The Max Level Hero Has Returned!
Chapter 1082

Chapter 1082

Sling!! Screech!!

Bartranakat, or simply Bartra, couldn’t hide her confusion.

Illyna was not only clearly perceiving the force she should never have been able to sense or see, but she was even counter attacking against it. Her Aura Blade and her attacks shouldn’t have possibly had much effect against a special being like Bartranakat, who was essentially a spiritual entity.

“Gyaaah!!” Bartranakat, forcing her severed flesh to stitch itself back together, gasped for breath. She then unleashed a barrage of frenzied attacks toward Illyna.

Wielding Caldeiras, Illyna effortlessly deflected and shattered all of the attacks with only minimal, precise movements.

“T-This can’t be happening!!”

Watching Bartranakat scream in frustration as the area around them shattered, Illyna frowned. “That’s Mr. Farmer’s land, you know. It’s a resting place for the territory’s business owners.”

“Shut up!!”

“Do you even know how much you’ve wrecked?”

Slash!!

Taking a swift step forward, Illyna slid gracefully toward the charging beastfolk girl, brushing past her as she flicked her sword.

“Gyaaah!!?”

The attacks weren’t supposed to land so cleanly, yet every strike was somehow delivering devastating damage.

“Stop getting in my way!! I said stop!!”

Bartranakat’s goal wasn’t to fight Illyna. It was to find Goddess Freyja and stop Davey, who was breaking apart and purifying the massive rift in the sky.

The longer she was delayed by Illyna, the more desperate she became.

“You’ll never get there,” Illyna said with a cold smile, pointing toward the rift.

“Shut up! No matter what you do, you can’t kill me!!”

Illyna didn’t respond to her desperate cry.

“You managed to graze me a bit, but that’s all you’ll achieve!!”

Hearing that, Illyna sighed, “Yeah, because you’re not even a real body. You’re a spiritual entity.”

Just as Illyna mentioned, her true form was the massive energy that sustained her—the rift itself.

“If Davey completely smashes that thing, you’ll disappear without anyone even laying a finger on you. Is that why you’re panicking?”

“Shut up! You know nothing of our mission!”

“Mission, my ass.” Illyna nonchalantly picked her ear and made another move.

“Hmph?!”

Her golden eyes, sharp and radiant, gleamed ominously.

[Transcendental Longsword]

[Strong Slash]

“No! Nooooo!!”

Slash!!

Caldeiras, glowing with white light, sliced cleanly across Bartranakat’s body in a diagonal arc.

Tear!!

Even so, that wasn’t enough to kill her. She forcibly held her body together, leapt backward into the air, and howled, “You damn bitch! I’ll rip you to shreds!!”

Following her scream, an uncountable number of invisible claws surged toward Illyna. Despite having just finished her slash, she remained completely calm facing them.

Clang!!

Caldeiras shimmered in her hand, transforming into a massive beam of light before splitting into two swords.

“Davey said splitting a sword and trying dual-wielding carelessly could get you killed, but...” Muttering something strange, Illyna divided Caldeiras into twin blades.

Golden light flickered in her eyes like an afterimage. “Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

The flow of mana around her changed, forming the distinct pattern seen when she manifested her Continuum-Attacking Blade.

[Demonic Sword 80th Form] [Dying to Live, Living to Die]

Though her swordsmanship had always been rooted in the style of the Sword God, what she unleashed in that moment was something entirely different—soft, fluid, almost unnaturally graceful. Even so, the power behind it was anything but gentle.

Bartranakat couldn’t even follow Illyna’s movements with her eyes. By the time she noticed, the swords had already crossed in the air.

Crack!!

Practically the instant her swords stopped moving, the massive swarm of invisible attacks flying toward her was shattered into countless fragments. Beyond the shattered remnants, Bartranakat’s body—and even the very space behind her—was ripped and warped.

Bartranakat, her eyes wide open, couldn’t even manage a scream. Illyna’s attack had moved far beyond the range Bartranakat could perceive, and its lethality was overwhelming.

The earth was torn apart, and the air itself was being sucked into the tears ripped open in the sky.

“This... This doesn’t make sense! It can’t be happening.”

