The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1227

The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1227

Chapter 1227
Davey felt something was odd with the way Reina was behaving. She wasn’t a child, though, so Davey had no right to interfere with her every action.
Technically speaking, she was bound to him, so she’d moved in accordance with his will. He wasn’t particularly fond of that system, however.
“Oh my goodness... Where are we, exactly?”
“The destroyed dimension.”
“D-Destroyed?!”
“Yeah. Looks like one of those mad bitches obsessed with destroying everything wiped out every living thing here.” Frankly, Davey had no idea which Princess of the Abyss could have annihilated the place he’d taken them to.
Compared to the devastation around them, what had happened to the Lux Continent that Urd destroyed in the past looked almost gentlemanly. Such a thing spoke to the brutal nature of whatever had happened.
If it somehow hadn’t been the work of a high-ranking Princess of the Abyss like Urd, then either the culprit possessed an unusually special power or the world had been far weaker than Davey would have expected.
“There are traces of civilization... but only a few remain.”
Shuneria couldn’t hide her sorrow. She brought her hands together and knelt down. “Merciful God, please watch over the souls of this place.”
Reina, who had remained silent, spoke up, “Your god is standing right here, and you’re praying to someone else?”
“W-What?” Shuneria panicked and grew flustered, while Reina had already turned her head away with a huff.
“Reina, enough,” Davey commanded. She pouted, clearly dissatisfied.
Shuneria tried to explain herself, “S-Sorry. It’s just... I’m not used to it yet.”
She still couldn’t quite believe that the man who had eaten meals and chatted with her like anyone else was the very god who had given her the stigmata.
“B-But... you really did give me the stigmata, right?”
“If not, then what, was that summoning some kind of illusion?”
“N-No, that’s not what I meant...”
Davey could understand why she trailed off. He hadn’t intended to bring Saintess Shuneria along, yet for some reason, there she stood beside him.
There wasn’t much he could do about that anymore. What was done was done.
“What’s that...?”
“The heart.” Davey looked at a massive red structure eerily floating at the center of the ruined continent. It pulsed with black-crimson light, cracked and trembling. Even a child would be able to recognize that it was in a critical condition.
“Do we... have to purify it?”
“It’s too late for that. Better to let it complete its function and put it to sleep.”
“
U-Um...
But... I still don’t really understand any of this...” Shuneria cautiously added, seeking some kind of explanation.
Davey simply ignored her instead of offering anything. In response, she puffed out her cheeks and glared at him.
‘Utterly blasphemous.’
Reina then turned to Davey and asked, “What’s my job here?”
“During the purification process, some things might try to get in the way. Being that I’ve already experienced it once, I’m a bit more prepared this time. Still, if anything leaks out, I need you to block it.”
“Will I be able to?” Reina knew how overwhelming the negative energy inside Davey could be.
“No one else can—only you.”
“
Umm.
What about me? Can I help, too?” Shuneria asked with her hand raised.
Seeing how clearly unaware of the situation she was, Davey felt lightheaded.
“We don’t have much leeway, so I’ll say this once. Listen closely, because I’m not asking for much. I just need you to wedge some disruption into a finely tuned gear.”
Before that remnant of Thanatos disappeared, it had explained a way that the purification could still proceed smoothly. Without that guidance, Davey wouldn’t have been so quick to make a decision.
Both Reina and Shuneria nodded, tension heavy on their faces.
* * *
Once Davey began the purification, a large barrier expanded around the massive heart to also envelop the three of them.
“This is incredible...” Shuneria, seeing such a sight for the first time, wore a look of genuine wonder.
Reina, on the other hand, remained silent. Her disapproval of the saintess was palpable in her expression.
A stream of pure white energy surged out from the heart and connected to Davey. He closed his eyes, and another stream of energy—black and ominous—began to swirl as well.
It was the same negative energy that Davey had once expelled. It was trying to make its way back to him, resonating just outside the barrier.
“I-It’s moving... It’s starting!”
The longer the purification continued, the more that negative energy multiplied.
Ideally, the heart would be strong enough to repel such corruption on its own. Yet the heart before them, being broken, tainted by demons, and long dormant, could no longer do its job. Reina was the one responsible for fixing that.
Thud. Thud!!
Dark energy forms pounded against the barrier, attempting to force their way through.
Reina closed her eyes. A tremendous surge of Celestial energy exploded from her, condensing behind her back.
