Talios-Chapter 49: The "Puppet"

Back at the training ground, the battle remained locked in brutal repetition. Blood traced a thin line from Linh’s mouth, but it was the puppets who were beginning to fail. They could no longer endure a frontal confrontation. His strikes were infrequent, yet each successful blow carried ruin. The more effort the puppets put into dodging, the more openings they exposed.

The next strike never materialized. In a blink, both puppets slipped from his vision, their movements precise and economical. Linh’s right fist cut through empty air as they split—one to his left, one to his right—each lining up a perfectly calculated, rib-crushing jab.

Linh knew it instantly. With his arm fully committed, his right flank lay wide open. He didn’t mind taking hits—but even he doubted these twin strikes would leave him walking away without consequence.

The thought barely formed before he acted. Channeling aura into his leg, Linh propelled himself skyward. Mid-twist, he met the puppets’ gaze, imagining their shock at his grin. Before they could react, the space beneath him erupted—blue flames blooming and licking across their faces.

The compressed plasma was meant to scatter them—sending them flying. It never fulfilled its purpose. Before the blast could finish unfolding, Linh twisted midair, legs snapping upward as his body inverted. Another detonation tore free from his limbs, fiercer than the last, launching him downward like a descending meteor. His fist, wrapped in blue aura, became an arrow of motion. Space itself seemed to stutter—presence, absence, then sudden reappearance. His fist buried itself into the first puppet, aura-laced impact sinking deep. The second puppet, still being pushed back by the earlier explosion, hadn’t even recovered before Linh was already staring it down at point-blank range.

The puppet had no emotions, yet it seemed frozen all the same—whether from simulated fear or sheer processing failure. Linh’s fist drove straight into its core. A heartbeat later, both puppets detonated simultaneously, like carefully primed fireworks.

Then came the aftermath—or more accurately, the math this battle maniac had completely ignored.

From the instant he launched himself upward, the strain he inflicted on the floor ruptured it from within. The resulting quake was so violent it could easily be mistaken for a mountain giving way.

When Linh drove himself downward once more, the blast surged upward, ripping into the high ceiling and rupturing it in turn. Then came the puppets—detonating in violent succession, sealing the destruction.

One puppet was driven downward, vanishing into the floor beneath. The other was blasted sideways, tearing through the wall and only coming to rest after slamming into the fortified barrier of the adjacent room.

Linh threw his head back, roaring, hand on his waist, smirk wide, radiating unrestrained self-indulgence.

Toah was momentarily speechless. The training ground was unrecognizable—its white tiled walls and floors shattered beyond any resemblance to their former state. And this was supposed to be a fortified facility?

Toah surveyed the devastation before speaking in a level tone.

"I wonder who’s in charge of this room and its assets," he said. "Halh... or That Ecnes?"

Linh laughed it off entirely. "Halh or That Ecnes—I’ll answer to either," he said before roaring, "Now another!" His gaze swept the ruins, openly begging for more destruction.

Through the shattered opening left by the second puppet, a lone figure stood inside the adjacent room—head bowed, utterly still.

From where they stood, Linh cracked his neck, excitement flashing in his eyes. "Looks like the Grade 14s are kept in there," he said before charging in, fists blazing toward the figure’s bowed head.

A Grade 14 puppet was in an entirely different class from the ones Linh had just destroyed. It possessed the strength to confront Late Stage 3 Awakeners irrespective of their layers—so long as they had not surpassed the second.

A puppet only activated once it sensed intent. Until then, it stood motionless in its chamber, head lowered. Knowing this, Linh charged without hesitation. This was an opponent capable of meeting him evenly—and the thought exhilarated him. He poured everything into a single punch, aura roaring as it drove forward.

The force of his punch compressed the air itself, sending it crashing into the walls and unleashing another tremor. As the shockwave dissipated, Linh’s eyes widened in disbelief.

