Chapter 128
The renovated swamp castle stood in solemn silence beneath the silver veil of dawn.
Once a monument to decay and corruption, it had become a sanctuary.
Ancient draconic stone walls, cleansed of miasma, rose proudly from the wetlands. Wooden bridges crafted by the Rune Forge artisans connected newly built watchtowers. Lanterns imbued with protective runes cast soft blue light across the murky waters below. The once-dying mangrove trees had begun to bloom again, nourished by the medicinal concoctions Nille had painstakingly created.
The Dark Elves, who had suffered years of contamination from Hydra-tainted waters, slowly reclaimed their lives.
Children played among the restored gardens.
Blacksmiths of Rune Forge worked their anvils once more.
Hunters ventured into safer parts of the swamp.
Hope had returned.
But hope was fragile.
Nille stood atop one of the castle's weathered battlements, his silver eyes fixed upon the distant horizon.
He had learned unsettling truths.
Something moved within the shadows of both worlds.
A force that desired imbalance.
Shamans and Awakened individuals across the lands had begun working together to preserve the fragile harmony between humanity and the spiritual realm. Yet hidden hands manipulated events from behind curtains of faith and desperation.
The followers of Apo Lakkay had become increasingly active. they never made a move it past , or maybe nobody notice them, Nille knew these people have their own reasons , but it seems its related to his Granny Amparo, it this is true , the events these bing has started will eventually reach him, because he followed her footsteps .
They preached that the Great God had abandoned them.
That suffering existed because humanity had strayed.
That only through sacrifice, chaos, and unwavering devotion would the Great God descend once more to reclaim His rightful place.
And now...
They marched toward the swamp.
Nille's gaze narrowed.
Emerging from the thick fog beyond the marshlands came a horrifying procession.
Hundreds.
Lizard Men.
Ungloc Malignants.
Corrupted shambling figures twisted by starvation, desperation, and spiritual contamination.
Their scales had darkened into sickly shades of gray and black. Bones protruded beneath their skin. Their eyes glowed with fanatical devotion.
They were not soldiers.
They were victims.
Brainwashed.
Hungry.
Broken.
Leading them were shamans draped in crude ceremonial garments adorned with symbols dedicated to Apo Lakkay.
"The Great God hears our suffering!"
"We offer the Swamp Sanctuary!"
"The impure shall become our sacrifice!"
Nille quietly descended from the battlements.
The Tactical Hard Buntala Knuckle Fingerless Gloves rested snugly around his hands.
Simple.
Ordinary.
No blades.
No firearms.
No mystical weapons.
Hidden beneath his clothing remained the other two much larger weapon pieces of Buntala Meteor Metal.
He would not use them.
Not yet.
The Dark Elf guards noticed him.
"Master Nille," one whispered nervously. "There are too many."
Nille adjusted the gloves.
"They're victims."
"They don't deserve annihilation."
The guard hesitated.
"But if they breach the walls"
"They won't."
Nille stepped forward.
Alone.
The swamp waters rippled around his boots.
The enemy host paused.
One of Apo Lakkay's shamans stepped forward.
"You stand against divine salvation?"
Nille answered calmly.
"I stand against those who exploit suffering."
The shaman's expression twisted.
"The Great God abandoned us because this world has forgotten Him!"
"The people starve!"
"The spirits reject us!"
"We simply seek forgiveness!"
Nille's eyes remained steady.
"Forgiveness cannot be built upon innocent blood."
The shaman screamed.
"Kill him!"
The swamp exploded into violence.
The first wave charged.
Lizard Men surged through the waters with terrifying speed.
Nille inhaled.
Exhaled.
Silence.
Then, Movement.
His body vanished.
The first Lizard Man swung a rusted cleaver.
Nille pivoted.
CRACK.
His gloved fist struck the creature's jaw.
The hard knuckle reinforcement shattered teeth and dislocated its mandible.
Without pause, he seized its arm.
TWIST.
