The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1052

Davey looked at Daphne with his arms crossed. “Everyone has a plan. Until it all goes wrong.” “Damn it. Damn it!”

Daphne continued to berate herself, utterly crushed by the fact that Persephone had vanished.

“Hey, Daphne.”

“Davey, just shut up!” she snapped coldly with a glare.

“Are you saying this is my fault? There was no way to recover her sanity anyway.”

While the full truth might have been a little different, Davey only shared what he had seen.

“She can’t be brought back. She needed to be purified, but you know that even if she did get purified, she still would’ve vanished in the end,” Davey gently explained in an attempt to console her.

Daphne wiped her tears with the back of her hand and then glared at him again. “I know. I know. That’s why I can’t blame you.”

“Then—”

“Still, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget this.” She avoided his gaze. Even though she knew she was wrong, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything more as consolation.

“That’s a karmic debt I’ll have to carry. So tell me—what exactly were you trying to do?”

She stayed silent, declining to respond.

“Hey, Davey. We should just leave her alone for now,” Illyna suggested.

“No. I need to check to make sure before I decide what to do.”

“Still, it’s just—”

“No,” Daphne interjected, cutting Illyna off. She then took a deep breath. “When I found her, all I could think was that I had to save her, no matter what.”

“You knew from the beginning, didn’t you? That the remnants of her soul were already beyond repair.”

Consumed by overwhelming hatred for Daphne, Persephone’s soul had grown so weak that it wouldn’t have been able to withstand purification. It would still have ultimately faded away.

“I didn’t expect her to hate me this much. No, I guess I did. She ended up in the beast lair because of me, after all,” Daphne muttered.

Sacrificing his senior wasn’t an option, so he had sacrificed Persephone instead.

“Those knight bastards?”

“Yeah. Those damn traitors.”

The story that followed was more unsettling than Davey expected.

The statues he had destroyed were conduits for the power of the beast lairs. What Daphne said wasn’t entirely false, either. They were suppression devices that prevented her from interfering with the lairs. To be precise, Goddess Freyja had created the statues to protect Daphne.

Immune to her interference, they were a way to forbid her from interfering with the beast lairs. Everything she had shared with them up to that point seemed to be the truth. However, things had unraveled when Davey tried to break the statue.

“Once that statue is destroyed and I’m able to interfere with the beast lair, I can use soul exchange.” She looked straight at Davey. “Right from the start, I never planned to purify her soul and let her into the cycle of reincarnation. But to even have it be an option, I needed to destroy those damn statues. No matter how broken she is, if a semi-divine soul seeps in, reincarnation should at least be possible.”

Souls couldn’t be mixed and melded unless they were the same. Persephone, a clone of Daphne made by breaking a taboo, was a soul that was never meant to exist. Fortunately, since they were essentially the same soul, they could merge. The problem was the price that came with such a choice.

If the Goddess Freyja, who deeply loved her saints and saintesses, had bothered placing such a strict prohibition, there could only be one price she would demand—the reversal of Daphne and Persephone’s positions. To give Persephone’s soul a chance at reincarnation, Daphne would have to either be destroyed or face an even worse fate.

“Even though Persephone hates you so much, you still want to save her? That’s not like you.”

“Like I said earlier, she has every reason to hate me. I just never showed it on the surface,” Daphne replied with a bitter expression, seemingly forcing out an answer that she didn’t want to say. After all, Persephone was Daphne’s clone—the sole result of the Mass-Produced Saintess Project.

“That sounds more like regret than anything.”

“Whatever. It’s not like she ever got the chance to live the life she wanted. She lived her whole life for others and died in such a horrific way. I’m the reason she ended up like that.”

From the start, the ones who threw her into the beast lair were the traitors who had fallen under their leader’s influence. They were the ones who claimed the Monster Queen had to exist and defended the lairs.

They were the true culprits; Davey didn’t understand why Daphne was the one taking the blame.

