The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1059

- Can you make me one promise, Ares? Please?

A woman lay in bed making her request with a bitter voice, smiling despite herself.

Despite the pain from the severe wound across her abdomen and death drawing near, she didn’t lose her smile.

- Please erase that child’s memories. This was just an accident. And it was my fault. So please... never blame her. Even in death, I’ll never forget you or Perserque. Goodbye, my love.

Rustle.

“Ugh. My head’s killing me,” Sword God Ares groaned as he clutched his messy hair and came to his senses.

It had been a long time since he’d dreamed of that. It was a memory that wouldn’t fade, no matter how badly he wanted it to. In his eyes, while Perserque wasn’t his biological daughter, she was still unimaginably precious. The same went for the wife he’d lost because of her.

At first, he’d taken out his misdirected rage on Perserque. Eventually, he had been crushed by overwhelming guilt and let everything fall apart.

A part of him had wanted to strangle Perserque right then and there, but another part couldn’t bring himself to harm the daughter he loved so dearly. The conflict tore him apart.

But the reason Sword Saint Ares couldn’t help but embrace Perserque was simple. The one who suffered the most; the one who was in the deepest pain; the one who was the most heartbroken and devastated by what happened wasn’t Ares. Nor was it his wife who’d died.

It was Perserque herself.

That day, she had taken away the lives of twenty people. Sure, for someone like the current Perserque—a former Demon King who had once led a war—twenty lives might not sound like much. But if each and every one of them was someone she cared about, then it became a different story entirely.

She may not have shared blood with them, but they were the most important people in her life. As such, their deaths at her hands had driven her crazy.

Her condition turned out to be far more serious than expected. Eventually, she developed extreme trauma tied to anything related to the incident. She’d deteriorated rapidly and, in the end, was so overwhelmed with guilt that she attempted to take her own life—only to be stopped by Ares.

The cause of it all had been painfully simple. Perserque, still just a child at the time, harbored the power of the Abyss within her. While examining her, his wife had unintentionally disturbed the core of the Abyss, a mysterious concentration of power she’d never seen before.

That was the trigger which made the disaster strike. Everything that had been suppressed inside of her erupted out of control. It was a devastatingly simple and tragic chain of events. Back then, her young body couldn’t handle that power, so she’d lost her mind.

His wife became the direct cause of the rampage. And in order to stop Perserque from killing anyone else important to her, she had given up her life instead.

“What a bitter memory. What’s the point of saving the world and earning the title of ‘Hero’ if you couldn’t even protect your own family?”

Slowly lifting his head, Ares looked at the man standing before him. “You’re here.”

“Judging from your face, you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

“Hard not to.” Ares took the bottle of rare liquor that Dokgo Jun the Heavenly Destroyer handed him and chugged it.

“Hey, didn’t you have a falling-out with your kid too? What are you supposed to do at times like this?”

“Hmph. Like I’d know how to deal with that crap.”

“Yeah, I guess if you knew the answer, you wouldn’t be brooding so much by yourself. Still, being alive means you’ve got a chance. Once they’re dead, regret doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

Ares couldn’t deny his words. The man’s own child was dead, but Sword God Ares’ daughter, Perserque, was still alive.

“Back then, I was so blinded by grief over my wife that I didn’t see it clearly, unaware that the one who suffered the most wasn’t me.”

“Yeah. The one who remembers it all has it the hardest. Especially when it’s not just one or two people who are hurt.”

After that incident, Perserque had fallen apart. In the end, Ares couldn’t bring himself to lose her too. That was why he had then searched high and low for the most skilled mages, eventually sealing her memories.

He used massive amounts of magical materials and powerful spells to ensure those memories would never resurface. No matter the circumstances—not even in places where magic was resisted or dispelled—those memories would remain buried deep.

It had all taken place before he was called a hero, but even then, he had already been fairly well-known.

Everyone in the Hall of Heroes had some kind of lingering regret. His friend, the Thousand-day Blacksmith Surtr, carried his own—unfinished swords, Blue Ribbon and Red Ribbon, and the ultimate forging technique he had never seen with his own eyes.