Bone snapped.
He redirected the falling body into two charging malignants.
The impact sent them tumbling into the swamp.
Another lunged from behind.
Nille ducked beneath clawed hands.
His elbow drove upward.
CRUNCH.
The attack collapsed the creature's throat.
A spinning hook punch followed.
Its temple shattered against reinforced knuckles.
More rushed him.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Nille flowed among them.
His movements possessed elegant precision.
No wasted motion.
Each strike carried purpose.
A step.
A pivot.
A punch.
A devastating elbow.
The tactical gloves amplified every impact.
He targeted joints.
Pressure points.
Areas that incapacitated quickly.
Yet the sheer numbers overwhelmed.
The fanatics continued charging.
Their minds consumed by desperate faith.
An Ungloc malignant leapt through the air.
Nille sidestepped.
His palm redirected the momentum.
The creature crashed into another attacker.
He followed with rapid strikes.
Three punches.
Solar plexus.
Liver.
Jaw.
The malignant collapsed.
A massive Lizard Man wielding a jagged spear roared.
The spear thrust toward Nille's chest.
Nille stepped inside its range.
His forearm deflected the shaft.
His fist exploded upward.
CRACK.
The creature's nose collapsed inward.
Another punch.
Its knee shattered.
A final uppercut lifted the towering reptilian off its feet.
It crashed into swamp water.
But more came.
Endlessly.
Hungry.
Desperate.
Nille's expression darkened.
He could hear them.
Not their war cries.
Their suffering.
Their fear.
Their hope.
"We just want Him to hear us."
"We're starving."
"We've been abandoned."
The manipulation ran deep.
Apo Lakkay's followers had weaponized despair.
The shamans remained behind the front lines.
They chanted.
Spiritual energy flowed.
The malignants became more aggressive.
Their pain dulled.
Their fanaticism intensified.
Nille clicked his tongue.
"Of course."
The true threat.
He accelerated.
The battlefield transformed.
His figure became a blur.
Lizard Men attempted to intercept him.
He slipped between them.
A shoulder strike sent one flying.
A spinning elbow crushed another's collarbone.
A precise strike behind the ear rendered a malignant unconscious.
He never slowed.
Bodies fell in his wake.
Not dead.
Disabled.
Except those too corrupted to save.
The shamans noticed.
"Protect the ritualists!"
Too late.
Nille arrived.
The first shaman attempted to cast.
Nille grabbed his wrist.
SNAP.
The arm bent unnaturally.
A strike to the diaphragm expelled all air from his lungs.
The second raised a ceremonial blade.
Nille intercepted.
His hard knuckle glove shattered the blade.
Fragments scattered.
A spinning backfist rendered the shaman unconscious.
The third screamed prayers toward the heavens.
Nille hesitated.
The man was crying.
"Please..."
"Please hear us..."
For a moment...
Compassion surfaced.
Then spiritual corruption erupted from the shaman's body.
Dark tendrils lashed outward.
Nille moved instantly.
Three precise strikes.
Chest.
Neck.
Temple.
The corrupted vessel collapsed.
The ritual shattered.
Confusion spread among the attacking forces.
The fanatic certainty vanished.
Many stopped fighting.
Others broke down crying.
Some fled.
Yet the most corrupted remained.
Their minds beyond salvation.
Dozens charged simultaneously.
Nille stood amidst the swamp.
Rain began to fall.
Soft.
Cold.
He lowered his stance.
The Tactical Hard Knuckle Fingerless Gloves glistened with blood and rainwater.
Beneath his clothing, the Buntala Meteor Metals remained hidden.
Unused.
He would not reveal them.
Not against enemies
The final wave descended.
Nille became a storm.
Each movement flowed into the next.
Grace and brutality intertwined.
His fists struck with surgical precision.
Bones cracked.
Muscles tore.
Corrupted bodies fell.
He moved like flowing water.
Like a dance taught by countless battles.
No anger.
