The boiler room, once a haven of golden light and blessed silence, was now thick with a new kind of tension. The three chemistry club members huddled together, shivering from a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature. Kyle stood apart, his quarterback bravado a fragile shell over the terror they had all seen in his eyes when he first stumbled in. Now, that terror was being replaced by a defensive arrogance.
"You did what to the swarm?" Kyle asked, his voice a little too loud as he listened to Ethan dramatically recount their descent. His eyes flicked back to Leo. "You made fire? With your hands?"
"It was a skill fusion," Leo said, his voice neutral. He kept his [Appraise] and [Ward-Sense] passively focused on Kyle. The 'Tecron Whisper' status remained, a dormant, oily smudge on the boy's aura, neutralized by the Heart's protective field.
"Skill fusion," Kyle repeated, the words tasting foreign and bitter in his mouth. He flexed his own hands. "I just got [Power Strike]. Simple. Effective. You hit something, it breaks." He looked around, challenging the room. "This 'fusion' stuff sounds... complicated."
"It saved our lives," Chloe said, her tone cutting. She had positioned herself between Kyle and the rest of the group, her body language that of a guardian.
"Maybe," Kyle conceded, though it was clear he didn't want to. "But out there, when things are coming at you fast, you need something you can rely on. Not some weird art project."
An argument broke out among the survivors. Some, like Ethan, were firmly in the "Kyle is a jock, jocks are dumb, trust the Artisan" camp. Others, however, were swayed by Kyle's simplistic logic. In a world gone mad, the straightforward power of [Power Strike] was comforting. Leo's creations were miraculous but strange, and strangeness was frightening.
Leo ignored the debate. He walked over to Maya, who was staring intently at Kyle, her fingers twitching as if she were taking notes on an invisible pad.
"You saw it too," Leo murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
"His mana is tainted" Maya whispered back, not taking her eyes off Kyle. "A psychic marker. It's a tracking beacon. The moment we leave this sanctuary, whatever placed that mark will know exactly where we are."
"That's the problem for later," Leo said. "The problem for now is that it's latent. Inactive. Which means we can't prove it. If I accuse him of being a walking homing beacon, he'll freak out, his supporters will freak out, and this group will shatter before we've even caught our breath."
Maya finally looked at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses. "So what do we do? We can't just leave him behind. That's monstrous."
"I'm not suggesting that," Leo said, his mind racing, the artist in him looking for a way to blend the components of this social disaster into a solution. "We need to get that mark off him. And to do that, I need to understand it. I need to appraise the source."
"The source? Leo, that means finding the thing that marked him! A 'Tecron Dominator'. That sounds... bad."
"It is bad," Leo agreed. "But it's our only play. We can't stay here forever. The System won't allow it." He glanced at the pulsating Heart. "This is a tutorial. Safe zones are for resting, not hiding."
As if on cue, a new, system-wide notification chimed.
[The Safe Zone 'Heart of the School' will deactivate in: 23:59:59.]
[All surviving participants are advised to prepare for evacuation to the Surface Settlement 'Hope's Outpost'.]
[A final evaluation event will commence upon deactivation.]
A collective groan of despair filled the room. Twenty-four hours. They had one day before they were thrown back to the wolves.
"The Surface Settlement?" Luna perked up. "There are other survivors? A real place?"
"Hope's Outpost," Chloe repeated, a flicker of real hope in her eyes for the first time.
Kyle seized the moment. "See? We just need to hold out for one more day. My [Power Strike] is perfect for breaking through any barricades. We form a tight phalanx, the strong on the outside, and we punch our way through to this Outpost. Simple."
His plan was simplistic, militaristic, and appealed to the desire for a straightforward fight. Several of the more physically inclined students nodded along.
Leo knew it was a suicide pact. Marching in a tight formation with a psychic beacon in their midst would draw every Tecron creature for a mile straight to them. They'd be surrounded and overwhelmed in minutes.
