The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1125.1
Chapter 1125.1
“Secretary Cho!!”
“Yes, Vice President! I’m here now!”
“How many satellites can we use right now?!”
“Currently, we have access to two. The rest are... difficult to reroute.”
“Activate both of them! We need to find her before something happens!”
Hyun-Ah quickly located Evangeline through her assistant, Secretary Cho.
It was a good thing she'd had a tracking device embedded within Evangeline’s necklace. When Evangeline had first arrived, something about her felt different, and with the recent spike in monster activity, it turned out to be a wise precaution.
“
Ummm.
Vice President? Is it really necessary to go this far? Using satellites just to find one person is...”
“Secretary Cho.” With a sigh, Hyun-Ah spoke in a low, warning tone, “If anything happens to that girl, I seriously won’t be able to stop that damn octopus."
‘Octopus?’
Looking uncomfortable and clearly confused, he hesitantly asked, “
Um.
Who exactly is that girl, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Don’t ask questions; just find her. Also, get in touch with the Tube User Management Team Leader and tell them to call me.”
“Right away.”
Leaving the now-frantically moving Secretary Cho behind, Hyun-Ah bit her nails anxiously. “
Haah.
Why is this all making me so nervous?”
“Shin Hyun-Ah, you’re biting your nails again,” Yeon-Hee said.
“
Whew.
Super Ribbon, don’t worry. Auntie will definitely bring Eva back. Just wait here, okay?”
“Please do, Auntie.”
She nodded firmly and stepped into Evangeline’s room, silently taking in the traces Evangeline had left behind.
While she had been too flustered before to notice, when she opened the minimized window on the computer, she could see a drawing of three people.
It was instantly clear to her who they were. Her older sister, herself, and—though no longer visible in this world—her older brother. That beloved Shin Hyun-Soo, who had since reincarnated and was living as another human being.
The composition and framing of the image resembled a photo, but it was a little different.
The expressions on both her and Hyun-Soo’s faces seemed to indicate they were in the middle of bickering, but they were also smiling with genuine happiness.
She’d heard before that both Super Ribbon and Evangeline had decent drawing skills, but seeing it in person was another story entirely.
Hyun-Ah figured Evangeline must’ve first come into the room and drawn the photo. Then, probably out of curiosity, she’d logged onto a video platform, where she somehow ended up getting into a fight with some malicious anonymous user and stirring up trouble.
Even without checking, she could guess the reason it provoked her so badly. That jerk must’ve insulted her father, and Evangeline could never let that slide.
While Evangeline was by no means an entirely innocent and sweet little girl, such an extreme level of reaction was far beyond what anyone could have predicted.
Sure, they weren’t related by blood. Yet looking at her behavior, her personality was nearly a carbon copy of Davey’s old self.
Bzzt!! Bzzt!!
“Did you find her?”
- Yes, Vice President. We barely managed to catch an intermittent signal from the tracker you gave us.
“Where is she right now?”
Secretary Cho cautiously answered the question.
- Daejeon, Vice President.
“Already?” Hyun-Ah frowned.
Of all places, Daejeon had been a hotbed of excessive mana readings. It was practically a place where a sudden monster outbreak wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest.
There was a saying, or common phrase, in Korea that she found particularly pertinent given the circumstances.
- Of all days, it had to be today.
When a weird, unsettling feeling crept up inside, her expression darkened. “Tell Kouna to head straight to Daejeon.”
- Yes, Vice President.
Bzzzt!!
The call had barely ended when another came through.
“This is Hyun-Ah speaking.”
-
It’s been a while, Vice President. I heard you were looking for me.
“
Ah
, Team Leader! Actually, I really need your help with something. Can I ask you a favor?”
- Hmm. It’s not easy to help with personal matters. Still, since it’s you, Vice President, I suppose I can’t say no.
“There’s not much time, so please listen carefully to me. One of the users you manage just cussed out a kid’s parent right in front of her.”
- Excuse me? Well, that sort of thing happens from time to time, after all.
“We’re not talking about just any normal kid. I think she’s on her way to meet that guy in real life. If this escalates, I won’t be able to contain it.”
- What are you trying to say?
“That person insulted her dad—and her dad just so happens to be the Saint of Tionis!”
-
Of all people, it’s him?!
“Now you know what might happen if something goes wrong. That kid could end up in serious trouble, and if the Saint of Tionis finds out what happened with his daughter, it’ll be a nightmare. He’s not a public figure who cares about the public, like the president or those politicians. You get what I mean, right?”
If things went south, public opinion might not even side with Evangeline. They could easily turn on her, saying she was overreacting just because someone badmouthed a well-known celebrity.
However, the real issue was that Hyun-Ah knew exactly how her brother would react. Even if no one else realized it, she knew how much the world needed Davey on their side.
Of course, expecting that he'd have a violent reaction was actually assuming everything went well. If that grudge-holding octopus actually lost his temper, she wasn’t sure if anyone could handle the fallout.
That was why she couldn’t just let the situation go.
“You understand, right? I’ll try to shut this down before it blows up and goes public, so please cooperate with me.”
