King Felipe Erkhán had aged ten years in only a few months.
It wasn't just exhaustion.It was fracture.The kind of weight borne only by a man watching his kingdom die in slow motion.
When he returned from the war against the Empire, he did so with hope—hope that he could stabilize the capital and reorganize the realm.
But the moment he set foot in Acropolis…
…he understood that the war had been nothing more than a prologue to the true disaster.
The capital, pride of generations, had changed brutally.
Avenues once polished by magic now lay cracked and split, choked by black roots bursting through the stone without restraint. Entire buildings had been devoured by mutated vines that grew day and night, as if trying to swallow the city whole.
The worst part wasn't the monsters.
It was the people.
The streets were flooded with entire families fleeing destroyed territories.
They weren't organized refugees.They were masses.
Desperate. Starving. Children reduced to skin and bone, adults too weak to stand.
Some waited in endless lines outside temples, hoping for blessed rations—small portions that barely delayed death.
Others begged for water, a sack of flour, a single unmutated fruit.
And many simply collapsed in the streets, unable to go on.
Overpopulation had turned the city into a powder keg.
Homes crammed with twenty or thirty people.
Sewers overflowing.
New diseases born from mutated insects.
Emerging gangs stealing food just to survive.
Merchants selling crumbs of bread at the price of gold.
The royal soldiers barely maintained order in the districts closest to the castle.
The rest of the city had been left to the adventurers.
Most adventurers were not heroes.
They were opportunists—people experienced enough to survive outside the walls.
Yet ironically, they were the ones keeping Acropolis alive.
They organized:
controlled hunts beyond the walls to bring back meat,
secure routes for transporting edible herbs,
protection for entire neighborhoods in exchange for shelter or favors.
Some even taught children how to use basic mana—to start fires or sense nearby creatures.
The kingdom was collapsing…
But the adventurers were thriving.
It was the beginning of the world Lusian had known in the game.
Felipe Erkhán slept no more than two hours a day.
He spent his nights reading reports:
Cities isolated by mutated forests.
Lesser lords devoured in nocturnal raids.
Beasts never seen before appearing in coordinated packs.
Entire caravans vanishing without a trace.
Magic academies reporting that spells were beginning to fail—or worse, mutate.
The king stood on the brink of madness.
And the only thing keeping him sane…
…was his wife, Adelaine.
She had held the capital together while he fought the war.She had kept the temples standing.
That was why he issued the summons.
The king did not call the nobles to debate politics.
He called them because the kingdom was dying…
…and he had no idea how to save it.
An urgent decree spread across the land:
"All nobles are to present themselves in Acropolis within thirty days."
There was no protocol.No courtesies.
It was a plea disguised as a command.
Felipe needed Lusian.He needed the Duchy of Douglas.He needed everyone.
Because if the capital fell…
The entire kingdom would follow.
Lusian expected chaos.
But what he saw surpassed even his worst memories from the game.
On the road, he found villages nearly empty—only elders too frail to migrate, and children who barely spoke.
He saw highways littered with the corpses of monsters… and of people.
He encountered families who had lost everyone but one or two survivors.
And he noticed something else.
Strong adventurers guiding entire groups of civilians.
Not out of kindness.Not out of heroism.
But because those civilians served as:
gatherers of edible roots,
porters,
informants,
or simple "currency" to secure entry into overcrowded cities.
The world was mutating into the one he had known from the game.
Slowly.
Without anyone understanding it.
Anyone except him.
When Lusian crossed the capital's walls…
The smell struck him first.
Rot. Smoke. Sweat. Dried blood.
The walls themselves were cracked, covered in mutated fungi that glowed faintly at night.
And when the people saw him arriving—with hundreds of soldiers, adventurers, and refugees behind him—
They fell to their knees.
Not out of respect.
Out of desperation.
They begged:
"Take me with you!"
"We are loyal to Duke Douglas!"
"Please, my family will die here!"
"Let me serve you, my lord, please!"
Lusian did not have the heart to refuse them.
And so the Douglas estate in the capital received dozens of new servants—
broken people…
but alive.