After Regressing, I Gained the Power of the Demonic Dragon - Chapter 6

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 6
Beep-beep-beep!
An alarm shrieked from inside the glass partition.
The blue barrier encasing the test platform shuddered violently.
The blue light faded rapidly from the center, and soon the entire barrier scattered into particles of light.
[Practical Resonance Simulation: 12th Trial]
[Barrier Output: Critical Drop]
[Mana Circuit: Overheating]
[Test Suspended]
“It’s failed again!”
A researcher removed the charred Wrist Guard from the test platform.
Thin wisps of smoke curled up between the outer casing.
“Run the standard diagnostic again.”
“All six runs on that came back normal.”
“Then why does it shut down the moment monster Mana enters the circuit?”
The researchers fell silent.
Just then, the Research Building entrance door opened.
Sang Hyuk stepped inside after clearing security.
A researcher passed him carrying the charred prototype on a fireproof tray.
Sang Hyuk watched the prototype for a moment, then headed deeper into the corridor.
On the wall display, red numbers continued their steady countdown.
[Korean Player Association Practical Suitability Verification begins in]
[17:42:18]
Staff members rushed past in the hallway, carrying spare components and tablets.
Inside open doorways, the same test repeated endlessly.
A blue barrier activated.
Monster Mana Resonance made contact.
The barrier wavered, and the equipment shut down.
Sang Hyuk stopped before the Conference Room door.
Beyond the closed door, Kim Sang Jun’s voice carried through.
“What about the extension request?”
“Officially rejected. They said if we don’t show, they’ll process it as voluntary withdrawal.”
“And if we proceed as scheduled?”
A brief silence stretched out.
“If the same failure shows up tomorrow, the defect becomes part of the official record. We lose our eligibility for the Secondary Comparative Performance Evaluation as well.”
“What about ongoing supply negotiations?”
“They’ll be restructured with Taeseong equipment as the benchmark.”
Either way, Ilseong loses.
If they withdrew, they’d fail anyway. If they pushed forward and the equipment shut down, it was over.
Before the regression, Sang Hyuk had chosen the latter.
That choice had marked the beginning of Ilseong’s collapse.
Sang Hyuk peered through the narrow glass pane beside the door into the Conference Room.
Kim Do Hyun sat at the head of the table.
His face bore its usual composure, though his necktie hung loose around his neck.
Kim Sang Jun stood beside him, holding out the Korean Player Association’s response letter.
The edges of the paper were creased from being read many times over.
On the opposite side stood Kim Seo Yoon in a white lab coat.
Her hastily tied hair clung to her cheek, and thin bandages wrapped the fingers that had held the soldering tool.
Sang Hyuk’s gaze fixed on those hands.
Before the regression, the last voice he’d heard from his sister had come through static and noise, fractured and distorted.
Now that voice rang out clearly and unbroken in this conference room.
Kim Seo Yoon set the charred prototype down on the table.
“If we remake the prototype from scratch, we have to go through certification all over again. We won’t make it in time for tomorrow’s verification.”
As she finished speaking, she lifted her head.
Her eyes met Sang Hyuk’s across the glass partition.
“Sang Hyuk?”
Every gaze in the conference room shifted toward the door.
Sang Hyuk took a steady breath and opened the door.
“What are you doing here?”
Kim Sang Jun rose from his seat.
His shocked expression hardened in an instant.
“The Research Building is under emergency lockdown right now. Go home.”
“That’s exactly why I came.”
“What could you possibly do here?”
Sang Hyuk looked at the equipment case placed in the center of the conference room.
A red test-suspension sticker was affixed to its lid.
“If that equipment fails even once tomorrow, Ilseong won’t make it past the Secondary Comparative Performance Evaluation.”
Kim Sang Jun’s eyebrows twitched.
“Taeseong wins without lifting a finger.”
The conference room fell silent.
Everyone knew it, but it was a conclusion no one spoke aloud.
Kim Sang Jun set the response document down on the table.
“Don’t interfere based on things you overheard outside the door.”
“I’m not talking based on just that.”
“Then what?”
Sang Hyuk turned to look at Kim Do Hyun.
