Chapter 158
Rume Ironbark allowed the conversation to settle before speaking again. The old merchant could already see the tension leaving Nille's shoulders. The young shaman wasn't relaxed yet, but at least he wasn't carrying the weight of the world on his back anymore.
"Good," Rume said while standing from his chair. "Now that you've stopped trying to solve every problem in existence, how about actually doing something productive?"
Nille raised an eyebrow.
"Productive?"
Rume grinned.
"Rune Forge recently completed our newest training facility."
That immediately caught Nille's attention.
"The upper complex?"
"The very same."
Rume looked unusually proud.
"It cost more money than I care to admit."
"That means it was expensive."
"It was extremely expensive."
The merchant shook his head dramatically.
"So naturally, I'd like someone capable of breaking it to test whether the engineers did their job correctly."
Nille laughed.
"I think that's the first time I've been invited to destroy company property."
"That's because you're not paying for the repairs."
Rume pointed toward him.
"One of the benefits of being our biggest benefactor."
The old merchant paused before adding another thought.
"Actually, there was something else."
Nille waited.
Rume folded his arms.
"If you're interested, Rune Forge recently acquired a high-tier spell archive."
That earned a genuine look of interest.
"High-tier?"
"Very."
Rume smiled.
"And before you ask, yes. I'd give it to you for free."
Nille immediately shook his head.
"No."
The answer came so quickly that Rume blinked.
"No?"
Nille nodded.
"My current spells still need work."
The merchant looked skeptical.
"Nille."
"I'm serious."
The young shaman leaned back slightly.
"Desintegration."
"Healing."
"Path Frequency."
"Psychokinesis."
"Spell Memory."
He counted each one mentally.
"I honestly feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of what they can do."
His eyes drifted toward the city beyond the window.
"The more I learn, the more I realize I only understand the first layer."
Rume remained silent.
Because that answer was not what most awakened would have given.
Most students chased new abilities.
New techniques.
New powers.
Anything that increased their arsenal.
Nille seemed more interested in understanding what he already possessed.
The merchant slowly nodded.
"A reasonable answer."
Nille smiled.
"I want to become an all-rounder."
That caught Rume's attention.
"Like my great grand mother who was called as War Babaylan."
The old merchant immediately understood.
Nille continued.
"She once mentioned, she wasn't limited by a single situation, because of war she had to face uncertainty in the past"
"One enemy."
"A hundred enemies."
"Close range."
"Long range."
"Spiritual threats."
"Physical threats."
He shook his head.
"She always seemed capable of adapting."
The image of Amparo standing against impossible odds remained deeply engraved in his memory.
"I want that."
Rume smiled faintly.
"A War Babaylan."
Nille nodded.
"A real one."
The merchant tapped his fingers against the table thoughtfully.
"Then you should understand something."
The old dwarf leaned forward.
"Shamanism isn't a single path."
Nille already suspected that.
Rume continued.
"It's one of the oldest cultivation systems known to awakened mortals."
"But over thousands of years, different cultures interpreted it differently."
He held up a hand.
"There are generally five major classifications."
The merchant began listing them.
"The Totemic Warrior."
"Battle-Shamans who fight directly on the frontline."
"They channel spirits and elemental forces into their weapons and bodies."
"Axes. Spears. Greatswords. Shields."
"Brutal combatants."
Nille immediately imagined several hunters fitting that description.
"The second is the Nature Brawler."
"Spirit Walkers."
"Shamans who channel animal spirits."
"They emphasize mobility, instinct, transformation, and enhanced physical combat."
"Fast."
"Aggressive."
"Hard to pin down."
Rume raised another finger.
"The third is the Elemental Channeler."
"Or Elemental Monk."
"These are individuals who use martial arts as a medium for spellcasting."
"Every strike carries magical principles."
"Every movement influences spiritual energy."
"They treat their own bodies as conduits."
That category immediately sounded familiar.
Perhaps a little too familiar.
"The fourth."
"The Hexblade."
