The Max Level Hero Has Returned!

Chapter 1397

Whummm. Clank!

Kain and Frelia watched the massive core of energy Willow had created with bored expressions.

“Hey, Kain, you sure this is safe?”

“Huh... I miss mom...”

“Ugh. This dumbass is out again...”

The Valkyrie Kain possessed two personalities. They weren't born from the same body, but rather two completely separate personalities sharing one.

Usually, there was the calm, composed Kain, but sometimes, the one who only looked for Illyna would pop out.

Frelia gave a sigh. “Nevermind, just keep a close watch while I'm gone. If something goes wrong, I'm seriously gonna kill you.”

Frelia spread her wings and disappeared somewhere, and Kain started poking the power core with his finger, a gloomy look on his face. “Uhh...” freёwebnoѵel.com

It was a careless act, as if the warning not to mess with it meant nothing.

That's when it happened.

CRAACK!

The gigantic sphere of energy sparked for a moment, and Kain's eyes snapped wide open in panic. “Uuuuh... W-what's wrong with this thing?”

He frantically poked and prodded the core even more for some reason. The core was something a Valkyrie couldn’t possibly affect to begin with, but his fiddling only made the situation worse when combined with the turbulence Willow and Super Ribbon were causing inside.

Gleam!!

“Aaaahhh!!!” Kain, who was flustered and didn't know what to do, was instantly engulfed in a blaze of light. At the same time, he reached out from the light and touched the divine object that was regulating the massive core.

Fwoosh!!

The light then began to stabilize and control the unstable, flickering core.

“Phew! That was close.”

Since it wasn’t fully completed yet, there were sure to be occasional bugs, but he had been incredibly unlucky.

Poof!!

Frelia returned and abruptly rushed in, holding a large artifact in her hand. “Hey! Didn't I tell you not to cause trouble?!”

“Where exactly were you, Frelia?” Kain sternly asked.

She was surprised by the sudden change of tone. “Uh... huh?”

“My other half is still inexperienced. You knew that, and yet you left him alone?”

“Ah. No, I just...” she began.

“If I hadn't rushed out and stopped him, we would've made a huge mistake with the two gods.”

She was floored. “T-that...”

“Consider yourself lucky, Frelia.”

Frelia wondered if she was really the one who should be getting scolded, but she nodded unconsciously under his pressure.

In truth, there were multiple layers of safety mechanisms in the virtual space, so a problem there wouldn’t affect the consciousness of the humans linked to it.

However, that wasn’t the case for those linked to the testing area. The unstable flow, caused by Willow, had nonetheless affected one person despite the astronomical chances.

* * *

“W-why can’t I logout?!!!!”

[LMAO they probably blocked boss from logging out cuz she ran away loools]

The viewers were just enjoying watching as Evangeline freaked out and ran.

It wouldn’t have been unusual for viewers to get motion sickness if the stream had been in a regular first-person view. However, as annoying as it was, the meticulously crafted streaming system—made with divine power—was filming her in a third-person view.

Thanks to that, the viewers felt like they were just walking alongside her.

“Ugh. Seriously!!” She dashed away, throwing a fireball she'd conjured on her fingertip.

Yet, even though it hit the monsters and destroyed them, a similar number of cockroaches swarmed out from somewhere else.

“What the hell?! Where’s the damn exit? How far do I have to run!!”

A normal person would've been engulfed in the swarm by that point, and Evangeline was setting an impressive real-time record.

After running what felt like an eternity, the faint light of a tiny portal appeared in the distance.

“Ah! There's a portal over there I can use! It's over!!!” Evangeline suddenly stomped her foot hard, boosting her speed.

Thump! Thump!

That's when it happened.

Beyond the wave of bugs, something massive began approaching her at tremendous speed.

It was a grotesque-looking creature with long hair. It looked like an agglomeration of human limbs but their length was terrifyingly long, and they were double-jointed like an insect's, making it even more repulsive.

“W-what the heck is that now??!!”

The monster, which closed the distance at a speed far beyond the regular cockroaches, opened its mouth wide. The tiny, saw-like teeth inside its mouth made crunching sounds as it closed in on her.

