Chapter 178: Harsh Reality

"No... that’s wrong," Filmos whispered, his voice cracking as he stared at the red text glowing on the screen. "That’s a glitch. The program made a mistake."

He shoved Trillo’s arm away, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

"Filmos, stop! Look at me!" Trillo grabbed both of his shoulders, shaking him hard. "It was updated five minutes ago! They’re gone!"

"Let go of me!" Filmos screamed, his eyes bloodshot as a wave of uncontrolled mana burst from his body. "They’re down here! They have to be down here!"

"Filmos, calm down!"

Filmos swung his elbow wildly, striking Trillo across the jaw. Trillo stumbled back into the stone wall, wiping a line of blood from his lip.

ROAR!

The SSS-Rank Light Dragon materialized automatically from Filmos’s Pocket Sanctuary, its glowing white scales bristling as it reacted to its master’s overwhelming grief and rage. A blinding wave of light flooded the dim corridor, cracking the stone walls.

"Filmos, control your beast!" Trillo yelled, lunging forward to tackle him to the ground. "You’re going to bring the whole ceiling down on us!"

Filmos thrashed violently beneath him, his shortsword sliding across the floor. "I just wanted them to see me! I just wanted to save them!"

A burst of raw pressure blasted outward from the Light Dragon, throwing Trillo backward onto the hard floor. Filmos scrambled to his feet, tears streaming down his mud-stained cheeks as he charged blindly down the corridor toward the next cell block.

Suddenly, heavy metallic boots thundered down the central shaft.

BOOM!

The reinforced iron doors at the end of the hallway shattered inward as a dozen heavily armored soldiers flooded the corridor, shields raised and spears glittering with blue solidified blob.

"Secure the perimeter!" a commanding voice echoed through the dust.

Deputy Commander Nair stepped through the rubble, her sharp eyes instantly locking onto the thrashing Light Dragon and the frantic boy beneath it.

"Subdue the beast! Restrain the boy before he collapses the stronghold!" Nair ordered sharply.

Four soldiers with expensive gadgets stepped forward, throwing heavy containment chains forged of anti-mana steel around the Light Dragon’s neck. The creature let out a deafening, mournful roar before being forced back into its seal.

Filmos reached toward the vanishing light, his strength completely spent. "No... please..."

Nair stepped in close, placing a heavy, gloved hand onto the back of Filmos’s neck. A soothing blue pulse of defensive mana surged into his nervous system.

Filmos’s vision blurred. The cold stone floor rushed up to meet him as his knees gave out, and everything faded into total darkness.

As Filmos’s consciousness drifted, his memory sent him back to when he was a kid alone in the destroyed mansion after they were attacked.

In the dark void of his mind, a young Filmos reached tightly for the golden necklace his mother had left behind. In his heart, he couldn’t accept that they were already gone.

Through long, grueling days of being hungry, cold, and desperately waiting for his parents to return to the ruined estate, Filmos was eventually spotted by an orphanage patrol. They brought him in, caring for him while he learned the basic survival skills of life. Yet, driven by the lingering belief that his parents were still out there waiting for him, he ran away from the orphanage in the middle of the night.

He drifted all the way to Hibiscus City during his solitary journey, searching every alley and street. Settling in a dilapidated, abandoned house in the slums that once belonged to a forgotten family, he convinced himself that he had finally found them.

Except he hadn’t actually found them.

His own mind had played a desperate trick just to pull him back from complete insanity. He had substituted his real parents with a mental illusion, forging fake memories to convince himself that his family was still alive and living under that roof.

The harsh reality was far cruel. It was all a massive hallucination.

The life he thought he had lived with his parents, the crippling debt, the miserable conditions, the arguments, had all come from his own mind and actions. The suffering hadn’t been caused by irresponsible parents running up debts; it was the weight of his own desperate struggle and loans taken out just to sustain his lone, fragile existence.

The parents who had allegedly burdened him with debt didn’t exist in that house. They were nothing more than ghosts created by his own mind to cope with the loneliness.

In reality, the kitchen was dumped with years of accumulated waste, overgrown with mold and completely forgotten. Yet through Filmos’s eyes all those years, the house had appeared entirely normal, looking like a proper home.

The only physical connection he ever had to his real parents was the golden necklace resting against his chest.

Filmos had clung to the lie his brain made just to force himself to keep living a "normal life."

For years, Filmos had lived inside that forged reality, only to finally face the devastating truth now—that his parents had been dead long before he ever stepped foot into the slums.

...

Filmos woke up to a familiar sky ceiling. Indeed, it was the sky that greeted him, simulated by the quarters.

He stood up groggy from his bed, feeling all kinds of heavy weight around his body. He couldn’t recall everything that had just happened, but he was sure the last sensation he felt was so weak that he couldn’t control his beast.

His connection with his two beasts was severely weakened. He could still feel them through the contract, but the level of sync had drastically dropped.

Before, he had over fifty percent control. Now, both were capped at a forty percent ceiling. He couldn’t accept it, and no matter how much he tried to reach out and communicate with them, his mana couldn’t pass through the mental wall.

"Don’t force yourself," Trillo’s voice cut through the quiet room. "You will sever it even further. You don’t want that to happen."

"What happened?" Filmos asked, turning his head slowly to look at Trillo, who was sitting on a fallen log placed beside his bed. "And why are you sitting there instead of on your bed?"

Trillo didn’t answer immediately. He stood up slowly and slapped Filmos’s shoulder, his expression dark and serious.

"You... really made me worry back there. I thought you were going completely crazy," Trillo said softly before stepping back. "The squad wants to dismiss your position and surrender you to the authorities. That’s the bad news."