Celestial Bloodline

Elli had witnessed Nine and Kyle's interactions before, and from Nine's boasting, she knew their relationship was quite close. There was no way she would believe that the Kyle she knew would respond like that upon hearing that his closest friend was missing.

She wanted to voice her doubts, but the words got stuck in her throat when Kyle grabbed the edge of his hoodie and lowered it from his head. Immediately, his long shoulder-length hair, which was neatly tied up, cascaded down to cover his neck.

He cleared his throat and gazed at the two women seated opposite him at the round table with a beautiful yet insincere smile. His face which had turned even more attractive from using the encasing ice skill on his entire body countless times over the years to heal his injuries, combined with that brief smile that lasted only a few seconds, immediately captivated both of the women across from him.

Kyle groaned inwardly but showed nothing on his face. He glanced at the older woman because he could sense that the younger one was catching onto the fact that he was somehow behaving strangely.

"So... it's been a while, Auntie. How have you been?"

Iva rested her hands on the table, and a bitter smile flashed on her face.

"I have been fine... the locals here have not mistreated us, apart from bringing us here. But Yue, she's had to endure a lot because of me. You know her, she's too caring. Now she has gone to such a dangerous place..."

Confusion flickered in Kyle's eyes as he heard the name that struck a chord with him, evoking a sense of familiarity and warmth.

"Yue? Who-! I mean where is she?"

Kyle almost bit his tongue when he accidentally asked, Who is Yue? He didn't even notice how his voice sounded a bit eager to know about the person he heard the name of for the first time.

Elli's eyes flashed with relief when she finally sensed something in Kyle's voice. She let out a smile.

'At least... he still cares for her.'

Iva fell silent at Kyle's question. She had only learned about the Sacred Divine Land from Yue after their arrival on this planet. She wondered how Kyle would know anything about it, considering he lived in a place where people knew very little about this vast universe. She hesitated to answer, thinking he had already come so far and must have suffered a lot to find them. How could she burden him with more? But Elli spoke up with a solemn expression.

"I don't know the location of the place, but it's called the Sacred Divine Land. Yue is going to participate in a dangerous Arena. I heard many people die in that place... and Yue went there because of Glacia!"

Kyle blinked. He knew a thing or two about the Sacred Divine Land, and the Arena the eleven woman was talking about was probably the Gladiator Arena. His second master specifically asked him to head to the Sacred Divine Land because right now his body needed a lot of divine energy.

"Yue went to the Sacred Divine Land to participate in the Gladiator Arena?"

Elli's eyes widened slightly.

"You know about that place!?"

Kyle nodded, and Elli let out a sigh of relief. She didn't hesitate like Iva and wanted to tell him everything.

However, she then remembered the silver-haired man had yet to tell them how he arrived here at a place that is so far from their planet. So even though she had a feeling he wouldn't answer, she asked the question again to know just one last time that he was truly alright because she could feel something was wrong with Kyle.

"You... have you been fine all these years after Yue and Nine left without a word?"

She let out a bitter smile.

"Don't blame Yue. She was forced to come here... and Nine, that fool, he mentioned before he vanished that he would let you beat him up once as a form of apology because unlike Yue, he left the planet with Glacia on his own. But I don't know how the two of them would feel if they knew you have been searching for them all this time..."

Elli's voice trailed off at the end because she couldn't grasp just how much Kyle had endured to come this far.

Kyle let out a hum, and both Iva and Elli felt the chill when all of a sudden the room's temperature plummeted.

The two elven women watched as Kyle pushed his chair back and rose to his feet with an emotionless expression to gaze into empty air.

"I can't tell if I am angry or not because it's been too long for me to tell. Honestly, how I have been doing all this while, it's quite a lengthy story, but still, I would have made something up to continue the conversation if I was not getting annoyed by the uninvited guest's presence."

Kyle let out a snarl while gazing at the vacant space.

"So, you don't want to come out?"

Iva and Elli exchanged a glance to understand what had suddenly happened for Kyle to act like this. But the duo froze in their spots when a familiar laughter filled the air around them. Elli snapped her head towards the direction Kyle was staring, and her eyes widened when she saw Glacia stepping out from behind a shadow.

Glacia clapped her hands together and examined Kyle from head to toe with an incredible and amusing expression. Her eyes conveyed how she had found something very interesting.

"So you are indeed still alive, huh? And you have managed to come this far even after I wreck your body?"

She raised her finger with a pondering expression.

"What was your name again?"

An 'ah' slipped out from her mouth, and her lips curled upward into a wide smile.

"Kyle, right? All this time I have been regretting that I wasn't able to peer inside your mind space. How about I do it now? Also, I am getting very very curious to know just how did you sensed my presence when I can clearly see you have just entered the divine-rank."

Iva and Elli both panicked and quickly the two elven women stood up. Elli grabbed her weapon and yelled at Kyle to step back. Even though Iva had stopped fighting after she got married, she also prepared to cast her most powerful skill.

But Kyle's gaze was locked on the bronze-eyed woman in front of him. His ears twitched slightly when he heard a loud name coming from Elli's mouth.

"Glacia!"

Glacia turned to look at the panicked expressions of the two elven women with an amused expression for a second, which is why she failed to notice when Kyle's eyes chilled enough to scare everyone who would have locked eyes with him at that moment.

Kyle's pupils glazed over, and a faint old memory of a similar bronze-eyed woman in a dark cloak flashed inside his mind. He watched as the woman reached out her hand with a smirk towards his head, and tremendous pain wrecked his body. He couldn't speak, but he remembered he swore to kill this woman at all costs if he survived that day.

"Haha..."

Glacia blinked and whipped her head towards the silver-haired man who let out a laugh and covered his eyes with his palm. She smirked... if it weren't for the town's head informing her that Yue's mother and Elli had taken some unknown hooded man in their house, she would have never found out that Kyle, the same man she badly injured in the past, had arrived on the elven planet.

All of a sudden, she remembered the Tree of Fate's unusual behavior. It was strangely aligned with Kyle's arrival, and a sense of foreboding welled up inside her mind.

'No way, don't tell me the tree reacted that way because of him? Oho... intriguing, but let me first take a look at that thing inside his body that I wasn't able to see last time.'

Glacia's figure turned into a mirage as she reached out her hand toward Kyle's head with a smirk, but her eyes contracted when the human in front of her sidestepped and evaded her hand. A shiver ran down her spine as a faint, deep, and chilling voice sounded beside her ear.

"Oh no, you missed."