Chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement at larger numbers of light-quark flavors, \(N_f\) , may impact the properties of light hadrons. In this work, we study several properties of the pion and kaon—such as their masses and other related quantities across a range of \(N_f\) . We employ the symmetry-preserving, confining vector–vector flavor-dependent contact interaction (FCI) as an input to the Schwinger–Dyson equation (SDE) and the homogeneous Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE). In the chiral limit \((m_f = 0)\) , increasing the number of flavors \(N_f\) leads to the restoration of chiral symmetry and deconfinement at a critical number of flavors, \(N^{c}_{f} \approx 8\) , where at above the dress quark mass \(M_{0}\) vanish. For \(N_f < N_{f}^{c}\) , the Nambu-Goldstone boson mass \(m^{0}_{GB}\) remains unchanged, signalling the chiral symmetry broken. When \(N_f > N_{f}^{c}\) , chiral symmetry is fully restored and \(m^{0}_{GB}\) rises rapidly, indicating a transition from a bound state to a resonant state. The bound-state dissociation occurs at a critical flavor number \(N^{d}_{f}\) , which coincides with \(N_{f}^c\) , providing a clear indicator of deconfinement as quarks and antiquarks detach from their bound states. On the other hand, when bare quark mass is considered \((m_f \ne 0)\) , the chiral symmetry remains explicitly broken and is partially restored at and above \(N^{c}_{f} \approx 8.2\) . Pion and kaon masses \(m_{(\pi , K)}\) rises rapidly and dissociate at \(N^{d}_{f} =N^{d}_{(\pi ,K)f} \approx 8.2\) , which separates the bound states from their constituents, indicating a Mott-like dissociation of bound states into their constituents. We also verified the consistency of our findings across different flavors using the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation.
