The Max Level Hero Has Returned!
chapter-169

Pzzzz!!! The huge balls of free energy that had spread out instantly gathered, engulfing the magic circle that slowly faded away. A new one began to take form.

Shocked, everyone stared at the enormous magic circle, which was over a hundred meters wide, with wide eyes. The circle was in neither rune language nor the ancient elves’ language. It was in the spirit language, the most superior language.

Humans couldn’t use the elves’ spirit magic because they did not understand their ancient language, just like how elves could not use the spirit language… Or at least, that was believed to be a known fact. However, Davey wasn’t going to stop using the elven or spirit language just because it was unnecessarily complicated.

Boom!! The ground shook once.

[My desires are yours, and your desires are mine.]

Boom!!

[I crave your power, and you will yearn for my existence.]

Boom!!

Ending his spell, Davey slowly stood up and raised his arms while opening his eyes.

Rumble!!!

As he raised his arms, Davey’s intense spirit mana released a huge amount of vitality into the ground and began creating a huge giant out of soil.

The soil giant, over thirty meters tall, had a mind-numbing presence.

* * *

“Wh… What is?!” Elder Condae widened his eyes and his jaw dropped on the floor in disbelief. He couldn’t believe or understand this situation at all.

Elder Condae knew that Yuria Helishana had been trying to summon a supreme-rank spirit. Like the other conservative elders had said, it was clear that Yuria Helishana had an incredible gift, which was having great affinity with the water spirit, even among the High Elves. The saint of the Divine Tree, the one he served, had told him that, with her gift, Yuria might be able to successfully summon a supreme-rank spirit if she had the assistance of nature.

To ensure that Yuria would fail, Elder Condae himself had planned and executed numerous obstacles for her along the way. He had done all kinds of things to prevent her from interacting and bonding with Undeen, the intermediate-rank water spirit, and to force her to summon Ellestra, the supreme-rank water spirit, without proper preparation. Then, finally when it seemed like Yuria would succeed, he did something even more drastic and passed the point of no return.

Thanks to that, the corruption spread quickly in the forest, and Yuria Helishana was actually failing to fully summon Ellastra. Up to this point, everything had been going according to Elder Condae’s plan.

However…it was at that moment that the disgraceful human stepped up. He seemed to have been waiting for this very moment. He awakened the power of his strange marble and engulfed the power of the massive ancient spirit that he had created along with Yuria’s power. Then, he summoned up a soil giant as if the corruption that had taken over the forest was none of his business.

“T… The corruption…”

“It’s disappearing.”

Elder Condae could not take his eyes off the soil giant. The nearby plants, which had been drying out, now regained their color and returned to normal. Then, while Condae froze in shock, the human who stood calmly despite having just summoned a spirit king called out, “Rinne.”

“Waiting for command.”

“Get him.”

“Roger.”

Boom!!!!

Elder Condae couldn’t understand their conversation, but he soon found himself pinned to the ground. He was in immense pain, unable to even scream.

“Rinne feels the emotional circuit rapidly overheating. Requesting permission for a strong beating. Suggesting that Rinne does it!”

“Wait.”

Davey’s eyes did not have their usual red hue. They shone with a mysterious brown glow.

* * *

A huge amount of Davey’s spirit mana disappeared instantly. His mana, holy power, and devil mana quickly changed into spirit mana to make up for the loss, but this wasn’t an ideal situation.

Davey couldn’t help but frown in disappointment as he watched the soil giant. He muttered, “Seriously, the fuel efficiency is terrible.”

However, Davey kept moving toward his original goal. He had come here to make a contract with a spirit, as well as to live up to his end of the deal that he had made with the Goddess of Wine Freyja. He said, “I request a contract.”

[The pure scent of an elf. But you are different; no pure yearning, and you have not merged completely with a supreme-rank spirit either. You tricked me.]