His punch had connected—of that there was no doubt. He hadn’t expected it to, but he hadn’t held back either. Yet instead of impact, there was only resistance. He looked again. The puppet, head still bowed, had caught his punch barehanded. His fist was trapped in its grip, unmoving.

The shock barely lasted a moment. Before he could react, Linh was wrenched like a rag doll—not merely pulled, but hauled upward. Still gripped by the fist, his body was lifted whole before being driven down in a brutal slam.

The impact came too fast for pain to register—blood burst from his mouth before thought could follow. Then he felt it: sinking. The tiled floor collapsed beneath him like butter under a heated blade as his body thundered downward, tearing through floor after floor, six floors shattered before he finally crashed into the third.

...

Moments earlier...

In a room once devoid of light, a trembling quake of uncertain origin jolted a lone individual awake. He sat up, legs crossed, dissatisfaction clear in his eyes as they rebelled against the intrusion of wakefulness. His mind struggled to grasp what had disturbed his rest.

Had Elmah been there, he would have recognized him instantly—the same man from the night before who rambled about topics no one asked for.

After leaving the meadow that night, Znoh had simply gotten lost. Uncertain which quarters were meant to be his temporary residence, he had wandered into this room instead. It was profoundly quiet, its white tiles cool and welcoming. And truly—where else could one find better rest than a place so grand and undisturbed?

For days, Znoh had neither rested nor slept, racing endlessly atop Mambal’s back toward the burial of the King’s father.

From the instant he received the news until his arrival at the court—two and a half relentless days—he had remained in constant motion, taking every shortcut available. He had not once dismounted, rested, or slept.

In a place this serene, he could finally allow himself to rest

And so he lay upon the cool floor and slipped into sleep. The night vanished almost instantly, replaced by dawn that felt far too soon. Though court awaited later, it was still early—and he hadn’t even been allowed to savor rest before being torn from it. By an uncultured rumbling that appeared to originate from the adjacent room.

The more he attempted to ignore it, the louder and more violent it became—the tremors escalating into outright absurdity.

If this wasn’t deliberate, designed solely to steal his early morning rest, what else could it possibly be?

The slams escalated, pounding that side of the wall with such force that even the most lifeless rock might have stirred in protest.

His face darkened into a deep frown. As though mocking his helplessness, a tremor—bolder than any before—rippled through the room, striking three times in rapid succession.

He rose, face hardening, eyes cast downward. His theory crystallized—this was a deliberate strike to rob him of rest. With a thunderous crash, the wall of his room exploded inward, and a barely humanoid catastrophe surged through, aimed at his head with lethal speed.

Enraged, he swatted it aside like an annoying fly, hurling it against the wall until it detonated on impact.

Clearly, the device had been meant to explode at his face. But before he could dwell, the perpetrator appeared himself, charging forward to ensure the task was completed.

In full form, the figure hurled itself at him, bare fist outstretched, targeting his face with murderous precision.

If he failed to annihilate this nuisance, how could he face his own self—the self robbed of its intimate hours of sleep? Today demanded reckoning, and he intended to deliver it.

This enemy of peace sent an aura-imbued fist hurtling toward his face with unmistakable intent to destroy. With measured precision, he caught it mid-air, and with a single motion, hurled the nuisance into the floor. It had to be buried.

Linh slammed into the last floor, coughing up a handful of blood before rising again. What sort of puppet was this? Since when had fighting someone of equal strength become so one-sided, with his punch being held as if it were nothing, slamming him through floors—floors that were supposed to be sturdy.

Fascinated, he fixed his gaze upward. In a blink, he was above the puppet, fist aimed for its face.

The puppet hesitated. Hadn’t this fellow thrown this punch before? It didn’t guard this time. Linh’s fist met an unexpected counter—a slap across the face sending his full body crashing through the side walls.

Bouncing back like a coiled spring, Linh struck again—same move, same fist. Znoh’s face contorted as he executed a spinning punch from above, slamming Linh face-first into the floor once more.