Evangeline clamped her mouth shut and frantically sped up with a pale face. As she began to run like a sprinter in a full-out race, the monster also picked up its speed.

Unbeknownst to her, the system had been designed to gradually speed up the enemies to match the players.

[Holy crap! Run!]

[Wtf bro that shit is scary as fuck (O.O) It's gonna haunt my dreams]

[That's just wrong...]

Its appearance was so horrifying that even the viewers who had been entertained could suddenly feel their stomachs churn.

It surely was a sight that’d earn high praise amongst the horror community.

The distance gradually closed. Evangeline, with a significant portion of her power suppressed and unable to manifest her true body, ran diligently. Fortunately for her, just before she was caught, she was able to throw herself into the portal.

“Haah. Haah. That was absolutely dreadful... What the heck was that?”

She slowly caught her breath as beads of sweat ran down her face, and shivered as she looked at the portal. She hadn’t known what Red Ribbon and Blue Ribbon saw inside, but it proved itself a terrifying sight.

“I'm exhausted... So exhausted... I want a relaxing, chill game...”

She floated the idea of slowing down the content to her stream with a completely worn out face.

The viewers, who would normally tell her to stop joking and egg her on, seemed just as tired from the chase, as if even watching had been exhausting for them.

[Is there a game like Animal Meeting or something we could switch to instead?]

“Wait a sec... Here’s one.” Evangeline held up a translucent window toward the camera. “How about this?”

[That one looks pretty interesting.]

[Which one is that?]

What Evangeline had found was a calm farming game. She figured a game with cute-looking NPCs surely wouldn't have cockroaches or monsters.

Once she quickly received approval from the many viewers, she linked the game, and a large door made of light began to open before her in the virtual space.

When she opened the door and stepped inside, a warm and relaxing landscape instantly appeared before her eyes.

“Woooow. I should've just played something like this from the start.”

Unlike Evangeline, who was excited and trying out various things in this relaxing looking game, some of the viewers voiced concerns.

[Uh... The game’s description did say that it’s incomplete. Is it really okay?]

[You never know what'll pop out lols]

[Holdin' my breath. Gasp!]

Regardless of their concerns, she finished the basic tutorial and started the game.

She was completely oblivious to the incomplete warning, and the fact that real farming wasn’t exactly a relaxing, chill experience.

* * *

The farming game Evangeline chose had yet to even be given a proper name. It had several modes, including a hardcore reality mode and a beginner mode.

Of course, other than that, even though it resembled reality, it still had game elements mixed in.

“Wow... Farming sure isn’t easy.”

[A rich girl working in a rice paddy? Now that's a rare sight.]

[Clip it and ship it, boys. Our work here is done.]

“Don't export it. Get outta here, you parrots.”

Evangeline realized that farming with her bare hands was much harder than she’d thought, and made a fed-up face. “I mean, the chill part’s nice, but this is way too much work! I may not be physically tired, but my mind is already exhausted.”

[So you thought farming would be easy? Life is no adorable Goodbye Kitten game, you know.]

[Seriously though, even with all these game elements, it's still this hard? Lol]

“That's it!” She finally rolled her pants up to her knees and splashed her way out of the rice paddy, then headed toward a warehouse where an NPC was waiting.

After exchanging a few words, she summoned a massive machine in front of her. “Yep, farming's just a tech war, after all.” freēwēbnovel.com

[OMEGALUL boss ended up buying stuff anyways lmao]

[Didn’t boss say buying stuff like that kills vibes? KEKW]

When Evangeline had first begun the tutorial, she’d said farming by hand was the way to go, but she soon gave in after being beaten down by (virtual) reality.

“Grrrrrr!!” She started the equipment, excitedly charged into the field, and continued farming with much more ease than before.

Even while working, she kept talking to the viewers, entertaining them nonstop. “Did I tell you before? When my dad first started developing the territory, the first thing he tackled was the herb business!”

[???]

[Nope first time hearing this.]

“There's an herb called Moon Grass. It's used everywhere on the continent, like in the Alchemy Society, the Magic Tower, and the temples.”