Bartranakat couldn't understand why she was being overwhelmed so badly. She couldn’t comprehend how Illyna’s sword was that fatal, how it devastated her like nothing. The only thing she knew for sure was that it’d be the end for her if she took another hit from it.

“No, my strength!”

The energy connection sustaining her from the rift began growing weaker and weaker, and her form started to scatter like light.

All spiritual entities shared the trait of not dying even if their hearts were pierced or their brains destroyed. Bartranakat was no different.

However, Illyna was monstrously talented, well beyond Bartranakat’s comprehension. Her very nature, her talent, her body—all of it fit perfectly with the Continuum-Attacking Blade.

“I’m not pulling as much firepower as Davey...” Illyna muttered in mild dissatisfaction.

Even with her natural affinity for longswords and the Continuum-Attacking Blade, mimicking the demonic sword techniques wasn’t easy. It was the first time she had come close to truly succeeding in one of the 80th Forms. Not mere mimicking, but borderline mastery.

The shattered space crumbled all around them like broken glass.

Collapsed on the ground, Bartranakat desperately reached out to reclaim the energy leaking from her body. Alas, it all slipped away.

Illyna watched without a word, looking down at her coldly.

In that moment, she seemed like the God of Death, though her beauty was far too striking for the title to fit perfectly.

“You’re right about one thing: in the end, I can’t truly kill you.”

No matter how many times she destroyed or repelled the attacks, as long as Illyna was a being bound to the world’s rules and not a being with divinity, she couldn’t fundamentally destroy the laws that sustained Bartranakat’s existence. It would be like trying to drown a fish in water.

“Still, that doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no possible way.”

Illyna, gripping Caldeiras in its original single-sword form, sliced through the air.

Slash!!

The remaining strands connecting Bartranakat to the rift were severed, including the last fragile thread barely holding her together.

Bartranakat could only look at Illyna with a mixture of horror and disbelief as she slowly crumbled into dust. The energy that had been scattered where she stood rose into the sky, forming a brilliant blue pillar. It was the final sign of her artificial spirit consciousness disintegrating into nothingness.

Almost immediately after Illyna finished off Bartranakat, another pillar of blue light rose from a distant direction. It seemed that Killer Rabbit and Evangeline had also finished dealing with the other spiritual entity.

Illyna was briefly curious how those two had managed to handle it together, but she ultimately didn’t bother thinking too much about it.

* * *

The small boy, now collapsing and scattering into particles, wore an expression of utter disbelief. “This can't be happening... It can't be happening!!”

Unlike Bartranaka, the boy Roguelle possessed a completely different kind of power.

Bartranakat specialized in offense, whereas Roguelle was made for defense. In fact, even after taking a direct hit from Killer Rabbit that’d torn his body apart, he had managed to reconstitute himself as if every particle of his being was alive.

Yet for some reason, he suddenly couldn't properly use his defensive capabilities. There was a good reason, of course.

Thanks to that damned white bipedal rabbit; the mysterious minotaur cloaked in stars; and a monstrous dokkaebi draped in tattered rags wielding a giant club, Roguelle didn’t even have a chance to recover. He was simply crushed under their relentless assault.

He faced the pinnacle of brute strength, the pure embodiment of mindless violence.

Normally, Roguelle could absorb any damage dealt to him, regenerating instantly even from fatal injuries. The moment the muscle-bound freaks saw that, they’d responded by simply attacking nonstop without giving him even a moment to breathe.

In any prolonged battle of attrition, no matter how sturdy the fighter, fatigue would inevitably set in. That was how they had managed to seize the absolute advantage.

On top of all that, an unexpected variable had come his way in the form of a small girl with a pitch-black sword. Compared to the two muscle monsters, her attacks were trivial, yet to Roguelle, she was the most dangerous enemy of them all.

It all started when Roguelle tried to seize control of Evangeline's mind. He had figured that if he could dominate a key figure like her, he could effectively neutralize the muscle freaks too.

Confident, Roguelle intentionally gave her an opening and let her approach, waiting for her to make a mistake. The moment she slipped up, he invaded her mind, pushing his consciousness inside.

That was the beginning of his nightmare.

