Chapter 41
Urto Dimas rose from his seat without a word, the quiet scrape of wood against stone barely breaking the stillness of the hall. His steps were unhurried, but there was intent in them, something restrained, something long kept beneath the surface.
Lualhati stood near the open archway, where the wind slipped through like a whisper from another world. She was the eldest of Maruha Dalisay's daughters, once known across their domain for her sharp tongue, restless spirit, and the tireless way she stood beside her mother in managing their lands. Many had called her spunky, alive in a way that demanded attention.
But now… something was wrong.
Her gaze was distant, unfocused. The fire that once defined her seemed dimmed, as though buried beneath a silence that did not belong to her.
Urto stopped in front of her.
For a moment, he simply looked.
Memories surfaced unbidden, the first time he had seen her, long before grief and war had carved their marks upon the world.
It was during an ancient gathering, a formal invitation from a Bathaluman who ruled over Mount Tanawan in an age when the world was still young and the veil between realms was thin. The air had shimmered with old magic, spirits and mortals alike walking side by side beneath towering trees that seemed to listen.
Lualhati had stood among them, unafraid.
While others lowered their gaze in reverence, she had spoken, clear, confident, unshaken even in the presence of beings older than memory. There had been laughter in her voice then, a brightness that drew Urto in before he even understood what he felt.
That was the beginning.
Or perhaps, the only beginning that would ever exist.
Because not long after, everything changed.
The war tied to the High Encantos, those ancient, dangerous beings once dwelling in what is now the sealed and vanished Biringan City, had taken much from them. Among the fallen was Maruha's husband, and with his death came the weight of leadership upon her shoulders. Lualhati, in turn, stood beside her mother, setting aside whatever life she might have chosen for herself.
And Urto…
Urto remained at a distance.
His feelings, unspoken, became something quiet and enduring, never growing, never fading. Simply there, like a shadow that followed him through the years.
Now, standing before her again, he reached out.
His fingers brushed against her cheek, tentative at first, then firmer, driven by something he could no longer deny. He leaned closer, intent clear in his eyes, an attempt to claim a moment that time had never given him.
But Lualhati moved.
Not away.
Her hand rose, steady, and grasped his wrist before he could close the distance. Her grip was not forceful, yet it held him in place with an authority that felt absolute.
She did not look at him.
Her head remained still, refusing even the smallest motion toward him. The distance between them, though measured in inches, became something far greater, an unspoken boundary that could not be crossed.
Urto froze.
For the first time in years, he found himself without an answer.
He could command, persuade, even manipulate the currents of unseen forces, but this… this was something else entirely.
Something he cant understand.
Or perhaps something stronger than that.
Slowly, he withdrew his hand.
The silence that followed was heavy, filled with everything he had never said and everything she had chosen not to acknowledge.
Whatever held Lualhati now, whether it was control, burden, or a will far deeper than it appeared, it was not something Urto could break.
And deep down, he knew…
Perhaps it never had been.
Urto turned away at last.
The silence between him and Lualhati did not break, it simply followed him as he stepped back, as though the air itself refused to let the moment end cleanly. Without another word, he walked past her and Tala, leaving the two sisters seated where they remained, still, watchful, and untouched by whatever illusion of control he believed he held.
The chamber they occupied had once been something else.
Once, it had been Maruha Dalisay's council hall, a place of voices, of decisions that shaped the fate of their domain. Its walls had carried the weight of unity, of leadership bound by duty rather than desire.
Now… it was different.
Urto had seen to that.
Where there had once been a circular gathering space, there now stood a raised platform, carved sharply from the old stone. At its center rested a throne, tall, imposing, crafted not with tradition in mind, but with dominance. Drapes of deep crimson fell from the pillars, dimming the natural light that once filled the room. The air felt heavier, as if the chamber itself resisted what it had become.
A throne room.
Not for a leader.
For a king.
And Urto had been sitting on that throne for far too long.
He did not look back as he left.
Behind him, the two sisters remained, silent witnesses to the slow corruption of what was once theirs.
Far from that chamber, beyond the quiet tension that clung to it, another thread of the story had already begun to move.
The letter had been brief.
Too brief.
It came from one of Maruha's most trusted stewards, a name Lakan Dalisay recognized without hesitation. That alone was enough to give the message weight. But the contents… they were troubling.
There were no full explanations. No detailed account of what had transpired within their domain.
Only a request.
No, a plea.
