CHAPTER 239: TRAINING

What would you feel when, right in front of your eyes, people die... when someone you know dies... and you are powerless to do anything?

You will curse yourself for being powerless, you will feel the boiling anger, the helpless frustration, and the kind of hatred that sits in your chest like a weight you can’t breathe past.

But what if that same person again sees people die in front of his eyes... and this time he has the power to save them, the strength in his hands, the means to change the outcome... yet still cannot use that power?

It was that same suffocating powerlessness the Whisperer was experiencing. Being bound by the unyielding threads of fate, he could not intervene in worldly affairs. So he simply watched. He saw Ash and Ray fighting the Hollow Puppets, saw their blades cut through the dark, saw them finally strike down the Hollow Mother. They won in the end, they came so close, they almost saved everyone.

Almost.

Until they all died.

Until a loud, earth-shaking explosion consumed everything in a blinding instant.

He witnessed it all, every scream and every moment as it unfolded before his eyes, and yet he could do nothing. He had followed Ash and Ray here, not to fight, but to observe. He wanted to see how they would overcome odds that seemed impossible to defy.

Overcome they did.

But... everything lost its meaning.

He could have stepped forward after everything was over, could have faced them and spoken... but with what face would he appear? With what voice would he admit that he had known something was wrong, that the truth had been clear to him the moment he laid eyes on the creature?

After Ash had asked his advice, the Whisperer had come here and studied the Hollow Mother from afar. He had peered deeper this time, learning more about its hidden abilities, about the strange forces it carried within. Yet even with this knowledge, he could not share it.

And that was fate.

It was fate that everyone died.

It was fate that both Ash and Ray witnessed it with their own eyes.

It was fate that... Ash was fed up with incomplete information.

That was how fate worked, seemingly mysterious, its true purpose unknown. Why what happened had to happen... even the Whisperer could not answer.

...how can these innocent souls affect the tapestry of fate? I cannot understand...

In his long life, he had never questioned fate. Never had he felt disgusted by it. But now... now in just few months, he had felt the weight of its restrictions, the invisible collar tightening around his neck, chained with links harder than diamond.

He felt sorrow, he felt the ache of grief, yet no tears came. They had long dried. There was no water left in his withered body to weep with, not even enough to mourn. What an irony.

That was the destiny of the silent observer, the one who sees all, past, present and future, yet is shackled by them in the end.

Sighing, the Whisperer stood still. Ash and Ray had done what they could. Now, it was his turn.

And so... he waited. And waited.

What would one expect from the dwarfs? After an explosion of such magnitude, anyone would think they would arrive in haste, their faces heavy with anger and grief, demanding answers, perhaps even growing suspicious of the other continents and preparing for war if guilt was found.

At the very least, one would expect them to come and investigate, to uncover the cause of such devastation within their own continent.

But no one came.

Even though the Whisperer remained there for an entire day, watching the silent crater, gazing at nothing but the lonely stone standing in its center, not a single dwarf appeared.

And the truth was... he knew why. He knew the reason no dwarf had set foot here. He knew, but he could never tell anyone.

It was not absolute certainty, but he was almost sure — ninety percent, at least — and now, seeing not a single dwarf arrive, while others had, his suspicions felt all but confirmed.

Humans had come, elves had come, wandering adventurers and the loose alliances of mercenaries had come. Even the distant information guilds, drawn by whispers of the event, had arrived to see for themselves. But after catching sight of the crater’s vast scar upon the land and feeling the oppressive heaviness in the air, they did not dare come close. They lingered at a safe distance, observing from afar.

Yet among them, not a single dwarf.

The reason was simple, and it lay in what he had glimpsed when he looked into the true nature of the Hollow Mother. The grotesque worm Ash and Ray had destroyed in the end... that was the real body of the creature. It had always been too fragile, too exposed, so it had grown a colossal, grotesque shell around itself, a stationary fortress to shield its vulnerable form.

From there, the pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place. Ash had destroyed the shell, and when the worm itself finally perished, the explosion occurred. The Hollow Mother, even in death, had chosen to take everyone with it.

The Whisperer’s mind also returned to an old memory, to the time when the mysterious masked man had slain the Hollow Mother effortlessly, back when the Whisperer was still young.

The truth was simple enough — that man must have bypassed the monstrous shell entirely, striking directly at the small black worm hidden within. And then, just as before, everyone would have died.

Yet one question lingered in the Whisperer’s thoughts like a thorn that refused to be pulled.

How had that man stopped the explosion?

The answer to this question... he did not know. But what he did know was...

The Dwarf Continent is finished, it has already been under the influence of the demons, for a very long time...

The Whisperer thought in silence, his gaze heavy with the weight of certainty.

The reason no dwarf had come was because they were all under the control of the Hollow Mother. Exactly, he suspected, every city had a Hollow Mother of its own, and those Hollow Mothers were, at the end, being controlled by the Hollow Queen.

In theory, that was what the Whisperer had pieced together.

When he examined the body of the Hollow Mother, he could feel a faint but undeniable link between it and something far greater, something similar in essence but much larger and far more powerful. At first, it had been no more than a guess. But now, after seeing that no dwarf came to investigate, while humans, elves, and even members of wandering criminal organizations and information guilds had arrived to observe the crater from a safe distance, his uncertainty began to settle into certainty.

Still, he could not claim to be entirely sure. So he decided to confirm it with his own eyes.

He went to the nearest city and searched for the abomination, and what did he see?

The Hollow Mother was present. Even though he looked directly at it, the monster could not see him. Being an Observer, he could conceal himself so perfectly that no one, not even such a creature, could notice him. It was as if he had erased his very presence from the weave of fate itself.

The process was different from Ash’s Absolute Concealment, though perhaps it was similar in concept... only altered by his own connection to fate.

After checking not one, not two, but three cities, he became certain... there really was a Hollow Queen. And she was most likely in the central city.

...What a hard hurdle...

Indeed, if the matter was not approached with care, millions would die, just like before. Yet even though the Whisperer knew about it, he could not tell anyone.

As long as something was related to Ray and Ash, except for a few certain matters, he could say nothing else to anyone. Not even to them.

Then how were they supposed to get the news...?

Ash will definitely come and check the other cities, and then he will also reach the same conclusion I have reached...

...but what would he even do against a Hollow Queen, about whom even the Whisperer himself did not know enough?

Of course, the old man could go and study the Hollow Queen directly, but he did not wish to step into the central city yet. Not yet. What if he learned its abilities, and whatever he could do right now, also become restricted.

It would be a tragedy.

The only thing he could do was...

To make them strong. I need to train Ash... and Ray too...

The old man was not eager to help Ray, but knowing that he was not bad at heart, and that in a previous fate it had been his actions that led to the world’s destruction, the Whisperer had always carried a lingering sense of unease about him.

But now that everything was shifting, and the future had become unpredictable, he decided it would be better if Ray’s strength could be turned toward protecting the humans rather than destroying them.

And just like that...

The real training sessions for both Ash and Ray were set into motion.

***