"Cinder Casters."
"They mix weapon combat with curses and spiritual afflictions."
"They weaken opponents before finishing them."
"Dangerous specialists."
"And the fifth."
The merchant's expression became more serious.
"The Necromancer-Medium."
"One of the oldest forms."
"They use spirits, soul threads, talismans, ancestral contracts, and environmental manipulation."
"They rarely fight directly."
"They make the battlefield itself fight for them."
Nille listened carefully.
The classifications were broader than he expected.
Rume continued.
"Here at Yamatai Academy, the curriculum mostly focuses on a combination of the Totemic Warrior and the Elemental Channeler."
The merchant pointed toward the academy skyline visible from the city.
"Most graduates develop aspects of both."
"They learn to fight physically while maintaining magical versatility."
He then added:
"Some lessons touch on the other traditions."
"But not deeply."
Nille nodded.
That made sense.
Rume continued.
"Elsewhere in the world, things are different."
"There are academies dedicated almost entirely to Spirit Walkers."
"Others specialize in Hexblade cultivation."
"A few focus exclusively on Necromancer-Medium traditions."
The merchant smiled.
"And each of those academies governs their own sectors."
Nille immediately noticed the implication.
"But not like Yamatai."
"Exactly."
Rume nodded.
"Most academies oversee a single domain."
"Perhaps two."
"Yamatai is unique."
His expression grew serious.
"We manage twelve separate isolated realms."
"Twelve."
The significance of that number was difficult to ignore.
It explained why Yamatai possessed such unusual influence despite remaining relatively hidden from ordinary society.
Then Rume's gaze returned to Nille.
"There's another reason I don't think you need a new spell right now."
Nille raised an eyebrow.
The merchant pointed directly at him.
"Most students have too many abilities."
That was unexpected.
Rume continued.
"They collect techniques."
"They collect spells."
"They collect blessings."
"They collect artifacts."
His tone carried years of observation.
"But eventually they stagnate."
Nille remained quiet.
Because he had seen it himself.
Awakened individuals with dozens of abilities but little mastery.
People who knew many techniques but understood none of them deeply.
"They become wide."
Rume tapped the table.
"But not deep."
The old merchant's eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"Your situation is different."
He gestured toward Nille's chest.
"Everything you possess originates from a single source."
Nille thought about the Seed
Rume had finally noticed the pattern.
"You don't have multiple unrelated blessings."
"You have one blessing expressing and connected itself in many different ways."
Nille felt a chill run down his spine.
Because that was exactly what Osamu's conversation had made him realize earlier.
The merchant continued.
"Your abilities all seem connected."
"Different branches."
"Different functions."
"But the same root."
His gaze sharpened.
Nille remained silent as Rume's words settled into his thoughts.
The Seed.
The term had surfaced too many times recently to be ignored.
Nymara had hinted at it.
Nyx and Hyde both became connected to it.
The Spiritual Tree Core originated from it.
The Buntala weapons reacted to it.
Even the Symbiote Thread that was once the celestial cloth somehow traced its existence back to that same mysterious origin. mybe that why the cloth reacted to nille because he has the seed.
At first, Nille believed these were separate blessings that had somehow gathered around him through coincidence. But the more he learned, the harder it became to maintain that assumption.
What if they were never separate to begin with?
The thought lingered.
If a tree produced branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, nobody would mistake them as unrelated things. They appeared different because they served different purposes, yet all of them originated from the same root.
Perhaps his abilities functioned the same way.
The Symbiote Thread adapted and evolved.
The Spiritual Tree Core generated and regulated spiritual energy.
The Spatial Enclave imposed his own laws upon reality.
Spell Memory collected fragments of magical knowledge.
At first glance, they appeared completely unrelated.
Yet beneath the surface, all of them shared one common characteristic.
Growth.
That realization made him pause.
The Seed never seemed designed to grant a fixed power.
Instead, every manifestation he possessed felt capable of evolving.
Learning.
Expanding.
Adapting.
