The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1202

They were bandits. Or perhaps it’d be wrong to even call them mere bandits. Their equipment was far too advanced for mere bandits, and every one of their movements was crisp like they had undergone professional training.

Still, even those highly trained individuals couldn’t help but panic facing such a situation.

More than anything, the reason they couldn’t simply be dismissed as ordinary bandits was because they carried special equipment—secret weapons and high-grade imperial equipment of the Nacha Empire—designed to disrupt mana structures.

Of course, that kind of interference didn’t have much effect on Reina, yet it was more than enough to hinder her. It was certainly more than enough to overpower the people in the carriage she was desperately trying to protect.

Reina, when she had been producing sacred, white-colored energy swords, looked like an angel descended from the heavens. However, that shimmering heat haze around her wings of light had since faded.

Instead, a thick crimson mist veiled her, and the once radiant white energy swords had long since turned into black blades with blood-red hues pulsing through them.

Sinister battle aura and murderous intent radiated from her.

Eventually, Reina, no longer able to contain herself, staggered and muttered in a broken voice, “Run... away.”

She trembled as she fought desperately to suppress the overwhelming impulse. “Please, run!!”

Alas, despite her desperate cries, the bandits didn’t retreat.

They weren’t simple bandits that fled at the slightest difficulty. They were armed forces of the Nacha Empire in disguise, sent to assassinate the passengers inside the carriage Reina was protecting.

Those occupants were royalty from one of the dimensions the empire had invaded. Figures who were too politically tricky to eliminate openly, yet far too inconvenient to leave alive. As such, under orders from above, the ‘bandits’ had to kill them.

However, the woman before them was terrifying.

Her appearance had been so holy that to watch her fall into corruption and turn black was enough to paralyze them with fear.

“Hurry... Hurry!”

Squelsh!!

One of the energy swords she had summoned in midair shot forward like a telekinetic blade, piercing through several of the enemies.

It wasn’t a clean attack like before. It instead brutally ripped through everything in its path, with those unlucky enough to survive only able to writhe in agony and wish for death.

“Urgh. Gaaa! Please, just kill me! Please...”

While their bodies were torn apart, their life refused to fade, most likely because of the black mist. The sight made Reina shed tears.

She couldn’t control the power pulsing through her. She wasn’t human; she was a Celestial. Her condition shifted depending on the state of the entity she served, not her own beliefs. She instinctively sensed that something was wrong with the being she answered to.

‘If this goes on, I won’t even be able to tell friend from foe! I have to get out of here as soon as possible...’

If she left, the people behind her—the ones she was protecting—would be slaughtered. However, if she stayed, she had no clue what would happen to her.

She was losing control.

There was no need to kill anyone with such excessive brutality, yet the power pouring out of her refused to listen. It only tore and crushed those in front of her while brutally keeping them barely alive.

“Ugh. Gaaa!”

The terrified bandits hesitated, unsure whether to run or try to subdue her.

“Please... I’m begging you! If this goes any further, I really won’t be able to stop myself.”

Despite her desperate pleas, they were still the armed forces of their empire. Retreat wasn’t an option for them.

So Reina made a decision.

“Hey! Run, now!” She chose instead to save only the people she was protecting.

“But—”

“Now!!”

Hearing her shout, the passengers, who had already started noticing something was wrong, hurriedly abandoned the carriage and fled.

“They’re running away!! Catch them!!”

Of course, the soldiers weren’t about to just let them go, though their thoughts didn’t matter when facing such a force.

Sling. Squelch! Squelch!!

Reina swiftly rose into the air and angled her many swords toward the soldiers. She then slightly released the power she’d been suppressing, rending them into scattered chunks of meat.

“M-Monster...”

“She’s a monster!”

Reina glared at them with blood-red eyes as she staggered. Red mist billowed beneath her feet. “You chose this.”

The moment her charges fled beyond her range, she staggered forward.

Sling!!!

The swords in the air began to dance. While she had already understood the technique intuitively before, her telekinetic blade had become flawless after Davey’s instruction.

The sword dance began once more.

“Gaaah!!!”

“Aaaagh!! Please, no!!”

Thus began her uncontrollable massacre. It didn’t take even ten minutes for her to wipe out the dozens of bandits. Not a single one was left standing.

While extreme, that had been with her trying her best to hold back. Those soldiers had been the ones foolish enough not to run.

Reina herself bore no blood, no wounds marring her perfect and pristine figure. She looked like a divine angel of death, noble and merciless, both beautiful and terrifying.

“Gaah. Ughhh! K-Kill me...”

They deserved a swift end, certainly—Reina instead changed her mind halfway through. Some of them had survived by sheer misfortune, only to suffer horrifying agony.

Watching their leader sob and beg through tears, Reina silently cried with him.

She wasn’t someone who had such an idealistic belief that even evildoers should be spared. Still, even she recognized that such cruelty was unnecessary.

With both Perserque and Davey now missing, she had fallen into a state of extreme anxiety.

“P-Please...” the commander pleaded in a weak voice.

Reina staggered toward him, corrupted sword in hand.

She could still hold on. Her sanity had nearly snapped for a moment, yet the entity she belonged to, Goddess Freyja, hadn’t completely fallen. She was only gradually weakened.

No, she had weakened suddenly, all at once.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered with regret, then plunged the sword into his neck, finally ending his suffering.

The deed done, she stumbled and slumped against a nearby tree, whispering to herself, “Where are you? I’m scared...”

Left alone, Reina was slowly being consumed by overwhelming fear.

Her usual companion Nightmare wasn’t with her. Even the rainbow slime, who normally clung to her constantly, refused to come to her for some reason. She had come alone.

Still, she had felt confident with the knowledge that Davey and Perserque were always behind her. Yet there she sat, alone.