Give Lualhati and Tala a place to hide.
Nothing more.
And that was what made it worse.
Because for a steward so loyal, so precise in duty, to send something so incomplete… meant that whatever had happened was beyond the safety of written words.
Lakan had no choice.
He had to ask for help.
Nille did not hesitate.
He accepted the request the moment it was given, without pressing for answers that did not exist. There was no long deliberation, no careful weighing of outcomes.
Just a quiet nod.
And that was enough.
Because Nille understood something simple—something that others often overlooked.
A call for help did not need to be complete to be real.
Still… he was walking into darkness.
He knew nothing of Lakan Dalisay's clan history. Nothing of their internal conflicts, their allies, their enemies. The names. Lualhati, Tala, Maruha, were little more than fragments to him, pieces of a story he had never heard.
And yet, he stepped forward anyway.
Not out of ignorance.
But by choice.
Because risk… had always been both his greatest strength and his greatest flaw.
He did not fear the unknown.
He moved and face it head on
Nille already stood outside the castle walls, his presence unchallenged. No goblin had been able to stop him. By the time he reached the fortress itself, the countless bodies left in his wake were already crumbling, ash remains fading into nothing as they vanished one by one behind him.
Nille pressed his palm against the castle wall.
It should have been cold—unyielding stone, ancient and immovable. But what met his touch was different.
Wood.
Not even well-hidden.
A hollow imitation beneath the surface.
His fingers lingered there for a moment, tracing the faint grain beneath the illusion before he spoke, his voice low and certain.
"So… this is fake too."
The air around him stirred slightly, and the scarf resting along his shoulders shifted as if alive. Its presence was subtle, but its awareness was not.
I have collected the spiritual beads from the goblins, the scarf replied, its voice echoing directly into his mind. They are being absorbed. Their essence is already merging with your core.
Nille's gaze remained fixed on the wall, but his thoughts sharpened.
"Then tell me," he said quietly, "did you see anything else?"
A brief pause.
Not silence—but processing.
"Any imprints?" he continued. "Fragments of this place… its past. What happened here?"
The scarf pulsed faintly, as if sifting through layers of memory not its own.
There are traces, it answered at last. Broken… incomplete. The goblins carried fragments, but not truth—only echoes of commands, fear, and repetition.
Nille narrowed his eyes.
Not memory.
Conditioning.
However, the scarf continued, there are deeper residues embedded within this area. Older than the goblins. Older than the illusion itself.
That made Nille shift his hand slightly, pressing harder against the false wall—as if testing whether it would break under the weight of what it was hiding.
"What kind of residues?"
This time, the pause was longer.
Heavier.
Conflict, the scarf said. A collapse. Not of structure… but of control. Something once held this place together, something central. When it was lost, the rest began to imitate what remained.
Nille exhaled slowly.
A fake castle.
Fake walls.
Creatures acting on borrowed will.
"…So everything here is just pretending to still exist."
Not pretending, the scarf corrected. Maintaining.
That single word lingered.
Nille stepped back from the wall, his expression unreadable.
Maintenance meant something had broken.
And something, or someone, was trying to keep it from falling apart completely.
"…Then we're not just talking about a place ," Nille murmured.
His eyes lifted toward the towering structure ahead.
"We're looking at a lie that's still being forced to live."
The scarf did not respond.
But it didn't need to.
Because whatever truth lay beneath that illusion…
Nille was already about to tear it open—
When the gates burst wide.
A long, razor-sharp blade came crashing down from above, cutting through the air with lethal precision. It struck the ground in front of him with a thunderous force, splitting stone and sending shards outward like shrapnel.
But Nille was already moving.
In a single motion, he dropped low—his jungle bolo flashing just in time to catch the edge of the descending strike and redirect its path. The impact still slammed into the ground beside him, the force alone enough to crack the surface beneath his feet.
He crouched there, steady… but only just.
If his reaction had been even a fraction slower,
He would have been split in half.
Dust and fragments settled around him as the echoes of the strike faded into the open air. For a brief second, everything stood still.
Then Nille slowly lifted his gaze.
Whoever, or whatever, stood beyond those gates…
Was not playing with illusions anymore.
Nille didn't wait for the next strike.
The moment the dust shifted, he rolled sharply to the side, boots scraping against fractured stone as he created distance in a single fluid motion. The air where he had been standing a second earlier whistled with delayed violence—proof that hesitation there would have cost him everything.
He rose into a defensive stance without breaking rhythm.