“Father. Please let me see the prototype once.”
Kim Sang Jun let out a hollow laugh.
“The research team has been working on this for days. What would change if you looked at it?”
“I’m not thinking of looking at it with the equipment the research team uses.”
“Then what are you planning to look at it with?”
Sang Hyuk pointed to his eyes with his index finger.
“My eyes.”
Kim Seo Yoon’s gaze fixed on Sang Hyuk’s eyes.
“Sang Hyuk. Don’t tell me you…….”
Sang Hyuk nodded.
“I Awakened today.”
Kim Seo Yoon’s eyes widened.
As if confirming an answer she’d been seeking for years, she couldn’t tear her gaze from Sang Hyuk’s face for a long moment.
“Your Attribute really opened?”
“Yes.”
Kim Seo Yoon opened her lips, then closed them again.
She was the one who had consoled Sang Hyuk each time the measurement results came back disappointing.
Even after he gave up, she alone continued visiting the research facility, searching for the conditions of awakening.
She was the person who had apologized even in that last moment before the regression, sorry she hadn’t been able to find it for him.
“Are you alright? You’re not injured or feeling anything strange?”
“I’m fine. Actually, I feel much better than before.”
Sang Hyuk looked at her bandaged hand.
“So there’s nothing for you to apologize for.”
Kim Seo Yoon’s pupils wavered for a moment.
Her face looked like she wanted to ask why he’d said that.
In that instant, an alarm sounded again from the Test Chamber beyond the wall, and Kim Seo Yoon swallowed her question and turned her gaze to the equipment case.
Kim Sang Jun also fixed Sang Hyuk with a rigid stare.
“How did you find the awakening condition?”
“I didn’t find it. When I came to my senses, it was already open.”
He couldn’t speak of the regression.
The fact that he’d achieved the awakening condition just before death was the same.
Then Kim Do Hyun asked briefly.
“Can you find the defect with those eyes?”
“I’ll need to examine it to be sure.”
“Will you need to touch the equipment?”
“No. I only need to look at it.”
Kim Do Hyun tapped the table once with his finger.
“Seo Yoon. Show him.”
Kim Sang Jun started to speak, then stopped.
Kim Do Hyun’s decision had already been made.
Kim Seo Yoon approached the equipment case and unlocked it.
Click.
The thick lid lifted open.
Three Wrist Guards—the prototypes in their form—lay side by side on the shock-absorbing padding.
A Magic Stone sat embedded in the center, visible between the black casing.
Two of them already showed charred edges from multiple rounds of testing.
“Do we need to disassemble it?”
“No. This should be fine as is.”
Sang Hyuk fixed his gaze on the leftmost prototype and opened his Dragon’s Eye.
Heat bloomed behind his eyes as the Conference Room’s colors dissolved into shadow.
Beyond the black casing, the Magic Stone and internal components overlaid in his vision.
Yet he found nothing unusual in the dormant device.
Just as the rumors had suggested before his return.
The trap reveals itself only when a monster’s Mana enters it.
“Could you feed some monster Mana into this, just weakly?”
“Right here, now?”
“I only need to see it the moment it activates. I’ll cut the power before the device overheats.”
Kim Seo Yoon studied Sang Hyuk’s eyes for a moment, then picked up one of the prototypes.
“Bring us one of the portable test units, please.”
A researcher wheeled in a mobile testing apparatus moments later.
Kim Seo Yoon set the prototype on the test platform and dialed the monster Mana output down to minimum.
[Monster Mana Wave Output: 5%]
[Test Duration: 1 second]
“Ready?”
“Go.”
The moment she pressed the button, blue light pooled across the prototype.
A circular Barrier enveloped the test platform, and then the monster’s Mana Wave made contact.
Click.
Sang Hyuk’s eyes caught the fingernail-sized Black Component hidden beneath the Magic Stone twitch into motion.
Simultaneously, the center of the blue Barrier darkened.
“Kill it.”
Kim Seo Yoon’s hand dropped from the button instantly.
The Barrier vanished just before total collapse, and only thin smoke curled from the prototype.
“Find it?”
“Yes.”
Sang Hyuk pointed directly beneath the Magic Stone.
