ll spell trouble. I need to find out how they got this strong, so I’ll leave it to you and go on ahead.”
He figured that the swarm would naturally fall apart once the hive was dealt with. In other words, all those rampaging things were nothing more than mindless swarms. They were clumps of hundreds or thousands of totrias fused into one, and once the hive vanished, their cohesion would collapse and scatter.
“
Heh.
Where do you think you’re going?!”
At that moment, the ‘Urd’ that had been knocked away ignored Isildi and lunged at Davey. The first time he’d met Urd, when his punch had landed, he’d taken damage instead. Though it was a long time ago, it still illustrated the vast difference in the foes he faced.
“I’m not the kind of guy to take a hit and let it slide.”
Crack. Boom!!!
After he caught its face mid-charge with one hand and slammed it into the wall, its body slumped limply to the ground. After all, no matter how strong it may seem, it was only a hollow imitation. The ‘Urd’ simply wasn’t strong enough to go against Davey.
“Hey. You gonna do this right or what?”
“What?! Just deal with it and get lost already!” Isildi shouted annoyingly.
Davey tossed aside the lump of totrias and walked deeper inside. With Isildi drawing all the attention to her, he continued down into the dark depths. Even with all the power totrias had accumulated, copying multiple Princesses of the Abyss couldn’t have been easy.
Davey was relieved to see no more obstacles appear. After descending for what felt like hundreds—no, thousands—of kilometers, even the air felt different.
In the middle of an enormous cavern, a massive lump of flesh squirmed into view.
“So you’re the overbrain.”
It was the singular mind controlling the totrias swarms. It couldn’t speak, but its intelligence was highly specialized for survival to suit its own objectives.
According to Isildi and Verdandi, the purpose of any totria’s existence was consumption and annihilation. It was meant to exterminate all life untouched by Thanatos.
Landing on the ground where the overbrain lay, Davey felt like the entire ruin had been constructed simply to facilitate its formation.
“They do say human greed has no end, and humans keep repeating the same mistakes.”
Sheathing Red Ribbon and drawing the flame sword Lavatein that he had received from Ifrit, Davey began to awaken the power within his body to destroy that damned creature before him.
[Do not move.]
Eclipse’s Dragontongue held strength on a completely different level from ordinary ones.
Unleashing the power he had consumed through Predatory Assimilation, the giant fleshy writhing mass of the overbrain began to tremble violently as if crushed and compressed by an unseen force.
He used his Dragontongue power to pressure the hive and the overbrain itself to prevent the mind from escaping. Originally, the plan had been for Isildi to finish it while Davey held it down. Given the circumstances, he had no choice but to end it himself and get the hell out of there.
Summoning the power of Dragontongue into one hand and Lavatein into the other, he pressed down with his left and raised the flame sword high in his right.
Sensing the danger, the overbrain’s resistance suddenly intensified. Unfortunately for it, all of the totria swarms protecting the overbrain had already been tied down by Isildi, so there was no one left to interfere.
[Do not move.]
As he unleashed his Dragontongue infused with will, the massive chunk of flesh reeled and faltered. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the overbrain began to morph its flesh, forming a bundle of tentacles to lash toward him.
Unfortunately, it had already given Davey too much time.
Fwoosh!
The flame sword Lavatein, which incinerated all it touched, descended in a wide arc. The massive flesh of the overbrain was engulfed in the blazing fire and began to vanish. The strike went beyond the concept of temperature. With a grotesque screech, the flames began to consume the tentacles first and then spread down to the very core of the flesh.
The flesh that had been a pale apricot color soon began to melt down into its original totrias form, resembling a translucent and purplish slime. Even the tentacles that had ceaselessly resisted were slowly consumed by the hellfire and slithered down.
Given that the creature was already weak to fire, there was no chance that it could resist after being crushed by his Dragontongue and engulfed by Lavatein’s flames.
When the scorched flesh began to evaporate entirely, Davey found himself feeling a strange sense of emptiness. It was an anticlimactic end for a living being supposed to be supremely dangerous, like Isildi and Verdandi had claimed.
Of course, what those two women had meant by dangerous likely referred to the scenario where there were multiple overbrains and no way to track them all down, making extermination massively troublesome.
In the end, the overbrain before him was probably the only one. Once it had been completely burned away, there would be no more coordinated swarm behavior.
Staring at the remnants being reduced to ash, Davey turned without hesitation to return to where Isildi was.
“
Huh?
You’re already done?” Just then, Isildi approached from the other side of the tunnel, blood dripping from one arm.
“What happened to you?”
“You actually care,
huh?
Well, I guess I’ve been slacking off in training too much.”
