CHAPTER 527: REASON VS INSTINCTS

Across the burning span of Aesmirius’s domain, the storm of battle stilled for only a breath—just long enough for Liam to understand the truth that had been stalking him since the moment he stepped into this realm. The solution wasn’t another strategy. It wasn’t another counter-calculation or another layered feint. It wasn’t intellect at all.

It was the abandonment of it.

Reason—his lifelong compass, his blade sharper than any weapon—was precisely what chained him. The illusion didn’t simply predict him; it mirrored the logic behind every move he made. Every thought, every deduction, every conclusion... the illusion had already reached it. That made his greatest strength his ultimate downfall.

So the only path left was the one that no logic could follow.

Instinct. Pure, feral, untethered instinct.

He let the leash slip from his thoughts. He quieted the inner strategist. He dimmed the calculating flame of his mind until it became nothing but an onlooking witness to the movement of his own body.

And the moment he embraced that wild emptiness—

He moved.

The world snapped back into chaos as Liam burst forward, crossing the distance in a blur of black flame. The illusion met him head-on, their clash detonating the golden grasslands into a wave of rupturing energy. But this time, Liam’s movements were nothing like before.

He twisted mid-dash, cutting sideways at a jagged angle that made no physical sense—almost like he was slipping between frames of reality. His dagger flickered from one hand to the other so fast it seemed to teleport. He dropped low, only to spring up with a rising kick wreathed in molten fire, then spun without warning, slashing backward with unpredictable fury.

The illusion parried one blow, dodged another, but its eyes sharpened in faint, visible confusion.

Liam felt nothing but motion. His body flowed, his Myst surged, and his instincts roared louder than thought. Even he didn’t know what his next step would be until it happened. He attacked not in combinations, but in explosions of unpredictable violence.

His limbs acted on their own, as his weapons shifted without command.

In a shift motion, a dagger vanished into shadow as a longsword erupted from his palm in its place. Then a hybrid javelin of blackened flame solidified in his grasp, which he threw with a barbaric force that warped the air around it.

The illusion dodged, its body trailing shadows as it blurred away—but Liam was already there, reaching it with a lunge powered by instinctive footwork that defied rhythm or readible form. He struck again, faster, and wilder, every movement born from the moment.

The illusion’s retaliation was precise, merciless and surgical. In an instant, blades of shadow shot from beneath Liam’s feet, aiming to pierce and cut off his legs. Howeve, he was able to react quickly as he flipped and landed sideways like a beast avoiding a trap.

Immediately after his landing, a column of hellish flame roared toward him, ready to devour him whole. But instead of dodging it, Liam charged straight into it, phasing through with an eruption of dark flame that split it in half.

As Liam approached, the illusion tried to mimic him—matching the strange twist of Liam’s torso, the low stance, and the odd pivot of his heel—but the imitation was sloppy. Wrong.

The illusion couldn’t mimic what it could not anticipate.

Abandoning it’s attempt of mimicry, it coated it’s fist with flames and lunged it at Liam’s approaching skull.

Before the fist could land on Liam, he arched backward with a fluidity that made his spine seem to melt, letting the blow tear through the air above him. He rolled beneath the illusion’s swinging arm, slashing upward with a dagger that had only existed a heartbeat ago.

The illusion recoiled to avoid the strike, but the dagger in Liam’s hand dissolved into writhing tendrils of shadow, instantly replaced by the longsword he had wielded moments before.

The illusion’s eyes went wide as the sword’s edge lunged toward its head. In a flash, it summoned a shadow mask over its face, reinforced with dense shadow along the side the blade was coming for. When the sword struck the mask, the illusion skidded backward just slightly, the impact barely holding it at bay.

The shadow mask dissolved, revealing the illusion’s face, twisted in a resentful grimace as it clenched its teeth. It had mere fractions of a second to react, barely enough to defend itself from the relentless assault.

But Liam didn’t let up.

In the next instant, he switched the longsword but to a dagger and tossed it skyward without reason as he darted toward the illusion. As he closed the distance between them, he caught the dagger mid-spin just to slam the hilt into the illusion’s jaw as sparks burst. The illusion flew back—only to catch itself and retaliate with a torrent of shadow spears.

Liam moved in a blur as he didn’t bother to appears the incoming spears. Some of the spears grazed him, carving lines of blood across his torso—but he didn’t slow. His body had no time to process pain. Or anything at all.

He lunged again.

Their blades collided—dagger to dagger—sparks raining like meteors as they clashed, separated, and clashed again. The illusion’s movements remained sharp, perfect in form, and devastating in execution. But it wasn’t enough to keep Liam’s madness at bay.

Liam’s next attack was a diagonal upward slash. However, mid-slash, he twisted his wrist making the blade dissolved as a compressed orb of flame formed in his palm.

Without pause, he slammed the orb point-blank into the illusion’s gut.

The explosion that followed carved a crater beneath them, as the illusion flew through a ridge of molten rock.

But Liam didn’t pause as he sprinted after the illusion with blistering velocity. He summoned two Umbra Stars—miniature suns of blackened radiance—launching them in spiraling orbits. They curved unpredictably, weaving through the rising dust storms toward their target.

The illusion slashed them apart with arcs of shadow—but its eyes narrowed. It was struggling—not dying, not overwhelmed completely, but struggling. For the first time since the fight started.

Liam crashed into it again.

Their weapons clashed in flurries too fast to follow. Flame collided with flame. Shadow devoured shadow. The world dimmed with every hit. Liam switched stances at random—aggressive one second, evasive the next, barbarically offensive the moment after.

Even he was just barely holding on.

His mind drifted like a ghost behind the curtains of the battle, watching as his body acted in savage, brilliant bursts. His thoughts had become observers

’So this is what it means to let go...?’

As the fight raged on, shadow whips from the illusion’s back cracked through the air as firestorms spun around its limbs. It blurred through the battlefield, tearing trenches through the golden soil.

Their fight became a cyclone.

A dance of destruction.

A maelstrom of weapon-fire and shadow-flare.

Every second, Liam’s daggers morphed into javelins. Javelins into longswords. Longswords into shadow-forged claws. Claws into explosive flame orbs.

He was killing the landscape. Burning the very air as he shattered the horizon.

But the illusion struck back with just as much devastation.

Its flames formed spiraling scythes. Its shadows erupted like serpents. It slammed Liam through a boulder, then caught the incoming counterattack with a vicious spear of darkness.

And through it all the spiraling chaos, Liam could feel it. The strange, unnerving stillness beneath the chaos.

A stagnation.

A balance.

The fight wasn’t rising. Nor falling. No advantage lasted more than a heartbeat. Every moment Liam gained ground, the illusion took it back. Every adaptation Liam made, the illusion matched. It couldn’t mimic him anymore—but it could respond. Adjust. Compensate.

They weren’t progressing.

They weren’t declining.

They were locked.

They were just... equal.

Perfectly, horrifically equal.

Liam realized this as he dodged a slash—no, his body dodged it—while his mind drifted deeper into that silent space where clarity took form.

’This isn’t moving up or down,’ he thought distantly. ’We’re have have been like this for the last few minutes, and nothing us changing. No even a small difference between us. It’s all just... even. Why?’

His body clashed blades with the illusion again, fire roaring in the friction between metal.

’Why are we equal?’