The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1157
Chapter 1157
Boom!! Beeeeeeeep.
As Nightmare rolled on the ground, gasping and shielding its eyes with both hands while Davey chased after it with a smile on his face, it was hard to tell who the real nightmare was.
“Looks like the roles are reversed.”
It should’ve been Nightmare pulling the pranks and Davey receiving them, yet reality clearly wasn’t interested in playing fair.
Reina and Perserque let out a sigh of pity as they watched Davey shamelessly use the special tools the Goddess Freyja’s avatar had given him.
The constant popping noises made it clear that Davey was fully determined to torment that little troublemaker.
“
A-Ahhh!!
”
Covering one eye with its hand, the little girl thrashed the other wildly through the air. In response, the swarm of bugs being mercilessly slaughtered on the ground suddenly turned and began charging toward Davey. It was a last-ditch attempt to knock him down.
However, the creatures Davey had summoned weren’t about to allow that to happen. After all, the bugs were basically useless in combat. They were just big bugs.
“
Ugh... Uuuugh... Ugh!!!
”
Davey was merciless. He kept repeating the same cycle of giving Nightmare five minutes then catching it after around four minutes and fifty seconds..
“Alright. Now take a look at this.”
“
Ugh. Ugh!!!
”
Davey held the orb up to the little girl, who had tears streaming down her cheeks and was shaking her head furiously.
Goddess Freyja had crafted the flash orb herself and entrusted it to Davey. To most, it wasn’t much of a bother. To Nightmare, however, it was especially devastating.
“
Waaah!!
”
Finally, just before the orb exploded, the little mischief burst into tears. It clung to Davey, desperately trying to persuade him to stop.
It never spoke, but its frantic gestures and desperate flailing certainly conveyed its message with clarity.
“Want me to stop? Swear you won’t do it again?”
Seizing the chance, it clamped its eyes shut and nodded with all its might.
When it finally blinked its eyes open again, all it saw was his grinning face.
“I refuse.”
Realizing negotiations had broken down, it spun around and tried to flee. Unfortunately, it had already been caught, and there was no escaping from Davey after that.
It tried to blow bubbles in a panic to obscure his vision, but Davey wasn’t about to fall for the same trick twice. He plowed through the foam without hesitation and shoved the orb right in its face.
“Pop goes the weasel!”
Boom!! Beeeeeep.
The punishment was merciless.
* * *
Having lost all motivation, Nightmare slumped down and crouched in a corner.
The swarm of bugs it had summoned vanished all at once, and the power it had been emitting faded completely. It had only wanted to play a prank, but then, after getting burned so badly, it found it hard to do anything at all.
“Aren’t we supposed to get Nightmare’s cooperation? Looking at what you just did, I really don’t see that happening...”
“We have to stop it from pulling pranks. Otherwise, it’ll just try to pull off pranks the entire time it’s with us,” Davey insisted.
Reina disagreed. “You’re lying! You were enjoying yourself way too much just now.”
Davey turned his gaze away.
“You’re awfully transparent, Davey. Goddess Freyja messed with you every chance she got, so you just took it out on her fragment—a piece of Goddess Freyja that looks exactly like her,” Perserque said.
Her words were logical and valid.
Hearing that explanation, Reina sighed and looked at Nightmare with a bit of sympathy.
It wasn’t evil, instead, it was completely indifferent to reason and obsessed only with pulling off pranks. It felt more like a child than anything else.
Nightmare, trembling with fear and half in despair, glared at Davey. Then, as soon as Perserque came over and gently comforted it, it practically melted into her arms, cuddling up with a satisfied expression. It began sticking its tongue out, teasing him.
“
Oh,
you wanna go all the way,
huh?
”
When Davey opened his Pocket Plane and pulled out a club, its face turned pale and it floated into the air in panic. It flailed its hands wildly, then tore open a hole in the air and slipped through it, vanishing.
“
Ah!
It ran away.”
“Let it go,” Davey responded.
“
Huh?
” Reina tilted her head in confusion. He had been chasing it so hard just moments before, and suddenly he was saying to let it go?
“We do need its power, but not just yet. Nightmare’s going to become a key component for something important in the future.”
Originally, it was something the sleeping Goddess Freyja should’ve taken care of. However, with her unable to manage the Dream World, the responsibility had fallen to the being born from her, Nightmare.
‘Fighting fire with fire’ was a suitable expression for the situation.
“I didn’t torment it just for fun, I needed it to stay on high alert around me. Let’s go after it in about ten minutes.”
‘By then, it’ll be exactly where I want it to be.’
* * *
On the far end of the boundless reverse world, Nightmare tore through space and tumbled out, rolling across the ground before slamming into the rooftop of a building.
Panting heavily, it frantically scanned its surroundings. Tears welled in its eyes like someone being chased by a terrifying assailant.
After confirming that Davey O’Rowane—the bad human who had suddenly invaded its domain and tormented it—wasn’t around, it reached out toward the air. In response, floating droplets in the sky converged in its hand.
They were compressed Dream Worlds, each on the verge of bursting from oversaturation.
