The Max Level Hero Has Returned!
chapter-548

In a rather luxurious building, a young noble dressed in aristocratic attire lifted his head. "Say that again. What did you say?"

"The primary laboratory has been attacked."

Shocked by the news, his eyes widened. "The primary laboratory? You mean... that place."

"Yes. It's where the Deathlord clone experiments and the enhanced chimera production research were ongoing. Most researchers have already relocated, but Director Strom remained, citing unfinished research..."

The leader silently closed his eyes, seemingly contemplating briefly before raising his head again. "Were all the necessary secrets destroyed during the intrusion?"

"Yes. We managed to burn about half..."

"That will suffice. Activate the backup plan."

The leader's words surprised the subordinate, widening their eyes.

"What do you mean...?"

"All research outcomes have already been transferred. There's nothing left there to see."

"But... But..."

"It's unfortunate about the facility. It served as a secret hideout for our members for a long time."

He took a short breath and asked quietly, "The intruder?"

"The supposed saint."

"Lucky fellow..."

‘How did he find that place?’

It was a facility known only to a select few members to prevent information leaks. There should have been no elements that could lead to its discovery. But worrying about what had already happened was futile. As a leader, he always needed to remain calm.

"Prince Davey's power is extraordinary. Facing him won't be easy."

It wasn't just once but twice that they had been bested. Ignoring him was no longer an option.

"Abandon the facility. It would be troublesome if any trace remains. Ensure nothing is left. Demolish the facility."

"Then, what about the clones inside..."

"Clones? Ah, those failures. Don't worry. They won't wake up. Besides, they're designed to obliterate everything within several kilometers if anyone other than an authorized person touches their hearts..."

He didn't know that the moment Davey appeared, the fingers of the girl in the test tube twitched.

* * *

Being lifted by the neck and suspended in the air caused immense pain.

"Ugh! Ack!"

Despite frothing at the mouth due to the strong grip threatening to break his neck, Director Strom desperately struggled to survive. Silently, Davey flung him against the wall and extended his index and middle fingers of his left hand.

Slash!

Then, with a light flick, Daggers pulled the dagger from the bodies of the robed corpses on the ground and used it to penetrate through Strom’s arms and legs, pinning him to the wall.

"Aaaaahhh!!!"

A harrowing scream erupted. His body quivered as blood spurted out.

"I... I can't die! I can't die like this!"

Enraged, he frantically moved his hands. Despite being impaled and bleeding, he endured the excruciating pain to activate something he had pulled from within his robe.

Slash!!!

However, his action ended futilely as his hand was severed by an unseen blade.

"What... What..."

"Sword of the Mind," Davey responded briefly and covered Strom’s mouth with his hand, as if sealing it, slamming him against the wall.

Then, Davey sighed briefly. Unlike other directors, Davey intended to make Director Strom taste extreme agony before death. But this old man... he had crossed the line.

[Transform]

Mana began to surge. Simultaneously, Director Strom's face grotesquely contorted.

"Ugh... Ughhh!!!"

As a red light flowed from Davey’s hand, a similar red light started pouring from Strom’s ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.

"Graaahhhhh!!!"

Blood wasn't just flowing from his seven orifices; they began emitting a blinding light, soon radiating intense heat as if magma were flowing from within. More precisely, it was waste material formed by his insides melting down in a magma-like manner, but to the onlooker, it seemed as if magma were pouring out from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

Despite the desperate struggles and the sinister magma pouring from his entire body, he began to curse his own living flesh.

"Ughhhhh! Ughhhhh!"

"Can't hear you, you bastard."

With a snap, Davey sealed his mouth again.

Crack!

This time, Davey crushed Strom’s jawbone. It wouldn't have been weird if Director Strom faced immediate death from shock, yet he remained alive. Pinned against the wall, a magma-like liquid with the temperature of real magma continued to pour from his seven orifices. His jawbone shattered, preventing even a proper scream, but his intermittent struggling indicated he was still alive.

"I never said I'd kill you instantly."

Davey’s chilling words made his body jolt violently.

Boom!!! Boom!!!

Far away, the sounds of Rinne rampaging could be heard. Likely implementing her specialty, the bar and high-temperature cannon, faithfully executing his orders and wreaking havoc. She might be a bit unreliable alone, but with Perserque by her side, there shouldn't be any significant issues.

"Ughhhhh... Ughhhhh!"

Strom's resistance gradually weakened.

