The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] Chapter 1165: The Great Beyond

"Hey, um... they’re not dead, right?"

Ollie’s voice carried an equal mix of concern and a smidgen of guilt as he stared at the two unconscious figures occupying neighboring medical bay beds.

Kyle, the automatic accomplice by relations, first leaned over Jax, then over his older brother, casually lifting one eyelid after the other with the ease of someone who’d apparently seen enough nonsense in his lifetime that this no longer ranked particularly high on the list.

After a moment’s inspection, he simply shrugged.

"Still alive," Kyle reported after a quick inspection. Straightening up, he added in the same matter-of-fact tone, "Though, for safety, you might want to hide out before they wake up... and for about an hour afterward. I’ll try negotiating with tonight’s dessert, but depending on the size of those bumps, there’s a reasonable chance it won’t work."

"!!!"

The blonde immediately flung both hands into the air in utter horror.

"Hey! I only made a suggestion!" he cried, sounding like history’s most unjustly accused culprit. "I was thinking something along the lines of medicine! Maybe a nice drink! A nap! Not... not launching them into the great beyond with express shipping!"

The rightfully normally bright lighthouse whirled toward the two unconscious victims before pointing at them with enough panic to power a small city.

"No one else was giving other suggestions! If there had been any, as there absolutely should’ve been, then there would have been at least three more terrible ideas before we ever got to mine!"

He turned back to Kyle with the expression of someone desperately appealing to the court of public opinion.

"I swear, my conscience specifically objected to murder!"

Not that it didn’t work on his already hopelessly biased husband, but from the comfort of someone’s rather safe sea of consciousness, one guardian mecha would’ve liked to remind everyone that this was the very same individual who had nearly obliterated the Empire’s one and only Imperial Crown Prince.

He merely wished to present the facts.

What everyone chose to do with them afterward was entirely their own business.

Meanwhile, just as Ollie flailed about, insisting on his innocence, Princess Kira remained completely unbothered, wearing the expression of someone who couldn’t possibly understand what all the fuss was about.

"What?" she asked with a small shrug. "It worked, didn’t it?"

Well, to the blonde’s horror, it actually definitely did.

Though somewhere beneath the blissful darkness of unconsciousness, one Chief of Staff who’d thoroughly had it with the universe probably would’ve rolled his eyes all the way to the moon before muttering, "Well, since everyone seems so convinced it works, why don’t they volunteer to experience it themselves?"

Of course, saying any of that would’ve required functioning legs and a brain that didn’t currently resemble warm porridge. Unfortunately, he was rather lacking in both.

It was, however, a brief reprieve for the increasingly worried blonde, who ultimately decided that staying close to his beloved sworn brother was probably the safest course of action in the event his own husband failed to negotiate an amicable settlement.

In the end, though, the concern proved unnecessary.

Neither Killian nor Jax showed the slightest sign of waking anytime soon, their thoroughly overworked minds apparently deciding that consciousness could wait until they recovered enough to process whatever in the world they’d just experienced.

Because apparently...

While everyone else received shinier feathers, sturdier horns, plumper bodies, or even the miraculous ability to cultivate mushrooms...

The little Queen Bee had unknowingly brought back a big for her parentals.

__

Save for the occasional buzzing and the soft flutter of tiny wings, the medical bay remained pleasantly quiet, with no frantic alarms or persistent beeping to suggest anyone had suffered lasting damage.

Emotionally speaking, however...

There was definitely a growing sense of vindictiveness brewing beneath one Chief of Staff’s otherwise composed exterior, one that’d likely culminate in certain people mysteriously losing their dessert privileges for the next three days.

Anyway...

The most prominent sound inside the room soon became the Imperial Crown Prince’s voice.

"A hive mind?"

"Yeah... or something like that," Killian answered, still trying to piece together what’d actually happened. He glanced toward Jax, who seemed completely unaffected by the earlier catastrophe and was currently rubbing noses with the little Queen Bee, who happily buzzed back at him as though she hadn’t nearly sent her parents straight back into unconsciousness.

Xavier raised a brow.

That clearly wasn’t going to satisfy him.

The eldest Nox rubbed his forehead before searching for a better explanation.

"Do you remember what the lectures said about the Zergs?" he asked. "Back then, they supposedly operated through a hive mind. Information spread almost instantly because once one unit learned something, everyone else eventually knew it too." He paused before adding, "I think... what happened earlier was something similar."

Only...

Not exactly.

"Though I’d hesitate to call it a true hive mind because..." Killian continued thoughtfully. "I still had some sort of control over my own agency the entire time. It wasn’t like I became one of them. It was more like..." He frowned, trying to organize the memory into words. "Like someone suddenly forced dozens of live projections into my head all at once. I could still think for myself, but I was also seeing what they were seeing."

"What?"

This time, it was Luca.

As a returnee, he’d naturally learned about the Zergs as part of the academy curriculum, but hearing someone discuss them so matter-of-factly, as though full-scale planetary invasions were simply historical events everyone accepted, still left him stunned to a great degree.

Killian, by contrast, merely nodded as though the entire topic were perfectly ordinary.

"It happened a long time ago, so I figured the comparison was close enough. Only... earlier there were far more perspectives than before." He looked toward the little Queen again. "So it felt even closer to a hive mind than the previous times."

"More?" Marquise Evelyn immediately caught that single word. "And... "

She stared directly at her eldest son.

"Has this happened before?"

Honestly...

Killian should’ve expected that question.

In fact, looking around now, he realized every parent present had practically identical expressions, all patiently waiting for their opportunity to begin what promised to become a very thorough interrogation.

The young official closed his eyes.

Resigned himself to fate.

Then sighed.

"Yes, Mom..."

Could he have lied?

Probably.

Should he?

Absolutely not.

For one thing, he was still trying to understand exactly what that phenomenon was.

For another...

His father, otherwise known as a walking lie detector, was standing right there.

Distracting him with the baby bee might’ve worked once already, but Killian wasn’t nearly as confident the same tactic would succeed against someone like Marquise Julienne Astrea Mylor.

Realistically...

Just how long could he expect those lies to survive?

And even if, by some miracle, he managed to fool every last one of them...

There was still D-29.

Given the current state of affairs, there was a very real possibility that the little system would sell him out for a single autograph the instant it detected even the slightest suspicious spike in his pulse.

With that, the rather calculating official determined that honesty was the way to go.