The Last Place Hero’s Return - Chapter 109

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 109. The Blonde is Too Much (4)
“…Why?”
A hollow voice echoing through the Slum District shrouded in darkness.
The monster, unable to accept the reality before him, blinked repeatedly before releasing his grip on Juliet Kang’s neck and stumbling backward.
“A man…? What? Then I….”
Perhaps the memory of moments ago—burying his nose in Juliet Kang’s hair and sniffing enthusiastically—came rushing back.
The monster’s expression hardened like stone, as if he’d just discovered half a cockroach in the bread he was eating.
“You sick bastard…!”
Freed from the monster’s grip, Juliet Kang unleashed a spectacular spinning kick toward him.
While she couldn’t compare to anomalies like me or Yurina, she was still a skilled fighter who confidently held a high rank in the Candidate Program’s comprehensive evaluation.
Thwack!
A clean spinning back kick, drawn as if by an artist’s hand, struck the monster’s jaw.
Her skirt fluttered. Something blunt protruded visibly above the shorts she wore underneath.
“Gaaahhh!”
“Ahhhhh!”
The monster shrieked while clutching his jaw from the impact, and I screamed while clutching my eyes—my optic nerves having been inadvertently attacked(?).
“Hey, you! What are you doing attacking me too?!”
“Huh? When did I ever attack Dale?”
Juliet Kang looked at me with an aggrieved expression.
I shook off the tragic stimulus assaulting my optic nerves and pulled Juliet Kang’s shoulder, drawing her back.
“Either way, stay behind me.”
Just now I’d managed to land a blow while the monster was shocked, but his strength was beyond what a mere Candidate should face.
‘Though technically, I’m a Candidate too.’
Forcing a bitter smile, I stepped forward toward the monster, who trembled with rage while clutching his jaw.
“You insolent fool! How dare you mock my pure love?!”
“That’s rich.”
Since when did assaulting random women on the street to satisfy base desires count as pure love?
Even if there had been no direct physical contact beyond her hair, the experience would have been traumatic enough to leave lasting scars on the victim.
“Throughout history, there’s only ever been one thing truly effective against creatures whose brains are located in their lower bodies.”
I drew my sword from my waist and pointed it at the monster.
“Ignite.”
Whoooosh!
Ash Flame engulfed the blade, burning fiercely.
I kicked off the ground forcefully and swung the flame-wrapped sword toward the monster.
“Ugh!”
The monster hastily retreated, sliding backward to evade the blade.
“Damn…!”
Judging the fight unwinnable, the monster turned and began to flee.
His movements were swift—clearly he hadn’t evaded capture all this time by accident.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I exhale sharply.
Drawing in a deep breath, I center myself.
I unsheathe my sword in a long arc behind me, lowering my stance.
The distance between me and the monster is roughly a hundred meters.
Even if I extended my aura to its maximum range, it wouldn’t reach—but that didn’t matter.
‘Mana bullets.’
Semi-transparent mana projectiles forming around the blade’s edge.
Unlike the mana bullets Berald created, these took an elongated, blade-like form.
The term “mana blade” suited their appearance far better than “mana bullet.”
And there weren’t just one—dozens of paper-thin mana blades overlapped, stacked upon each other.
The flames roared to life with a crackling sound.
Ash Flame ignited, wrapping around the mana-forged blades.
The entire space around my sword erupted in inferno.
In that state—
“Ash Flame Sword, Second Form.”
Flame Blade.
A heavy boom echoed as I pivoted sharply.
I slashed horizontally, my movements rough and forceful.
The dozens of ash-flame blades hovering around my sword swept forward, scattering through the air.
“Tch… damn it!”
The monster snarled, dodging the vicious ash-flame blades by launching itself upward between two building walls, leaping high into the air.
But—
The blades shrieked as they cut through the air.
Mid-flight, they abruptly changed direction, engulfing the airborne monster in ash-flame.
“Kyaaaaaaagh!”
The monster’s entire body shredded by the ash-flame blades, it shrieked and plummeted to the ground.
“Phew.”
I gazed down at the fallen monster and smirked.
‘This is the first time I’ve used it in actual combat. Not bad at all.’