The magma Davey extracted from his seven orifices wasn't real magma. It was just a melting substance similar to magma, created by slowly liquefying his internal flesh. As his organs, bones, and muscles melted in the intense heat, his resistance naturally waned. Silently watching him, Davey eventually let go of his neck. But as if Director Strom had developed telekinesis, he began to float arbitrarily in the air.

Crunch...

With a horrific sound, his body started to bend at unnatural angles and soon began to swell as if it would burst.

Boom!!!!

And then, as the massive hues beneath his skin gradually darkened.

Bang!!!!

His body shattered into pieces.

"Death is not an escape."

Silently watching the completely fragmented corpse, Davey summoned devil mana.

Simultaneously, pieces of his soul began to emerge from the remains. With a furrowed brow, Davey watched as the soul slowly drew more devil mana. Fortunately, the Deathlord clone he trusted in the test tube remained dormant. Knowing she was a clone but wary of the possibility of her awakening, Davey extended his hand toward the departing spirit. Roughly grabbing the soul, Davey began pouring devil mana into it.

Strom’s soul writhed in excruciating pain. Death could be seen as an escape leading to the path of reincarnation after all deeds were tallied. However, being reborn as a different person through reincarnation would fundamentally change one's being. That was the nature of reincarnation. The system judged and delivered verdicts based on sins, dispensing punishment. So, execution was momentary.

"Who are you to judge, punish, and forgive?"

The ones most entitled to rage against him would be the humans and animals sacrificed for chimera experiments and the original Deathlord, Ro Aias herself. The very individuals who should decide whether to forgive his sins were not present here. How could Davey make such a judgment? Holding onto the disappearing soul, Davey growled and pushed it against the wall.

Then, Davey let out a sinister laugh. "Let's see you be judged."

Fixing the spirit form against the wall, Davey quickly formed a hand seal.

Thump!

A black mist whirled out from Davey’s body, and from within it, a dark and murky entity leaped out, tearing at Strom’s soul.

“Aaaaaahhhh!!!”

A harrowing scream, more a ghostly wail than a human cry, rang out.

Afterward, Davey turned his attention to the sole significant presence inside the laboratory: the occupant of the test tube. With her eyes closed, simply trapped in the solution, she elicited a sense of bitterness. Deathlord. She bore the exact face of Rho Aias, though her hair color and physique differed slightly. The pure power Davey felt from her was nowhere near what the original Deathlord radiated. Yet, Davey could distinctly sense the unique devil mana of the Deathlord within her.

"Lord Davey, a large amount of identical energy is detected from the heart," reported Rinne, bloodied and holding a crimson bar in one hand.

"Clean."

With a light flick, Davey threw a bottle of water from a pocket plane into the air, its contents quickly cleansing Rinne's body.

As expected, the blood wasn't hers.

"Reported, quite interesting. All parts you ordered have been incinerated."

"Any survivors?"

"Zero."

At her brief response, Davey nodded.

"Davey... Wait, this woman..." As Davey remained silent, Perserque, perched atop Rinne's head, asked with a serious expression. "Is the Illuminati planning to resurrect her?!"

"No, they know better than anyone that resurrection is impossible. This is just a mere imitation, their own greed." Saying so, Davey drew out Red Ribbon and aimed to slash the test tube diagonally. "Let's destroy it before the body is complete." Davey swung his sword without hesitation, aiming to cut her body along with the test tube.

Crash!!!!!

Certainly, here's a revised version with refined language and readability:

"But then, something astonishing occurred.

"Ha... Is this really happening?"

The girl slumbering inside the colossal test tube opened her eyes as if she had been anticipating this moment. Without hesitation, she reached out and seized Red Ribbon's blade. It was a feat not even a skilled swordsman, let alone a magician, could easily achieve.

The clone, previously silent and holding Red Ribbon’s blade with closed eyes, began to open hers slowly. Her pupils were enveloped in a faint light. The emotions hidden in those eyes were void of expression and sensitivity, yet they emitted an eerie chill.

Davey let out a brief sigh upon seeing her silently gaze at him.

Shh…

Simultaneously, an enormous black magic circle began to emerge beneath her feet. One after another, as if dozens of interconnected circles, the magic patterns unfurled, and she seemed to resonate with the energy, causing chaos to spread.

"Ugh... Ugh!" Perserque, shaking as if in terror, glanced at Davey.

Perserque had concluded that leaving that clone alone was not an option. How could he not realize it?

Davey promptly withdrew Red Ribbon and swapped to Blue Ribbon. Without hesitation, he swung Blue Ribbon toward the Deathlord's clone. If she were merely a replica with traces of the Deathlord, there might not have been an issue. However, the power displayed by the clone was excessive.

