The Max Level Hero Has Returned!

[Get lost!]

Thwack!

Davey’s soul bounced back as if Eclipse had kicked it. The sticky black fog that had been entangling him was torn away, sending him spitting out.

Ssss…

In the darkness he saw a black fog—the Abyss was reaching out toward him. In that black fog, he heard someone's voice that made him shoot to his feet.

‘Eclipse?!’

Davey opened his eyes wide and tried to refocus on the voice he had heard in the darkness. Unfortunately, the rift that was opened like a wormhole then completely sucked in him and Perserque.

[No good deed goes unpunished.]

Just before he was thrown out of the wormhole, he pondered over the voice he heard as his entire spirit body flew back into his physical body.

When he opened his eyes, he felt he was touching something like a carapace. He then saw his hands wrapped around Rinne’s neck.

“Rinne…”

Rinne, on the ground, slowly opened her eyes.

“Rinne reports… has made an impossible survival against all calculations. Rinne…” she said jokingly.

Her body began losing strength as she spoke.

“Rates this… highly…”

She then lay flat on her back and started coughing.

“Rinne reports to Master Davey that there is a problem with Rinne’s circulatory system... Rinne requires a careful and hands-on full-body check.”

“Got it…”

Davey looked at her blankly and turned his head with a bitter expression. It didn't seem like much time had passed. He figured he had gone wild after being encroached by Thanatos, which would have been a few minutes at most.

It seemed clear that he had taken a huge amount of time overall. Rinne was safe. They had also stopped his body from running wild just in time before his soul had begun to deteriorate. But he didn’t know what had happened to Perserque.

He quickly turned his attention to Perserque, whose movements they had sealed with spells and barriers. Even though he had brought her soul back, she wasn’t moving. But after a little time had passed, her body jerked once and began to tremble.

“Did it work?”

“Don’t say anything.”

Davey cut Verdandi off and looked at Perserque with a nervous expression. Since he had metamorphosed a fake physical body, it was questionable whether her soul would properly settle.

Time passed very slowly, each second stretching for what felt like days. As he watched Perserque in suffocating silence, he saw her stop trembling.

“Cough... cough, cough...”

Seeing her coughing softly, he took a deep breath, finally feeling free after being still for a long time.

"Phew… There we go.”

He had succeeded in rescuing her. Thanks to that…

“Davey…”

He heard her calling him. He reflexively ran to catch her as she was about to collapse. When he lifted the binding spells on her, she looked up at him while coughing softly in his arms.

“Dummy… Why did you come…”

“I wouldn’t have found you if it weren’t for your singing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It didn't matter whether she was telling the truth or not—the important thing was that she was now free from Thanatos and her tricks. As her soul returned, some of the suppressed power of the Abyss still remained, but he figured it wouldn’t get stronger and encroach on her like before.

All in all, it was clear that whatever happened, he would need to keep an eye on her for the meantime.

Whoosh! Clink, clank!

Verdandi sat down gasping for breath after taking down the barriers.

"Now... there is one last thing left to do,” Verdandi said while looking at Davey.

"Last thing to do?" Perserque asked.

Then Davey called in Blue Ribbon stuck in the floor. He had ordered Rinne to kill him with Red Ribbon and Blue Ribbon if he got out of control, but Rinne didn’t follow his orders after all.

"Davey?!" Perserque shouted with a surprised face as he slowly fixed his grip and approached Verdandi.

[Dad... Is it going to hurt a lot?]

He could hear how worried Blue Ribbon’s will was.

"It's going to be okay.”

Davey answered gently and pointed her toward Verdandi’s neck. This time, he knew there should be no miracle to save her. She probably knew this too, which was why she had a resigned look on her face.

"Honor the subordination contract magic you used; don’t touch Skuld. She really doesn’t know anything."

Davey then slowly prepared to slice at her, looking at her with cold eyes. He raised his sword in a disciplined manner and swiftly brought it down toward her.

Bang!!

A huge cloud of dust rose up with an enormous explosion. Rinne and Perserque looked at him in surprise at his unexpectedly rough actions, but Davey only focused on the dust settling around them.

“Why…?"

When the dust cleared, Verdandi appeared and asked him a question.

"Why did you save me?"

"Ask your parents."

Shing!!

Davey turned around, sheathing Blue Ribbon and putting her back on his waist.

"Let's go."

"Prince Davey."

He saw the doubt in her surprised eyes. She probably thought he was going to kill her. In fact, he did want to kill her. But in the end...

"I have to keep my promise to someone."

She was the one who helped him out of this damn situation. She probably wondered why he had suddenly changed his mind, but she figured she could always think about the reason some other time.

***

Rinne’s suffering seemed to go on for a long time. Davey had just managed to fix her, but then she broke again. His repairs were only partial—most of the time, Rinne would break down ores herself and use them to reconstruct her body. Even when he asked her about her method, she only replied that she didn't know because it worked automatically.

