People were talking in a loud and serious manner, footsteps can be heard coming from all directions, the sound of plate armor clanking every sec. All of the noises were coming outside of Xiao's room.

(Damn it! What the hell is happening out there, so noisy.)

Xiao shows irritation by the noises outside as he is unwillingly woken up by it. He noticed that it was still around sunrise as the light coming through the window was still dim.

"Are they doing their morning marching or what? Damn it...so tired..."

Xiao lay back to his bed without a care of what's happening outside, he only slept for a few hours as he was unable to fell asleep yesterday night, right after witnessing Lars lunatic behavior, his laughter echoes inside Xiao's mind, like a curse that haunted him throughout the night, until Xiao's body finally give in to the fatigue, only then he was able to fell asleep, but it was already near dawn by that time.

The talking and the sound of the footsteps rushing all over the place continues, and it only gets louder as time passes, so loud to the point that Xiao can no longer stay asleep.

"For God sake! This is just outrageous!" shouted Xiao out of frustration.

Without thinking much, Xiao jumped out from the bed, walked to the door and opened it to see what the commotion was about.

The scene outside shocked Xiao, soldiers were marching from all directions, although they were wearing a helmet on their head, Xiao could tell that something serious had just happened, just by the aura emitted by them.

Xiao asked the guard who was stationed in front of his room, he was also the one who brought him food.

"Morning, mister, what's going on here? Is there training or something is happening?" Xiao asked curiously.

The guard jumped because of Xiao's sudden appearance, he was looking tense, as if something bad had just happened.

"Woah! You scared me there."

Xiao immediately apologizes for making the guard jump, the guard lightly waves his hand as to indicate it was okay, he then regains his composure and tells Xiao what's the commotion about.

"Well....one of our patrol guards found a dead body in the garden nearby." the guard said it while looking tense as if this was the first time he had encountered such an incident throughout his life serving as a guard in this castle.

"Dead body?!" Xiao replied in shock, not just because of the news of the dead body, but also the location of where the dead body is, which was the place he went last night.

"So, did you guys find out who's the dead body?" Xiao asked.

The guard took a deep breath before answering Xiao's question as if he was about to disclose information that will surely affect Xiao deeply.

"For now, all we can learn from the dead body is that he got killed, a few stabbed wounds all over his body, and the wound is still fresh, so he got killed just last night," the guard answered, then took another deep breath before announcing the most important information to Xiao.

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"It was Lars Leo, the previous Hero of Lightning, who got killed last night."

The guard said it without any hesitation, for he was speaking the truth, the one who got killed last night at the garden was none other than the one and only, Lars Leo.

Upon hearing the news, Xiao's expression didn't change, he was still stuck at the same expression, and slowly, he began to react with a single word.

"What?"

"Lars Leo is dead, he got killed last night at the garden nearby here," the guard summarizes everything nicely to Xiao, who was still looking dumbstruck by the news.

When the guard told Xiao the second time of Lars's death, Xiao chuckled lightly and showed a confused expression as if the guard was making some kind of sick joke to him.

"You should return to your room, for now, I will call for you if anything requires your attention," the guard didn't care for Xiao's confused state as he thought he had already fulfilled his duty of telling Xiao about the finding, he sent Xiao back to his room as to not affect his job.

Xiao obeyed the guard's instructions, he went back to his room, closed the door, walked to his bed and lay down on it.

The noise that was bothering Xiao has suddenly gone from his mind, for he was currently experiencing an emotional turmoil, so much that he didn't even know how to process his thoughts.

(What the hell? Lars is dead? Why? That....that's just absurd!)

Xiao thinks back how he still met with Lars just a few hours ago, although he was acting all bizarre and horrifying all the sudden, he was still alive right at that moment, and now he is dead.

(The guard said that he got stabbed or something, right? Who could have done it? And why?)

More questions popped out in Xiao's mind as he continued to think about Lars's death, and the more confused and stressful he became, everything happened too sudden, too unnatural, as if it just happened for the sake of happening, there is no pattern or reason to it, just total madness.

(Shit! Shit! Shit! The more I think, the more confused I am, I am there as well, and the culprit chose to kill Lars instead of me, meaning the culprit was aiming for Lars all along.)

Slowly, Xiao begins to piece the information he has learned so far to sort out his mind. He suspects someone who had a grudge on Lars, not to say that Lars was an exiled from this country, someone must have hated him for returning to here.

(To think that the one who should be guiding me through this world is now dead, but he was not doing a good job in the first place, the only thing he is good at was irritating, humiliating and making fun of me. Now that the mad man is dead, I should be happy about it, right? If that's the case, why am I having this feeling? Why am I feeling down and this hard to breathe feeling?)

Xiao looked at the ceiling blankly while thinking back how he met Lars in the first place, which was in Xiao's cell in his world. Lars just appears out of nowhere and offer him a chance to run away from his death sentence by becoming a replacement for his brother, a hero, things may not go the way Xiao imagine it would be, and quite the opposite, things have turned unexpectedly worst than Xiao could imagine, but at least he was still alive.

(To begin with, I don't even know why is he in my world, when he was the so-called hero of lightning, why is he being exiled from this country? Is it because of his exile that he ran into my world?)

Xiao kept on thinking about the fact that how Lars got exiled in the first place, and what's the reason he got killed, he figured something must have happened to lead Lars into such a gruesome fate.

(Well, no matter the reason, it doesn't matter anymore, he is dead already, and I'm the only one left, at this point, I'm truly by myself from now on.)

Eventually, Xiao decided to stop thinking about Lars, for he thinks it was useless to keep on thinking on stuff he was unfamiliar with and should be focusing on himself, on what he is going to do to survive in this world, for his guide was no longer exist in this world, no one will have a clue of what he kind of life he was leading on before coming into this world, no one will truly understand his position.

The door opened after a few knocks, it was the guard outside the room, he was wearing a serious expression.

The guard waited for Xiao to slowly rise from his bed before he made an important announcement to him.

"Lord Xiao, the King has summoned you."