Her clinginess hadn’t always been so bad. However, after finally finding peace, she had developed a terrifying dependence. She laughed bitterly at the realization.

* * *

Goddess Freyja’s avatar, who had always maintained an expressionless face, was crying.

Her face hadn’t changed, yet Davey could somehow tell that she was weeping for him. She hadn’t said anything, but he knew it intuitively. He didn’t bother asking her foolish questions, either.

Goddess Freyja never revealed the future she had seen, or the great tides of fate, as she knew that doing so would create variables. Perhaps she knew how cruel it was for a creature to be shown their own future.

“Goddess...” Davey stood there, stunned. He hadn't expected her to slap him.

If one were to ask if it hurt, he would answer ‘not really.’ In fact, her touch was so delicate that it felt more like a tickle than a slap.

However, the image of Goddess Freyja crying as she struck his cheek stirred something inside him. He was assailed by a guilt that felt strangely like that of a child who had made their parents cry.

Davey had never felt such guilt, not even when Krianes, the current king of the O’Rowane Kingdom and his father, had silently swallowed his own tears in the past.

“Sob. Sob.”

Then it happened.

When Davey turned his head, an almost comical sight unfolded before his eyes.

The palace guards, the royal guards, and even the commander of the royal guard—all of whom had come to attack him—were suddenly crying as they stared at Goddess Freyja, not even understanding why they were weeping.

“Why the hell am I crying?!”

They couldn’t comprehend what was happening to them.

They were facing the Mother of All. No child could remain unmoved if their parents cried.

Davey simply stared at Goddess Freyja in silence.

His head, once overheated from acting on impulse, rapidly began to cool.

‘What did I just do?’

He’d blown the emperor’s head off simply because he got in the way. He had also launched a White Nova into the sky, like he always did, and dropped one to prove his point.

‘Wait. Have I ever gone this far before?’

Realizing something felt off, Davey staggered slightly.

“Consider yourself lucky,” he muttered coldly, then grabbed Goddess Freyja by the arm. “Let’s go.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, he tore through space and left.

He knew that anywhere would do—as long as it was somewhere else.

* * *

Goddess Freyja was the creator of all things, yet at that moment, she felt far too weak to be called by such a grand title. It was for good reason—while the woman standing before Davey was indeed the real Goddess Freyja, it was only one of her many avatars.

Despite possessing an ego, she rarely displayed emotion. Yet there she stood, crying.

Davey couldn’t remember if he had ever seen her in such apparent agony. He said nothing, but as he stared into the still waters of a valley stream where they’d ended up, he fell into thought.

He was so absorbed in thought that he even forgot that he needed to find Reina.

“What exactly is it about me that’s changed?”

Facing his question, she slowly stepped onto the water’s surface. Once her feet touched the cold stream, faint specks of light scattered around her. The valley waters began to glow with a pale brilliance.

It wasn’t just holy water. It was divine water.

Davey watched blankly as Goddess Freyja gracefully sat down on a nearby rock.

Then, with a gentle motion of her hand, the water swirled upward, forming letters in midair.

[Think for yourself.]

“It’d honestly be easier if you just told me.”

[If I did, there’d be no way to fix it.]

It would appear he had to figure it out on his own.

Leaving only those words behind, she disappeared. Well, just before vanishing, she actually said one more thing.

[Think about why Thanatos became an Evil God. And... go find Reina. She’s the one most sensitive to your changes.]

She actually left, after leaving behind a cryptic message. However, Davey could tell how significant it was for her to speak to him like that, and how difficult of a feat it was for her to say even that much.

She’d posed a vague question, but the clues were everywhere.

The black slime that had fled from the emperor of the Nacha Empire had also fled from Davey, for the same reason.

When he killed the emperor and nearly slaughtered the palace guards, Goddess Freyja cried and slapped him.

Finally, Davey was a being that had attained divinity.

As his thoughts deepened, something struck him.

“Thanatos!”

His recent behavior wasn’t so different from Thanatos after all. The methods and scale were different, but the essence was the same.

The only difference was that, unlike Thanatos, Goddess Freyja had no means of stopping Davey.

‘So when did she first start acting this way?’

“She warned me from the start, didn’t she...?”

Consuming too much power changed an individual. Davey didn’t know the exact threshold, and had already changed without even realizing it.

She governed the world’s flow, and she had seen his future. Despite already knowing how it would turn out, she still created miracles and pushed him forward.

However, if that was the result, then her sorrow made sense.

“Haaah. Tch. So what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

He understood it logically, yet emotionally, he just couldn’t accept it.

In the end, he needed to cool his head.

“I need to find Reina first.”

For some reason, Goddess Freyja had said Reina would be the one most affected by his changes.

“Don’t tell me she passed on the Celestial bond’s control to me?”

If that were the case, and such a monumental event had taken place, he should’ve noticed it. In fact, for that to happen, Goddess Freyja would’ve had to assign the bond to him from the moment she reawakened Reina as a Celestial.

However, Reina had been channeling her holy power just fine all this time. In addition, Davey hadn’t even gained divinity yet back then. So realistically, it didn’t make sense.

Trapped in a situation he couldn’t fully grasp, Davey tried to reestablish the link between him and Reina. Yet for some reason, he couldn’t sense her.

That should’ve been impossible for him, unless she was dead.

As the thought lingered, he started moving. He knew she was alive, but that something must have gone terribly wrong.

Unlike Illyna, Reina didn’t have the power to cross dimensions on her own. That meant he had to find her himself.

However, he couldn’t help but wonder why his sense of unease kept growing heavier.

That was when he felt movement, as if someone or several people were circling around him.

It was some typical low-level bandits.

‘Should I kill them?’

The thought crossed his mind, but then he suddenly realized something was off about him.