Chapter 104

───────────

Episode 23 - Goodbye [1]

─────────────────────────────────

The face beneath the helmet no longer looked like it belonged to a living person.

His skin was cracked like old porcelain, black lines spreading from his neck to his forehead like rotten roots buried beneath dead flesh.

Part of his right cheek was missing, leaving exposed bone covered by a dark substance that pulsed slowly.

His lips were split and dry, barely parted enough to reveal teeth stained black.

Even one of his eyes no longer existed, replaced by an empty socket where tiny dark particles drifted like smoke.

Luminus felt the air leave her lungs.

Her pupils trembled violently as she took a step back, unable to accept what she was seeing in front of her.

Kyle’s face still retained faint traces of who he used to be, but that could no longer be called human.

It was as if something had slowly devoured every part of him from the inside, leaving behind nothing but a broken shell held together through sheer willpower.

"K... Kyle..."

Her voice came out broken, barely a miserable whisper lost within the bloody silence surrounding them.

Tears began falling one after another without stopping.

She could not control them.

Her hands slowly covered her mouth as she stared at that horrifying face.

She remembered every conversation, every absurd argument, every interaction, and every single time she had looked at his face.

But now... now he looked like a corpse forced to keep walking.

Her breathing became unstable.

Luminus slowly fell to her knees before him while transparent tears dripped onto the black blood covering the ground.

Her sword remained far away, completely forgotten, because at this moment she did not even have the strength to pick it up again.

"What... did they do... to you...?"

Her voice broke at the end of the sentence. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Kyle did not respond.

His only remaining eye stayed empty and unfocused, as if he could no longer even recognize her.

Behind her, Charlotte arrived alongside Adel.

However, even Charlotte froze the moment she saw Kyle’s face.

All calm vanished from her expression.

The emotions pouring from Luminus surged violently within Charlotte.

Even after witnessing countless battles and corpses, Kyle’s appearance was still far too disturbing.

It was not only the physical corruption; it was the unnatural sensation radiating from him.

As if something dead was staring outward from inside his body.

Charlotte looked away for a second before slowly approaching Luminus.

She crouched beside her and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.

"Master..."

She truly did not know what to say.

There were no useful words for something like this.

Charlotte looked once more at Kyle’s condition and lightly clenched her teeth before turning her attention back to Luminus, who continued crying silently in front of him.

"Listen to me... calm down first."

Her voice was soft, much lower than usual.

Luminus simply shook her head slowly.

The tears continued falling endlessly as she stared at Kyle’s ruined face.

With every passing second, she felt something inside her breaking even deeper.

"No... it can’t be him..."

Charlotte remained silent for a few seconds.

But both of them knew it really was him.

The armor, the presence, the absurd way he kept fighting even after being completely exhausted. Everything pointed to only one person.

Charlotte slowly embraced Luminus, trying to steady her while she continued trembling.

"Maybe there’s still a way..."

Even Charlotte herself doubted her own words.

Because Kyle’s condition was far too horrifying.

Meanwhile, Adel remained several meters behind them in complete silence.

His senses and the white lines within his vision had already mapped out in detail everything the two women were able to see.

The wind lightly moved her hair as she watched the scene.

She said nothing.

She simply focused on Luminus crying while Charlotte tried to keep her emotionally stable.

The entire atmosphere felt heavy.

Mountains of corpses, black blood spreading like rivers, and in the middle of it all, a half-dead figure sustained only by chains of mana.

Luminus’s sobs and groans were the only things echoing through the silent surroundings.

Charlotte tried several times to calm her down, but she failed.

Eventually, Charlotte stepped away from Luminus, leaving her to vent on her own.

’The progress stopped at 99%.’

Meanwhile, inside Adel’s mind, he was "watching" the Chapter’s progress.

At some point, it had stopped. Most likely, to clear this Chapter, they needed to comfort Luminus or make her understand that she had to move forward.

Either way, regardless of what was about to happen next.

For now, however, they allowed the minutes to pass slowly.

The sobbing did not stop. Luminus kept muttering things while staring at Kyle.

The chains restraining Kyle remained firm, even with Luminus in that state.

That was how the minutes passed, then the first hour.