One could only summon a higher spirit upon fully merging with those in the lower ranks. This was a requirement, because the higher-ranks wanted to see if the person was good enough to make a contract with them.

There were three requirements to summon a Spirit King. To fulfill them, Davey had borrowed Yuria’s pure will, and his spirit language and abundant spirit mana had made it seem like he had merged with a supreme-rank spirit.

“It’s your fault for getting tricked. Don’t think about running away. This magic circle is infamous among the Spirit Kings, no?” Davey said. He was aware that the spirit world was not confined to Tionis.

[The damn elementalist’s… She is not a being of this world… How do you know this nasty magic circle?]

“You know her?”

[How could I forget? I am the person she made a contract with.]

“Huh, what a coincidence! Well, that’s good to know, because I’m her student.”

[One demon has raised another! Damn it!]

“Ah, I don’t care! So, are you going to do it or not?”

[If you are her student, do I have a choice? Can I even refuse?]

“Of course…” Davey trailed off before saying with a sneer, “Not. You will never be able to go back if you don’t make a contract.”

The soil giant appeared to frown at Davey’s brazen request.

[Damn fraud. I…accept your contract. It is reprehensible that you tricked me, but I am the one who got tricked.]

Each Spirit King required rather similar things, which only had slight differences differing from one Spirit King to the next. Then, how did Yuriana, the elementalist, summon thirteen Spirit Kings? It was fraud, in a way.

[Speak, contractor. I will grant your wish.]

“This is my first request.”

[I accept.]

“I want the removal of the enemies.”

The Ancient Guard who was going to attack Davey stared at him with wide eyes. Besides Condae, who had already been subdued, there was only one other enemy that Davey had to deal with.

“Aak?!”

The Ancient Guard hurriedly tried to get away from Davey by instinctively releasing her spirit powers. She tried to fight back by conjuring up a spirit arrow, but she was only contracted with a high-rank spirit. Her spirit attacks were meaningless against a Spirit King, a being who was two ranks higher and was the very origin of spirits.

Ultimately, the place they had chosen to hang Davey to dry had actually come back to bite them in the butt instead.

The Earth moved to grab the fleeing woman like it was alive, then crushed her into the ground. Then, the Spirit King’s overwhelming anger pierced into her. The power shown was much stronger than what Davey had expected; perhaps it contained the anger of having been tricked by him.

Boom!!!!

The Earth shook with a huge explosion, and the woman who was punched by Spirit King Gnoass slammed against the ground helplessly. She couldn’t fight back at all. It only took a few seconds for an elf like her to turn into a meat pancake like they had been crushed by a hydraulic press.

It was quite grotesque, but Gnoass didn’t stop there. He moved the ground and swallowed the elf up. Unless they had something special planned, even an advanced elementalist couldn’t endure a Spirit King’s attack.

Davey lost interest in the Ancient Guard, who had only been there for a short while. He said, “I give my second request: the purification of all the corruption in this forest.”

[The odor of corruption… It’s disgusting. All right, I accept.]

“And, there should have been a will of an elf when I summoned you. Take care of the curse and rebound upon her. You can do that, right?”

A spirit curse was different from curses cast with holy power or dark magic. It was only breakable by another spirit.

[The curse of the World Tree…]

Davey heard Gnoass, the soil giant, sigh when no one else could hear him.

[The Divine Tree must be insane.]

“I think it is out of its mind as well,” Davey mumbled.

A huge pile of spoil began to swallow Yuria up. It looked like she was being buried alive, but no one else could easily speak up. They were probably frozen in fright from the Spirit King’s presence. After all, it was not a high-rank or supreme-rank, but the Spirit King Gnoass. The effect he had was enough to leave the elves in awe.

Grrr!!! After some time, Yuria fully emerged from the soil. She was still unconscious, lying on the ground, but she looked much better than before. The Spirit King’s natural power had instantly untangled the power of the spirit that was tangled inside her.