Almost as if the Seed itself was never intended to be a weapon.
It was a foundation.
A beginning.
A source from which countless possibilities could emerge.
Nille stared at the city outside the window while another thought surfaced.
Temria.
The Seed Bearer.
The ancient spirit who had entrusted the Seed to one of his Filipino ancestors generations ago.
Why?
Out of all the bloodlines in existence, why his?
What had Temria seen?
Or perhaps the more troubling question—
What had Temria expected?
The thought sent an uncomfortable feeling through him.
Because if Osamu was correct, if ancient events had been influencing his lineage long before he was born, then perhaps his existence wasn't entirely accidental.
Not destiny.
Nille disliked that word.
It implied that his choices didn't matter.
But there was a difference between destiny and preparation.
Maybe someone had simply planted a seed and waited to see what would grow.
And now, centuries later, that answer was standing inside Yamatai Academy trying to understand what he had inherited.
His gaze shifted toward his own hand.
A hand capable of wielding the Symbiote Thread.
A hand capable of casting spatial magic.
A hand capable of shaping spiritual energy through the Tree Core.
Yet despite all that power, he still felt like he was standing at the entrance of something much larger.
Rume was right.
Nille had spent months learning how to use the leaves.
The branches.
The fruit.
The visible parts of the tree.
But he knew almost nothing about the root itself.
And somehow, that root felt older than every mystery he had encountered so far.
For a long moment, neither he nor Rume spoke.
The cafeteria noises faded into the background.
Nille simply sat there, staring beyond the city skyline, wondering if everything he had gained was not a collection of blessings,
but the gradual awakening of a single one.
Nille remained silent as Rume's words settled into his thoughts.
The Seed.
The term had surfaced too many times recently to be ignored.
Osamu had hinted at it.
Nyx seemed connected to it.
The Buntala weapons responded to it.
The Symbiote Thread evolved through it.
Even his Spatial Enclave appeared to draw from principles connected to it.
At first, Nille had believed these were separate blessings gathered through coincidence. But the more he learned, the harder it became to maintain that belief.
What if they were never separate?
If a tree produced branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, nobody would mistake them as unrelated things. They looked different because they served different purposes, yet all originated from the same root.
Perhaps his abilities functioned in the same way.
The Symbiote Thread adapted.
The Spatial Enclave imposed laws.
Spell Memory reconstructed knowledge.
The Buntala transformed according to need.
At first glance, they appeared unrelated.
Yet beneath the surface, they all shared one common trait.
Growth.
The Seed never seemed designed to grant a fixed power.
Everything connected to it evolved.
Learned.
Expanded.
Adapted.
Almost as though the Seed itself was not a weapon, but a foundation from which countless possibilities could emerge.
His thoughts drifted toward Temria.
The Seed Bearer.
The ancient spirit who had entrusted the Seed to one of his Filipino ancestors generations ago.
Why?
What had Temria seen in his bloodline?
Or perhaps a more unsettling question
What had Temria expected to happen?
Nille frowned slightly.
He disliked the idea of destiny.
It implied that his choices didn't matter.
But there was a difference between destiny and preparation.
Perhaps someone had simply planted a seed centuries ago and waited to see what would grow.
And now, after countless generations, the answer was sitting inside a cafeteria overlooking a modern city while trying to understand what he had inherited.
His fingers tightened slightly around his drink.
For all the powers he possessed, he still felt as though he had only glimpsed the surface of something far larger.
And perhaps that was where Rume's observation became frighteningly accurate.
Most awakened individuals accumulated powers.
Spells.
Artifacts.
Blessings.
Titles.
Nille was different.
Unknown to almost everyone—including many of the experts who had examined him—he wasn't carrying multiple unrelated gifts.
He wasn't even carrying a magical ore, a spirit crystal, or some legendary artifact embedded within his body.
What existed inside him was something far rarer.
Far older.
A Core Tree.
A living spiritual foundation born from the Seed itself.
Even Nyx, who managed the Core Tree, treated it less like an object and more like a growing ecosystem.
