When consciousness finally crawled back to Jun, it brought nothing gentle with it. His entire body was submerged in pain and the kind that doesn't announce itself in one place but spreads everywhere at once, dull and relentless. The dried blood near his chest had stiffened the fabric against his skin, and even the small act of breathing felt like it required more effort than it should have. He lay still for a moment, trying to piece together where he was and what had happened, and then he made the mistake of actually looking around.
Dozens of skeletons, scattered across the floor in every direction some slumped against the walls, some collapsed mid-crawl, some simply lying flat as though they had just decided to stop existing right there. The smell hit him almost simultaneously, thick and stale and deeply unpleasant, the kind of smell that coats the inside of your nose and refuses to leave. Jun's breath caught in his throat and for a brief, unguarded moment, genuine fear ran through him before he could suppress it.
He called the Red Eye suit without wasting another second, and it wrapped around him with that familiar, quiet efficiency. It didn't fix the pain not really but it created enough of a barrier between him and the environment that he could at least think straight again. He steadied himself and began scanning the room properly this time, pushing past the discomfort, and that's when he noticed it a stone surface a short distance away, and resting on top of it, something that looked unmistakably like a key.
Jun walked over, each step heavier than the last, and looked down at it for a moment before picking it up. The instant his fingers closed around it, his card flashed with a message.
Illusion Shelter's authority is hereby granted to you. Full access has been provided.
He barely had time to process that before a second message appeared immediately after.
You get a reward. However, you are currently unable to claim it due to your current level. Level upgrade required.
Then, before he could even react to that, a third prompt materialized on the card.
Please enter your name and supportive name.
Jun stared at it. For a moment, a familiar unease settled over him the quiet, creeping suspicion that none of this was real, that he was still somewhere inside the illusion, that this was just another layer of it designed to make him lower his guard. He turned the thought over carefully, examining it from different angles. But the pain in his body was too specific, too consistent to be fabricated. The smell was too awful. The skeletons were too detailed. Illusions tended to be clean, constructed so, this place was neither of those things.
He made his decision. In the name field, he typed Omnis. In the supportive field, he typed Ruhi. The response came instantly.
Thank you. We will promptly forward this shelter's claim to all registered claimed shelters, ensuring you receive the necessary support and assistance.
And then the card, along with every message on it, simply vanished. Jun reached out instinctively some part of him wanting to stop it, to pull the message back, to at least have a moment to think about what had just been sent out and to whom but there was no option for that, no pause, no confirmation step. It was already done. He stood there with his hand half-raised and nothing in it, staring at the empty space where the card had been.
What Jun had no way of knowing was that across Icolis, that single claim notification had landed like a stone thrown into still water.
In the Poison Queen's shelter, the atmosphere had turned sharp and cold the moment the alert came through. She stood at the center of her gathered subordinates, her expression carrying that particular brand of fury that doesn't raise its voice because it doesn't need to. That man who called himself Omnis had claimed the shelter the shelter that her people had been searching for, the one that multiple teams had been sent to locate.
"How," she said, her tone quiet and precise, "did this happen. And where are the people I sent."
Nobody in the room had a satisfying answer for either question.
The tension in Xinka shelter was no less suffocating. Their search parties had come back with nothing or rather, hadn't come back at all. The shelter had swallowed every team they'd dispatched, and now some unknown individual had walked out of it with full authority. The details were sparse and that made it worse, because the imagination tends to fill gaps with things more unsettling than the truth.
Several other shelters across Icolis were buzzing with their own versions of alarm and speculation, though a quieter undercurrent of relief ran through some of them the kind that nobody says out loud, but everyone feels. At least it hadn't gone to anyone in Icolis's top hundred. If it had, the balance of power would have shifted in ways that nobody was quite prepared to deal with yet. Whoever this Omnis was, he was at least an unknown quantity rather than a known threat.
Jun, entirely unaware of the ripple he had just sent through Icolis, had moved on to more immediate priorities specifically, making the shelter livable. He spent a considerable stretch of time clearing out the space, working through the exhaustion and the persistent ache in his body with the kind of focused, methodical effort that leaves no room for overthinking. By the time he finally allowed himself to stop, the worst of it was done, and the shelter felt at least marginally less like a tomb.
He settled down to rest, and Red Eye, without being asked, had already begun preparing something rabbit, from the smell of it, simple and warm.
Jun watched her for a moment, then spoke,"Can you wait a bit? I'll be right back."
Red Eye turned her head slightly toward him and gave a small nod, the quiet kind that meant she'd heard and she'd wait, no questions attached. Jun pushed himself up and headed out, leaving her to it.