BEEEEEP―!
A warning tone burst from inside the glass wall.
The blue barrier surrounding the test stand shook violently.
The blue light rapidly faded from the center, and soon the entire barrier scattered into particles of light.
[Field Waveform Reproduction Test 12]
[Barrier output plummeting]
[Mana circuit overheating]
[Test terminated.]
“It shut down again!”
A researcher removed the blackened wrist guard from the test stand.
Thin smoke rose through the gaps in its casing.
“Run the standard diagnostics again.”
“All six runs on that side came back normal.”
“Then why does it shut down only when monster mana enters?”
The researchers fell silent.
At that moment, the research wing entrance opened.
Sang-hyeok stepped inside after passing the security check.
One researcher walked past him carrying a charred prototype on a fireproof tray.
Sang-hyeok studied it briefly, then headed down the inner corridor.
Red numbers continued counting down on an electronic display mounted on the wall.
[Time Until Korean Player Association Field Suitability Verification]
[17:42:18]
Employees hurried through the corridor with spare parts and tablets in their hands.
The same test was being repeated through every open door.
A blue barrier activated.
A monster mana waveform touched it.
The barrier shook, and the equipment shut down.
Sang-hyeok stopped in front of the conference room.
Kim Sang-jun’s voice came through the closed door.
“What happened with the request for a delay?”
“It was finally rejected. They said if we don’t attend, it will be treated as a voluntary withdrawal.”
“What if we just proceed?”
A brief silence followed.
“If the same phenomenon appears tomorrow, the defect will be entered into the official record. We’ll also lose our qualification for the second comparative performance evaluation.”
“And the follow-up supply negotiations?”
“They’ll be reorganized around Taeseong’s equipment.”
If Ilseong delayed, it was eliminated.
If it forced the verification through and the equipment shut down, it was over all the same.
Before his regression, they had chosen the latter.
That result had marked the beginning of Ilseong’s downfall.
Sang-hyeok looked into the conference room through the narrow pane of glass beside the door.
Kim Do-hyun sat at the head of the table.
His expression was as composed as always, but his tie had been loosened.
Kim Sang-jun stood beside him, turning through the Association’s response.
The corners of the pages were crumpled from how many times he had read them.
Across from them stood Kim Seo-yoon in a white lab coat.
Her loosely tied hair clung to her cheek, and thin bandages were wrapped around the fingers that had held the soldering tools.
Sang-hyeok’s gaze stopped on that hand.
Before his regression, the last time he had heard his sister’s voice, it had been breaking apart between explosions and static.
Now that same voice was carrying clearly through the conference room.
Kim Seo-yoon placed a blackened prototype on the table.
“If we remake the prototype from scratch, we’ll have to get the certification approved again. Then we won’t be able to enter tomorrow’s verification.”
After speaking, she raised her head.
Her eyes met Sang-hyeok’s through the glass.
“Sang-hyeok?”
Everyone in the conference room turned toward the door.
Sang-hyeok took a breath and opened it.
“Why are you here?”
Kim Sang-jun rose from his seat.
His startled expression quickly hardened.
“The research wing is under emergency control right now. Go home.”
“I came because of that emergency.”
“What can you do here?”
Sang-hyeok looked toward the equipment case placed in the center of the conference room.
A red test-suspension sticker was attached to the lid.
“If that equipment shuts down even once tomorrow, Ilseong won’t make it to the second evaluation.”
Kim Sang-jun’s eyebrow twitched.
“And Taeseong wins without even having to fight.”
The conference room fell silent.
Everyone knew that outcome, but no one had said it aloud.
Kim Sang-jun set the Association’s response on the table.
“Don’t interfere based on something you overheard outside the door.”
“That isn’t all I heard before speaking.”
“Then what?”
Sang-hyeok looked at Kim Do-hyun.
“Father. Please let me examine the prototype.”
Kim Sang-jun let out a hollow laugh.
“The research team has been working on it for days. What is going to change just because you look at it?”
“I’m not planning to look with the equipment the research team used.”
“Then what are you planning to use?”
Sang-hyeok pointed at his own eyes with his index finger.
“My eyes.”
Kim Seo-yoon’s gaze stopped on Sang-hyeok’s eyes.
“Sang-hyeok. Don’t tell me……”
Sang-hyeok nodded.
