CHAPTER 51: BACK

The morning sun seeped in through the cracks between the heavy blue curtains, spilling golden light across the polished floor. Dust motes floated in the still air like wandering spirits. It was warm, serene—eerily so.

Elius stirred beneath his sheets.

His body felt like lead, every muscle draped in invisible chains of fatigue. His eyes fluttered slightly, then winced as if disturbed by something... something subtle.

Light.

That was the first thing he noticed.

His eyes twitched again. Slowly, he opened them halfway. The ceiling above stared back, blank and familiar.

A soft groan escaped his lips.

He blinked.

Once. Twice.

"Huh...?"

He didn’t recognize it at first, but after a few seconds, the contours of the space around him began to sharpen—his bookshelf, his folded uniform hanging on the wall, the floating clock that ticked with a soft magical hum in the corner of the room.

This... is my room.

He frowned, pushing himself up halfway. His body protested with soreness, but not the kind from a regular day of training. This was deep fatigue. The kind that nestled into his bones like ice in a mountain’s cracks.

His eyes wandered across the room, his brows creased. He rubbed his face.

"Why... am I here?" he muttered under his breath.

The last thing he remembered—

The rift.

The battle.

Lava Scissor.

And then—his memory blurred. A haze. A roaring flood of emotion, rage, euphoria. He remembered the heat, the power, the urge to slam that monster over and over until—

He clenched his teeth, suddenly gripping his head.

His temples throbbed.

"I was in a dimensional rift," he murmured. "We were... clearing it... fighting that thing. Lava Scissor. And then—"

He paused.

"How... did I end up here?"

Suddenly, as if reacting to his confusion, a ding! echoed in his mind.

A translucent system screen flickered into view at the edge of his vision, pulsing softly with unread notifications.

[You have 6 unread notifications.]

His heart skipped.

Elius swiped through the screen, and the messages appeared in a cascading list, glowing blue with detailed summaries.

[System Alert!]

Your Cultivation Party has been disbanded.

All linked abilities and shared buffs are now nullified.

Five Flying Sword Technique healing rate has been halved.

Shadow Clone duration reduced from 4 minutes to 2 minutes.

Dragon Claw Strength halved.

Ghost Step reduced from 8 to 4 steps.

Party Member Debuffs Applied:

Ron: Partial Transformation Only. (Full velociraptor form disabled. Only legs remain hybrid.)

Klee: Healing abilities limited to self-repair only. Group healing suspended.

Shiro: Ninja Shadow Doppelgangers no longer respond to direct commands. Battle capabilities reduced by 60%.

Lina: Ghost Form downgraded. Can now only shift half her body into phantasmal state.

—

Elius stared at the screen, silent.

His chest rose and fell with slow, controlled breaths. The weight of the information was like ice-cold water poured directly into his soul.

"...They were my party," he whispered.

"Ron... Klee... Lina... Shiro..."

It was all coming back in fragments. They were with him. Fighting with him in that rift. He remembered Ron’s claws tearing through goblin enemies.

Lina’s half-transparent face as she phased between attacks. Klee’s worried expressions while healing. Shiro’s shadows flickering behind him like ghostly warriors.

And now?

Disbanded.

Disconnected. The system link severed.

Elius looked down at his own hands. They were trembling slightly, the aftershock of divine energy still lingering faintly in his fingertips.

"But how... how did I get back?" he asked aloud, to no one.

There was no system answer this time. Just silence.

Then—knock knock knock.

He flinched.

A soft knocking on his door, followed by a familiar voice.

"Elius? Are you awake?"

His mother.

Shannon.

The door creaked open, and she stepped in carrying a breakfast tray in one hand and a folded robe in the other. Her face was calm, but her eyes held a curious shine—equal parts concern and warmth.

"You’re finally up," she said, gliding across the room and setting the tray on the desk. "How was your sleep?"

Elius blinked. "I... I don’t know."

Shannon opened the curtains slowly, flooding the room with full daylight.

"You must’ve been exhausted," she said softly, brushing her hands across his blanket, straightening it instinctively. "You’ve been asleep since last night. I didn’t want to wake you, but I’ve been checking every hour."

She turned to him, her eyes narrowing slightly. "How are you feeling? Any pain? Dizziness? Headaches?"