- Another day, another headache. Alright. I’ll cooperate as much as I can.
* * *
The stench of malice hit Evangeline like a foul wave. For someone like her, who had fed off human emotions since conception, the scent of emotions was a particularly sensitive matter.
Landing on the rooftop of a tall building, she retracted the wings that had instinctively formed, sniffing the air with narrowed eyes.
“This is it... It’s definitely here.”
Her eyes were brimming with tears.
No matter how much she tried to hate or resent him, watching someone speak so carelessly about her father, slandering him and spreading vile rumors, was unbearable.
She wondered if that was what it felt like to be so consumed by anger that you could barely stand it. Human emotions came in all forms, but the reek of hatred that traveled even through a computer screen was burned into her senses like a scar.
Silently overlooking the city, she gripped the divine dragon sword Twilight tightly in her hand and took off, leaping into the sky. She moved swiftly, heading in the direction where the awful stench was growing stronger and stronger.
“
Tch.
Freakin’ idiot thinks he’s tough...” A man sitting in front of a computer sneered as he took a drag from his cigarette.
Wearing a white tank top and shorts, he finally snuffed out his cigarette in an ashtray and let out a snicker. His viewers joined in, spamming the chat with endless laughter.
“See? These fanboys defending that piece of trash don’t have a shred of logic.”
A notification sound chimed on his computer.
[User HeyHey has donated 10,000 won.]
- Honestly, he’s been super fucking annoying. Just because he has some power, that punk acts like he’s untouchable. So damn irritating.
[‘He’ who must not be named.]
[We might get caught too lol]
[Who are you gu—
mmph!
]
“I’m telling you, this is why you can’t just hand out power to anyone.”
Still giggling, he mocked a clueless viewer who’d just demanded an apology. “I mean, the guy isn’t even Korean, nor is he from overseas either. No one knows where the hell he crawled out from, so why the hell are people worshiping him? It just ruins my fucking mood. Anyway, shall we move on to the next game?”
The streamer, known as Wherry, was a well-known Davey hater, as were most of the people who watched his stream.
To his viewers, it didn’t matter who Davey was or what he had done. He was just a convenient target and outlet—someone who had everything they didn’t, which made him easy to hate.
However, Wherry was different. He specifically hated the Saint of Tionis, the man Davey O’Rowane.
“Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that Saint of Tionis bastard back then, I’d be living large right now.
Ugh,
just thinking about it pisses me off again.”
[LOL you’re just mad you never awakened. What a joke.]
[When has this guy ever made sense? LOLS]
Back when the monstrous Malicious Spirits had appeared and caused chaos, some users of Alf Online had awakened. Many of the survivors had then gone on to make it big with their newfound powers.
Wherry had also been one of the Awakened. Though not particularly powerful, he’d had enough strength to carve out a decent life for himself. Unfortunately, during one of the battles with monsters, he had suffered a severe injury and become one of the rare cases where an Awakened individual lost their power.
It was only once he was already effectively crippled that Davey O’Rowane finally appeared.
Though Wherry survived, the damage to his organs left him incapable of functioning as an Awakened individual ever again. He believed that if Davey had arrived just a little earlier, things wouldn’t have turned out that way for him. That twisted belief had gradually festered into a grudge.
Reality often outdid fiction when it came to unbelievable twists, and his irrational hatred toward the Saint of Tionis was one such case.
He thought if only he’d been saved earlier, he could’ve been living like a king, surrounded by women. That was how he saw it.
“
Ugh.
These games are just pissing me off today. My team’s just garbage, absolute trash.”
As the word Defeat flashed on his screen, he took a deep drag from his second cigarette. He ground it into the ashtray and muttered, “Let’s do one more. Honestly, this team just sucked.”
[Yeah, sure. It was all them, buddy. That's rich, coming from the one with a 1/7/2 KDA.]
[Even that Saint of Tionis dude plays games now, and he solo-climbs to high ranks bro.]
“I told you all to stop talking about that bastard!” He slammed the desk in frustration.
It wasn’t anything new. A minor streamer with barely a few dozen viewers, a former hardcore user of a long-dead streaming site—there was nothing about the world that sat right with him.
“Whatever. I’m gonna hit the bathroom real quick.”
He stood up, scratching his bulging belly. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pretty girl silently perched on the window, staring straight at him.
“W-What the hell...?”
With jet-black hair and vacant, violet eyes, the girl looked to be in her mid-teens. She sat lightly on the edge of the eighth floor balcony of his old apartment’s building.
To him, she was like a cold angel of death. He wasn’t the only one stunned, either. The viewers who saw the same girl through his webcam started filling up the chat with question marks.
She said, “Apologize...”
“W-What are you talking about?”
“Apologize! Apologize for insulting my dad!!” The girl, clearly enraged, looked like she was barely holding back her tears.
Wherry began to put the pieces together.
Apologize.
Dad.
For someone like him, who’d spent his entire life reading the room just to survive, her words were more than enough to figure out who she was.
“Wait... don’t tell me... HA1123?”
HA1123 was Hyun-Ah’s user ID that Evangeline was using.
Chapter 1125.1
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