While silently observing the clone, Perserque responded to Davey's unspoken query. "Davey..."

"Did you see an artifact?"

"The heart..."

At those words, Davey felt a chilling sensation. His master's heart was present. It was the Deathlord's heart—one of the things she had desired to erase and forget. Consuming it or harnessing its power could unleash an immense surge of power. Naturally, only one person in the world could accomplish this, but what mattered was that this sphere could transform even an ordinary person into a superhuman.

"That heart doesn't belong to you." Dozens of black spheres materialized in the clone's hand as Davey spoke.

The Deathlord, also referred to as a demigod, now with a clone harnessing her heart as its core... Even if it wasn't her, it posed tremendous danger. The tense standoff persisted. Davey wasn't particularly inclined to kill her, as she bore an identical appearance to his master. However, if her existence became a threat, as her disciple, it was his responsibility to safeguard his master's legacy.

"Don't misinterpret." Saying so, Davey swiftly moved Blue Ribbon before she could unleash a magical assault. He then aimed precisely for her heart with the tip of his sword.

[Davey, allowing such perilous flesh to remain signifies a harbinger of destruction. I have gained immense power, but I must not maintain my existence in this world because of it.]

Her body was already an artifact in itself, yet these reckless fools had resurrected it.

"Those who serve the Deathlord should never perform such an act."

The realization that they were merely using her, not truly serving her, crossed Davey's mind. It was then that the magic circle under the clone Deathlord began to resonate intensely. Simultaneously, the ceiling started to twist and be drawn upwards toward the sky.

When Davey looked up, Perserque was also gazing at the sky in horror and murmured, "Good heavens..."

What appeared in the sky was a black sphere so vast it seemed to occupy the entire expanse.

"A semi-black hole..."

It wasn't an actual black hole phenomenon but celestial magic, pulling anything it encountered into the depths of space-time.

Could a mere clone wield the magics, the specialties of the Deathlord? The level of the semi-black hole magic was about an 8th circle, but it was peculiar for the clone to perform 8th circle magic. Perhaps this unexpected behavior of the clone wasn't even anticipated by the Illuminati. Davey observed her, creating a colossal magic with an indifferent gaze.

"Davey! Act swiftly! The axis of time is starting to warp!"

That was why ultra-high gravity magic was troublesome.

Silently, with gleaming eyes, the clone began to ascend. However, Davey caught a glimpse of something in those eyes. After a moment of silence, he merged Blue Ribbon and Red Ribbon to forge Super Ribbon. Almost instantly, stones began to be drawn into the sphere, orbiting around it as if to engulf everything nearby. Eventually, Super Ribbon completed its fusion, and a girl with blue and red hair in a white dress materialized behind him like a translucent apparition.

[I've missed you, father.]

"Let's sever that."

At Davey's command, Super Ribbon slowly raised her head to gaze at the massive black hole and then fell silent.

Soon after, she began to manifest pure white colossal wings behind her. As the wings stretched and expanded, Davey briefly gasped. Then, he focused on the immense black hole and the clone that conjured it, gripping his sword with one hand and drawing it diagonally, as if to flick it away. Finally, he raised the sword's tip toward the sky and hoisted it upwards.

Shh…

Simultaneously, a white current began to flow into Super Ribbon's sword. It was still pushing the limits, but he believed it was sufficiently possible. At the culmination of the silence, Davey's eyes gleamed. The emotion he glimpsed in the clone's eyes was fleeting, yet unmistakable—a simple desire to live. However, the flesh of the Deathlord must never be allowed to persist.

‘Desire to live? I'm sorry, but that's not possible. If you wish to harbor resentment, feel free to resent as much as you like. Even though you're a soulless clone, I would perform a ritual to offer peace.’

[Transcendental Londsword]

[Final Curtain]

[Cleaving the Heavens]

If the opponent unexpectedly possessed more power and spiraled into a berserk state, the only recourse was to unleash an even greater power. Typically, direct confrontation like this was far from efficient. But Davey wielded the finest sword to compensate for such inefficiencies.

There was a saying, perhaps attributed to Mencius: "There is no match for good gear." The sword of Super Ribbon was enveloped in an imperceptible current, with a swirling blue aura surrounding it.

In an instant, the raised sword gleamed and descended. By the time Davey regained his composure, a colossal flash, seemingly tearing through the sky, had passed over the clone and the black hole, completely splitting the clouds above. This was vastly distinct from the gash he had left in the sky of the Boltis Kingdom. There, he had to restrain his power, but here, he had to unleash his full might.