The Max Level Hero Has Returned!-Chapter 1022

"Seriously... Why the hell does this school have so many wraiths?” Davey grumbled as he walked, clearly annoyed.

The vice president, who had been watching him with wide eyes, blinked in shock, his pupils darting around in disbelief as the stream’s chat went wild.

[Wait, what are you doing?! Isn’t that a person?]

[Hold on a sec, that’s the Saint of Tionis!]

[BS. Why would he be here?]

[I mean, to be fair, the guy is ridiculously weird from head to toe...]

[Screw all that—just hurry up and ask for help!]

Crack. Crack.

The ghost, its glowing red eyes locked onto the vice president, suddenly shifted its attention.

It turned away from him, instead beginning to move toward Davey.

[Oh shit... That ghost’s pissed LOL!]

[I mean, yeah, if some random dude walked in, stopped me, and then told me to go about my business like nothing happened, I’d be mad too KEKW!!!]

[Bro drew max aggro LMAO!!]

The once-tense atmosphere was no more.

Meanwhile, the vice president could do nothing but sit there and wait, as his legs had long given out.

Soon enough, a bloodcurdling scream rang out as the walls trembled.

Mere seconds later, a blood-soaked, disheveled ghost frantically scurried back into the room with desperation.

It completely ignored the vice president and bolted toward the farthest corner of the room, only to curl up and tremble violently.

"Hey. You’re the one who started this, so you'd better see it through. Where do you think you’re going?"

- Screeeeeech!!

The ghost, eyes wide with terror, tried to push itself further back, its nails scraping against the floor.

The vice president had no clue what the hell was happening before him.

[Wait... What? Did the ghost... just hide?]

[What the actual fuck LOLOL]

[At this point, I refuse to believe this is staged... Saint of Tionis, you are a fucking menace. Making ghosts run from you OMEGALUL]

"Hey. Ready or not, here I come. If I see even a single strand of your hair, you better be prepared...”

The ghost instantly grabbed its own hair, letting out a strange, strained noise resembling a whimper.

"Heeeeeere’s Johnny!"

A head popped through the door’s small window with a crash. Davey spotted the ghost, grinned, and disappeared from sight once more.

Unfortunately, the door was locked, and the window was too small for someone to fit through.

Unless... they broke it down.

Boom!!

"Aaaagh!!”

- Kiiiek!!

The vice president and the ghost screamed and shrieked in unison as the door suddenly shattered, fragments flying all across the room.

A single arm shot through the wreckage.

For a second, they lived through a scene straight out of a horror movie.

Then, the genre abruptly shifted into a psychological thriller.

Click. Click. Clunk!

The hand fumbled for the lock and twisted it open.

The Saint of Tionis and another man were standing on the other side of the door.

[Holy shit... Look at that ghost. It’s scared af LOLS]

[This is really amazing... what the hell...]

[Okay, but who’s the handsome guy next to him?]

The two casually stepped inside, crossing their arms as they studied the cowering spirit.

"Should we send it off properly?"

"Hm. Yeah, let’s do that. Looks like it’s one of the stronger wraiths among the weaklings. Its sorrow is especially strong. You block the escape routes—I’ll purify it."

Woochi reached out, grabbing the ghost by its hair.

"You’re lucky, you know. If that lunatic over there was the one to take care of you, you’d have suffered a lot worse. You get that, don’t you?"

The ghost trembled violently, unable to even resist.

A soft glow radiated from his hand. Next thing the audience knew, the ghost dissolved, fading away like black smoke.

“Rebirth in paradise.”

Having said his piece, he stood up.

"You’re insane, you know that? Do you always go all out like this? That ghost only had a bit of resentment, yet you damn near scared it to death.”

"I don’t care about ghosts that indiscriminately attack people because they have their own resentment. If they want revenge, they should take it up with the person responsible."

"Wraiths that lost their targets have no other choice.”

The two bickered as they walked out, leaving the club vice president sitting there, stunned.

"Uh, excuse me!"

Woochi turned, making eye contact with the trembling student. "Huh?”

"I-I’m the vice president and videographer of the University of Korea Paranormal Club... Vice President Kim.”

"And?"

"Uh. Well. I got trapped in here, so... Would it be possible for you to, um, take me with you?"

Just as Woochi was about to respond, Davey cut in. "Let him follow. We might have nightmares if we let people die in a place like this. Just don’t get in the way while we’re working."