"Prince Davey!"

While he was checking and fixing various parts of Rinne, who was lying on a large surgical bed, the door to the operating room opened. Then Aeria came in.

"Aeria."

"You're safe!"

Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she hesitated to get closer. Normally she would have hugged him, but her reason desperately stopped her—that didn’t mean Davey wouldn’t. As she stopped in her tracks, unable to take a step closer to him, Davey went to her and hugged her. She then turned red and looked down.

"See? What did I say?" Davey said.

"What a relief… I’m so glad..." she said, face covered in tears. “No matter how strong or great you are, it doesn't mean you can't die... It doesn’t mean hakuna matata.”

He couldn't say anything at her sobbing.

“It’s only natural for me to worry… I couldn’t help but be worried...”

"Okay… I’m sorry."

No matter how certain things seemed, it was never possible to know what would happen in the world. Of course, Davey knew Aeria would feel anxious while he was gone, with her blood running cold. Then as he stroked her head in silence, someone chimed in.

“Davey, being affectionate is good, but wouldn’t it be better to finish what you’re doing first?” Perserque said.

After shrinking her body, she had been moving things around the room. At her words, Aeria was startled and stepped back from him.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no, I don’t have any right to say anything to you.”

She then went up to Davey’s side while giggling, tossed him a small piece of magic stone, and flew toward Aeria's face. Perserque was currently the size of Aeria's palm. She looked at Aeria in silence, slowly stretched out her hand, then stroked her cheek and said,

"Thank you."

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“I really wish I had come back completely and permanently...”

She was currently on a temporary measure as she wasn’t completely liberated yet. However, since they had won the major power struggle, Davey figured she shouldn’t have any problems for the time being.

After their discussion, Davey repaired Rinne's broken body with all too familiar ease and hung a sign saying [Absolute bed rest] around her neck before he left.

“That voice back then… It was definitely…”

“It was Eclipse.”

Perserque flew to his side and looked at him quietly.

“I’m sorry, Davey, that I’m like this right now.”

“It was just due to a lack of preparation. Don’t even think about running away.”

Of course, rather than running away, she was more in the situation of being a kidnapped princess from a children's book.

“Do you think she’s still insane?”

“Well, she was definitely insane. No matter how strong someone is, no one can last that long and maintain their sanity there.”

‘That place is... much more terrible than I thought...’ Davey thought.

It was a place that forced you to forget and despair, living in fear.

The end of the Abyss was a space that was hard to put into words—it was just that repulsive and mysterious. It was originally supposed to be the front side of the coin, but it had become a world that had rotted away because it lost its side.

Davey couldn’t figure out why Goddess Freyja suddenly surrendered that place to Thanatos, but he knew one thing for sure: the Abyss was deeper and darker than one could imagine.

“Davey…” Perserque said, holding his hand tightly and looking up at him. His hands were shaking without him even realizing it.

“I still have aftereffects…”

“It won’t last long even though it hasn’t been long since you got out.”

He knew he could have been left with a traumatic experience. In fact, it was surprising he hadn’t gone permanently crazy from the experience, escaping free from any lasting trauma.

“Do you think perhaps she was sane?”

"No. She was definitely insane, but…”

Davey knew Eclipse was clearly insane. Even so, the last thing she did was pull Thanatos away and throw Davey out as he was being dragged into the Abyss...

‘Odin…’

He figured something must have gone wrong when she forced Thanatos into the Abyss. It might have had to do with the roots of Thanatos seeping into her. Or perhaps, as Odin’s power was impacted, her consciousness—which had been temporarily sealed at the edge of the Abyss—had reawakened.

“...”

Davey knew Eclipse should’ve died by now, considering she had experienced the same corruption as him for so long by now.

Even if he had to close the door to the Abyss, he knew it was right to kill her. But in fact, that was impossible. Furthermore, because the Absolute Gem failed once, it was impossible to perform the ritual again at where the charnel house was.

Kane despaired, saying there was no place left to perform the ritual, but Davey knew another place.

Hines Territory.

It was a land surrounded by ancient ruins, where Davey could change the nature of all territories to match the way he intended.

He then contemplated in silence. Collecting the energy of the Absolute Gem again was one thing, but... he couldn’t decide if closing the Abyss was really the right thing to do. As long as Verdandi was alive, if he tried to close the Abyss again, he knew she would most certainly give up her life to stop him.

He then pondered for a moment if he had saved her for ultimately no reason—just to be killed by him eventually anyway. But he was also reluctant to go with a failed plan again.

“I need to find a way to completely destroy Eclipse.”

‘I think I need some new swords, too.’

“Let’s rest here for about a week.”

She looked at him with a red face. It was because her newly reduced height made him a giant compared to her, now fitting snugly between his relatively enormous arms.

“Then we’ll go back to Tionis. I need to get some advice from Caldeiras or World Tree Yggdrasil.”

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