"Let try sothing," Max said aloud as he stepped toward the corrupted crown, his voice steady despite the storm of thoughts raging within him.
Before he could take another step, Freya's hand gripped his shoulder tightly, stopping him in place. "What are you doing?" she demanded, her eyes sharp as she glared at him.
Max turned to look at her, his expression serious yet strangely calm. "I do not know, honestly," he said truthfully. "But I have a feeling I can fix all of this."
"You think I will let you beco corrupted like Mark just because of a feeling?" Freya shot back, her voice rising. The mory of Mark's fall was still fresh, still painful.
"You have to believe ," Max said quietly. "I can fix this. I can fix all of it."
"No," Freya replied firmly, her tone leaving no room for argunt. "I cannot let you risk being corrupted. That crown is evil, and it cannot be controlled by any being. It would be better to seal it away and leave it in Acaris forever."
"I think we should give Max a chance," Lucien said suddenly, his voice calm as he looked at Freya. "He can control infernal energy, and from what we have seen, infernal energy does not affect him the way it affects others. If he can purify the crown of its evil energy, then we may actually have a way to expel the Devouring Spirit."
He spoke with quiet conviction. Lucien had witnessed Max purge corruption before, and even though this situation was far more dangerous, he believed that if Max said he could do it, then there was a reason for that confidence.
"Are you serious?" Freya turned toward Lucien, her eyes wide with disbelief.
"Just give a chance," Max said, eting her gaze. "If it even feels like the crown is trying to control , you can take it away imdiately."
Freya remained silent for a long mont, her expression shifting as she weighed the risks, her grip on Max's shoulder tightening and then slowly loosening. Finally, she exhaled sharply and looked at him with a hard glare.
"Fine," she said at last. "But the mont sothing feels wrong, I will not hesitate."
Max nodded, knowing that this was the only chance he was going to get.
Max nodded at her as he floated and arrived before the corrupted crown. It was still releasing evil energy.
"Let's see what I can do," Max muttered to himself as he stepped forward and closed both hands around the corrupted crown.
The instant his fingers touched it, his eyes flared with an intense blue radiance, so bright that Freya and Lucien instinctively shielded their vision. In the next heartbeat, that sa blue light surged across Max's entire body, wrapping him in a luminous aura as his figure slowly rose into the air, suspended as if gravity itself had lost all aning to him.
"This…" Max whispered, his voice filled with disbelief. The mont he made contact with the crown, he felt it clearly and unmistakably. The evil energy, the so called True Origin Devil Blood, was gone. Not suppressed. Not sealed. It was erased completely, as if it had never existed in the first place. There was no resistance, no backlash, no struggle. It simply vanished the mont it touched him.
At the sa ti, Max felt a profound connection form between himself and the crown. He could sense its existence as if it were a part of his own body. He could feel its thoughts, faint and instinctual, its imnse authority, and the vast power flowing through it, yet none of it felt hostile. It felt calm, obedient, and strangely familiar, as though the crown itself had been waiting for him.
"I can do this," Max said softly, conviction settling into his voice as the blue light surrounding him grew even brighter.
As his aura expanded, the almost destroyed world of Acaris began to change. The shattered land, torn apart by the battle between Max and Mark and ravaged by the advance of the Devouring Spirit, started to nd itself. Cracked continents slowly fused back together.
Mountains that had been reduced to rubble rose once more from the earth. Rivers that had long run dry began to flow again, their waters clear and vibrant. The scars carved into the world by countless catastrophes faded as if ti itself were retreating.
Then sothing even more unbelievable happened. The fallen beings returned. Lives that had been lost during the war, lives that had perished long before the final battle, rose again.
On the Valora Continent, where Max had once believed salvation was impossible, humans who had died scread back into existence, their bodies restored, their souls returned to them as if death had never claid them at all.
Freya and Lucien stood frozen, unable to speak. Shock alone could not describe what they were witnessing. Freya, in particular, felt her understanding of the crown crumble completely. She knew its limits. She knew its authority. Even a perfect crownbearer could never do this. The crown could repel the Devouring Spirit, and maintain balance, but it could not rewrite reality itself on the scale Max was doing.
Resurrection on this scale was impossible.
Yet Max was doing it effortlessly.
The world continued to heal under Max's presence, not rely repaired but renewed, as if it had been given a second beginning.
"Is this… the power of a true god?" Freya muttered unconsciously, her voice barely audible as she stared at the restored world with her own eyes.
Lucien said nothing. He simply watched, unblinking, his expression utterly still, as though afraid that even a single breath might break the reality unfolding before him.
It took only a few minutes for the transformation to complete, yet those few minutes felt like an eternity. By the ti the blue radiance finally receded, the world of Acaris stood restored to its absolute peak.
The lands were whole again, the seas vast and deep, the skies clear and vibrant. Every scar left by war, demonic invasion, and divine catastrophe had vanished.
More than that, all the human beings who had died, whether in the war against the demons, in Mark's ancient massacres, or through unjust and cruel circumstances across the ages, now lived once more. Their souls had been called back, their bodies remade, their lives returned as if fate itself had been rewritten.
As the last ripple of power faded, Max slowly descended, the glow leaving his body as he opened his eyes. The crown was still held firmly in his hands, but it no longer carried a trace of corruption. It shone with a brilliant golden light, pure and dignified, radiating a calm authority that felt nothing like the malice it once carried.
"I did it," Max said, a bright and genuine smile spreading across his face. In that mont, every regret he had carried, every mory of the Valora Continent's destruction and the countless lives he had failed to save, dissolved completely. The weight on his heart vanished, replaced by a profound sense of relief and joy that he could not hide.
Freya stared at him, still struggling to process what she had witnessed. "What did you do?" she asked, her voice quiet but filled with disbelief.
"It's a secret," Max replied with a playful smile.
Freya pouted slightly, crossing her arms. "Now we are keeping secrets, huh?"
Max chuckled softly. "I think I have grown enough to keep a secret or two of my own."
Lucien glanced at the crown in Max's hands, his expression thoughtful. "What about the crown? What should we do about it?"
Max looked at him calmly, confidence clear in his eyes. "Of course we will let it choose a human from this world. A worthy one. A new crownbearer who can truly protect Acaris. But before that, we need to release all the humans from the Life Space Rings and return them to their ho."
Freya's expression sharpened again. "And the Devouring Spirit?"
"Don't worry," Max said with an easy smile. "I have already taken care of it."
Seeing the certainty in his expression, Freya and Lucien both felt their remaining concerns fade away. Max turned toward the restored world below, his figure drifting downward as he prepared to return everyone to Acaris.
"Let's go and bring everyone back," he said.
Lucien and Freya followed after him, descending together toward a world that had been given a second life.
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