No cruelty.
Only necessity.
Minutes later...
Silence returned.
The swamp was littered with unconscious bodies.
Those irredeemably corrupted lay still.
Rain washed away the blood.
Nille stood alone amidst the aftermath.
Breathing steadily.
The Dark Elves cautiously approached.
Rune Forge warriors followed.
They stared in disbelief.
One man.
Against hundreds.
Using only his fists. and Hyde retractable 6 arms like piercing whips .
Nille gazed toward the distant horizon.
Something far greater loomed.
This attack had not been random.
It had been orchestrated.
A test.
A distraction.
Somewhere within the shadows, hidden beyond mortal understanding, forces sought to disrupt the balance shamans and Awakened people had struggled to build.
Someone wanted both worlds to collide.
To descend into chaos.
To shatter coexistence.
Nille clenched his gloved fists.
The hidden Buntala Meteor Metals remained untouched.
Whatever awaited ahead...
He would need them eventually.
Behind him, the swamp castle stood unharmed.
Children still slept safely within its walls.
Families remained together.
Hope endured.
For now.
But as thunder echoed across the distant mountains, Nille understood one undeniable truth.
This battle had not been the end.
It had merely been the opening move in a far more dangerous game.
And somewhere in the darkness... she was watching.
She never expected to see him again.
For a fleeting moment, Elarisse wondered if her eyes had deceived her. Years had passed since the Unflinching and unafraid eleven-year-old boy had offered kindness to a wounded creature abandoned by the world. Time had transformed him, shaping the child she once knew into a man burdened by responsibilities and hardened by experience.
Yet some things remained unchanged.
It was not his face that made her certain.
It was the way he moved.
The same cautious steps of someone who always considered others before himself. The same habit of lowering his guard around those he trusted. The same warmth she had felt long ago, during cold nights when she had curled herself into the shape of a stray black cat and rested against the only person who had shown her compassion without asking for anything in return.
The memory resurfaced vividly.
A small black cat with matted fur.
A wounded shapeshifter hiding beneath the shadows of the Encanto.
And a lonely boy named Nille who had chosen kindness.
Back then, he had named her Luna.
He had never known that the stray cat he fed scraps to and sheltered from the rain was, in truth, Elarisse Bathalienne de Tamawon, daughter of House Bathalienne and rightful heir to one of the oldest High Elven noble families, a direct lineage from a Nephilim that accepted its fate in there new home and started a noble and gave birth to Elarisse mother and her clan, , even after the great flood that cleanse the world , and survive the the great calamity war that separated broken many Nephilim lineage to scatter all over the world , and soon resided inside their own realms weather mirror of isolated space.
Nille never knew that the blessing he received from an ancient high elf, the gift that allowed him to shape his own inner sanctuary, and call it his enclave where his core manifestation first took form, had come from the same being he had cared for without hesitation.
In those quiet moments, Elarisse had learned something unfamiliar.
Safety.
Warmth.
Home.
Things she had lost long before meeting him.
Now, standing before him once again, those memories felt painfully distant.
Nille watched the elegant elven woman step from the gathering shadows. Silver-white hair cascaded down her shoulders like moonlight, while eyes the color of twilight studied him with an unreadable expression.
Then, slowly, a faint smile touched her lips.
"It's been a while, my dear Nille," she said softly. "I never expected you would come here."
Nille's breath caught in his throat.
The voice.
The mannerisms.
The strange familiarity that stirred within him.
"I remember you...?"
The smile widened slightly.
"So you remembered."
Silence settled between them.
The realization crashed over him all at once.
The stray cat.
"Luna!"
The wounded creature he had cared for.
The mysterious blessing that had altered the course of his life.
It had always been her.
"my real name is Elarisse Bathalienne de Tamawon,"
"Iam the exiled daughter of House Bathalienne."
Nille turned toward her.
"My stepmother made certain I became a ghost within my own homeland."
Her voice carried no hatred.