One pair. Two pairs. Three pairs. Her growing wings gleamed brilliantly, scattering radiant white feathers about.
Boom!!
Shuneria gasped softly as she watched the transformation. She had assumed Reina was merely an outsider from another dimension, but what she was seeing seemed to suggest otherwise. Davey with his overwhelming power, and Reina in her heavenly form of an angel that could’ve come straight from scripture, shattered her understanding of the world.
Zzzzt. Zzzzt.
His barrier was powerful, yes, but it was nonetheless being worn down at a rapid pace.
Shuneria quietly clasped her hands in prayer before extending them forward. A column of white light emerged, intercepting one of the dark energy clusters that was trying to force its way in. The difference in power was stark, but the overwhelming elemental advantage made the dark energy hesitate.
When Reina’s power collided with the darkness, it disappeared on contact. But likewise, the negative energy stalled, as if soap foam dropping onto a dusty floor.
Boom!!
Thanks to that brief interruption, the bits of darkness were thrown off balance, making them enter at mismatched intervals. The barrier, no longer being overwhelmed all at once, began to recover and hold steadier.
They were still coming strong, but not enough to make Reina lose focus.
“Aaahh.” Shuneria watched, her mouth slightly agape.
It didn't have much of a complex visual impact, but interrupting a finely tuned system of gears to disrupt its flow wasn’t something that could be done easily.
Still, it wasn’t a fundamental solution. What Reina was doing was buying time. Fortunately, Shuneria was there to support her and lessen the burden.
[To my noble god, I offer this prayer...]
She spoke her prayer in a clear, serene voice.
It was similar to conventional holy power, but different. It wasn’t the holy power of the widely worshipped Great God. Instead, it was the divine power of Davey, the god she served.
That was why she could affect the negative dark energy outside the barrier. Though her fledgling power was still weak, she was a Saintess, after all. A Saintess was the most sacred of beings, one who carried out the will of a god and acted in their name.
She fell into a trance-like state, drawing up the unfamiliar divine power and sending it outward.
“
Woah
!”
One of Reina’s wings suddenly smacked the back of Shuneria’s head, breaking her concentration.
“
Oops.
My bad.” Despite her words, she had her tongue stuck out.
Shuneria blinked, feeling as if something had snapped in her mind. “I-It’s fine.”
“Don’t push yourself, okay? I can handle this on my own.”
“No! He’s my god, too. I want to help.”
Reina turned away, visibly annoyed.
Just as Shuneria was about to concentrate again, a sudden gust of wind blew into her face, scattering her focus. “
Urgh.
”
“
Ah—
sorry. Guess I put too much power.”
Another snap echoed in Shuneria’s head, followed by yet another gust of wind blasting her in the face.
Fwoosh!!
“Can you please stop doing that?!”
“
Huh?
Stop doing what, exactly?” Reina continued overloading the negative, dark energy with her power, feigning complete ignorance.
“You’ve been intentionally messing with my focus this whole time!”
“Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reina said with a smirk.
Shuneria was reaching her limit. Reina hadn’t acted like that before. She used to be kind to her, so thoughtful.
However, clearly something had changed.
Shuneria couldn’t understand why Reina was like this only toward her.
At first, Shuneria had assumed it was jealousy over Davey. Then again, Reina had said nothing when Princess Myurin practically fell head over heels for him.
It was only toward her.
Shuneria Recken was known for her altruism, but there were many people in the world who were just as altruistic as her.
She began to wonder why she specifically had been chosen as the Saintess of Davey O’Rowane, a newly ascended divine being.
Crack.
Shuneria clenched her jaw. “So that’s how it is,
huh?
”
She clapped her hands together lightly, then began to pray even faster.
[Blessing, please.]
The prayer was so offensively casual that if Davey had heard it, he probably would’ve choked. However, she didn’t care. She had come to understand the reason she had been chosen—she was more like Davey than anyone else.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“
Hmm?
I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.”
Shuneria spread her holy power with a smirk, intercepting the flow Reina had been managing. Reina’s hostility began to boil over, yet unlike before, Shuneria didn’t back down either.
Reina's dead, hollow eyes looked truly chilling. Alas, she didn’t know that Shuneria was surprisingly unhinged in her own way.
“
Ha!
What, gonna throw hands next?
Huh?!
”
Reina barked out, “I could end you right now! You better shut that little mouth of yours.”
Shuneria flinched internally once she noticed her gaze growing even more ice-cold.
‘Did I push her too far?’