Elius opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Then nodded. "I’m fine."

"You sure?" she stepped closer, feeling his forehead. "You don’t have a fever."

"I said I’m fine," he repeated, more firmly.

She frowned, arms crossing now. "Elius, this isn’t the time to pretend you’re invincible. You were unconscious. You were glowing golden. The paramedics didn’t know if you were having a mana seizure or awakening a divine trait."

"I’m fine, Mom," he said again, eyes flickering.

She stared at him for a few seconds more. Then sighed, relenting.

"Well, Colt said you’d say that."

Elius blinked. "Radiant Man?"

Shannon would pause, "Call him your dad,"and then she stepped over to the window, looking outside.

"He was here last night," she said. "Well, not for long. Just enough to check on you."

Her voice softened again, almost excited now.

"He said... he was proud of you."

Elius’s heart stopped for a second.

"Proud?" he repeated.

Shannon turned back to him with a smile.

"He said you performed extremely well in the dimensional rift. That you even managed to defeat a villain completely on your own."

She clapped her hands slightly, as if suppressing her own glee.

"F-rank, he said. The unkillable Lava Scissor!"

Elius’s breath caught.

Her words echoed in his ears like a temple bell.

The unkillable... Lava Scissor.

The image came rushing back. The glowing hair. The burst of golden light. The madness. The slams.

The scream.

The twitching body.

The way it looked up at him in fear.

He stared at the tray of food. At the rising steam of warm rice and fried egg.

It felt so ordinary.

So normal.

But his mind was not at peace.

"...I defeated him?" he whispered, almost to himself.

The words trembled on his lips, uncertain. Incomplete.

As if even he didn’t believe them.

Elius sat there for a while, staring blankly at the corner of the room, the breakfast untouched and steaming on the table.

His mother’s scent still lingered faintly in the air—a mix of lavender oil and warm fabric—but it was quickly drowned out by the heavy memory clawing at the back of his mind.

He remembered now.

Or at least, he almost remembered.

Someone had stopped him.

A voice.

A hand—gripping his wrist right as he was about to deliver the final, absolute, earth-crushing slam on Lava Scissor’s broken body.

That moment had burned itself into his consciousness like an unhealed scar.

And yet, what shook him most wasn’t that someone had stopped him.

It was the feeling.

He shuddered.

His shoulders curled in, and his posture folded slightly inward. He wrapped his arms around his ribs, trying to hug himself without realizing it.

There was something twisted about that memory. Something... unclean.

It hadn’t just been power.

It was pleasure.

The joy.

The euphoric ecstasy in destroying something that was supposed to be unkillable.

The sound of Lava Scissor’s bones cracking, the way its elemental body trembled beneath his heavenly slam, the way it screamed in pain for the first time ever—it all ignited something in Elius that should not have existed in him.

It was so good.

Too good.

He swallowed thickly. His throat was dry.

"Why... why did I feel like that?" he whispered to himself, trembling. "Why didn’t I care about anything else but killing him?"

There had been no fear. No hesitation. Only the primal, addicting need to destroy. And once he started... he couldn’t stop.

He remembered laughing.

Smiling.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He rubbed his face with both hands, trying to shake off the cold sweat, the goosebumps still crawling across his arms. His breath was shaky.

Then came the voice from earlier that morning again. Echoing in his mind.

"Your father told you to rest. He won’t be coming back for three days... You did something to the world that he needs to fix."

That was what Shannon said before she quietly shut the door and left him alone. She didn’t press. She didn’t pry. She just gave him space.

But three days?

What did I do...?

He could feel it now. Something in the air had changed. A tremble beneath the earth. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it when he woke up, but now his senses were fully attuned. It was faint, but the world felt... strained.

Like the core of the Earth had hiccupped.

"...Did killing Lava Scissor actually do something to the planet?"

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a half-cough.

"Dad can fix it though," he mumbled to himself. "He’s from the Solarion Empire. He’s basically the face of alien-grade tech and magic. What’s a small planetary instability to him, right?"

Still, the guilt lingered like smoke.

But something else tugged at him—an itch behind his eyes.

He remembered there were more system notifications.

He sat up straighter and focused on the floating blue screen still suspended near the edge of his vision.

Three more messages.