"The answers we seek are often not the ones we need, and the questions we ask are often not the ones we mean, but regardless the world will provide" – an optimistic philosopher

After a couple of hours that stretched out like molasses, Alex had some of his answers, at least surrounding his surgery. He managed to gleam through the deluge of technical jargon that he had had some sort of growth in his brain, which she explained is the housing of his soul, that is usually fatal and that upon hearing this from one of the court doctors his father Duke Albent had decided to call in an old favor, and voila we have Ivona.

As the conversation progressed into other topics, including on what their unnatural 'skins' were, which was answered with, "they're the newest antiseptic suits for dealing with post-surgery patients, didn't we go over this before the surgery?" by Ivona. After that Alex talked with Ivona for a while more on various topics that he thought important. Ivona, surprised by the topics he chose, asked him if he had any symptoms or possible issues he could tell her. When he asked why she didn't just refer to her diagnostic, she explained that the diagnostic in a low-mana environment is not all-encompassing. When Alex heard her once again ask if there were any problems Alex pondered,

'I thought they already knew I was having memory issues; maybe I'm not the only one?'

Alex then proceeded to tell them how he was having trouble remembering, well almost anything before a couple of days ago, and he then asked her to explain more about his father and his situation.

Ivona was shocked to hear this and said they would need to talk more about that later and started mumbling to herself, "what could have gone wrong, I thought-"

She then looked at Alex and sighed, and then started answering his question the best she could, every once in a while checking with Alex to see if he remembered any of it, but every time she asked all Alex could do is shake his head in the negative. From this, Alex learned that he was the son of Duke Walter Albent, first to his name, ruler of the Alkian province, though duke is probably misleading; for all intents and purposes, he was a king. Learning this prompted Alex to ask why he was then called a duke, this prompted another long lecture, this time about the formation of the kingdom. Alex, though only caught part of it because the pounding in the back of his head had returned, he knew he would need to tell Ivona but didn't want to spoil this chance for information. What he learned in his half lucid state was that his father, along with a number of other provinces, used to be loyal to a central ruling family. This changed when a stray magic beast (Alex dearly wanted to ask about it, but was in too much pain to do so) had destroyed the ruling king with his family. With the family's disappearance, there was infighting over which family would take the role next, in the end ,though, they decided after close to a decade of conflict with no clear victor to remain as separate kingdoms, the names denoting the rulers though did not change, as an homage to the era that the empire had brought ( which Alex, almost on the edge of insanity due to the pain, wondered why the king was not called an emperor then).

'I'm royalty, I guess,' he had thought.

And then he collapsed.