Normally, Daphne would’ve snapped, asking what any of it had to do with him. However, seeing her so shaken made him think that perhaps she still had some lingering feelings from the time Persephone had been alive. Everything began when Davey learned about the Monster Queen and told Daphne about it. freēnovelkiss.com

“Let me make this clear. It’s not happening.”

“What’s the point of talking about it anymore? You’re the one who erased her.”

No matter what plans she had, they meant nothing if Persephone’s soul no longer remained. Davey had severed what was left of her soul right in front of Daphne—there was no path left for her now.

Illyna tried to comfort the limp and powerless Daphne, but no words could reach her in that state.

* * *

Leaving Daphne behind, Davey ventured deeper within the Dark Forest—to the final beast lair. It was a massive rift, almost exactly the same as the first one he’d seen. No monsters were coming out of it, but the atmosphere was unmistakably upsetting and unsettling on a deep level.

Zzzttt!

The moment Davey tried to place his hand into the lair, black darkness began to erupt from the rift, wrapping around his arm as if trying to devour him. It looked as if it was craving something.

“So it just takes in whatever it can get, huh?” he muttered.

He then began gathering divine power at the entrance and poured it in. Since the lair was being maintained through the statue, which acted as a conduit, destroying the statue naturally caused the lair to begin to collapse.

Davey wasn’t doing this just to break the prohibition placed on Daphne. After all, he knew that Persephone still wasn’t dead.

Crack!! Zzzttt!!

“I’m in a really bad mood right now,” Davey told the presence within the lair, “so let’s just finish this already.”

Zzzttt!!

Crimson-black energy gathered in his hand, and without hesitation, he dealt the final blow to the last beast lair. With a loud crack, the space split apart, and the rift of the beast lair began to twist and distort, slowly fading away.

From within the shrinking rift, something suddenly shot out and grabbed his arm. It seemed to be trying to drag him in at first, but after a few mere seconds, Davey began pulling it out instead.

Soon, his opponent let out a hideous, bone-chilling scream. “Kyaaah!!!”

The one screeching at Davey was Persephone herself, her form even more grotesquely twisted than before. Had Daphne or Illyna seen her in such a state, they would’ve been shocked. The remnants of her soul no longer had the strength to endure Super Ribbon’s blow, let alone purification.

For her to reappear from the beast lair as if she’d never vanished made zero sense. Yet, it was of no surprise to Davey, who had specifically come there on his own to find her.

What Davey had severed wasn’t Persephone herself, but rather the tether of power that allowed her to exist in the world. In other words, he hadn’t erased Persephone—he had simply cast her back into the beast lair by cutting off the power that maintained her presence in his world.

“K-Kyaaahhh!!! D-Daphne. Daphne!!”

As she screamed and struggled, Davey pinned her down and calmly said, “Daphne thinks you’ve been destroyed.”

She visibly flinched.

“You’re still holding on to your sanity, eh? Honestly, I respect you for that.”

Despite her soul being shattered, she was still clinging to her will. That was something Davey hadn’t expected, yet it was the undeniable truth.

“If talking is hard, let me help you out a little.”

He slowly breathed vitality into her body. It was only a temporary fix—useless for elaborate purification—but it was enough to stabilize her for that moment. Her continued existence was practically a miracle to begin with, after all.

Crackle. Crackle.

Her grotesquely twisted skin began to peel away as if it were flaking off. A faint white glow then began to envelop parts of her body.

Finally, she stopped screaming. Seemingly realizing that something had changed, her eyes widened slightly before she looked at Davey.

“The pain is gone,” she said as if everything she’d done before—all the hatred she had expressed—had simply been a lie.

“Can you listen to me now? Let’s get straight to the point—I don’t like dragging things out.”

“Y-You actually helped me. Thank you. But how did you...?”

“Your acting was way too sloppy. That’s how I knew.”

Illyna was too inexperienced to notice, and Daphne had been in a panic. Honestly, her poor performance wouldn’t have fooled the usual Daphne for a second.