Only exhaustion.
"After my father's death, she seized control of House Bathalienne. Those loyal to my family disappeared. Others were forced into servitude. The council recognized her authority out of fear."
She looked toward the distant horizon.
"I was cast out from the Tamawon Domain. remember the landscape you entered were a sarangay or a minitour guarded"
The Tamawon Domain.
The ancestral seat of her family.
Her birthright.
" I waited for you , after you last visited me at the hospital"
" but you never came back"
Nille was wet since it rain as he hunted the remaing enemies marching toward the swamp castle, Nille asked Elarisse as he walk closer to her , she stop Nille saying its not wise to see her in the same way as before, he has his own destiny to fulfill , so thus her,
Nille asked her did you started this malignants march.
"What choice did I have?" she asked quietly. "I wandered for years. Alone. Hunted. Forgotten."
Her eyes found Nille's once more.
"Until I found him, he promised to give me power to reclaim my birthright over the House Bathalienne.
But something in Elarisse's voice unsettled him.
"He promised to help me reclaim my home," she continued. "He offered sanctuary when I had none."
Nille reacted "I wanted to help you , my a promise remember"
"But not without conditions," Elarisse said.
The bitterness in her voice was subtle.
"To challenge House Bathalienne required power. Influence. An army."
She looked away.
"And so I convinced myself that the means no longer mattered."
Nille felt a cold weight settle in his chest.
The Malignants.
The displaced clans.
The growing unrest throughout the 12 divided and isolated realms
The alliances forged through desperation rather than trust.
Everything suddenly fit together.
Apo Lakkay had gathered those abandoned by society, promising them a future.
Elarisse had seen an opportunity to reclaim what had been stolen from her.
Neither had started with evil intentions.
But desperation had a way of changing people.
"I told myself it was justice," Elarisse confessed. "That once I regained my home, I could make everything right."
Her fingers clenched tightly.
"But every compromise demanded another."
"Another alliance."
"Another battle."
"Another innocent caught between causes they never chose."
Nille saw it then.
The woman before him was not a conqueror seeking power.
Nor was she a villain delighting in suffering.
She was someone who had lost everything and had become trapped within the consequences of her own desperation.
"You helped me," Nille said quietly.
Elarisse's composure faltered.
"When I was no one."
"You gave me a place to belong," Nille continued.
"You blessed me."
"You taught me how to understand the space within my own soul."
His voice softened.
"The Luna I knew wouldn't want this."
For the first time since their reunion, uncertainty appeared in Elarisse's eyes.
"I don't know if Luna still exists," she whispered.
Nille stepped forward.
"Then let me remind you."
The words struck harder than any weapon.
Because Luna had never wanted armies.
Never wanted revenge.
She had wanted to go home.
To reclaim the place that was rightfully hers.
To stop being alone.
but something in Elarisse's expression broke mid-sentence.
It wasn't gradual. It was instant, like a candle snuffed out and replaced by something colder than darkness.
Her body stiffened.
Her breathing stopped for half a heartbeat.
Then her silver-white eyes dulled… before igniting again with a corrupted, predatory glow.
Nille stepped forward instinctively. "Elarisse?"
No response.
The air around her warped.
A pressure pressed into the mind itself, heavy, invasive, suffocating. It felt like thought was being overwritten, as if something else had taken hold of her consciousness and was dragging her soul beneath it.
Elarisse's fingers trembled.
Then curled.
Slowly… violently.
A twisted smile formed on her lips, foreign and wrong, as if forced onto a face that no longer belonged to her.
"…Ah."
Her voice came out different.
Deeper.
Layered.
Not hers.
Nyx appeared behind Nille in an instant, his gaze narrowing sharply as he felt the shift in spiritual resonance.
"That's not her," Nyx said coldly.
Nille's eyes widened slightly. "What do you mean?"
Nyx didn't take his eyes off Elarisse.
"The person you knew is gone."
A pause.
Then his expression darkened further.
