Chapter 459 - 6 Months

He’s different.’

Troy noted at first glance the Kyle standing before him, was not the same Kyle he’d fought with months ago.

There was no denying he’d gone through a lot with such timeframe but still, his age was still considerably young.

"I can tell you’re thinking about me. Kinda creepy." Kyle broke the ice, his steps silently trailing the floor.

"Perceptive as always." Troy remarked with a light smirk, cutting off at the inner first floor in the palace.

"When did you realize that thing wasn’t me?" Kyle followed up the genuine question hogging his mind since he arrived.

Knowing Troy and his ever calculative senses, there was no time he’d figure it out sooner or later.

"Immediately it arrived." Troy bluntly answered, without a shift in his attitude. "A mimic can shape shift, imitate voice, eyes and even aura. But can never imitate one’s mind."

Keeping quiet Kyle wanted to speak further on the main reasons that plagued his mind, which was the close relationships he’d left here. But he didn’t have to as a familiar voice caught his attention.

"Kyle!" An older citizen with dark bulb cut hair screamed, rushing over to him and embracing him in a deep hug.

For a moment, everything became still, his heartbeat, senses all slowed at this moment. An unimaginable cloud of emotions settling in his chest, in calm serenity.

"M-mom~" Was all that left his mouth, embracing his mother in a deep and warm hug.

"You’re finally back son. We thought we’d never see you again." Another person spoke this voice much deeper.

"And miss the moments we lost? Never." A genuine bright smirk spread on Kyle’s face, stretching his arm and also extending his father into the circle of hugs.

"Very touching." Seraphina sniffed, wiping a subtle tear from her eyes.

"If you’re done with the family reunion there are several important matters to discuss now." A familiar soft yet mischievous voice caught his attention.

Tilting his head, he could see the figure of a well endowed young woman with the same bulb cut hair as xia. Dressed in a tight black dress, a white lab coat resting on her shoulders.

"Impatient as expected from the kingdom’s finest." Kyle remarked with a slight nod. Acknowledged by the brilliant scientist.

"Where are the others? Falcon and Aurora?" He asked tilting his head but saw no signs of them. And for some reason, he couldn’t sense both women aura the second he stepped foot in the kingdom.

With a deep sigh, Reze slightly shook her head. "They left months ago after you failed to return. We tried to stop them but his majesty insisted we respect their wishes."

"Why?" Kyle demanded his attitude shifting into heated anger.

Waving Kyle’s chilling threat as a facade, Troy calmly answered. "It’s simple. They’re not slaves nor prisoners of the kingdom anymore. You paid for that right with your blood, sweat and grit, remember? So their affairs are not associated with the kingdom any longer."

Taking a step forward, the guards dressed in the sleek advanced battle suits pointed their weapons at Kyle. A low static hum building with a faint blue glow at the tip of the Cannon blasters.

"Stand down you fools. He can meagerly kill you with a wave of his hand." Reze instructed, maintaining her position a few distance behind Troy.

"B-but he’s a threat to-" Before the latter could finish, his whole world turned black.

Not the kind of empty void spaces portrayed at time of death or reincarnation phase. But a much more chilling representation of the word nothingness.

"My eyes.. i-i can’t see. You bastard, what did you-" His unconscious body slumped to the ground, while another figure wearing elegant purple dress befit for royals wiped her hand.

"Idiot. That was an order." Lumia coldly muttered, her gaze void of any emotion whatsoever.

---

Kyle’s eyes stayed on Lumia for a long second. The other guard was already being dragged away by two of his comrades, still clawing at his own face and screaming that he couldn’t see.

The purple dress Lumia wore was the same one she wore on coronation days. Elegant, royal, perfectly tailored. But the way she wore it now felt different. Distant. Cold.

"Lumia."

Kyle took a step toward her. His voice was softer now. The anger from before was gone, replaced by something that almost sounded like relief.

"You’ve gotten stronger. That spell just now... you didn’t even need an incantation. Last time you needed three seconds to -"

"I told him to stand down because he was being stupid," Lumia cut him off, not even looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the unconscious guard on the floor. "Not because I was protecting you."

The hall went quiet. Even Reze raised an eyebrow at that.

Kyle frowned. He tried again, with a small, tired smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

"Come on. Don’t be like that. I just got back. I haven’t even -"

"Why?"

Lumia finally turned to look at him. And when she did, Kyle felt a chill that had nothing to do with her magic.

Her eyes, which used to light up whenever he entered a room, were empty. Not angry. Not sad. Just void. Like she was looking at a stranger who had walked into the wrong palace.

Kyle blinked. "What?"

"Why?" she repeated. Her voice was low, but every single person in the hall heard it. "Why are you back here?"

Kyle genuinely looked confused. His brows furrowed, his mouth opened slightly. This wasn’t the Lumia he knew. The Lumia he knew would have already hit him on the head for disappearing, then hugged him so tight he couldn’t breathe, then called him an idiot for making everyone worry.

This Lumia was standing three feet away from him like there was a wall made of ice between them.

"What do you mean why am I back?" Kyle asked, his voice losing its steadiness. "This is my home. My parents are here. You are all here. Where else would I go?"

"Anywhere," Lumia said instantly. "You could have gone anywhere. You were gone. Everyone thought you were dead. We mourned you. We held a funeral with an empty casket because there wasn’t even a body to bury. And now you just... walk back in like nothing happened?"

