On the massive laboratory monitor, the molecular structure of 'Phantom' drifted, tracing a complex, geometric pattern.
Lee Seo-han stood with his hands buried inside his lab coat pockets. He stared intently at the amino acid chains radiating a cold, blue aura.
It was a compound that a global big pharma had buried after pouring billions into development and failing utterly.
In their arrogance, they had attempted to increase its commercial value by extending its half-life, sloppily anchoring fatty acid chains to the structure.
As a result, Phantom had merely become a heavy hammer that crushed the body's natural circadian rhythm.
Granting ninety-six hours of heaven.
Followed by an accelerated descent into hell.
But the core mechanism Seo-han pursued moved in the exact opposite direction from the conventional dogmas of capital.
Not continuous release.
But pulsatility.
Much like natural biological signals, it triggered short, intense waves that forced the dormant neural axis to awaken on its own.
On the screen beside Phantom, Seo-han brought up a virtual rendering of Ghost 2.0.
It was an ingenious chemical architecture that stripped away everything but the core active site, controlling the body’s absorption rate with unprecedented precision.
While perfectly evading existing hormonal patent networks, it was a category-defining asset destined to create an entirely unprecedented category:
An ultra-fast-acting intranasal neuroendocrine enhancer.
The data of vitality and decay collected from Jeong Hyun-jin and Jeong Ui-hyun served, paradoxically, as a flawless compass pointing toward the exact direction Ghost 2.0 needed to take.
But the timing was wrong. Not yet.
If he unveiled this mechanism to the open market now, the hyenas of the global industry would swarm him instantly.
Beneath a pristine layer of absolute legality, he had to secretly nurture the spike named Ghost 2.0.
The perfect camouflage was Aether Bio’s official pipeline: the next-generation antibody therapy based on the ETR platform.
It was the most elegant and flawless facade, engineered specifically to open the wallets of prominent investors and risk-averse analysts alike.
The morning sun of Teheran-ro spilled through the window, stretching across the desk in Seo-han’s office.
Dressed in a tailored suit, Seo-han scanned the open innovation applications filling his tablet screen.
It was a global open innovation project co-hosted by 'Bayern Biopharma,' a world-class big pharma, and a traditional domestic pharmaceutical giant.
He had already established contact with their executives at Bio Korea, placing Aether Bio firmly on their radar.
To the conservative titans of the establishment, conquering aging was nothing more than a charlatan’s alchemy.
But an immunotherapeutic antibody platform capable of pinpointing cancer cells was a different discussion entirely.
Seo-han meticulously filled out the documents using the exact vocabulary of mainstream science they blindly worshiped—focusing strictly on data replication and delivery rates.
The more brilliant and unshakeable the temple in the light appeared, the more the underground empire locked beneath it became an inviolable sanctuary.
A thirty-million-dollar mega round designed to push the company's pre-IPO valuation to its zenith.
Securing a partnership with Bayern Biopharma was the perfect shield.
It was an optimal move to shatter the narrow vision of domestic venture capitalists and engrave Aether Bio's irreplaceable value into the minds of global big pharma.
Seo-han quietly studied the prototype vial of Ghost 2.0 resting on his desk.
Ultimately, the key to the true kingdom—the weapon that would force them to their knees in desperation—was the cold bottle currently resting in his hand and the pristine logic flowing inside his own mind.
"First, I build the temple in the light," Seo-han murmured to the empty room.
"Then comes my true empire."
"Lee Seo-han... you’ve played a rather clever trick here."
Beyond the glass wall of the secret university laboratory, the chilling cold exuded by Baek Seo-woun settled over the room.
As a medical doctor and the director of clinical development at a global big pharma’s Korean branch, she let out a bitter, mocking laugh.
She lightly tapped the failed report left behind by Professor Ki Jong-ho.
"He deliberately laced the compound with human blood components to distort the mass spectrometry data, creating an artificial barrier."
"The active molecule is organically bound to an albumin chain so that the moment you attempt to force them apart, the entire molecular structure shatters like glass."
It was the perfect deception to make an old-school academic like Professor Ki—someone who does nothing but stare into beakers—run straight into a brick wall.
Seo-woun adjusted her cold, metal-framed glasses.
Her gaze shifted between Chairman Jeong Ui-hyun and Vice Chairman Jeong Hyun-jin, who was anxiously smoking a cigarette across the table.
"Are you saying there is no way around it, Dr. Baek?" Ui-hyun asked, his voice heavy and low.
The pride of a monarch who was reduced to begging a forty-three-year-old venture founder for a syringe every month had already reached its absolute limit.
"No. If chemical hacking is blocked because the substance itself destroys its own structure, we simply reverse-engineer the trajectory of the response it leaves behind."
The temporary sterile room had been converted from the underground wine cellar of the Hannam-dong secret safe house.
Clad in flimsy patient gowns, the two titans who anchored a massive pillar of the nation's economy lay helplessly atop a cold, stainless steel surgical table.
Through her metal-framed glasses, Baek Seo-woun studied them.
Her focus was entirely detached as she evaluated their bodies as mere masses of organic tissue.
"Ah... ugh. Dr. Baek, is it truly necessary to draw this much blood? There isn't a single spot left on my arm for another needle."
Jeong Hyun-jin groaned, his body twisting from the deep, throbbing ache near his pelvic bone.
He was squarely in the middle of the brutal crash that arrived after his four days of heaven had expired.
His skin looked dull and drained, drenched in a heavy downpour of cold sweat.
"Quiet, Vice Chairman. If we want to rip through the defensive barrier Lee Seo-han built, we have no choice but to treat your bodies as living vials."
Seo-woun delivered her instructions coldly.
Her eyes scanned her tablet screen as the raw vitals of the two old men began to align into data logs.