She’d only lashed out because she’d been provoked, and Reina’s change in demeanor was honestly a bit alarming.
“I deserve to know, don’t I?! What did I do to make you hate me this much?!”
Reina stared at her for a long moment before responding, “I’m the only one who serves him. I won’t allow anyone else.”
However, Davey was a being with divinity who also already had multiple wives. Given that, Shuneria couldn’t understand why she was so jealous of her.
However, after contemplating for a while, it finally clicked for her.
‘Don’t tell me... it’s possessiveness? As his bound subordinate...?’
That was when an energy sword shot past her, close enough to graze her cheek. She threw herself aside, only narrowly avoiding it.
“Tch.”
She turned her head and caught Reina clicking her tongue. Her eyes widened as she screamed, “You’re insane! Are you seriously trying to kill me right now?!”
The shock of the moment made Shuneria stumble back, hands raised and unable to retort.
“If you weren’t here... I’d be the only one fully bound to him. So don’t get in my way.”
“I-I’ll tell on you!! I’m a Saintess! My prayers do get heard by
my God
, you know that?!”
Reina took a step forward, voice emotionless. “Then there won’t be any issues if you die here, would there?”
Boom! Boom!!
Even as their fight escalated, both of them continued channeling their power outward, disrupting the flow of the negative dark energy.
However, as time passed, Reina kept stepping closer and closer, and Shuneria genuinely started to believe that the lunatic bitch might actually kill her.
She took a shaky step back. Then another. “L-Let’s talk this out! Look at it this way—you’re the one who’s always with him! I have my own life going on!”
Reina paused for a moment to consider that, but continued her approach not long after. “Nope! No matter what I think about it, you’re just in the way.”
Her eyes had completely lost focus. She wore a twisted smile and formed a white energy sword in her hand.
Shuneria swallowed hard and began to sweat buckets.
Boom!!
A sudden deafening explosion shook the entire land.
The ground twisted and cracked open beneath their feet. Above them, the sky began fracturing into pieces, crumbling like shattered glass.
It felt like the end of the world.
The two, having been locked in a fierce standoff just moments before, abruptly forgot what they were doing and stared blankly ahead.
Davey had said that as the purification progressed, the world outside the barrier would begin to crumble. Despite hearing what would happen ahead of time, seeing the end of the world firsthand was far more terrifying than they had ever imagined.
Crackle.
Just like that, the world shattered and reset before their eyes. The negative energy caught in the collapse outside the barrier simply disintegrated, swept away as the world broke down at its most fundamental level.
“One single barrier is all that is separating us from the extremes like this...” Shuneria looked stunned, unable to believe what was happening.
Outside the barrier, destruction and disintegration continued relentlessly, while inside, everything remained eerily calm as if they were in the eye of a storm.
The time it took for the world to be completely reset and recreated was about five minutes. Not particularly long. However, Shuneria spent that time fleeing for her life from Reina, who came at her with crazed eyes and a wide grin.
Shuneria knew she wouldn't die if Reina caught her, of course. Yet, she had a strong feeling it’d be anything but pleasant for her if that happened.
“It’s okay! I’ll just carve out the stigmata. That way, you won’t be tied to him anymore,” Reina said as one of her wings began to darken.
‘That psycho bitch!’
Even as that thought flashed through her mind, Shuneria instinctively slammed her hands together. She then wrapped her difficult-to-control holy power around herself and released it in a burst.
She noticed that the dark, black energy affecting Reina’s personality was similar to the force disappearing outside the barrier.
She figured it either hadn’t been completely purified, or the negative energy no longer cared to survive outside the barrier, instead trying to corrupt Reina even further.
“I can erase it without hurting you. The stigmata isn’t a standard wound, so I should be able to remove it without causing physical damage,” Reina coldly suggested.
“Are you out of your mind?! Wake up already!!”
“It’s okay.”
Watching her lifeless eyes and eerie smile, Shuneria realized that the root of everything lay in her own stigmata. Her face couldn't help but turn bitter.
Then, just as Reina’s hand was about to finally touch Shuneria, the light surrounding Davey exploded outward and then began to fade. The fractured heart, having split into pieces, slowly dimmed and started to contract, as if it were finally at peace.
The purification had ended.
In the silence that followed, Reina stood frozen. The wing that had turned black returned to its original white.
Once Davey was fully purified, Reina, who had also been affected by it, began to return to normal as well.
“
Haaah.