A technique born from insights I’d gained watching Berald’s fight.
At first glance, this technique—wrapping mana-forged blades in Ash Flame and launching them—resembled the Sun Sword’s Sixth Form, “Radiant Burst,” but it was fundamentally different.
‘Because I can freely control the trajectory mid-flight.’
Radiant Burst fundamentally concentrates aura at a single point and fires it in a straight line.
Naturally, changing direction mid-flight or withdrawing the aura once fired was impossible.
‘But—’
Flame Blade, being a technique harmonized with magic, allowed me to change direction mid-flight like a guided missile.
‘And its power exceeds Radiant Burst.’
Aura, fundamentally derived from the power of the “Inner Realm,” suffered from a critical weakness: its potency diminished dramatically with distance from the user.
But Flame Blade, harmonized with magic like Berald’s martial arts, maintained its full power regardless of distance.
‘It’s a perfect upgrade to Radiant Burst.’
Admittedly, compared to White Light—which simply concentrated aura at a single point and fired it—this technique consumed more mana.
But even accounting for that drawback, the advantages far outweighed the costs.
“Ugh… hack, cough! Cough!”
The monster collapsed on the ground, vomiting dark crimson blood.
His body, mangled by the Ash Flame blade, hung in tatters as though a starving beast had torn into him.
Half his limbs lay severed across the floor, and his entrails spilled from the gaping wound where his abdomen had been ripped open.
And yet.
“The… blonde… give me… the blonde….”
The monster crawled forward on his belly toward Juliet Kang, who stood at a distance, his eyes gleaming with covetous hunger.
Moments ago he’d dismissed the man’s hair without interest, but now—with death mere moments away—he seemed blind to everything except what his eyes fixated upon.
“Eek!”
Juliet Kang shrieked and stumbled backward, away from the creature.
“Tch… this bastard’s disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
What was it about that blonde hair that made him cling to it so desperately, even as fatal wounds drained the life from his body?
‘This is madness.’
I frowned down at the monster, still crawling across the floor despite the river of blood pouring from him.
“Ah… uh… ah.”
The creature’s gasps grew fainter and fainter until his head simply dropped.
“Is… is he dead?”
Juliet Kang asked in a trembling voice.
I placed my hand on the monster’s neck and nodded.
“He’s dead.”
A tenacious creature in every sense.
“Well then, shall we see what he actually looked like?”
I pulled back the deeply drawn hood.
As the hood fell away, the monster’s true identity was revealed.
“…Rascal Joe?”
Powerman, Rascal Joe.
A true hero who protected the weak and punished the wicked among heroes obsessed with their own gain.
“Why would Rascal Joe…?”
I stared down at his corpse in confusion.
Blonde hair. A strong jawline.
Though I’d never seen him in person, his features matched exactly with the photographs of Rascal Joe that had circulated.
“If this is Rascal Joe… that Powerman? Could it be… he was the culprit all along?”
Juliet Kang, who had approached beside me, opened her eyes wide in disbelief.
The perpetrator of this utterly repugnant perversion was actually revered as a ‘hero’ by the people of the Slums.
“I told you rumors can’t be trusted, didn’t I? Posing as a hero on the surface while preying on women behind closed doors to satisfy his own depravity—nothing but garbage!”
Juliet Kang’s voice trembled with fury as she glared down at Rascal Joe with contempt.
“….”
Rumors can’t be trusted, indeed.
I fully understood what Juliet was saying.
‘Something’s off.’
There was something that didn’t quite add up about simply concluding that Rascal Joe’s true nature was that of a pervert obsessed with blonde beauties.
‘In my past life, Rascal Joe died fighting against the Demon God’s forces to protect the people of the Slums.’
If he were truly a villain merely pretending to be a hero on the surface, he never would have met his end by sacrificing his own life for others.
And there was one more thing.
‘This incident never happened in my past life.’
This unsettling series of attacks targeting only blonde beauties—it had never occurred in my previous life.
Of course, it was possible that the rumors simply never spread within the Academy and I overlooked it.
‘But an incident like this would definitely have become a hot topic within the Academy.’
In terms of sensationalism alone, wasn’t this more shocking than your average murder case in the Slums?