The Spiritual Tree Core wasn't merely generating energy.
It was becoming the central framework upon which every future ability would eventually be built.
And that realization made Rume's words take on an entirely different meaning.
The merchant smiled.
"So before you go chasing another spell..."
He pointed toward Nille's chest.
"Maybe learn what the thing inside you can already do."
The old merchant stood and adjusted his coat.
Nille watched him quietly.
Neither of them fully realized how close Rume's guess actually was.
The old dwarf believed Nille possessed an extraordinary blessing.
The truth was considerably stranger.
The blessing wasn't the source.
The Core Tree was.
And the Core Tree itself was merely the latest stage of something that had begun centuries ago.
Rume grinned.
"Because if I'm right..."
His eyes gleamed with amusement.
"You haven't even reached the trunk of the tree yet."
"And you're still discovering leaves."
For a brief moment, Nille almost laughed.
Because the merchant had intended it as a metaphor.
Yet unknown to Rume, it might have been the most accurate description anyone had given of his situation so far.
Nille wasn't discovering separate powers.
He was discovering branches.
And somewhere deep beneath all of them, hidden below every spell, every artifact, every blessing, and every mystery, a root system continued to grow quietly within him, waiting for the day he finally understood what had truly been planted inside his bloodline.
Nille's thoughts immediately began connecting the pieces together.
If his Spatial Enclave could create a separate space connected to reality...
And if the Core Tree acted as the primary energy source that allowed magical laws to manifest...
Then a natural question followed.
Could a Spatial Enclave eventually function like the Isolated Sectors?
The idea sounded absurd at first.
Yet the more he examined it, the less impossible it became.
The twelve isolated sectors around Yamatai were not simply pocket dimensions. They possessed stable environments, independent ecosystems, spiritual circulation, unique resources, and most importantly, their own internal laws that remained separated from the mortal realm while still being connected to it.
Nille's Spatial Enclave already demonstrated the first requirement.
It could create a separate domain.
A space where his influence was stronger.
A place where reality itself acknowledged his presence differently.
The problem was scale.
His current Enclave was closer to a room than a world.
A temporary structure rather than a permanent ecosystem.
But wasn't that exactly what a sapling was compared to a forest?
His thoughts drifted toward the Core Tree.
Unlike ordinary awakened abilities, the Core Tree constantly generated and refined spiritual energy.
Not infinite energy.
But renewable energy.
That distinction mattered.
If enough energy was supplied into the Enclave continuously, then theoretically the space could become more stable over time.
Stable spaces could support structures.
Stable structures could support environments.
Stable environments could eventually support life.
The logic itself wasn't flawed.
The challenge was the amount of power required.
A single isolated sector likely consumed spiritual energy on a scale that most awakened individuals couldn't even comprehend.
Even Apo Lakkay Masalanta or Elarisse Bathalienne de Tamawon would likely find such a feat difficult without preparation.
Yet Nille wasn't trying to create a sector immediately.
He was thinking about progression.
A room becoming a building.
A building becoming a domain.
A domain becoming a territory.
A territory becoming a world.
His eyes widened slightly.
The idea reminded him of something.
The Seed.
Every ability connected to it shared the same characteristic.
Growth through stages.
The Symbiote Thread evolved.
Spell Memory accumulated knowledge.
The Core Tree expanded through cultivation.
What if the Spatial Enclave followed the same principle?
What if its final purpose was never merely storage or battlefield control?
What if it was meant to become a genuine realm?
Not a copy of the twelve sectors.
Not a naturally formed dimension.
But a territory cultivated through the Core Tree's energy.
A realm whose laws originated from him.
Nille immediately recognized the dangers of such thinking.
He was nowhere near that level.
The spiritual cost alone would probably collapse him.
His current Core Tree could sustain advanced spells, but maintaining an independent ecosystem was an entirely different category of challenge.
Still...
The concept made sense.
The isolated sectors did not become what they were overnight.
Someone had built them.