Then, Gnoass curled up like he was following Davey’s will and slowly dug his hand into the ground. At the same time, Davey released a large amount of mana that Gnoass quickly absorbed. The Spirit King was starting to purify the entire forest and not just the surroundings.

Davey could handle the required mana of a Spirit King, but he could still feel that even the smallest movements took a lot of mana out of him. He knew that Gnoass, who was pissed at him, was overdoing it and excessively taking his power. To be able to take the Spirit King’s tantrums…

“I should probably get my mana to the 9th circle.”

The first summoning of a spirit required a lot of mana. Davey could barely breathe as the Spirit King drew on his strength excessively on purpose.

As Davey picked Yuria up from the ground as he complained, she slowly opened her eyes and stared at him. She couldn’t focus on him at all, glancing over at the soil giant boasting his presence. With a faint smile, she asked, “Gnoass, the Earth Spirit King… You…really succeeded?”

“Amazing, right? You can’t see this kind of stuff anywhere.”

‘Do you think it’s easy to catch a Spirit King in your life?!’

“Ha… You are just unbelievable, boss…”

“I told you I was going to summon him.”

“Well, half the things you’ve told me are ridiculous stories, boss. How could I believe you?” Yuria coughed, but she still had a faint smile on her face.

“Even though Gnoass neutralized the rebound, you won’t be able to summon spirits for a while.”

“I was prepared for that. What about the corruption of the forest…?”

“See for yourself.”

When Davey gestured over to the forest, Yuria noticed that the dull forest was coming back to life. Feeling relieved, she murmured, “How can I ever repay you…?”

“Stay awake. This is the important part.”

Davey had achieved both his goals; he had successfully made a contract with a spirit and he had purified the Great Forest. The only thing left was an additional source of money.

Yuria nodded and got up, asking, “Do you have the proper evidence?”

“Rinne has a lot of functions.”

Davey looked at Rinne, who silently stood with the little half-elf on her back, and the Megatron, which had pinned Elder Condae to the ground. Rinne’s hostility made her seem like she was about to pull out her chainsaw and behead Condae, even though she had no ego. That was because of the disgust she felt.

Conade probably thought Myuu had died from the forest’s sudden acceleration of corruption, but Davey wasn’t terrible enough to let a girl who had befriended him die.

“Ah… Ah… This is all a lie.”

“Be quiet, Elder Condae,” Yuria said.

“This is all a lie!!! How could a mere human…!!” Elder Condae screamed so loudly that he was practically spitting. “Tell me! How could a human summon a spirit and not you?! And a Spirit King! How is this possible!”

“There’s something more absurd than that.” Speaking coldly, Yuria left Davey’s arms. Then, she approached Elder Condae while speaking to a shocked elf standing near her. “Millia, my friend. Give me the bow.”

“Oh… Oh? Lady Yuria?”

“Hurry.”

Milla, the elf guard who had been staring into space, was unable to comprehend the situation and the calm yet cold atmosphere. She handed over her bow.

Yuria took the bow indifferently, then loaded an arrow and pointed it at Condae. She declared, “Elder Condae. Do you admit to accelerating the forest’s corruption for the purpose of fulfilling the Divine Tree’s orders and throwing out a child who should be protected into the origin of the corruption?”

Everyone went pale.

“L… Lady Yuria! What is this?!”

Ignoring the flustered elves, Yuria stared straight at Elder Condae. She was not speaking with respect, but with condescension. “Speak! Elder Condae.”

“…Nonsense! Why would I do such a thing! This is a conspiracy! This cannot happen! You know, this kind of thing couldn’t have happened in my days… Keugh?!”

Condae, who was screaming in fury, collapsed with a scream. Rinne had kicked him in the head with her bare feet.

“Rinne has excellent recording abilities.”

After speaking calmly, Rinne’s blue eyes shone.

Whoosh!!

At the same time, the light from her eyes projected into space and began playing a video like a beam projector.