The Hero Academy was a place where even obscure news from remote corners of the Empire would spread if it was unusual enough. There was no way an incident occurring in Valhalla City—practically the Academy’s front yard—wouldn’t reach the Academy’s ears.
‘Then that means.’
I narrowed my eyes and examined Rascal Joe’s corpse.
‘There’s someone pulling the strings behind this.’
Someone orchestrating the fall of the ‘hero’ beloved by all.
“….”
“What’s wrong, Dale?”
“Nothing.”
I shook my head and reached toward Rascal Joe’s corpse.
Whoosh.
Ash flames consumed the body, leaving not a single trace of flesh behind.
“Juliet. Keep it secret that the culprit was Rascal Joe.”
“Why? Wouldn’t it be better to expose this scoundrel’s true identity to everyone?”
Juliet tilted her head in confusion.
“….”
I started to explain the possibility that someone had been manipulating Rascal Joe from behind the scenes, but then shook my head.
To people who didn’t know what had happened in my past life, my words would be nothing but baseless speculation.
Sigh.
I exhaled deeply and opened my mouth.
“The world of heroes needs at least one hero.”
“…?”
“Anyway. Can you keep it secret?”
“U-uh. Yeah, I got it.”
Leaving Juliet nodding uncertainly behind me, I moved forward.
‘The future is changing.’
There had been signs of it before, but now it was becoming so different from my past life that it was truly difficult to predict.
Whoosh.
I ignited ash flames above my palm and narrowed my eyes.
A future that had begun to transform.
In the midst of unpredictable currents, there was only one thing I could do.
“….”
Extinguishing the Ash Flame I’d summoned in my palm, I turned my steps back toward the Orphanage.
* * *
“Madness, you see, is much like gravity.”
In the Field shrouded by darkness.
A boyish-looking youth opened his mouth, a deep smile playing at his lips.
“Once you fall, you plummet endlessly toward the abyss below.”
The boy hummed a tune, his voice light and carefree.
“And only after hitting that bottom can a human truly face themselves.”
He burst into a giggling laugh, spreading both arms wide open.
“Their true self.”
“….”
The old man listening to the boy’s words clicked his tongue in disapproval.
“What business do you have here?”
“Huh? You’re unhappy that I came, Jackal?”
“….”
The Archbishop of Beasts, Jackal, turned his head away from the grinning boy.
Unlike the other archbishops, he had no desire to be entangled with this one.
The unpredictable madman known as the ‘Archbishop of Madness’.
“Why are you doing such things in Valhalla City?”
“Ah, you mean Powerman?”
The boy’s lips curled upward in a grotesque grin as he continued.
“It’s amusing, isn’t it? Watching a ‘hero’ lauded as a champion plummet to the very bottom.”
“….”
“Hehe. And I didn’t exactly corrupt him like Mephistopheles did, you know?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
“I merely gave his back a gentle push.”
The boy stretched both arms forward and giggled.
“So he could face his true self.”
“…Sigh.”
A deep sigh escaped from Jackal’s lips.
“It’s not wise to cause such disturbances in front of the Hero Academy.”
“Hehe. I never expected to hear such words from you, Jackal… Ah, could it be because of that ‘spider’?”
“….”
“Mm-hmm. I heard you came up completely empty this time—so it was true.”
The boy spun around as if dancing.
“Anyway, don’t worry about the ‘spider.’ I didn’t come this time to meet the spider.”
“…Then?”
“I heard an interesting story from Mephistopheles this time.”
“An interesting story?”
“Yeah. Apparently some Candidate went straight through the Helios Family and wrecked their plans.”
“Huh.”
A Candidate who went straight through the Helios Family and destroyed them?
This was the first I’d heard of it.
“I bet Jackal knows that Candidate too.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You know, that Candidate who’s close to the ‘Spider’ that Jackal’s been after? The one who was with you when you came up empty last time?”
“Ah, you mean that gray-haired Candidate.”
Jackal nodded as if he finally understood who was being discussed.
“Dale Han.”
The boy extended his tongue long, drool dripping as if gazing upon a delectable prey before him.
“What kind of sight will you show me?”
Seto, the Archbishop of Madness, grinned widely, his lips stretching as if they might tear.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————