"Something far stronger… and far more vicious is inside her now."
The swamp wind suddenly died.
Even the water below them stopped rippling.
Elarisse tilted her head slowly, like a puppet testing its strings.
And then she smiled, completely, unnaturally.
Her voice shattered the silence.
"You there…"
The tone was no longer confused or human.
It was amused.
Superior.
Poisoned with delight.
"You insolent little insects…"
The pressure in the air exploded outward.
Runes across distant stones flickered and cracked.
Birds in the marshes dropped mid-flight.
Even the spiritual flow around Nille distorted violently.
"How dare you interfere with my master plan?"
A low laugh followed, soft at first, then escalating into something unstable, almost ecstatic.
"Do you even know who you're dealing with?"
Elarisse's body lifted slightly from the ground, not by movement, but by force, like reality itself was rejecting her weight.
Her aura twisted.
No longer silver twilight.
Now it was a sick, black-violet corruption spiraling like a living storm.
Nyx's voice sharpened. "Nille. Do not engage lightly. This is not possession in the usual sense."
But it was already too late.
Elarisse's head snapped toward Nille with terrifying speed.
And she moved.
The ground beneath her detonated.
A shockwave tore through the swamp behind them as she vanished from sight entirely.
Far away, far beyond the swamp sanctuary, at the edge of the mountain range territory near the broken stone pass, space itself tore open with a violent ripple.
Nille barely had time to stabilize his footing as he was forced back several meters by the arrival pressure alone.
Dust and shattered rock exploded outward.
And there she stood.
Elarisse.
But not Elarisse.
The mountain winds howled violently around her as if rejecting her presence. Cracks spread through nearby stone pillars simply from her aura leaking outward.
Her head slowly lifted.
Eyes locked onto him.
And she smiled again.
"This world… is always full of pests."
A flick of her hand.
The air distorted.
Invisible force compressed the ground where Nille stood, crushing it inward like an unseen fist.
She didn't wait for confirmation.
She attacked again.
The mountains screamed as the terrain itself ruptured, stone fragments lifted into the air and turned, suspended, then launched like artillery in all directions.
Elarisse moved through it effortlessly, walking through her own destruction as if it were nothing more than falling petals.
Her voice echoed, layered with something inhuman beneath it.
"I was almost amused… watching you cling to her."
"But attachment is such a fragile weakness."
She tilted her head again.
And this time, the corruption in her aura sharpened into a killing intent so dense it felt like the sky itself was collapsing.
"You ruined everything."
"So I'll erase you first."
Her hand lifted once more.
The mountain range trembled.
And reality itself began to bend toward annihilation as she prepared to strike with something far beyond human comprehension.
The mountain pass became a collapsing arena of shattered stone and distorted wind.
Nille had never experienced pressure like this.
Not even close.
From the very first exchange, he understood something fundamental, this was not just strength. It was execution beyond comprehension. Every movement Elarisse's "other self" used was layered with precision that ignored human limits. There was no wasted motion, no hesitation, no readable rhythm. It was as if she was fighting with techniques refined across centuries of slaughter and refinement.
Nille tried to respond.
He had no choice.
He moved first, bursting forward with controlled speed, gloves tightening as he aimed for her center line. A standard opening. A calculated strike meant to disrupt balance.
But she was already inside his timing.
A single step.
That was all it took.
Her palm met his fist mid-air, not stopping it, not blocking it—but erasing its momentum entirely. The impact rippled through his arm like a shockwave, numbing bone and tendon at once.
Nille's eyes widened.
Impossible…
He rotated instantly, following with a spinning elbow.
She tilted slightly.
The elbow passed harmlessly through empty space.
Then, A strike landed.
Not heavy.
Not flashy.
Just precise.
Her knuckles hit his ribs with surgical accuracy.
CRACK.
Air exploded out of his lungs as pain detonated through his torso. Nille was thrown back without resistance, skidding across fractured stone.