Someone had stabilized them.
Someone had fed them energy for generations.
The difference was that Nille's potential realm would not rely on external foundations.
It would rely on the Core Tree.
A living spiritual engine growing alongside him.
For the first time, Nille began to understand why Nyx treated the Core Tree so carefully.
Perhaps it wasn't merely a source of power.
Perhaps it was the cornerstone of something much larger.
Something that had not yet reached maturity.
And if that theory was correct, then the Spatial Enclave wasn't his greatest ability.
It was merely the first visible sign of what the Seed ultimately intended to create.
Rume didn't sit back down after his last remark. Instead, he stayed standing, as if the conversation had already shifted from theory to movement.
"Finish your drink," he said casually, glancing at Nille's half-filled cup. "And come with me."
Nille blinked. "Now?"
"Unless you've got somewhere more important to be," Rume replied, already turning toward the exit.
That was enough to make Nille pause. He didn't, actually.
Still, he hesitated just a second longer before standing.
They walked out of the cafeteria and into the quieter upper corridors of the Rune Forge facility. The hum of distant machinery replaced the earlier noise of conversation, and the air gradually shifted—cleaner, colder, more controlled.
Nille finally broke the silence.
"Where are we going?"
Rume didn't look back. "The tenth floor."
"That's… above your office."
"Yes."
Nille frowned slightly. "That's the artifact storage section."
"It was," Rume corrected.
That made him slow his steps.
"What do you mean was?"
Rume finally glanced over his shoulder, a faint grin on his face. "You really think I'd leave a perfectly good training opportunity sitting unused just because someone labeled it 'storage'?"
Nille didn't answer immediately.
Because that sounded like something Rume would absolutely do.
They stepped into a lift-like rune platform embedded in the wall. Rume tapped a sigil, and the platform hummed to life, lifting them smoothly upward.
The silence inside the moving chamber felt heavier.
Then Rume spoke again, this time more casually.
"You've been staying with us for a while now."
Nille looked at him. "Temporarily."
"That's what I mean."
The lift continued upward.
Rume leaned back against the rune frame, arms folded.
"You don't really stay anywhere, do you?"
Nille frowned. "I have places I can stay."
"Not the same thing."
That line lingered longer than expected.
Rume's voice softened a fraction, not sentimental, but observant.
"You move too much. Train too much. Think too much. Always somewhere between one objective and the next."
Nille didn't immediately respond.
Rume continued anyway.
"I've seen a lot of young awakened in my time. Some burn out. Some settle too early. Some get trapped by comfort."
He glanced at Nille.
"But you… you're different."
Nille raised an eyebrow slightly. "Is that good or bad?"
Rume gave a short laugh. "Neither. It's just rare."
The lift chimed softly as they passed another level.
Rume exhaled through his nose.
"I envy your age, you know."
That caught Nille off guard.
"…You?"
"I don't look it, but yes," Rume said, waving a hand dismissively. "Not the foolish parts. The part where everything still expands. Where your body doesn't argue with your ambitions yet."
He tapped his own chest lightly.
"At some point, you start planning like the world has limits because you do."
Nille stayed quiet.
Rume tilted his head slightly.
"But something's changed with you recently."
Nille's gaze sharpened. "Changed how?"
The lift slowed slightly as they approached the upper floors.
Rume spoke more carefully now.
"The connection you carry… it's not the same as a few days ago."
That made Nille stiffen.
Rume noticed immediately.
"Don't panic. I'm not saying it became stronger." He paused. "I'm saying it became clearer."
Nille frowned. "Clearer?"
The lift stopped.
A soft click echoed through the platform.
Rume stepped out first.
"As if something inside you stopped being noise and started becoming structure."
Nille followed him into a wide corridor lined with sealed rune doors. Each one pulsed faintly with layered protection arrays.
Rume walked at an easy pace now.
"You used to feel like someone carrying multiple forces at once. Now it feels like they're all… responding to the same pulse."