Time moved slowly. The air inside the Pocket Gate flowed normally.

There was no night here, so the dim light beneath the cloudy sky remained unchanged for the following hours.

Then, suddenly, Luminus stood up and approached Kyle.

She wiped away her tears and stared directly into the only eye Kyle still had left.

’What is she going to do?’

That thought crossed both Adel’s and Charlotte’s minds as they focused their attention on whatever Luminus was about to do.

She extended her hand toward him and murmured:

"Decree of Truth."

Luminus needed to know what had happened to Kyle.

She knew Kyle would never willingly allow something like this to be done to him.

His face was covered with fragments of flesh stitched together. They had probably tried to turn him into a chimera.

Luminus’s emotions had still not calmed down. Using all her strength, she forced herself to stand and use one specific Trait.

Decree of Truth.

One of her many Traits. This one, in particular, allowed her to force even the dead to speak.

She could choose whether the target would feel pain if they refused to answer, forcing them to speak.

They could only tell the truth, and the Trait was not limited to living beings alone.

She could use it on dead, spiritual, or ghostly beings.

However, if the target’s power was greater than Luminus’s, then the Trait would have no effect whatsoever.

But the current Luminus was stronger than Kyle.

She was going to use the Trait to obtain answers.

So, when she activated it, Kyle’s eye turned completely white, unnatural and out of place, as if his consciousness had vanished.

After confirming that the Trait had worked, Luminus spoke:

"W-where had you been all this time?"

She asked her first question. Decree of Truth only allowed her to ask a limited number of questions.

So she had to carefully choose the most important ones, the ones she truly wanted answers to.

Kyle remained silent.

Then, his body trembled for a second.

Luminus froze, but before she could do anything, Kyle opened his mouth, and a completely inhuman voice reached her ears.

"Bait... kingdom army... used... they used me as bait... deliver into ambush... Villains."

The answer came, and Luminus’ heart tightened.

So the kingdom itself had used him as bait for an ambush by the villains.

Although she wanted to know more, her questions were limited.

So she would have to find the answers herself.

Luminus, suppressing everything inside her, asked the next question.

"How did the villains capture you? I’m sure you were strong enough back then."

Kyle said nothing for a moment. His body trembled, as if weakly reacting to Luminus’ voice.

His mouth opened once more.

"Corruption... Power of Chaos... in my body... and poison..."

Kyle must have been poisoned by the kingdom army.

Then, some villain took advantage of the opportunity and infused Power of Chaos into his body, corrupting every part of him.

He suffered betrayal from his own people.

He suffered some kind of torment after being captured and taken somewhere by the villains.

Kyle had disappeared ten years ago.

She never truly knew what had happened.

It was only reported that he had died, but very few believed it.

Because his body was never found. If he had truly died, then the army itself or his comrades would have brought the corpse back to his family.

But none of that happened.

"You knew this was going to happen to you."

Kyle did not take long to respond.

"Yes... knew... I knew..."

"Then why didn’t you run away? Or at least, why didn’t you tell your family... or me?"

Luminus began to cry.

If Kyle knew what the army was planning to do to him, then why had he seemed to accept it just like that?

He had a family waiting for him.

Brothers, friends, and her.

He had a fiancée thinking about him every day.

But even so, Kyle said nothing.

Luminus felt confused, or even betrayed, at best.

Kyle answered her question.

"Not do it... lose them all... they were going to kill them... family... and wife... you, my wife..."

His words reached her ears, and Luminus felt her chest tighten even more.

Her tears only increased.

Her thoughts shattered as thin droplets continued falling endlessly down her face.

Her aching, broken heart could no longer contain the despair.

Her breathing became uneven.

Her thoughts grew clouded, but she tried to remain standing.

Her legs and body trembled, and even so, she remained firmly on her feet, staring at Kyle with her lips tightly pressed into a thin line.

She could not break down.

Not yet, when she still had a few more questions left.

She avoided falling into the void within herself, being swallowed by her emotions and completely consumed by them.

She could not allow that to happen.

And she did not want to allow it either.

But even so, her tears continued falling onto the cold floor of smooth black stone.

Finally, she parted her lips while her vision remained blurred and asked her next question.