[But if it’s that huge, wouldn’t everyone else have done the same thing, then?]

“Nope, they couldn't. Moon Grass is expensive because the supply's ridiculously low. It's super cheap now, but back in the day, there weren’t that many places it could grow. The fact that its successful harvest rate was so low didn’t help either—it was practically an impossible plant to cultivate, so there wasn't much of it to sell. But he carefully controlled the climate of Heins Territory with his power, creating the perfect conditions for Moon Grass to grow.”

[So boss was a scammer from the start...]

[What the hell KEKW]

“Anyway, there’s no denying that Heins Territory grew bigger thanks to the Moon Grass. There’re a lot of other businesses now, but Moon Grass was the main pillar back then. Of course, I only know what I've seen recently.”

Still, the territory's history was clearly less than five years old.

“Anyway, farming’s really important. It's a noble profession that creates food, after all. So, I see farm work in a really good light, but...” Evangeline slurred and squinted her eyes. “Doing it myself is just too much work, you know...”

Chuckling to herself, her head suddenly tilted at a strange sound. However, even when she waited a few moments, it didn't happen again.

After that, she gradually started taking shortcuts and trying to cheese the system. She sold piles of finished crops, bought new equipment, and tried out a variety of strategies.

“It's kinda weird to finish farming a crop so quickly when it usually takes a year.”

[tbh the chilling and all that’s good, but this content is just too bland]

[By the way boss, that straw hat actually suits you pretty well now.]

She giggled, showing off her rolled-up pants, her dirt-stained shirt, and her large straw hat. “Right? How do I look?”

Though the design was shabby, she made it seem like a professional fashion choice.

“You know, I'm getting tired of this, too. It's the same thing over and over again. I wish something would happen.”

As soon as she said that, the viewers' reactions were split. Some agreed with her while others expressed concern, saying she was only jinxing it by saying such a thing.

Boom!!

The game proved the latter group correct.

“Huh?” Evangeline stopped the tractor at the sudden roar, turned her head, and lifted her straw hat.

She then saw billions upon billions of locusts darken the sky, instantly setting to devouring all the crops she had painstakingly grown.

“No... No! What the heck! This is ridiculous!” She scrambled off the tractor and ran, but most of the crops she had carefully named and tended to had become future bug excrement. “No! Chris! Max! Aaaah!”

Her face was the picture of despair as she sobbed, looking at the rice stalks that had been cleanly eaten away.

That wasn't the only problem, either.

Perhaps due to a bug, a huge number of water deer[1] descended from the mountain on one side and completely ruined her field.

“Gwaaak!!!”

The water deer mocked Evangeline as they stomped on and ate the crops before running away. Even worse, another sudden swarm of locusts rushed forward for a renewed offensive alongside the water deer.

Her killing aura rose as she watched the crops she had nurtured so carefully become completely destroyed right in front of her.

“I'm gonna bury every single one of those bastards!!” she shouted. Vowing revenge for her crops, she strode over to the store.

Then she opened the pest control section—

[Holy crap...]

[I thought this was supposed to be a chill game...]

[Why is there a railgun???]

[There's a Dyson Sphere[2] for planetary defense, too?]

[And that ‘???’ thing that's kinda blurred out totally looks like a space battleship wtf are aliens gonna come to eat the crops too or something lmao]

It didn't take long for her to realize that this game was far from a simple relaxing, chill game.

1. Picture a normal deer but kind of stubby and less graceful, with the dudes having—instead of antlers—two tusks that make it look like they have a sick-ass handlebar mustache and ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle. ☜

2. Picture pseudo-armor that doubles as solar power generators surrounding a planet in its orbit on a literal cosmic scale, the theoretical brainchild of famed physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960. The term ‘Dyson Sphere’ is actually a bit of a misnomer, with gravity constraints meaning it would be closer to a Dyson Swarm of innumerable small satellites. One could argue those satellites constitute armor/protection, but that'd be a bit of a reach despite the satellites needing to be pretty durable. It’s more of a radiation energy thing for late-stage civilizations with crazy power demands. ☜