Nille's thoughts flickered immediately to the Seed, the Core Tree, the Enclave, the Thread—
Rume raised a hand.
"I don't need the details," he interrupted lightly. "I'm not your instructor on that matter."
He stopped in front of a large double door etched with deep golden runes.
"But I can tell when someone stops being scattered."
Rume placed his palm against the seal.
A brief surge of light ran through the door.
"It usually happens right before they either stabilize…" he said, glancing at Nille, "or break."
The doors unlocked with a heavy resonance and slowly opened.
Beyond it was not storage.
It was space.
A massive, open training hall expanded far beyond what the building's exterior should have allowed. Floating rune platforms hovered in layered formations. Gravity-stabilized arenas rotated slowly in the air. Training constructs stood dormant along the edges like silent guardians waiting to be awakened.
Nille stepped forward slightly without realizing it.
"…This wasn't here before."
"It was," Rume said. "Just not used like this."
He walked inside, hands in his pockets.
"We're on the tenth floor of Rune Forge Foundation."
A pause.
"Top level."
He gestured upward, though there was nothing visible above them.
"The five floors below this are artifact-secured vaults. High-risk, high-value storage. Things that shouldn't be moved lightly."
Nille looked around slowly.
"And you turned the top floor into this?"
Rume shrugged.
"I turned it into something useful."
He walked toward the center of the hall.
"Artifacts can sit still for decades. People can't."
Nille followed, still taking in the scale of it.
Rume stopped and turned to face him.
"This is why I brought you here."
Nille looked up. "To test it?"
Rume shook his head.
"To test you."
A faint silence spread through the hall.
Rume pointed lightly toward the arena platforms.
"Pick whatever theory you've been thinking about lately. Spatial Enclave. Core Tree. Whatever is currently making you stare at ceilings instead of sleeping properly."
Nille gave him a look. "You noticed that?"
"I notice everything I fund," Rume replied flatly.
Then his tone softened slightly.
"But more importantly…"
He crossed his arms.
"You don't need another lecture right now."
A pause.
"You need contact with reality that pushes back."
Rume's eyes narrowed just a little, not hostile—measuring.
"And I want to see what happens when that 'single root' of yours actually meets resistance."
He stepped aside and gestured to the training hall.
"So tell me, Nille…"
A faint grin returned to his face.
"Are you going to keep thinking about what you are…"
"…or are you finally going to test what you can do?"
Rume let out a slow breath, gesturing around the training grounds as the air shimmered faintly with dense mana.
"This place is saturated," he said. "Even staff below Level 10 can barely stay standing here."
He glanced at Nille, making sure he was following.
"And before you start comparing yourself to others, you need to understand how Yamatai's ranking system actually works. It hasn't changed in years, but it's not as simple as the numbers make it look."
He tapped the floor lightly with his boot.
"Most students enter as Level 2. That just means 'newly awakened.' But that number alone is misleading."
Rume turned slightly, as if recalling old lectures.
"In simple terms, what they call Level 2 can already represent something like a spiritual capacity of 2000 units. That's the easiest way Professor Caelum Verdanis Eruien explains it."
He raised a hand, shaping the idea in the air.
"Think of it like this: your spiritual energy is a storage system. Every spell, every skill, every ability consumes energy points from that storage."
He pointed toward the academy grounds.
"That's why the Shamatic Forgers and builders created measurement artifacts—to scan an awakened person's total spiritual storage capacity. They don't measure 'power' directly. They measure how much you can hold."
A faint grin crossed his face.
"Like a power bank. A big one, small one, it doesn't matter how fast you use it if your capacity is low."
Then his expression turned more serious.
"But don't mistake it for a perfect law. It isn't. Consumption varies. Efficiency differs. Not every spell costs the same for every person."
He flexed his hand, as if weighing something invisible.
"For example… I can swing my hammer and cast a Tier 4 pulverization spell at the same time. Wide-range impact, about twenty meters. Force output? Around four tons on impact."
He looked at Nille directly now.