Just as he’d proudly infiltrated her mind to take control, something unknown had latched onto him. Something far beyond his comprehension. Startled beyond belief, he had instantly severed the link. Unfortunately, the scars left behind by whatever had attacked him were horrific, beginning to erode his mind from within.

He never even got a clear look at it. All he knew was that in the blink of an eye, whatever it was had utterly shattered his mind. That distortion of his mind began affecting his spiritual body, too. His regeneration, once his greatest strength, had begun to deteriorate.

Though he had plotted everything with confidence, he had been completely blindsided. His instincts had screamed at him to flee, but his physical abilities were far weaker than the other spiritual entities’. With his special mental abilities crippled, his collapse only accelerated.

‘I... I don’t want to die...’

He no longer even thought about the muscle monsters chasing him. All he could think about was running away from the thing he had seen inside Evangeline’s mind.

It was too late for regret. Starting from deep within, his form began to warp and crumble. By the time he regained awareness, more than half of his body had already disintegrated into particles.

“T-This is impossible!! It’s not supposed to be like this!!” His final scream was full of nothing but despair and overwhelming terror.

* * *

Though Davey had aimed to minimize damage, there were clear limits to what he could control.

“Ahhh. There goes the disaster relief fund.”

The avatar of Goddess Freyja remained suspended midair, expressionless.

Meanwhile, Davey was still locked in a struggle with the massive, slowly warping rift. He continued ripping apart the endless stream of pale, elongated arms reaching for him, gradually weakening the rift’s power.

- Davey, it’s over on my end.

As soon as he heard Illyna, a pillar of light shot up into the sky in the distance. Then, from another direction, yet another pillar rose.

- Daddy, it’s done here too!

Hearing Evangeline, Davey tilted his head, feeling a little puzzled. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

- Nope! But something weird happened...

Davey frowned slightly at her words. “Weird?”

- Yes. That kid... he looked at me, then suddenly weakened, ran away, and ended up getting wiped out by the muscle guys.

Calling those monstrous things ‘muscle guys’ so sweetly showed just how kindhearted Evangeline truly was.

‘Well, she is my daughter, after all. Though... Eclipse’s personality had been a lot rougher.’

Davey didn’t know exactly why the last spiritual entity had weakened so suddenly, but for something he'd been so worried about, things had turned out surprisingly well.

“Good. Don’t push yourself, just go ahead and pull back. Daddy will finish cleaning up here and return in a bit.”

- Okay! Promise you’ll come back safe!

Just then, the avatar of Goddess Freyja, still suspended, expressionlessly tossed him her tablet.

[Dizzy.]

“Hang in there just a little longer.”

[Let me down.]

Letting out a sigh, Davey floated Red Ribbon up into the air and reached out with a sweeping motion, summoning the divine spear Longinus.

Pzzt!!

[Divine Spear Longinus, Second Form]

[Nuclear Spear]

Crackling!

Golden sparks danced along the spear, as if it contained raw lightning, as Davey aimed it at the rift. Sensing the danger, the rift roared and drew out even more hands in a desperate attempt to resist.

Alas, Goddess Freyja didn’t even budge. Instead, she calmly typed out another message on the tablet.

[Hurry. Dizzy.]

Apparently annoyed by her attitude, the chains binding her quivered violently. Then, black thorn-like projections suddenly shot out toward her from the chains.

Davey hesitated. Honestly, he wanted to leave her alone a little longer. Noticing this,he slightly frowned, making him click his tongue.

[If the avatar breaks, I won't be able to see you anymore.]

“Why?”

[If it breaks, I can't meet you.]

She didn’t even bother hiding her selfish reason. It was so open and direct it all but killed the tense mood.

[Petty saint. Brainless anchovy.]

Deceiving her was impossible. Letting out a sigh, Davey gripped Longinus to destroy the thorns and free her.

Then someone unexpected appeared.

[The Primordial Cleaner.]

“What?” Davey’s eyes abruptly widened. He didn’t understand how it was even here, or what form it had taken.

The sky tore open, and from that opening, an unimaginable, overwhelming presence began pouring out.

“Behemoth??” he shouted in surprise.

There was no reply, but there was no mistaking exactly who it was. However, it was admittedly far larger than the Behemoth he knew.