Low center of gravity. Blade angled. Breathing steady.
His jungle bolo stayed tight in his grip, not raised in arrogance, but positioned for survival—ready to redirect, parry, or break an incoming line of attack in an instant.
The gate loomed open ahead of him now.
And through it…
Something had stepped forward.
Nille didn't speak. Didn't question. His eyes narrowed, reading movement instead of meaning, intent instead of identity.
Whatever this was, it wasn't part of the illusion he had exposed earlier.
This was real pressure.
Real intent.
The kind that didn't bluff.
Behind him, faint remnants of goblin ash still drifted through the air like dying embers, but even that felt distant now, irrelevant compared to the presence that had just revealed itself beyond the gate.
Nille adjusted his footing slightly, shifting weight to his back leg.
One breath.
One opening.
That was all it would take for either side to decide what came next.
The Sarangay moved first.
It retracted its initial stance in a single, unnatural motion—then lifted its weapon high above its head. The motion was not hesitation, not hesitation at all, but preparation. A deliberate gathering of force, as if the creature itself was compressing violence into a single point.
Its target was clear.
Nille.
For a split second, something flickered in his mind.
A memory—sharp and uninvited.
Luna.
A stray cat from long ago, cornered in an alley, the same kind of towering presence looming over it. The same overwhelming intent. The same crushing certainty of destruction.
That memory snapped something into place.
Nille didn't retreat.
He rushed.
He closed the distance in an instant, boots tearing across broken stone as he drove forward into the Sarangay's range. His jungle bolo came up in a wide, decisive arc—no hesitation, no testing, only commitment.
Steel met force.
The impact was brutal.
A deafening crack of collision rang through the open courtyard as blade met weapon. The Sarangay did not stagger. It barely acknowledged the contact. Instead, the sheer weight of its counterforce surged through Nille's arms and into his frame.
Pain detonated through him.
Bones strained. Joints screamed. A sharp, sickening crack echoed somewhere deep in his arm—but Nille did not pull back.
He refused to break rhythm.
With grit clenched behind his teeth, he adjusted mid-impact, shifting the angle of his bolo just enough to avoid being fully crushed under the next blow. The Sarangay pressed forward anyway, overwhelming him with raw, unrelenting strength.
Strike after strike followed.
Each one heavier than the last.
Nille was forced into motion—deflecting, slipping, redirecting what he could and absorbing what he couldn't. Dust exploded around them with every clash. Stone cracked beneath their shifting weight. The courtyard itself seemed to recoil from the violence unfolding within it.
A strike caught his side.
Another grazed his shoulder.
Pain layered upon pain, but Nille's focus remained sharp, locked not on survival alone, but on timing. On openings that came in fractions of seconds between brute swings.
Far above, overlooking the shattered courtyard, Urto Dimas stood in silence.
He did not intervene.
He did not speak.
The transformation of his throne room into a battlefield unfolded before him like a verdict he had not yet decided to pass. The Sarangay fought as an extension of his will, but Nille… Nille fought like something unassigned. Something unowned.
Below, steel and flesh clashed again.
And again.
Nille was already bleeding, already straining against the impossible weight of his opponent, but he still did not fall.
at the same time, Inside Nille's inner enclave, something was changing.
The seedling that had taken root there was no longer dormant, it was beginning to grow. New leaves slowly unfurled, fed by the steady flow of his spiritual energy. His core was expanding as more power poured into it, strengthening it with every passing moment.
Around the main core, a smaller energy orb continued to orbit it. At first, it had kept a steady distance of about five inches, circling in a controlled path. But now, that distance was shrinking. It had moved one inch closer, tightening its orbit as if being pulled inward.
The smaller core pulsed more violently with each cycle. Faint plasma-like sparks began to crackle from its surface, and these sparks occasionally reached out, briefly touching the main core.
It was not physical movement, but a metaphysical reflection of Nille's internal evolution. His power was growing, stabilizing, and beginning to merge into a more unified form.
And with each step forward in his fight outside…
His inner strength was quietly changing as well.
Back in the fight, Nille was thrown around like a ragdoll.
Each impact sent him skidding across broken stone, yet he never stopped moving. Even when he was struck, even when his footing broke, his body recovered mid-motion and continued the flow of combat.
The Sarangay's massive sword came down again and again, heavy, relentless strikes meant to crush anything in their path. Nille met each one with desperate precision, deflecting what he could and redirecting what he couldn't.