He sounded less like an exorcist and more like someone on a casual field trip.

And yet, for some reason, the club videographer found himself oddly reassured.

* * *

The members of the University of Korea Paranormal Club were currently scattered across the abandoned campus, terrified out of their minds.

What had started as an innocent exploration of a haunted site, suggested by their vice president, turned into a nightmare.

Among all the rumored haunted locations, they had chosen Suran All-Girls High School, one of the most infamous. As the night went on, they regretted it with every fiber of their being.

"What do we do?"

"Shit! I don’t know—I can’t even find the vice president.”

Although most of them had been separated while fleeing, two of them had been lucky enough to reunite.

Desperately searching for a way out of the terrifying school, they carefully navigated the halls.

They had already tried exiting the first floor and headed to the main gates—only to find that the doors were no longer there. In their place stood a strange, unfamiliar classroom.

It was as if the entire school had transformed into a twisted maze.

They could do nothing but keep low and continue searching.

Beep. Beep.

The ghost detectors that their club's vice president had bought using the club budget began blaring.

When their vice president first mentioned buying such items, they laughed at him, saying it was overkill.

But ever since entering the abandoned school, those very devices had saved them multiple times by steering them away from dangerous zones.

"Hey. This thing’s going crazy. That must mean there’s a ghost in front of us, right?"

"These elevated levels..."

It wasn’t one entity. Or, if it was, then it was something extremely dangerous.

Their instincts screamed at them to run. And so, that’s just what they did.

But whatever was chasing them proved faster.

Tap, tap, tap, tap!!!

A shadowy mass came charging toward them at an insane speed.

The two screamed at the top of their lungs, collapsing onto the floor and clinging to each other in fear.

As the black figure finally approached them, they braced for death.

But the figure they assumed to be a ghost just rushed straight past them. The two students blinked in confusion.

Seeing ghosts was terrifying enough, but seeing ghosts fleeing en masse was downright horrifying.

They couldn’t understand why the ghosts had just passed them by.

A cold, disembodied voice whispered to them.

- Run...

The ghosts hadn’t bothered with hunting them—they were running away from something.

The two students swallowed hard, their gazes snapping toward the darkness before a voice echoed out.

"You guys really think running is going to work? Persistent bastards."

Stepping into the dim light, three men came into view.

"Are those people?"

"A-Ah. Yes!!!”

Their vice president emerged from the darkness and came sprinting toward them, his face pale with terror.

"Vice President!!"

"Are you guys alright? Thank goodness!” he remarked with relief.

"Waaah! I was so scared!”

Davey stepped past the sobbing students, unfazed.

"You can either stay here, or follow us."

"C-Can’t you just get us out of here?"

"Nope."

The firmness of his response made them gulp.

"V-Vice President. Who are they?" one of them asked skeptically.

"T-The Saint of Tionis.”

Meanwhile, the entire situation was still being broadcast live.

The legend of Suran All-Girls High School was spreading in real time across the world.

* * *

The abandoned school was infested with countless ghosts.

Those occupants came in all types and shapes—myriad ghosts of students who had died there, the lingering grudges of countless people who had met their end on those grounds.

Regardless of whether they were so overconfident that they just appeared in front of Davey and Woochi, or that the two were just good at finding the ones which had thought they had masterful hiding skills, it didn’t take the team very long to track down the strongest wraith.

"Y-You’re really going in there?"

"Is there a problem?"

"Well, this is one of the most infamous spots in Suran All-Girls High,” the vice president explained with a pale face.

True to the student’s words, Davey saw the walls covered in graffiti as the air was thick with a rotting stench. Those two aspects made the already eerie place even creepier.

[Help me...]

[Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...]

[Let’s die together...]

Every single word messily scrawled on the wall exuded an ominous presence.

"See?! See?! I swear I wrote ‘Top-tier ghost hunting spot’ here before! But now it says ‘Help me’ instead!!"

"L-Let’s not go in... Rumors say this room is unlike the others—it’s extremely dangerous! No one who’s entered has ever made it out."

The Paranormal Club members were terrified, and desperately tried to stop the two.

But Woochi was as calm as could be.

"This is the right place. The grudge here matches perfectly."

"Step aside."

Davey rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath.

The storage room door was firmly locked, but he couldn’t have cared less.

"I’m going to come in if you don’t come out.”

Bang!!

The door, which an ordinary person could barely open even with tools, was blown apart with a single kick.

"Stay here with them. I’ll deal with this thing real quick."