“I awakened today.”
Kim Seo-yoon’s eyes widened.
As if she were finally seeing the answer she had searched for over so many years, she could not take her eyes off Sang-hyeok’s face for a long moment.
“Your Trait really opened?”
“Yeah.”
Kim Seo-yoon parted her lips, then closed them again.
Whenever his test results came back negative, she had been the one to comfort Sang-hyeok instead.
Even after Sang-hyeok himself had given up, she had continued going to the research institute in search of his Manifestation Condition.
Before his regression, even in her final moments, she had apologized for failing to find it for him.
“Are you all right physically? Nothing hurts or feels strange?”
“I’m fine. I actually feel much better than before.”
Sang-hyeok looked at her bandaged fingers.
“So you don’t have anything to be sorry about, Noona.”
Kim Seo-yoon’s eyes trembled for a moment.
She looked as though she wanted to ask why he had said that.
Just then, another warning tone sounded from the test room beyond the wall.
Kim Seo-yoon swallowed the question and turned her gaze back to the equipment case.
Kim Sang-jun also stared at Sang-hyeok with a rigid expression.
“How did you find your Manifestation Condition?”
“I didn’t find it. When I came to my senses, it had already opened.”
He could not talk about his regression.
The same was true of the fact that he had fulfilled his Manifestation Condition just before dying.
At that moment, Kim Do-hyun asked a short question.
“Can those eyes find the defect?”
“I’ll have to check.”
“Do you need to touch the equipment?”
“No. I only need to look.”
Kim Do-hyun tapped the table once with his finger.
“Seo-yoon. Show him.”
Kim Sang-jun opened his mouth, then stopped.
Kim Do-hyun had already made his decision.
Kim Seo-yoon approached the equipment case and released the lock.
Click.
The thick lid opened.
Three wrist-guard-shaped prototypes lay side by side on the cushioning material.
A mana stone embedded in the center could be seen through the gaps in the black casing.
Two of them already had blackened edges from repeated testing.
“You don’t need it disassembled?”
“No. This is enough.”
Sang-hyeok looked at the prototype on the far left and opened <Demon Dragon’s Eye>.
Heat spread through both of his eyes, and the colors of the conference room faded.
The mana stone and the internal components appeared layered beyond the black casing.
But while the equipment was inactive, he could not find anything particularly abnormal.
It was just as the rumors he had heard before his regression said.
The trap only revealed itself when monster mana entered.
“Noona. Can you feed it a weak amount of monster mana?”
“Right here?”
“I only need to see the instant the problem moves. We can stop it before the equipment overheats.”
Kim Seo-yoon looked into Sang-hyeok’s eyes for a moment, then picked up one of the prototypes.
“Bring in a small testing unit, please.”
A short while later, a researcher wheeled in a portable tester.
Kim Seo-yoon placed the prototype on the test stand and lowered the monster mana output.
[Monster Mana Waveform Output: 5%]
[Test Time: 1 second]
“Ready?”
“Start.”
When she pressed the button, blue light spread from the prototype.
A round barrier formed around the test stand, and immediately afterward, the monster mana waveform touched it.
Click.
Sang-hyeok caught sight of a fingernail-sized black component hidden beneath the mana stone moving.
At the same instant, the center of the blue barrier darkened.
“Turn it off.”
Kim Seo-yoon immediately removed her hand from the button.
The barrier disappeared just before it completely collapsed, and only faint smoke rose from the prototype.
“Did you find it?”
“Yeah.”
Sang-hyeok pointed directly beneath the mana stone.
“There’s a black component hidden here. It moved when monster mana entered, and the barrier shut down at that exact moment.”
Kim Seo-yoon lifted the prototype and examined the place Sang-hyeok had indicated.
But from the outside, there was nothing to see except the smooth casing.
“Exactly where is it? What does it look like?”
“It’ll be faster to show you than explain.”
“How?”
Sang-hyeok opened his inventory.
Black light gathered over his palm.
Flash.
A black stone slab engraved with the pattern of a closed eye appeared.
Kim Do-hyun leaned slightly forward from the head of the table, and Kim Sang-jun’s gaze fixed on the slab as well.
“An item you obtained from the Tower?”
“Yeah.”
Without touching it, Kim Seo-yoon slowly examined the slab’s surface.
“Rare Grade?”