But every block came at a cost.
The force behind each clash rippled through his arms, shoulders, and ribs, sending sharp waves of pain through his body. The more the Sarangay pressed forward, the heavier that pain became.
Still, he didn't fall.
The beast's assault turned into a barrage, powerful, sweeping slashes that filled the space with overwhelming pressure. Nille's martial skills were pushed to their limit as he moved constantly, weaving through danger, slipping just outside the reach of killing blows, and searching for even the smallest opening.
His breathing grew heavier. His body strained under the weight of every exchange.
But his mind stayed sharp.
He wasn't just surviving the attacks, he was studying them, reading their rhythm, trying to find a pattern within the brute force.
Because against something this strong…
One mistake meant death.
The final spiritual bead taken from the goblins by the scarf finally entered Nille's primary core.
The moment it merged, something within him shifted.
His shamanic ability evolved.
Energy inside his core stabilized and expanded, allowing him to actively channel up to twenty percent of his primary core into a single focused skill. It was a small fraction in theory—but in practice, it meant control, precision, and the ability to push his techniques beyond their previous limits.
Among his seven abilities, however, one remained the most difficult to use in real combat.
Telekinetic movement.
The power to move objects with his mind.
It was strong, but unstable in battle. It required focus—something hard to maintain while dodging, blocking, and surviving constant attacks. Because of that, Nille rarely used it, relying instead on physical movement and instinct.
But now, something about his thinking changed.
He realized he had been approaching it the wrong way.
Instead of trying to add concentration on top of defense…
What if he used it as part of defense itself?
The idea was there.
Clear, sharp.
But testing it was another matter entirely.
Because right now,
He was still in the middle of a fight for his life.
The scarf spoke again, calm and precise despite the chaos unfolding around them.
You are overcomplicating the process, it said. Test it now.
Nille tightened his grip on his footing as another shockwave of impact from the Sarangay rattled the ground beneath him. "Now?" he muttered through his breath. "I'm in the middle of—"
There is no better condition for testing than actual combat, the scarf interrupted. Controlled environments produce false results.
A pause, then it continued, more deliberately.
Create distance. Force separation. Use your butterfly knife as the anchor point.
Nille's eyes flicked down briefly as the scarf's suggestion formed a clearer structure in his mind.
The butterfly knife, small, fast, designed for rapid shifts and tight defense. Normally, it was a close-range tool, something dependent on hand movement and reaction speed.
But the scarf's idea was different.
Treat it as an extension of your body, it explained. Not a weapon you hold, but one you command.
The Sarangay's blade came crashing down again.
Nille twisted away, barely avoiding the strike, boots scraping stone as he slid back to gain space.
If you can move it with intent, the scarf continued, you can use it to intercept attacks before they reach you.
The concept was simple in theory, but divided in execution.
Because it required two separate layers of thought at once.
One part of Nille had to continue surviving, dodging, reading movement, maintaining awareness of the Sarangay's overwhelming strength.
While another part had to independently control the knife through telekinetic focus, tracking its position, angle, and timing as if it were a second body.
The scarf shifted slightly, its voice steady but layered with implication.
I can assist, but only partially.
It flexed faintly along his shoulder.
At my current stage, I cannot act independently. I can only manipulate the threads I am connected to, interfering with nearby fibers in your clothing to assist movement and alignment. I can guide, not act.
A brief pause.
In future evolution, I may be able to move freely with full intent and force. But not yet.
That meant the burden still belonged to Nille.
Full control. Split attention. Active combat.
The difficulty was not just physical, it was mental partitioning.
One mind, divided into two simultaneous streams of execution:
Survival instinct handling defense.
Conscious will directing a floating weapon.
The Sarangay roared and advanced again, its presence pressing like a wall of force.
Nille exhaled slowly.
There was no time left to debate.
"Then we test it," he said.
And for the first time in this fight, he didn't just react,
He began to divide his focus.
Nille steadied his breathing as he created just enough distance between himself and the Sarangay. The idea was no longer abstract, it had to become structure. If he could not split his focus cleanly, he would fail. So he simplified it: one mind for survival, one will for control.
He anchored his butterfly knife into motion first, not as an attack tool, but as a defensive orbit. Instead of holding it tightly, he released partial control, letting his shamanic influence lift and guide it. The blade hovered close to his body, moving in short, reactive arcs that mirrored his instincts. When the Sarangay swung, Nille's body reacted as usual, but the knife responded a fraction earlier, intercepting angles before they reached him.