For Sword God Ares, his lingering regret was that he simply couldn’t let his beloved daughter live a tragic life and then disappear. Of course, after she fell in love with Davey and eventually got married, most of that lingering regret had been resolved. Even so, her lost memories were still the one thing that weighed most heavily on his mind.

“There’s no woman in the world who doesn’t want a child.”

Motherhood was something instinctual, after all.

“The memory seal I made back then was extremely complex and tightly bound. I guess that’s what caused all this trouble in the first place.”

He had cast an erasure spell that no Dispel Magic could break. When Perserque’s power of the Abyss was tangled into it, the spell had become far more complicated than its original form.

Even though that power was gone, the spell had already been twisted by its influence. That unique, distorted magic had one particular weakness. It was a side effect that Sword God Ares had never known about in his lifetime, and would occur when a new life grew inside Perserque.

“When Odin and Rho Aias first told me about it, I went completely numb. Still, since the child didn’t have a physical body, and because that bastard Davey gave her a new one that couldn’t conceive, I thought maybe it was for the best.”

At the time, it was the best he could do.

“What about modifying the memory now?”

“They told me that the structure of the magic is unusual. Davey could erase it, sure, but if all that intense trauma and grief she’s kept buried for so long were to suddenly come flooding back...”

There was no guarantee her mind would remain intact. It wasn’t that the wounds had healed over time. It was more like someone had slapped a heavy dose of anesthetic on a gaping wound.

It had been nothing more than an unfortunate accident, but the fact that she’d have to carry the weight of that accident for the rest of her life? That didn’t sit well with him.

Dokgo Jun clicked his tongue and stepped back, shaking his head as he looked at him. Then, a rift suddenly cracked open before Davey emerged, looking tired.

“You’re here,” Ares spoke bitterly, watching him approach with a blank expression. “How’s Perserque?”

“She cried herself to sleep. I barely managed to calm her down by telling her we’re not giving up, just taking a little time.”

Davey clenched his jaw until it made an audible crack while recalling how Perserque, overjoyed at the thought of having a child, had tried clumsily to act cute, something she rarely ever did. He clearly hadn't handled it well, either.

“I never want to see her cry like that again.”

His rage was palpable. Just when they had finally found a way for her to conceive, such a twisted mess had to get in the way.

“So why the hell did you listen to that crazy bastard who dumped a bunch of unverified spells on her in the first place?”

“At the time, it was the best I could do. Her trauma was far more twisted than you could ever imagine.”

A disaster born of sheer coincidence layered over another coincidence—that was her current condition.

“Fuck!!! If there was a risk of something like that happening, you should’ve said something! What kind of father doesn’t tell me there’s a landmine buried in her memories?!”

“I have no excuse, but the thing you were trying to do back then had less than a five percent success rate! I thought it’d be best for it to fail without anyone ever knowing why.”

The moment someone knew the truth, the secret would no longer be absolute. Unlike the other Hall of Heroes members, Ares knew the living couldn’t be burdened with that truth. He couldn’t tell anyone. It had only been a five percent chance of success. In other words, it had a ninety five percent chance of failure.

“Persephone, Daphne’s clone, beat even lower odds when she succeeded in purification.”

“Normally, that should’ve been impossible.”

Trying to let Perserque bear a child using the life essence orb had been worth attempting. Even so, the chances of success were slim to none, even as they carefully enticed the birth of life without breaking any taboos.

To give a physical body to someone who only had a soul, and then, on top of that, to bless her with the ability to bear new life? It was no different from creating something from nothing.

“But seriously. Who the hell made that spell?”

When Davey asked, Ares stroked his chin and answered, “A mage my wife knew a long time ago. I heard they were a 5th Circle mage, but looking at this now, there’s no way that’s all that mage was.”

Even if the magic had mutated after mixing with the power of the Abyss, a spell so complex that even Odin—the so-called God of Mages—couldn’t fully control it was certainly not from a mere 5th Circle mage.

Davey let out a low hum as if deep in thought. He had seen the spell firsthand so he knew better than anyone. Of course, not as much as Ares or the mage that had cast it.

“I’ve taken a look already, and it isn’t something just any mage could’ve created.”