Her voice didn’t rise. That was what made it worse. It stayed cold, flat, controlled.

"I... I didn’t want to disappear," Kyle said, his hands clenching at his sides. "Something happened. I was pulled somewhere else. I didn’t choose to leave. If I could have come back sooner, I would have. You think I wanted to leave my mom and dad? You think I wanted to leave -"

He stopped himself. He looked at her face again, trying to find any crack in that cold mask.

"Lumia, what really happened while I was gone? Why are you talking to me like this? Did something -"

"Enough."

Reze’s voice cut through the tension like a scalpel. She had seen enough. If she let this continue, Lumia would say something she couldn’t take back, and Kyle would say something that would make Troy have to intervene. And Troy intervening never ended well for anyone.

Reze clapped her hands together, her white lab coat fluttering as she stepped between them. Her usual mischievous smile was gone, replaced by a serious, professional expression that Kyle had rarely seen.

"As touching as this little lovers quarrel is, we have bigger problems than your feelings. Follow me. Both of you. Troy, you too. Seraphina, bring his parents to the waiting hall, make sure they get something warm to drink."

"Reze, I don’t -" Lumia started.

"No. You are coming," Reze said firmly. She grabbed Kyle by the wrist - her grip was surprisingly strong - and started pulling him toward the back wall of the palace. "And you are going to listen with your mouth shut until I finish explaining. Your attitude is noted, Princess. We will deal with it later."

Troy said nothing. He simply followed, his hands behind his back, his face unreadable as always.

Reze pressed her palm against what looked like a solid marble wall. A blue light scanned her hand, and the marble shivered, then split open to reveal a hidden elevator, large enough to fit ten people. The air that came out of it was cold and smelled like ozone and chemicals.

Kyle had never seen this before. "You built a lab under the palace? Since when?"

"Since we realized the kingdom was sitting on a graveyard," Reze said dryly as the elevator doors closed and they began to descend deep underground. The descent lasted almost a minute. When the doors opened again, Kyle’s breath caught.

The lab was huge. Bigger than the palace throne room itself. The ceiling was lined with bright white lights that made everything look sterile. And in the center of the lab, suspended in a massive cylinder of faintly glowing blue liquid, was a corpse.

No, not a corpse. A specimen.

It was the Chimera they had killed together. The one that had almost wiped out the eastern border. Its three heads - lion, goat, snake - were still frozen in a snarl. Its body was riddled with scars from their battle. But it was perfectly preserved, floating in the liquid, tubes and wires connected to it.

"What the hell..." Kyle whispered, stepping closer to the glass. "Why do you still have this thing? I thought we burned it."

"We did burn the body," Reze said, walking over to a holographic console and tapping a few keys. The image of the Chimera flickered and was replaced by a map of the kingdom. Red dots were spreading across it like a rash. "This is a clone tissue we regenerated from a single cell we kept. For research. Because we thought it was an anomaly. A one-time mutation caused by the dungeon break."

She zoomed in on the map. The red dots were moving. Clustering. Forming a horde.

"But it wasn’t an anomaly," Reze continued, her voice dropping. "Not long after your absence, the beasts started changing. The normal wolves in the northern forest grew a second spine. The birds in the south started spitting acid. The dungeon bosses... they started organizing. Like they had a leader."

Kyle stared at the map. The red dots were now surrounding the kingdom on all sides.

"How long after I left?" he asked.

"Two weeks," Troy answered for her. He had been silent until now. "The first mutated pack appeared exactly fourteen days after the mimic replaced you. At first we thought it was coincidence. Then the reports kept coming."

Reze pulled up another screen. It showed a timeline.

"And it has been getting worse ever since. For six months. Non-stop. We have lost three outposts. The eastern wall fell last month. We rebuilt it, but we don’t know how long it will hold if another horde like the one on the map hits us."

The word hit Kyle like a physical blow.

His eyes widened. His whole body went rigid. He turned from the Chimera tank to look at Reze, then at Troy, then back at Reze, as if he had misheard her.

"Six months?" he repeated, his voice barely a whisper. "What did you just say?"

Reze sighed, and for the first time, she looked genuinely tired. Not the playful tired, but the kind of tired that comes from not sleeping for weeks.

"I said you were gone for six months, Kyle."

"I was gone for six months?" Kyle said again, louder this time, repeating her words as if saying them would make them make sense. His eyes were wide, his pupils shaking. ℯℯ𝘭.

"No. No, that’s impossible. I was... I was only in that place for a few days. Maybe a week at most. The time dilation... it can’t be..."

He stumbled backward until his back hit the glass cylinder containing the Chimera. The blue light from the liquid cast eerie shadows on his face.

"Six months? I’ve been gone for six months? My parents thought I was dead for six months? Aurora and Falcon left because I was gone for six months?"

He looked up at Lumia, who had been silent the entire time in the lab, her arms crossed, her face still cold. But now, under the cold, Kyle could see something else. Hurt.

"That’s why," he whispered, understanding finally dawning on him. "That’s why you’re asking me why I came back. You all... you all had to live six months without me. You had to fight all of this... alone."

Lumia didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. The silence was answer enough.

And in that huge, cold lab underneath the kingdom, with the preserved corpse of a monster floating behind him and a map showing a horde of new monsters closing in, Kyle finally understood that coming home was not the end of his journey.

It was the beginning of a much harder one.