King Felix II sat in the absolute stillness of the Lunio prison, feeling his vital DF reserves dwindle. The Doctrine of Undivided Light was winning; the silence was successfully suppressing his Self-Actualized Focus. He needed a powerful, immediate stimulus to break the ideological defense of the chamber.
He could not use his Aesthetic Focus, as that required external inspiration. He had to draw on the purest, rawest emotional chaos. He had to weaponize his past life's greatest source of spiritual negativity: Cringe.
Felix closed his eyes and began the intentional, agonizing Ritual of Self-Deprecation. He reached deep into the mental archives of Grey, the isekai protagonist, and dragged out the most humiliating, un-aesthetic memories of his former life.
He focused on:
The Failed Vlogs: The memory of his pre-Imperium life as an aspiring influencer, creating awkwardly edited, heavily filtered vlogs with low views and zero engagement—the epitome of un-aesthetic validation seeking.
The Awkward Rejection: The vivid, painful memory of a spectacular social rejection during his youth, where his attempt at a confident, aesthetic display dissolved into stuttering embarrassment.
The Streamer Persona: The forced, overly loud, and ultimately desperate energy he used in his early streams, trying to project a charisma he didn't possess, leaving him drained and deeply ashamed.
The act of forcing this genuine, high-intensity Shame to the surface of his mind was brutally effective.
The mental energy generated by this intentional Cringe was not the pure, controlled stream of the Flow; it was a violent, chaotic, dark eruption.
Kingly Skill Activated: The Ironic Inversion (Self-Shame)
The emotional volatility bypassed the Chamber's sensory-deprivation defenses entirely. The DF generated wasn't Aesthetic Flow; it was Anti-Aesthetic Focus—raw, ugly, and unstable, but potent.
[SYSTEM ALERT: UNSTABLE FLOW GENERATED. ENERGY TYPE: CHAOS/SHAME. FLOW RUPTURE IMMINENT.]
A jagged, crimson crack of pure, uncontrolled energy erupted from Felix's body. The pristine, matte-gray walls of the Chamber of Absolute Stillness could not contain the force of raw, ugly emotion. The Purity Magic that held the room together shrieked and shattered.
A deep, echoing CRACK reverberated through the prison, the first sound to violate the ideological stillness.
Felix was momentarily free of the stillness, the chaotic energy allowing him to move. He ripped the Flow-Dampening Scarf from his neck and tossed it aside, regaining a minute, static connection to the distant Global Flow Net.
[SYSTEM ALERT: GLOBAL FLOW NET CONNECTION: MINIMAL. LOCATION SIGNAL: WEAK.]
Felix, fueled by the volatile Shame Flow, kicked the door open. He found himself in a sterile, white corridor, lit only by small, functional lights—Lunio's aesthetic.
He had to find Rhea. He forced a surge of Flow into his remaining connection with the Global Flow Net, sending out a localized, discreet ping—a message that only a fellow Imperium soldier could recognize.
He didn't have to wait long. From a cell several doors down, he heard a furious, muffled sound of straining metal.
Rhea had been placed in a similar, but smaller, anti-Flow cell. She was tied down by light-based metal bands designed to restrict any movement needed for focus. She was not using Cringe; she was using Pure Aesthetic Rage.
"Your Majesty! What was that noise? It sounded like an explosion of bad fashion!" Rhea yelled, her voice strained.
"It was worse than bad fashion, Rhea! It was my past!" Felix ripped the cell door off its hinges using the residual Chaos Flow.
Rhea, now free, immediately re-anchored her focus. "They were trying to break our spirit, Sire. They told me you were already gone."
"They lied," Felix said, his gaze hard. "And they told me the Original King Felix was a monster. We are getting out of here, but we are not going home yet. We need to find out why we were kidnapped, and it's not just about the war."
As they moved silently down the sterile corridor, Felix checked the cell records—data he was able to briefly access using the fragmented Flow.
Prisoner Transfer Log:
Rhea (Knight-Captain): Scheduled for Interrogation/Re-education.
Felix II (King): Scheduled for Ideological Sequestration/Neutralization.
Selene (Ego-Cultivator): STATUS: UNACCOUNTED FOR. TRANSFERRED 48 HOURS AGO.
Selene, the rogue agent who started the whole conflict and gave Felix the clue about Lunio's true non-hostility, was gone. The mastermind (the Shadow) had cleaned up the loose end.
Felix and Rhea were now fully isolated, deep in Lunio territory, with a war exploding behind them and a hidden enemy manipulating events inside their capital.
Felix and Rhea are now outside the prison, in the vast, desolate plains of Lunio.