He’s asking if everything is okay, when we haven’t talked in almost 6 month?

So background on me: I’m in potentially my last year of university and a couple years ago decided to not date while in uni, because my last relationship had a negative effect on my grades. I had also never been in a long distance relationship before.

The situation: Over a year ago I was welcomed into an online D&D group by a bunch of awsome guys. Fast forward 8 months and 1 of them asks me if I want to try out a long distant relationship. He is a nice and sweet guy so I decide, despite my promise to myself I wouldn’t, to give it a go. It’s all good, we work thing out. And then bam, as I should have expected, my grades start to drop from not being able to manage my time properly while dating. I was also finding it very difficult to be in a long distant relationship, for all the normal reasons it’s hard to make a long distant relationship work.

The relationship (for me at least) lasts 4 months, I have the discussion with him that it’s not working out, I need to focus on my school, and I don’t want a long distance relationship.

At this point in time we were still talking weakly for our D&D game, no hostility anywhere but not talking outside the game anymore. Fast forward again almost 6 months to last week and our D&D campaign comes to a natural close. I join a different game scheduled to start tomorrow, which he isn’t in (not because I don’t want anything to do with him, he just happens to not be in this one). He had mentioned last week that he was sad that he wouldn’t be able to have the weekly schedualed time during our last campaign to spend with me anymore, which I thought was sweet but didn’t really read much into.

The issue: he just messaged me essentially asking if we where still dating, saying - I have been wondering, are we alright? I have felt like there might be something wrong with us so I thought I would ask.

And all I can think to reply is - you’re joking right? But I know he isn’t. And we haven’t talked outside of our game in almost 6 months, when I thought I was pretty clear about our relationship having ended. I just don’t know how to handle this with eloquence, and not having him feel like an idiot.

TL;DR
I thought I ended a 4 month relationship 6 months ago pretty clearly. We haven’t talked just the two of us since then. But he seems to think that there is still a relationship. I don’t know how to handle this with eloquence.