Just like she said, she had been neglecting her training lately. Ever since awakening her own power, her growth had significantly slowed, unlike in the past when she was the great senior disciple.
Still, for something to be able to wound Isildi—whom even Sleesia treated cautiously—the enemy clearly wasn’t just some pushover.
“Just so we’re clear, and before you start getting the wrong idea, these damn jelly blobs are just a bad matchup for me.”
“Did I even say anything?”
“I seriously wanna gouge your eyes out, you know?” She puffed out her cheeks and vented her irritation.
Davey clarified, “Anyways, they’ll start falling apart now since I took care of the overbrain, right?”
“Totrias without a hive can’t make proper decisions. They’ll probably start popping up all over the place with no strategy, unable to control their own strength and ultimately destroying themselves.”
Davey figured that to be pretty much the best-case scenario he could hope for. He then rolled up Isildi’s sleeve.
“W-What are you doing?!”
“Treating you. What’s it look like?” Channeling holy power into her, the small wound on her arm began to slowly heal. “It’s interesting, you couldn’t be healed by holy power before.”
“Guess that means I’m not a Princess of the Abyss anymore.”
“I can’t deny that it was easier to deal with them since Thanatos is gone.”
Isildi glanced around at the hive that had been reduced to ashes. “If Thanatos were still around, this definitely wouldn’t have gone down so easily. Or maybe you’re just strong?”
“It’s just compatibility. With Lavatein, this was bound to be easy—”
Boom!!!
The wall exploded, chunks of flesh pouring out as masses of totrias began piling up from within.
Talk about bad timing—it was like fortune had turned its back on them.
“Isild, didn’t you say they can’t merge without an overbrain?”
“Shut up for a second. I just had an incredibly bad thought.”
The hive and overbrain had been completely incinerated, yet when she saw those things clumping together again, a horrifying realization struck her.
Drawing her sword, she muttered, “I probably already know the answer, but I’m asking just in case. Up until a moment ago, there weren't any noticeable waves of activity, right?”
“How many are there now?”
“There are seven ones that I can sense nearby. It seems the overbrain you just burned was simply masking the presence of the others.”
“So they pulled out Princesses of the Abyss just to protect one of their many overbrains?”
“I guess so. Even if they’d been gathering power for nearly ten thousand years, that’s still a lot of firepower just to protect a single hive,” she muttered.
Davey let out a sigh. If there were that many hives, it meant the number of damned totrias was far greater than they had imagined.
* * *
While Davey was exterminating the hive, Reina and her group had just arrived at the royal capital of the Vatan Kingdom, only to be escorted somewhere the moment they set foot inside.
They had requested an audience with the king, so they’d naturally expected to be taken to the current monarch of Vatan. Instead, they were wordlessly escorted to a remote and deserted part of the palace grounds.
“I’ve read a lot of books, so I already know how this is going to go,” Maximus said.
“Nobody would think you’re mute if you just stayed quiet,” Reina coldly rebuked.
“Whenever something like this happens, someone always ends up attacking.”
“Vatan wouldn’t be crazy enough to attack us... right?” Morziana hesitantly asked.
“I’m just telling you what I’ve seen before. It’s unlikely, but not impossible,” he said while shrugging. Theoretically, he was right.
Yet—
Sling!
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
“We bear no grudge, but you’ll need to die. Nothing personal, kid.”
A group of knights surrounded them, raising their auras.
“Looks like it’s one of two things.” Maximos continued, “Either this country has gone mad, or the real mastermind is someone else entirely. No matter how insane the king is, he wouldn’t give such an order unless he were insane. That means someone who stands to gain from our deaths is behind it.”
Sling!!!
The knights drew their swords and warned them.
“Do not resist. We have you surrounded, and the entire area is under a mana-suppression field.”
“Oh, is it? You all look just fine, though.”
Maximus attempted to ignite his fist energy and condense an Aura Fist, but just like the knights had said, the mana wasn’t cooperating. “Goddammit.”
As he cursed under his breath, Reina asked their foes, “Is this His Majesty the King's command?”
The knights kept silent, so she sighed. “Either way, this situation clearly isn’t normal.”
She drew her sword, a faint blue glow beginning to gather around it.
Under a mana suppression field, it should’ve been impossible for her to gather any aura on her weapon. However, there was something the world didn’t quite know. The one who had her back wasn’t the emperor of any of the Three Empires.
It was Davey.
Crackle. Boom!!
The roaring aura burst outward before violently condensing into a high-density Aura Blade.
“Sorry, but I won’t be going down that easily. Take me to His Majesty, if you know what’s good for you.”

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Chapter 1101