It took a while before his breathing finally stabilized.
The urge to destroy the picture and crush it into dust surfaced in his mind, but he restrained himself.
Kael Solace is dead. He's dead. He died seven years ago. In that dungeon.
Hypnotizing himself was the only way to slowly loosen the heavy feelings crashing over him like a tidal wave.
After calming down, he returned the album to its place and took out his phone.
"Great Master Clyde, are you on North Cross Street right now?" Ruby asked in the guild chat.
"Yes."
"Can you enter national hunter Kael Solace's house for a minute? And please take a picture of the inside."
"Hey! That's illegal!" the Guild Master protested.
"As if you're not a fan yourself, Sir Baldy! You realize this is our only chance to see his house, right? The Hunter Association forbids anyone from entering! Now that we have Great Master Clyde in the area, it's the perfect opportunity to take a glimpse of the national hero's childhood home!" Matthew typed enthusiastically.
"What's so interesting about seeing his house? Didn't you hear when his sister was interviewed? She said her brother was just an average young man."
"But the national hero's power is to turn anything he touches into dust, right? I want to know if things inside his house half melted or have some of its parts missing after he accidentally touched them."
"Fool. You actually believe those rumors?"
"There aren't any," Clyde interrupted. "His house looks like any ordinary home."
Kael went downstairs and began taking photos, starting from the entrance all the way to the back door. He also took pictures of each room to satisfy their curiosity.
After five minutes, he deleted them all.
"Wait! Why did you delete them, Great Master Clyde?!"
"We need more!"
"I'm not done looking yet!"
"I'm leaving," Kael announced. "Besides, Ruby only asked me to enter and take pictures for one minute. Because you're my guildmates, I extended the deadline to three."
Reading his message, everyone felt the urge to crawl out of Clyde's phone and smack him. Sometimes, he could be so rigid it was infuriating.
He always did things his own way.
Kael double checked the dome he had set up before switching his phone to silent mode. Instead of returning to his own room, he went to his sister's room and lay down on her bed.
Being inside the familiar house made his chest feel tight. He remembered how many times he had barged into her room just to annoy her.
And now, he could never return to those moments. He closed his eyes and fall asleep.
After sleeping for a few hours, he got up and left. He climbed onto the highest wall in the neighborhood and overlooked the city.
With a snap of his fingers, golden light burst outward from where he stood. It spread across a five kilometer radius, restoring everything in its path. The silver coin remained in his palm, flipping and twirling between his fingers.
He walked along the familiar streets until he was seven kilometers away from his hometown. He now stood in a quiet neighborhood lined with large houses and wide gates built for privacy. It was obvious that only wealthy and high end families lived here.
Each house was equipped with an A-class shield dome to protect it from dungeon explosions.
He walked down the path with ease and stopped in front of his sister's current home.
It had only been yesterday when he received the news of his nephew's death.
The boy, along with other teenagers his age, had illegally entered a C-rank dungeon and gotten themselves killed.
Their trespassing into the newly opened dungeon had gone unnoticed, until an official guild from the main city was dispatched and recovered their bodies.
The hunters assigned to clear the C-rank dungeon were just as shocked as everyone else. No one had been granted entry before them. So how had a group of untrained high schoolers managed to get inside?
The public and the media blamed the Hunter Association.
But the Association clarified that their system detected the dungeon's appearance five minutes after it manifested. Within three minutes, they were onsite and had barricaded the area.
They measured the mana density and confirmed it was a C-grade dungeon. They contacted the military to assist in evacuating nearby civilians.
So, within a span of eight minutes, could a group of high schoolers have entered unnoticed?
The Hunter Association also confirmed that a CCTV camera across the street had captured the event. The store owner allowed them to review the footage. It recorded the moment the dungeon appeared. People nearby panicked and fled as far away from the portal as possible.
And just as the Association had stated, they arrived within eight minutes and barricaded the area around the portal.
The footage never showed Kael's nephew or his friends entering the dungeon.
So how did they get in?
Kael had no answer.
He wanted to investigate immediately, but the Guild Master had prevented him by assigning him this restoration job.
Fortunately, the affected area included his hometown. His sister and her husband had been away from their house since yesterday, attending their son's funeral.
Kael placed his hand on the A-class shield his sister had commissioned for her house. In a few seconds, it crumbled into sparkling dust.
He restored the two storey home with ease and stepped inside.
The interior design was more vibrant and refined than their previous house. Kael could tell it reflected a blend of his sister's and her husband's tastes.
He walked around the first floor before heading upstairs.
There were six rooms in total: a guest room, a study, their master bedroom, his nephew's room, a storage room, and a collector's room.
The first room he opened to turns out to be the collector's room. And it was full of his posters, figurines, limited edition of clothes and shoes he used to wore.
Even after his so called death, his sister and her family never forgot about him.