The theory was simple: if his body predicted danger, the knife would answer it first. This created a layered defense, physical movement backed by remote interception. But the execution demanded strict separation of thought. One stream tracked footwork, spacing, and survival. The other maintained continuous command over the blade's position and rotation, adjusting its path like an extension of reflex rather than hand.
At first, the delay was visible. The knife moved slightly late, forcing Nille to compensate with sharper dodges. Each mistake punished him physically, but it also refined the timing. Pain became feedback. Every impact taught him where his control lagged.
As the exchange continued, a pattern formed. Nille stopped thinking of the knife as a tool and instead as a second defensive limb orbiting his core. The scarf subtly assisted by stabilizing his posture through micro-adjustments in his clothing tension, reducing wasted motion and helping align his balance during evasions.
Bit by bit, his style began to take shape, an adaptive close-quarters system built on dual-layer cognition: body for survival, telekinesis for interception. It was not perfect, but it was his own.
And for the first time in this fight, Nille wasn't just reacting to the Sarangay.
He was beginning to structure the fight around himself.
Nille's movements started to evolve.
What was once pure instinctive survival began to take on structure and purpose.
He was no longer just reacting to the Sarangay's attacks, he was beginning to control how the space around them flowed. Every step, shift, and dodge became intentional, forming a rhythm only he could understand.
His butterfly knife no longer stayed strictly in his hand. It moved in controlled, orbiting patterns around him, responding just before danger arrived. Instead of meeting attacks head-on, Nille now used his body to evade while the blade intercepted or disrupted the force of each strike at the edges.
This changed his defense completely.
It was no longer simple blocking, it was interruption and redirection.
Although the Sarangay's strength still overwhelmed him at times, the damage was no longer direct. Each attack was broken into parts: some absorbed by his movement, some weakened by the knife's interference, and some reduced through precise timing.
Nille's breathing steadied despite the pain. His focus split into two functions, one part of his mind managing movement and survival, while the other maintained control of the floating blade. Over time, this division became more natural, slowly turning into instinct.
He refined his approach further. Instead of reacting after an attack began, he started anticipating the Sarangay's motion based on its shifting weight. The knife would move first, aiming not at the weapon itself, but at where the force would land, reducing the impact before it fully formed.
The scarf subtly assisted by adjusting his posture and balance through its threads, helping him stay aligned during rapid movement without taking control.
Step by step, Nille's fighting style took shape.
A layered system built on body movement, telekinetic defense, and predictive timing.
He was no longer just defending himself.
He was building a new way to fight.
But it wasn't perfect. Not yet.
Nille could feel it in every breath, every staggered step, every delayed reaction. The system he was building was holding, but barely. The wounds were stacking, each one layering fatigue over precision, each impact making his control slightly harder to maintain.
He knew it.
If this continued, he would lose.
Across the courtyard, the Sarangay's behavior began to shift.
At first, it had been pure force, relentless, unquestioning strength. But now, something else surfaced beneath it.
Frustration.
This was not a creature used to resistance. Not used to prey that stood back up after every crushing blow. Its attacks grew heavier, less refined, more desperate. The rhythm it once owned was starting to fracture.
And then Nille saw it.
The collar.
Dark energy began to gather around it, dense, oppressive, almost breathing. It pulsed with a heavy influence that seeped into the Sarangay's movements, twisting its aggression into something sharper, less controlled by the artifact Urto Dimas place around its neck, something was stirring its bewildered reasoning ,
The beast was resisting, because it was seeing and facing a honorable and strong enemy, it wanted to know who it was facing, it wanted recognition from the fight, it hated the feeling of not knowing how it won.
its pride and honor was pushing it.
Forcing it.
The scarf reacted immediately, its voice cutting through Nille's thoughts.
"It is a curse artifact, its the one that is controlling it"
The words landed with clarity.
Not control through strength alone, but through corruption of will. The collar was amplifying rage, overriding restraint, turning instinct into forced aggression. It was feeding the Sarangay's frustration and shaping it into violence defiance from its master , it wanted to gain its natural rhythm, and face the enemy as itself.
Nille tightened his grip.
That explained the escalation. The increasing pressure. The unnatural persistence.
This was no longer just a fight against raw strength.
It was a fight against something that was actively driving that strength.
And worse,
It meant the Sarangay was not going to slow down, and Nille was sure he will loose