“Hero Grade.”
Her hand stopped in midair.
Kim Sang-jun immediately turned toward Sang-hyeok as well.
“You got a Hero Grade item from the tutorial?”
“Yes.”
Even high-level players could not easily obtain Hero Grade items.
No one had ever heard of a newly awakened player obtaining one in the tutorial.
Kim Sang-jun looked ready to ask more, but Kim Do-hyun raised a hand and stopped him.
“We can hear the rest after this matter is settled.”
Kim Do-hyun’s gaze deepened.
“What item is it?”
“<Demon Eye Record Stone>. It can show other people what I saw.”
Sang-hyeok flowed mana into the Record Stone.
The closed-eye pattern slowly opened.
Ssssk.
The wrist guard they had just tested appeared over the stone slab, enlarged beyond its actual size.
The black casing faded, revealing the small component hidden beneath the mana stone.
When Sang-hyeok sent his will into it, the frozen record began to move.
The blue barrier unfolded.
Then the monster mana waveform covered the equipment.
Click.
The black component beneath the mana stone moved, and the blue barrier immediately shut down.
What had happened in the testing room was reproduced exactly over the stone slab.
“Wait. Stop there.”
Sang-hyeok paused the record, leaving the black component frozen just before it moved.
Following the direction of Kim Seo-yoon’s finger, Sang-hyeok enlarged that section.
The location and shape of the black component beneath the mana stone expanded until it was the size of a palm.
“Now play it again.”
Sang-hyeok resumed the record.
The black component moved downward, and the blue barrier immediately vanished.
Kim Seo-yoon watched the moment it moved without blinking.
‘<Demon Dragon’s Eye: Structural Analysis>.’
Heat spread through Sang-hyeok’s eyes once more.
Short lines of text appeared beside the black component in the record.
[Activation Condition: Monster mana detected]
[Activation Result: Forced barrier shutdown]
Kim Seo-yoon quickly read both lines.
“I’ll check whether this component was there from the beginning.”
She pulled over a tablet.
The approved design and internal inspection photographs taken immediately after final assembly appeared on the screen one after another.
Kim Seo-yoon enlarged the area beneath the mana stone in the photograph and placed it beside the Record Stone’s image.
One side was empty.
The other had the black component embedded in it.
“It isn’t there.”
Kim Sang-jun asked.
“What isn’t?”
“That component. It isn’t in the approved design, and it isn’t in the photographs taken after assembly was completed either.”
Kim Seo-yoon called up the standard diagnostic results on one side of the screen.
All six tests had returned normal.
“This is why the standard diagnostics were normal too. It doesn’t move at all in response to diagnostic mana, so no matter how many times we tested it, we couldn’t find it.”
Kim Seo-yoon looked toward the remaining two prototypes.
Without saying a word, Sang-hyeok moved <Demon Dragon’s Eye> over them.
The same location as the first.
The second prototype had the same black component hidden inside it.
So did the third.
“All three have it.”
The remaining exhaustion disappeared from Kim Seo-yoon’s face.
A cold, hardened look took its place.
“Someone opened the prototypes after the assembly inspection and put these in.”
Kim Sang-jun looked at the Record Stone.
“Could they have been included by mistake during production?”
“No.”
Kim Seo-yoon answered without hesitation.
“A component that got in by accident wouldn’t selectively react only to monster mana. And certainly not in exactly the same place on all three units.”
She pointed to the text on the Record Stone.
“Someone deliberately made it so the equipment would look normal in ordinary testing and only shut down in actual combat.”
Everyone in the conference room stared at the black stone slab.
Why the standard diagnostics had continued to return normal.
Why the barrier collapsed every time monster mana touched it.
The cause of twelve repeated failures had been revealed as a single fingernail-sized black component.
Kim Do-hyun looked at Sang-hyeok.
“You suspected from the beginning that this wasn’t an accidental defect.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you mentioned Taeseong before even examining the prototype.”
Sang-hyeok did not deny it.
Kim Do-hyun’s finger stopped on the table.
“You believe Taeseong is behind this?”
Before his regression, by the time Taeseong’s involvement became known, Ilseong had already failed the verification and lost every opportunity that followed.
But this time, they had found the trap before the verification.
There was still time to act.
Sang-hyeok answered without hesitation.
“Yes. It was Taeseong Group.”