Nightmare gathered them into a cluster, then shaped them with its small, pale hands until they formed a large clay-like mass.
Squish! Smack!
It slapped and molded the mass urgently and roughly, like a child playing with mud. Tears streamed down its face as it sniffled and mashed together more and more Dream Worlds. As the teardrops from its eyes soaked into the clay, something substantial began to take shape.
That something grew darker and deeper by the second. However, it wasn’t quite to its liking. Nightmare abruptly reached into the air again, pulling in even more Dream Worlds and adding them to the blob.
Once the saturated Dream Worlds had been absorbed en masse, the sky suddenly looked clearer, as if wiped clean.
The mass of clay grew bigger and denser, yet the urgency on Nightmare’s face only intensified.
“
Grrr. GRRR!!
”
Frustrated that it wasn’t turning out how it wanted, it slammed its little hands harder against the clay, smacking it with fierce determination. Then, it suddenly froze.
“
La la la!
”
The sound of someone singing rang through. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant melody, but to Nightmare, it was the most terrifying sound in the world.
As the song gradually instilled fear in it, it abandoned the clay it had been working on and reached toward the air again. It opened another door and ran away once more. Only the misshapen clay remained where it had been.
Davey arrived shortly after. “Well now, looks like it ran off again.”
Reina floated into view, wobbling unsteadily in the air as she spotted where Nightmare used to be. “Is there a reason you’re chasing it so slowly? Shouldn’t we just catch it and get it over with?”
“Take a good look. Do you see the sky up there?”
Davey pointed upward, and Reina tilted her head, confused. It didn’t take long for her eyes to open wide.
“
Huh?
The droplets in the sky... they’re gone?”
“Exactly. Those Dream Worlds were on the brink of overflowing, but that little thing swallowed them all up to make obstacles to stop me.”
Goddess Freyja had tasked him with two things. First was to take care of Nightmare, then the Dream Worlds that were oversaturated.
However, despite inheriting her divine authority, it wasn’t something Davey could do without consequences.
“That’s why I’m using Nightmare instead. It can take in Dream Worlds and use them to shape materialized nightmares.”
Nightmare normally wasn’t malicious. Alas, it was terrified, bound to recklessly try to stop Davey.
“Won’t those nightmare creations cause problems?”
“As long as it doesn’t finish making them, they’ll just fall apart,” Davey said as he pointed to the abandoned clay mass.
Cracks soon formed across its surface, and it slowly began to crumble apart.
“So all we have to do is keep playing hide-and-seek until it uses up all the saturated Dream Worlds.”
After tag came hide-and-seek.
“Then why did I even come along?” Reina muttered with clear irritation.
“Field trip.” His answer surely was short and dismissive.
* * *
Nightmare couldn’t believe how many times it had failed already.
Practically sobbing, it desperately gathered droplets to form nightmare remnants once more.
If it could just complete it, it’d be enough to stop Davey. As long as it could buy itself a little time, then it could vanish deep into the farthest parts of the reverse world, never to be bothered again.
However, each time it was about to finish, it was discovered.
It had to hide better. Hide more thoroughly.
Nightmare began the process anew after naively cursing its own luck. It pulled in even more Dream Worlds—more droplets—and formed them into clay. It patted and slapped the mass with its small hands like a potter with a deadline who was working while lit on fire.
“
Ugh...
hic
...
sniff
...!” Tears streamed down its cheeks as it struck the clay with desperation. At the rate things were going, it knew it wouldn’t have any more chances to complete it again.
Growing more frantic, it pulled in even more droplets. The clay turned unnaturally dark, yet it was far too panicked to notice.
“
Waaah!!
”
Finally wailing, it threw the clay into the air in a final, desperate attempt. Alas, it once again failed to take form.
It was nearly out of Dream World droplets!
Cornered, its eyes welled with tears as it stared into the void. It then hugged the lump of clay tightly to its chest.
Its power began to seep into it, and even the power it usually saved for pulling pranks bled into the lump.
It was clearly not what Davey had anticipated. Nightmare, however, didn’t have the capacity to distinguish that.
The pitch-black clay, infused with its power, floated upward as it tried to activate it. Its eyes then suddenly opened wide.
“
Eep!
”
The clay wrapped around its hand in a sort of bite, then detached and broke free.
Overwhelmed with frustration, Nightmare let out another wail and tore open space to flee once more. However, unlike the previous lumps, the one it left behind didn’t crumble or vanish.
Instead, it ripped open a passageway not to the reverse world, but Middle Earth.
It was a mistake that neither Nightmare nor Davey had predicted.
“Now where did you go?”
Eyes practically glowing with mischief, Davey finally cornered Nightmare again. It burst into tears, running straight at him and clinging to his leg. It begged him to stop, swearing it’d never pull off pranks again. It pleaded with all its might for him not to set off another flash orb.
Davey just smiled. “You’re really good at cleanup.”
Of course, Davey had no idea that the lump Nightmare had thrown—the one that slipped past both of them—had fallen from the reverse world and crashed onto a quiet island on Earth.
That lump was beginning to shift, slowly taking shape.
Chapter 1157
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