“Now, would it be alright if I just keep calling you Persephone? Don’t worry about anyone else. Let's just talk.” He let her go, snapped his fingers, and sealed off the space around them. “How are you still sane?”

He couldn’t believe how a shattered soul was still enduring all this torment, neither dispersing nor falling into madness. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with a logical explanation for her perseverance.

“I kept going... just for Daphne.”

‘If it was really that easy, miracles wouldn’t be called miracles.’

“Daphne thinks you hate her.”

“No, of course I don't hate her. She’s precious to me. I only exist because she does,” she replied, her tone growing calmer and her appearance returning to normal. She looked nearly identical to Daphne, but the atmosphere around her was completely different.

“The statues can’t be broken. I used what little willpower I had left to put on an extreme show for her, all so that she wouldn’t destroy them.”

She had hoped that if she showed Daphne a version of herself that was full of hatred, it would sway her heart. In a way, it was reasonable and even somewhat noble.

“You were the one who etched those words into the statues, weren’t you? You left them behind so that I would pick up on the connection between you two.”

She smiled faintly. “Yes.”

Soon, the vitality that Davey had breathed into her began to reach its limit, and her form started to twist grotesquely once more. In desperation, she grabbed his arm. “Listen to me, Kid. That statue must never be destroyed. She still doesn’t understand the real reason it exists.”

“And you do?”

“I received the first... and last revelation from the goddess.”

The statues seemed to hold more than what Daphne knew.

“If she destroys them, she might try to force a soul exchange on me.”

Davey knew that much was certain.

“But she’ll never succeed. My soul will disappear before it can work, and the backlash could shatter her soul in half, too.”

The situation reminded Davey of the fact that Persephone was born from breaking taboos. Shaking the thought from his head, he then questioned if Persephone was asking to keep the statues intact just to save herself. Maybe she wasn't quite as selfless as she was purported to be.

“If that happens, and the beast lair is left without a Monster Queen, its bounds will spread across the entire continent. People will keep dying endlessly. To stop that, another Monster Queen or King has to take my place.”

Davey understood what she was saying. If the statues were destroyed, Persephone’s soul would vanish—whether Daphne wanted it or not. The statues were the final pillar keeping both souls in existence. However, what Persephone feared wasn’t simply her own destruction.

“I get it now. If you disappear, then until the next Monster King or Queen is born, people will keep dying. Since you don't want that, you’re planning to stay and keep suffering for eternity just to protect everything?”

She didn't know how to respond.

The Monster Queen had to exist. According to the rules of the world's system, if a beast lair existed, then there must also exist a Monster Queen to control the monsters within it. He figured that was also the reason the traitors betrayed the Last Wisp and started spewing nonsense about protecting the Monster Queen. Instead of fighting an eternal, unending beast lair, they chose to sacrifice one person to maintain the balance forever.

“You knew all that, yet you still threw yourself into it willingly?”

Her brief silence already spoke volumes before she even replied. “If she finds out the truth, she’ll try to fall into Hell in my place. Only the most suitable soul can take on the role of the Monster Queen. Right now, aside from me, she’s the only one who can do it.”

Hell, the bottomless abyss, seemed to be the official name of the beast lair.

“This is all starting to sound pretty familiar.”

“Please don’t tell her that I’m still alive. If she finds out, she’ll just try to destroy the statue again.”

“Let me ask you one thing,” Davey insisted while looking at her. “Do you even realize how miraculous it is that you’re still conscious with that barely held-together soul of yours?”

He wasn’t aware of what had happened between Persephone and Daphne in the past. Frankly enough, he didn’t really care. However, when a big fat mystery was sitting in front of him, he had to solve it.

“If what you’re saying is true, and you’re holding the continent together through your role as the Monster Queen, then what happens when your soul finally shatters completely?”

Silence.

“You’re not arrogant enough to think you can hold on forever, are you?”

Still no response.

Davey chuckled bitterly. The two saintesses were so eager to sacrifice themselves for the other. “I’ve got a fun idea. Want to hear it?”

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