Nyx appeared at his side in an instant, eyes narrowing. "Record everything."
"I am," Nyx replied sharply. His gaze didn't leave Elarisse. "This is not instinctual combat. This is structured martial doctrine far beyond current known systems."
Nille forced himself upright, breathing uneven. "She's reading me before I move…"
"She's not reading you," Nyx said coldly. "She's already finished you."
Elarisse tilted her head slightly, watching them as if evaluating discarded tools.
Then she moved again.
Hyde manifested behind Nille in a violent unfolding of dimensional tension, six retractable arms snapping outward like bladed whips of compressed force.
For a brief moment, it seemed like an advantage.
A counterweight.
A chance.
The six arms struck simultaneously from multiple angles—crushing arcs designed to overwhelm any single opponent's guard.
But Elarisse's other self did not defend.
She advanced.
Straight into the assault.
Her hand blurred.
One arm was caught mid-strike.
And torn off its trajectory with such brutal force that the energy structure itself fractured.
Another arm attempted to pivot, She twisted.
SNAP.
The joint shattered.
A third came in from above.
She caught it.
Held it for half a second.
Then ripped it apart as if it were fabric.
Hyde recoiled violently as two more arms were destroyed in rapid succession, their energy dissipating into unstable fragments that exploded outward harmlessly.
Within seconds, the six arms were gone.
Not blocked.
Not countered.
Dismantled.
Hyde collapsed back into Nille, destabilized.
Nyx's voice tightened. "She's treating dimensional constructs like physical limbs. That level of resistance"
"I know," Nille muttered, wiping blood from his lip. "I felt it…"
Elarisse stepped forward again.
The ground beneath her cracked with each footstep, not from weight—but from pressure in reality itself.
Then the real punishment began.
The next few minutes were not a battle.
It was a correction.
Nille tried everything.
Feints. Counter-angles. Pressure-point entries. Defensive redirection. Even his enhanced tactical timing through the gloves.
Nothing worked.
Every strike he threw was intercepted mid-formation.
Every defense arrived too late.
She didn't overwhelm him with speed alone, she erased the concept of advantage itself. Each time Nille adjusted, she had already adapted to the adjustment before it happened.
A kick shattered his guard.
A palm strike folded his shoulder inward.
An elbow drove him into the ground so hard the stone fractured beneath him.
He tried to rise.
She didn't allow it.
A knee struck his chest.
Then another.
Then a sequence so fast Nyx stopped counting hits and began recording patterns instead.
Nille's vision blurred.
Pain stacked upon pain until his body stopped interpreting it as separate events.
Only impact remained.
Only collapse.
Even the swamp-born resilience in him began to fail under the relentless precision of her assault.
He finally realized something terrifying:
He wasn't losing.
He had already lost.
She was simply finishing it.
Then, abruptly, Everything stopped.
Elarisse's hand paused mid-motion.
Her expression flickered.
The violet-black corruption in her eyes trembled like unstable flame.
"…Huh?"
She blinked once.
Then twice.
The killing intent vanished so suddenly it felt like a switch being turned off in reality itself.
She slowly lowered her hand.
Looked around at the shattered mountains.
At the broken terrain.
At Nille kneeling in the rubble, barely conscious.
Silence stretched.
Then she frowned slightly.
"…What am I doing here?"
Her tone had changed again.
Empty.
Confused.
Like waking from a dream she didn't remember entering.
She turned her back on him without waiting for an answer.
Step by step, she began walking away through the fractured mountain pass, her presence no longer warping space, just fading into something disturbingly normal again.
Nyx's voice dropped low. "She's… gone."
Nille struggled to lift his head. "Elarisse…"
But she didn't turn.
Didn't respond.
Didn't even acknowledge the name.
As she disappeared into the distance, the mountains slowly settled into silence once more.
And Nille remained on the broken ground, not defeated by strength alone…
but by something that could turn a godlike martial system on and off like it was never there at all.