“Is it really that much of an issue?”

“That guy’s right. His assessment is dead-on.”

At that moment, two figures burst into the room, all eyes turning toward them.

It was Death Lord Rho Aias and the Archmage Odin, known as the God of Mages.

They looked between Davey and Ares before speaking.

“To be blunt, this is no longer within the realm of magic.”

“To be precise, it falls into the domain of miracles.”

Miracles. There was a spell using the Power of Miracles even among Daphne’s holy magic, but what those two referred to was fundamentally different.

“Hey Ares, can you describe the person you asked to cast the spell?”

“Not much to say that stands out, really. They were just so plain, the kind of person you could see anywhere, but a fairly skilled mage nonetheless.”

“Anything else?” she probed.

“Nothing worth noting. I heard they were a frequent traveler,” he shrugged.

Rho Aias sighed at his unhelpful response. “So, what about the seal magic engraved into that child’s body? We have assumed it mutated after being fused with the power of the Abyss.”

That was what everyone believed. That interference had made the spell incredibly tangled and impossible to undo. There were, in theory, two ways to forcibly erase it, but both would inevitably trigger her trauma, even if only briefly. It should have been possible to erase the memories along with the trauma as well, but according to Odin’s examination of her condition, the trauma went far beyond a simple psychological wound. It was so severe that it could cause her soul to shatter in just an instant if resurfaced.

“The best course of action would be to adjust the structure of the seal without releasing it. If we could confirm the structure it had from the time it was cast, even Davey could fix it. So, we went ahead and checked it out... but it exceeds what any human should be capable of creating,” she said calmly.

“I don’t know much about magic, so could you explain that more simply?”

“There’s only one being in existence who could perform and utilize such Power of Miracles. For a very, very long time, they are the only one to have ever done so.”

The Goddess of Mercy.

The Chief God.

The Primordial Will.

Goddess Freyja.

“So it’s Her.”

“That’s what we’re assuming, for now.”

“No, hold on. Are you saying Goddess Freyja descended into middle earth just to cast a memory seal on Perserque? Is that what you're telling me?” Davey asked, clearly dumbfounded. “Why? For what reason?”

Even for the Primordial Goddess Freyja, a descent into middle earth was no small matter. Sealing her memories for no reason at all made no sense for Davey. The only way to confirm that would be to go back to the past and witness it firsthand.

“We don’t know the exact reason, but if it wasn’t Goddess Freyja, there’s no other way to explain this. Even if we try to assume it was some other weirdo like you, it still goes far beyond anything that should be possible.”

“Even Neltarid on Earth couldn't create a miraculous seal like this.”

Even if everyone in the Hall of Heroes worked together, they still couldn’t manage to alter her memories without causing side effects. The memory seal was perfect, but at the same time, there were too many suspicious elements surrounding it.

At that moment, Dokgo Jun, who had been silent, gulped down his Nirvana Brew and casually tossed out a comment. “Maybe, just maybe, that Goddess is calling you to go back to that time. After all, to adjust that spell, you’d need to see the initial structure with your own eyes.”

Davey waved him off with a scoff. “Haha. Yeah, okay bro. You know how insane that sounds, right? That the Goddess couldn’t even predict a recent event, but somehow foresaw the current situation three thousand years ago? Come on—”

Fwoosh!!

A blinding white light suddenly enveloped the area, and his consciousness was forcefully pulled away from himself in an out-of-body experience. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

He then heard Odin’s voice echo faintly in the distance, “The divine power of the Goddess... Bingo.”

‘Wait, what? For real for real, though?’

It felt like a long time before his mind returned to his body. The sound of insects chirping and a cool night breeze brushed his cheek, the realism of the experience chilling. In that serene moment, Davey heard someone talk to him.

[I’ll be waiting for you here.]

[You must find me.]

It was too full of life to be the voice of Goddess Freyja. But Davey instinctively knew it was Her. He then felt the sensation of a gentle hand stroking his cheek, before his consciousness snapped back into his body.

“Hey, hey. What did you see?” Odin kicked his shin with her foot.

“Goddess Freyja... I heard Her voice,” he answered in a daze.

“So, it really was Her.”

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