[Phase 1: Observation — Baseline State of Biological Specimens]
Subject A (Jeong Hyun-jin, age 58): Chronic sleep deprivation. Grip strength and gait speed demonstrating rapid degeneration prior to dosage.
Subject B (Jeong Ui-hyun, early 60s): Drastic carbohydrate restriction. A tyrant archetype who has historically forced his physical limits through sheer mental fortitude.
[Pre-Dosage Baseline Endocrine Report]
Endocrine metrics—including Testosterone, LH, FSH, GH, and IGF-1—trailing at the absolute bottom, typical of men in their late fifties and sixties.
"Only antiquated academics like Professor Ki would bash their heads against the serum noise left in a beaker," Seo-woun said, a thin smirk playing on her lips as she lifted a disposable syringe.
The scheduled time for the variant Phantom dosage provided by Seo-han was fast approaching.
"If the drug is engineered to fracture upon separation from plasma albumin, we simply reverse-engineer the biological response it triggers in the brain in real time."
"He can't erase the fingerprints left behind by the mechanism."
The needle pierced the skin of the two titans' thighs.
The exact second the fluid entered their systems, the sterile room’s digital timer began its ruthless countdown.
Phase 2—the tracking of the immediate aftermath—had begun.
"Ugh... damn it!"
Chairman Jeong Ui-hyun gripped the backrest, his breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.
In a mere fifteen minutes, the agonizing fatigue that had dominated his entire existence was severed cleanly, as if cut by a blade.
Simultaneously, a sharp, electric tingle flooded his cerebral cortex, burning with an almost terrifying intensity.
Baek Seo-woun, a clinical purist who lived by data, immediately doubted her own eyes.
Her mind instantly raced toward contamination, testing errors, or a statistical artifact.
She fought the conclusion with a sharp, defensive skepticism, but the cold reality before her refused to yield.
"Check the timer. Draw blood at fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, sixty minutes, two hours, and four hours. Keep the intervals exact."
At Seo-woun’s command, researchers clad in hazmat suits mechanically plugged lines into the old men's veins.
Crimson blood flowed in real time through transparent tubing.
The precision mass spectrometers and automated immunoassay analyzers began to whir, filling the room with a harsh, mechanical hum.
Through those cold instruments, high-velocity data cascaded onto Seo-woun’s monitor.
The exact moment the spectral graph surged into a steep, violent curve, Seo-woun’s gaze locked onto the crimson numbers on the upper right of her screen.
Her pupils dilated minutely behind her metal-framed glasses.
"...This is impossible."
At her low, freezing murmur, the chief researcher operating the equipment quickly looked up.
"What is it, Doctor? Is there an anomaly?"
"When was this equipment calibrated?"
"Yesterday afternoon, ma'am. Completely zeroed out. The margin of error is under 0.01 percent."
A vein throbbed against Seo-woun’s temple. She pressed her finger roughly against the screen.
"Run it again. Restart Sample B from the gas chromatography pretreatment and reinject."
"Yes, ma'am! Right away!"
A suffocating tension gripped the laboratory.
The researchers moved with pale faces; none of them had ever seen a strict data devotee like Baek Seo-woun lose her composure so completely.
A few minutes later.
The newly extracted cross-verification data flooded the screen.
The results were terrifyingly identical, down to the last decimal. The endocrine hormone levels in Jeong Ui-hyun and Jeong Hyun-jin’s blood had risen exponentially.
But that wasn't the anomaly.
The true horror lay in the manner of the spike.
Seo-woun’s brow furrowed completely.
"If an artificial hormone compound was injected from the outside, the pituitary gland should halt its commands via the negative feedback mechanism."
"LH and FSH—the upstream signals—should have plummeted to zero. That is the biological law."
Her finger trembled minutely as she pointed at the graph on the screen.
Three blood-red lines were climbing in perfect, parallel synchronization.
"Is it reagent contamination? Or a temporary artifact?"
Seo-woun adjusted her glasses with a sharp flick, scanning the raw data logs backward.
The cross-verification from three separate analyzers pointed to a flawless, undeniable intersection.
The harder she tried to deny it, the more the scientific facts tightened around her throat.
It was not an error. It was not contamination.
"This... is real?"
Instantly, the underground sterile room fell into an unnatural silence.
The lips of Baek Seo-woun—a medical doctor who viewed the world strictly through known organic constraints—slipped into a fine tremor.
"He didn't inject anything from the outside. He restarted their internal endocrine factories."
"It’s moving as if the dead brain cells inside them have suddenly awakened."
The data was screaming the truth: something existed here that could not be explained by any biology she had spent her life worshiping.
At that exact threshold—precisely fifteen minutes after the needle had pierced his skin—Jeong Ui-hyun, the monarch of H Automotive Group, held his breath.
“Fuu...”
It felt as though his tightly collapsed alveoli were being forcibly expanded all at once by an invisible hand.
The corners of the ceiling, which had been a blurred, heavy mass just moments before, cut into his retinas with a terrifying clarity.
The microscopic texture of the wallpaper.
The glare of the white fluorescent bulb reflected off the cold stainless steel surface.
The sharp details of a world that had been natural ten, twenty years ago slammed directly into his cerebral cortex.
Jeong Ui-hyun slowly closed his eyes.
And in that darkness, he understood.
It wasn't mere vitality. It wasn't just youth.
It was the self he believed he had lost forever. The sensation of a monarch in his absolute prime was being etched back into his body.
Jeong Ui-hyun’s fingers clamped hard around the edge of the stainless steel bed.
A flawless strength surged through him, so profound it left an illusion that the thick steel plate was warping beneath his grip.
A cruel addiction.
Once tasted, it could never be forgotten.