The moment Davey stepped inside, a completely different chill washed over him.

There was no sound. Yet somehow, it felt unbearably loud.

Nobody was inside. Even so, he felt a presence.

When a wraith harbored a sorrow for long enough, it manifested into frost.

Woochi called this the Wraith Frost, which was exactly what he had come for.

The damn school was crawling with wraiths. It had taken some time to locate the right one, but with a wraith arrogant and smart enough to sit back and wait like this, Davey figured all of what he had gone through was going to be worth it.

Just as he reached out into the air, the door slammed shut, cutting off all light.

For a normal person, it would’ve been a moment sufficient to overwhelm them with sheer terror.

A frigid breeze brushed against his skin.

Davey casually turned toward the door and gave the handle a slight tug.

It was locked, so he looked around.

Clack. Clack.

A strange sound echoed through the darkness.

Something was moving.

Then a deep, unnatural heartbeat reverberated through the air.

He could tell it was getting closer.

For a moment, Davey simply stood still.

He suddenly felt the presence of something touching his back. Shrouded in the darkness, a twisted figure began to creep forward.

Most people would’ve lost their minds at such a sight.

But as Davey calmly stood right where he was, the entity creeped even closer.

Casting his Death Spirit Eye, he finally saw its full form.

Its eyes were hollow, as if they had rotted away, and half of its mouth had been torn off.

Dark, blood-like tears streamed from its empty sockets.

- Kiaaa!!!

With a shriek full of malice, the ghost entirely revealed itself.

It was massive—far beyond human proportions. Its grotesque body seemed to be a fusion of six or more corpses.

Long, black, matted hair was draped over half of its face.

There were two additional monstrous arms on its back, suddenly reaching out to grab him.

It truly was a horrid sight.

Davey took a step forward and charged straight at it.

Boom!!

A sound unimaginable coming from a human crashing into another entity rang as the ghost was sent flying.

But before it could even react, Davey leapt onto it and raised his fist.

"Gotcha, you piece of shit."

Smash!!

"Don’t worry. I won’t hit you hard enough to wipe you out completely. If you disappear, I won’t be able to collect that Wraith Frost of yours.”

‘I bet you don’t know what power I’m wielding. It’s called divinity, you little shit!’

Bam! Bam!

Davey pinned the wraith and brutally assaulted it with his fists. The wraith, completely overwhelmed by the unexpected beating, let out a twisted scream.

It thrashed desperately, trying to escape—but Davey held fast, gripping its tangled hair and yanking it back before landing another punch.

"Does it hurt? Huh? You think the other wraiths you killed here weren’t scared? Huh?"

Bam! Bam! Bam!!

Though he wasn’t using much force, each strike was laced with divinity and holy power, so the wraith couldn’t do anything to resist.

The most powerful wraith of the haunted school screamed at the top of its lungs.

"I don’t even need to feel guilty about this.”

Wham! Wham!!

Perhaps realizing it couldn’t take much more, the hideous looking wraith suddenly coughed up blood and disappeared.

The moment Davey had let go of it, it’d seized the opportunity to escape.

Naturally, the wraith seemed to realize something had gone terribly wrong and tried to hide, but it had nowhere to run. The walls were already plastered with ritual talismans, leaving it completely trapped.

Spotting the storage room door—the only place with relatively fewer talismans—it desperately crawled over and yanked it open. But the moment it did, those waiting outside locked eyes with it

The members of the Paranormal Club, seeing a terrifyingly powerful wraith clearly for the first time in their lives, screamed and jumped back in panic.

“Hey. Where do you think you're going?” As the wraith tried to flee, Davey grabbed it by its ankle.

His red eyes gleamed as he dragged it back into the room, wailing and clawing at the floor in desperation.

“Davey, don’t overdo it.”

Woochi said from behind, but a burst of telekinesis shut the door once more.

- Kiaaa!!!

The ghost scratched frantically at the door for help. Even so, Davey just slowly dragged it to the center of the storage room.

He then pinned it down again with a grin.

“Where do you think you're going?”

And just like that, it wasn’t until about thirty minutes later that Davey finally managed to extract the dark power orb concentrated with immense power.

Watching the whole thing unfold, the Paranormal Club members couldn’t help but mutter to themselves.

“This is a bit...”

“I can’t tell who’s the real ghost here...”

Everyone who witnessed the downfall of the ghost that had once terrified so many had the same reaction.