Indeed, the creature that emerged from the sky was so massive it completely covered the heavens. Even with a rough estimate, its size couldn’t be measured in mere kilometers. With a little bit of exaggeration, it felt like an entire small continent floating above him.

It abruptly fell from the sky, jaws wide open, and swallowed the entire rift in a single gulp, along with all the surrounding space.

Boom!!

The chains piercing the ground, that had been trying to drag Goddess Freyja up into the rift, disintegrated into dust and vanished without a trace.

It was downright absurd.

“What the hell...”

Just when Davey thought Behemoth was about to crash into the ground and obliterate the entire territory, its massive form abruptly shrank, condensing into a size of just a few hundred meters as it fell. If it had remained the size it first appeared at, the entire land would’ve been flattened on impact.

“Hey. What the hell are you?”

It was already ridiculous enough that it had appeared without his permission as its contractor, but even more absurd that it had appeared in a form Davey had never seen before to casually devour the entire rift. The sky was pristine—completely spotless, as if the rift had never been there before.

Despite the Mythical Beast King Behemoth being incredibly strong and specializing in devouring, there was no way it should’ve been capable of doing what it had done.

[Huh? What’s with you, Contractor!? When did you call me?! Hurry up and send me back! So-Ya’s waiting for me!]

It shouted at Davey, staring with huge, clueless eyes. Apparently, it had no memory of what it had just done.

Davey, trying to process the madness, slowly asked, “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

[What nonsense are you spouting?! I was just hunting a minute ago! Damn those arrogant great white sharks!]

‘There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him mentally.’

Suppressing his exasperation, Davey returned Longinus to its original form and tossed it into his subspace. He then turned to Goddess Freyja to demand an explanation.

“What the hell is that thing?”

She immediately turned her head away, refusing to meet his gaze.

[Grace Thief. Brainless anchovy.]

‘Not like someone else told you to mess around with a human body like that.’

Just now, Goddess Freyja hadn’t used her full power. Or rather, to be precise, she had only used just enough to trigger something.

In other words, everything that had just happened—the rift being devoured, Behemoth bursting through dimensions and popping out like it owned the place—had all been thanks to her silver of power.

“So what’s Behemoth doing here?”

He had just seen something he’d never even heard about from the Hero and Mythical Beast Summoner Shane Scrift. When Davey pressed again for an answer, Goddess Freyja simply stared at him in silence. Then, all of a sudden, she blushed slightly and looked away.

[Your gaze is intense.]

He had no words.

She reached out, took one of his hands, and led him somewhere. Once they reached Behemoth’s side, she placed his hand on its skin. Then, as she looked at him, she pinched her nose like it was too stinky to handle.

Davey figured he must be feeling what people mean when they say they’re about to explode from frustration.

Finally unable to take it anymore, he grabbed both of her cheeks, stretching them mercilessly.

[Owwwww.]

“That’s the point. It’s supposed to hurt, got it?”

[Ow, ow. It hurts.]

She squirmed with a blank expression, but Davey wasn’t backing down.

“No, seriously, what the hell is it doing here?”

Right then, the massive whale-like creature that had been sprawled on the ground, Behemoth, suddenly opened its eyes wide.

[Ah! That’s right! I remember now!]

“What? What do you remember?”

Davey’s attention was already far more focused on Behemoth, who had devoured the damn rift, than on the rift itself. Since Goddess Freyja clearly had no intention of telling him anything, he had no choice but to get his answers from the airheaded beast.

Unfortunately, Behemoth turned out to be far dumber than Davey had imagined.

[Hey! Right there, my whiskers are so itchy! How odd. How could someone as brilliant as me forget something like that? Contractor, scratch it already!]

Not hesitating for even an instant, Davey opened space and kicked it inside. “Get lost, you bastard!”

Davey questioned why he had even bothered to ask that idiot anything. When he turned to Goddess Freyja with a look that screamed he’d given up all hope, she looked back up at him with a blank face.

[Curious?]

Davey nodded.

[But it’s a truth you’re not meant to know. Still... if you really want to...]

She tapped his cheek lightly.

[You’ll have to give something in return.]

“Hold it right there. Just who do you think you’re trying to flirt with? I’ve got a wife, you know.”