He couldn't say that. Not without revealing what he knew about Kyle and causing a panic.
He needed a new creation. Not a weapon, not a tool. A countermeasure. A way to either mask Kyle's signal or, ideally, sever it entirely. But to forge a cure, he needed the blueprint of the disease.
"Kyle," Leo said, his voice cutting through the planning. All eyes turned to him. "You said you saw the light from our fight. Where were you when you saw it?"
Kyle looked suspicious. "Why?"
"Because the path we cleared might not stay clear," Leo lied smoothly. "If we're evacuating together, we need to know what's between us and the quickest route out. Where did you come from?"
"We were holed up in the chem lab," one of the other chemistry students, a girl named Sarah, answered shakily. "Until... until the big one came."
"Big one?" Maya asked.
"It was huge," Kyle said, a shadow of genuine fear crossing his face again. "Like... a walking tumor. It had these... these grey ethereal lances that seemed to radiate with psychic energy. It didn't even touch us. It just... looked at us. And Mark got this weird symbol on his forehead and started screaming before he... before he just died." He unconsciously rubbed his own temple. "We ran. I don't know how we got away."
A walking tumor. Psychic lances. The Tecron Dominator. It had marked Mark, who dissolved. And it had marked Kyle, latently. Why? To track the survivors? To study them?
Leo's [Appraise] had stored the data on the 'Tecron Whisper' status from Kyle. It was a blueprint, of a sort. A blueprint of a curse. It was incomplete, a mere caricaturebn, but it was a starting point.
He had an idea. A dangerous, reckless idea.
He walked away from the group, back to the edge of the Heart's light, and sat down, pulling his satchel into his lap. He had one more tube of paint—a deep, viridian green. He also had the wrench, now stained with black ichor. And he had the incomplete, shadowy blueprint of the 'Tecron Whisper' in his mind.
He couldn't fight the Dominator yet. But maybe, just maybe, he could forge a shield against its influence. He focused on the [Aegis] blueprint—pure, golden-hued protection. He then focused on the faint, oily residue of the 'Whisper' blueprint. He wouldn't fuse them. That would be like mixing clean water with poison. Instead, he used the [Whisper] as a template, a pattern to defend against. He imagined the [Aegis] energy conforming to it, creating a psychic counter-signature, a ward designed specifically to block that particular frequency of corruption.
[Fuse Skill Blueprint: Aegis with Physical Items: Viridian Paint & Ichor-Stained Wrench? Y/N]
[Intent: Psychic Ward. Target: Tecron Whisper.]
He selected Yes.
The viridian paint bled into the wrench, not with a fiery glow, but with a deep, emerald light that pulsed like a heartbeat. The black ichor seemed to boil away, consumed by the green energy. When the light faded, the wrench was gone. In its place was a simple, green-stone pendant on a leather cord, cool to the touch.
[Item Forged: Pendant of Aegis (E-Rank)]
[A protective charm. Grants the wearer minor resistance to low-level psychic intrusions and tracking effects, specifically those of the Tecron strain. Soul-bound to Leo Vance.]
It wasn't a cure. It was a filter. It might not hide Kyle completely as it was soul bound to Leo, but it could dampen the signal, maybe enough to give them a fighting chance.
He stood up and walked back to the group. He ignored Kyle and went straight to Chloe.
"Here," he said, handing her the pendant. "It should help. With... the fear. The mental fatigue."
Chloe looked at the beautifully crafted pendant, then at Leo, her eyes soft with understanding. She didn't know the full truth, but she trusted him implicitly. She put it on. The green stone rested against her chest, glowing faintly.
Kyle watched the exchange, his expression unreadable. For a moment, Leo thought he saw a flicker of the same oily residue in the quarterback's eyes, a whisper of paranoia. He's giving her special treatment. He doesn't trust you. He's trying to divide us.
The shadow was already at work. They had twenty-four hours before the sanctuary fell. And the enemy wasn't just outside the door. It was already in the room.