I thought I was going to die...” Shuneria collapsed to her knees, sniffling, then glanced over at Reina.
‘That psycho bitch! I should rat her out for everything.’
Just as that thought crossed her mind, Reina dashed over and hugged Davey, who was slowly opening his eyes and staggering unsteadily.
“Are you okay?!”
“
Uhh. Oh
, hey, Reina.” Davey looked at her with a tired expression and gave a faint smile.
“I’m so glad you’re okay!” Both the dead look in her eyes and the slightly crazed smile from before completely disappeared.
‘That vixen of a woman...!’
Shuneria felt her insides boil with fury. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever felt so wronged before.
Mere moments before, Reina had tried to erase her stigmata like a maniac. Suddenly, there she was acting as if nothing had happened and she was ever so innocent.
‘Fine. Maybe it really was because of the negative energy. Her wing was tainted, after all.’
Reina had been exposed to the dark, negative energy for quite a long time.
Shuneria opened her mouth to explain the seriousness of the situation. “
Ummm—
”
“It’s all over now, right?” Reina interrupted. “Let’s go home. Reina is really tired.”
Seeing her smile like a child whining for attention, Shuneria lost all words.
The behavior wasn’t just because she had been tainted, after all. That angel named Reina had a jealousy streak running far deeper than Shuneria had imagined.
* * *
The dimension, which had been falling apart with the cycle of life broken, stopped collapsing once it no longer needed that cycle. The corrupted heart went back to sleep, beginning to restore itself in preparation for the next divinity purification.
During the exchange it had with Davey, giving and receiving energy, it had absorbed a significant amount of power and managed to return to a stable state.
Obsession, different from pure affection. Shuneria looked at Reina, who was quietly feeling Davey’s touch, as she tried her best to suppress her growing exhaustion.
She had heard that Reina used to be called a hero. Yet to her, she was just a terribly nasty woman.
* * *
Once Davey had finished the purification and balanced his power completely, the black entity that had appeared from the heart—the black slime—turned its gaze toward Reina.
It looked around with a strange expression, wobbled its body a bit, then opened its body like a mouth. It sucked all of the dark energy that had seeped out of Reina into its round mouth without a trace.
Gulp. Gulp. Gulp!
Then, it trembled and spat something out, seeming like a cat with a hairball. What emerged was none other than an egg.
A rainbow slime’s egg!
The black slime silently picked up the egg in its mouth and melted away from its spot like a shadow. It reappeared behind Shuneria without her noticing, then slipped the egg into the pocket of her holy robe.
It then bounced off, satisfied. After Davey vanished with Reina and Shuneria, the black slime approached the heart that had fulfilled its role.
Then, something remarkable happened. With each beat of the heart, the slime’s body pulsed in sync.
Thump! Thump thump!
The creature suddenly looked up at a woman with blue hair who had approached from behind. She stared down at the black slime with an expressionless face and conveyed her thoughts.
[Such a long time.]
The black slime bounced and jiggled its body in response.
[It must’ve hurt a lot, all this time.]
Hearing the soft and divine voice ring in its head, the black slime nodded.
[That’s why I searched for him. To save you.]
The black slime nodded again in understanding.
The heart, which should’ve purified long before yet remained awake far too long, had distorted. As it died, it created a new existence—one that would find someone who could save it.
[Now rest in peace.]
The black slime. Its origin was the heart of the dimension the goddess created to purify the gods. Its power to devour twisted divinity was nothing short of sacred.
Just as her hand reached out toward the black slime, it suddenly bounced away from her.
[You don’t want to sleep?]
It twisted its body in response, then changed its form. It took on a face identical to Evangeline’s just to vigorously nod with emphasis, then returned to its original shape.
The goddess silently closed her eyes, then turned away. She didn’t say a word, but her message was clear.
The black slime silently watched the goddess retreat, then lightly hopped across dimensions. It glanced at the sleeping Evangeline and the rainbow slime on the bed before giving the rainbow slime a nudge, knocking it onto the floor.
The rainbow slime wriggled on the ground and looked around, then froze the moment it spotted the black slime.
It wasn’t fair, but there was nothing it could do. Hierarchy was everything. After glancing around nervously, the rainbow slime finally curled up at her feet and fell asleep. Only then did the black slime, wholly satisfied, burrow into her arms and close its yellow eyes.
For a sentient entity, the heart of a dimension made in order to survive, its behavior was oddly whimsical and undeniably adorable.

Chapter 1227