"But that doesn't mean I'm just 'strong.' It means I know how to convert and control my energy efficiently. Someone else with higher capacity might still waste it and lose."
Rume lowered his hand.
"So don't get trapped thinking levels are everything. In Yamatai, levels are just a rough map, not the law itself."
Nille had already understood most of it.
The explanations, the numbers, the system behind Yamatai's ranking, it was all familiar now. Complicated, yes, but not new.
What caught his attention instead was the place itself.
Rume had built a training space unlike anything Nille had seen before.
The mana density here wasn't natural, it was engineered.
A faint pressure hung in the air, thick enough that even breathing felt like drawing in warmth. The training room carried a Level 700–like energy signature, not because of a single source, but because of multiple mana cores embedded throughout the reinforced 100-square-meter chamber.
Each core pulsed in slow synchronization, feeding the space with controlled overflow, shaping it into a constant flow of usable energy.
Rume walked beside him like it was nothing unusual.
"This whole building," Rume said with a casual laugh, "isn't what it looks like."
He tapped the wall as they passed.
"Runes, spatial folding artifacts… the usual. From the outside it looks like a normal guild facility. Inside?" He spread his arms slightly. "Three thousand square meters of usable space."
Nille didn't even bother arguing anymore.
He had learned that Rume was the kind of man who treated impossible architecture like minor adjustments in trade contracts, eccentric, unpredictable, sometimes silent for hours, then suddenly laughing too loudly at nothing at all.
Still, there was logic behind everything he built.
Eventually, Nille spoke.
"Why go this far?" he asked. "To other students… this would look… excessive."
Rume paused.
Then he burst out laughing.
"Excessive?" he repeated, shaking his head. "Lad, you are not normal."
He turned to face Nille fully now, eyes sharp beneath the humor.
"I know what you are. You don't just absorb mana, you take it in like breathing air. Raw energy doesn't reject you. It becomes part of you."
His grin softened, but didn't disappear.
"And don't go thinking you're the only one with something unusual like that."
He gave the room another glance, almost proudly.
"I'm just helping you because you're already representing my merchant guild, lad."
Then he shrugged, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
"I might be hot-headed, peculiar, and a bit cranky… but I know a good investment when I see one."
He pointed lightly at Nille.
"And you? You're the best investment there is."
Rume's expression shifted slightly as he listened, the usual humor in his face settling into something more grounded.
He crossed his arms, glancing toward the distant flow of mana beyond the training hall walls.
"Yeah… I've heard the reports," he said calmly. "I don't need rumors for that. I can see it in the numbers—and in the way people move."
He looked back at Nille.
"Wages doubled after we opened swamp mining rights. Productivity stabilized instead of collapsing like everyone expected. And those dark elven workers…" he paused, choosing the words carefully, "they didn't just accept it. They adapted."
Rume gave a short, approving nod.
"That's the part people don't understand. They're not breaking laws in the Twelve Sectors. They're working inside them, reshaping their lives without crossing the lines the enforcement systems set."
He turned slightly, pacing a slow step.
"And yes, that alone is a huge matter. Even I can't fully explain why it's happening so smoothly."
His gaze narrowed a little at the mention of the restrictions.
"Inhabitants of the Twelve Separated Realms aren't supposed to move freely. Sector Gates are regulated—most people are confined within their assigned zones. Only Sector 1 and 2 have partial exceptions for controlled travel."
He exhaled.
"But us?" A faint, knowing smile returned. "We're not operating under the same constraints. Not entirely."
Rume stopped walking.
"That's the strange part you're circling around, isn't it?"
He looked directly at Nille.
"Something about your presence, and the way these systems respond to it, is bending the usual outcomes. Not breaking rules… but making them behave differently."
His voice lowered slightly, more serious now.
"And if people like the dark elves are already changing their entire way of life without triggering enforcement backlash… then we're dealing with something bigger than just economics or governance."
He tapped his temple once.
"We're dealing with a system that is accepting the change instead of resisting it."
A brief pause.
"That doesn't happen by accident, lad."