Jun's mind had locked onto a single obsession that how to break the illusion? The more he thought about it, the deeper his frustration grew, coiling around his thoughts like a vice. And to make things worse, he couldn't even escape the shelter itself. No matter which direction he walked, no matter how many times he crossed the same passage or searched desperately for an entrance, he always ended up back in some other corridor or looping around the same familiar structure. It was as if the place had decided to keep him trapped inside, sealing every possible exit with quiet, invisible malice.
He had even tried activating his wrist teleporter at one point he touched the screen, attempted to run the command but there was no response not even any type of flicker.
"Great…" he muttered through clenched teeth, the words barely escaping his lips,"So this is what dying without doing anything feels like."
At least one thing had become clear to him that the only way out was to reverse the illusion itself. He had no other skill, no other ability that could break or bypass it. But how? that was the question. For what felt like an eternity, he stood there searching every detail of the hall the walls, the corners, the shadows pooling beneath the throne, the windows, the entire structure searching for any possible clue. But the more he looked, the more the place seemed to deliberately feed his confusion, as though it were alive and enjoying every second of his helplessness.
He had no idea how much time had passed. Slowly, beneath all the frustration and pain, boredom began to creep in as well.
Eventually, he walked over to a window on the side of the hall. Faint sunlight was filtering in through it, and Jun simply sat down in that pale warmth, letting his mind run in circles while his exhausted body quietly screamed at him. The pain had spread through every part of him by now, dull and persistent, the kind that settles in when the body has been pushed past its limits for too long. He sat there staring blankly at his surroundings, and then, almost by accident, his gaze drifted to the light and the way it entered through the window and scattered across different surfaces, bouncing and bending as it struck each one at a different angle.
He watched the reflections for a few seconds. Then his eyes widened slightly. "…Damn." The word came out quiet and flat, directed entirely at himself,"Why didn't this come to me sooner."
He pushed himself to his feet immediately. If it was an illusion, then what was its foundation? Perception, projection, or some form of reflection. And if it was projection or reflection then breaking it wouldn't require force. It would require a reverse-reflection, a counter-projection thrown back at the source.
Jun straightened up and steadied his breathing. Then he activated his Mimic Ability. A faint wave of energy rippled outward from him, and he set his full focus on the environment around him, attempting to reflect the illusion back on itself from every direction at once. For the first few seconds, everything seemed to hold and then it all snapped back to exactly how it had been before. Jun clenched his jaw,"Again"
He tried once more, and then again after that, each attempt pushing the energy into a reflection pattern, each attempt collapsing before it could take hold. Sometimes the light distorted around him, sometimes a crackling gathered near his hands, sometimes his mimic flow simply broke apart mid-execution but the result was always the same and that was Failure.
Wait, if I die here, what will happen to my mother? What will become of my family? Thoughts like these flooded his mind. No, no I can't die like this. After all, I've barely even seen the world yet.
He kept going without stopping, cycling through every variation he could think of, refusing to let himself rest. But his body was already deep in pain, and with every failed attempt the weight in his arms grew heavier, as though gravity itself was pressing down on them with increasing patience. His chest had begun to ache in a way that was harder to ignore now. Still, he kept trying adjusting the angle, the intensity, the structure of the reflection and until the frustration had compressed itself into something quieter and colder inside him.
After a long stretch of failed attempts, Jun drew in a slow, deep breath. He looked at his trembling hands for a moment, then said quietly to himself, "…One last try" This time, he wasn't going to rely on his own power alone. He would bring Red Eye into it as well.
He summoned Red Eye first, letting the merge happen that familiar, strange sensation of something vast and sharp folding itself into his body. Then he raised his hand slightly and began drawing on Red Eye's power alongside his own. The moment the summoning process engaged, an unusual surge ran through him, electric and deep, and in the next instant one of his eyes began to shift slowly bleeding into a full, vivid crimson red. A faint mist-like aura crackled around him, restless and alive.
Jun locked his entire concentration onto a single point. He began pushing his Mimic Ability toward its absolute limit, letting it run at full speed of copying, reflecting, aligning everything simultaneously. His mind was operating at a pace that felt almost unsustainable, processing the illusion's structure while feeding the reflection pattern back into it. The energy around his hands began to warp the air itself, distorting it in visible waves, and as the sunlight from the window struck that distorted energy, faint reverse reflections began to bloom across the surrounding space or a sign, however small, that something was actually working this time.
But using his powers at this level while already wounded was taking a toll that his body couldn't hide. A thin line of blood traced its way down from his nose. The blood stains on his chest, already there from before, became more visible. His hands were shaking badly now, and his entire body trembled with the effort of staying upright, as though it might give out at any second.
He was still holding the reverse reflection when his vision suddenly fractured with black and white light bleeding into each other at the edges of his sight and then, before he could do anything about it, his body gave way entirely. He hit the ground hard and fast, and the world went dark.
Red Eye separated from him immediately, but the power instability inside Jun's body and the dangerously low reserves he had left meant she couldn't stay. Before leaving, she moved with sharp precision in that brief final moment, aligning Jun's body carefully against a wall so he wouldn't be left exposed in the open. Then she was gone, and the crimson slowly faded from his eye, leaving it ordinary again.
Some time passed but how much, it was impossible to say. When consciousness began to return to Jun, it came in fragments, slow and reluctant. The first thing he registered was the weight of his own body, heavy and uncooperative, pain sitting in every part of him like something that had made itself at home. He couldn't move properly. He could barely even think straight. He turned his head and looked at his surroundings and for one disoriented moment, a cold spike of fear ran through him before he could stop it.