“There’s a Black Component hidden here. It moved the moment the monster Mana entered, and that’s when the Barrier cut out.”
Kim Seo Yoon lifted the prototype and examined the spot he’d indicated.
But the outer casing revealed only a smooth, unmarked surface.
“Exactly where is it? What does it look like?”
“It’ll be faster to show you directly than explain.”
“How?”
Sang Hyuk opened his Inventory, and black light pooled across his palm.
A flash of light.
A black stone tablet with an engraved eye pattern—closed—materialized before them.
Kim Do Hyun leaned forward slightly from his seat, and Kim Sang Jun’s gaze locked onto the tablet.
“An item from the Tower?”
“Yes.”
Kim Seo Yoon examined the surface slowly without touching it.
“Rare Grade?”
“Heroic Grade.”
Her hand stilled in midair.
Kim Sang Jun turned to Sang Hyuk at once.
“You obtained a Heroic Grade item from the Tutorial?”
“Yes.”
Heroic Grade items were rarely acquired even by high-level Players.
No one had ever heard of a newly Awakened Player obtaining one from the Tutorial.
Kim Sang Jun opened his mouth to ask something more, but Kim Do Hyun raised his hand to stop him.
“We’ll hear the rest after this is finished.”
Kim Do Hyun’s gaze deepened.
“What item is it?”
“It’s a Magic Eye Recording Stone. It allows me to show others what I’ve seen.”
Sang Hyuk channeled Mana into the tablet.
The closed eye pattern slowly opened.
Whoosh.
The Wrist Guard that had just been tested appeared magnified on the slate, larger than its actual size.
The black outer casing blurred, and a small component hidden beneath the Magic Stone became sharply visible.
As Sang Hyuk sent his intention, the frozen recording began to move.
A blue barrier unfurled, followed by the monster’s Mana Wave washing over the equipment.
Click.
The moment the black component beneath the Magic Stone shifted, the blue barrier extinguished instantly.
Everything that had happened in the Test Chamber reproduced faithfully on the slate.
“Wait—pause it there.”
As Sang Hyuk stopped the recording, the image of the black component just before it moved remained on the slate.
Following the direction of Kim Seo Yoon’s finger, Sang Hyuk magnified that section.
The position and shape of the black component attached beneath the Magic Stone enlarged to the size of a palm.
“Now again.”
Sang Hyuk resumed the frozen recording.
As the black component moved downward, the blue barrier vanished at once.
Kim Seo Yoon watched without missing the instant the component shifted.
‘Dragon’s Eye: Structure Analysis.’
As her eyes grew hot again, a brief line of text appeared beside the black component in the recording.
[Activation Condition: Monster Mana Detected]
[Activation Result: Barrier Forcibly Deactivated]
Kim Seo Yoon read both lines quickly.
“Let me check whether this component was there from the beginning.”
She pulled the tablet toward her.
The screen displayed the approved design and internal inspection photos taken immediately after final assembly, one after another.
Kim Seo Yoon enlarged the area beneath the Magic Stone in the photo and placed it alongside the Recording Stone.
On one side, there was nothing.
On the other, the black component was embedded.
“It’s not there.”
Kim Sang Jun asked.
“What?”
“That component. It’s not in the approved design, and it’s not in the photos taken when assembly finished.”
Kim Seo Yoon pulled up the general diagnostic results on one side of the screen.
All six tests had been cleared as normal.
“That’s why the general diagnostics kept coming back normal. The component doesn’t react to diagnostic Mana at all, so no matter how many times we inspected it, we could never find it.”
Kim Seo Yoon turned to examine the remaining two prototype units.
Sang Hyuk silently deployed Dragon’s Eye.
The same location as the first.
The second prototype had the same black component hidden there as well.
The third was no different.
“All three have it.”
The lingering exhaustion drained from Kim Seo Yoon’s face.
In its place, a cold, hardened gleam filled her eyes.
“Someone opened the prototypes after assembly inspection was complete and planted these inside.”
Kim Sang Jun asked, staring at the Recording Stone.
“Could they have gone in by mistake during manufacturing?”
“No.”
Kim Seo Yoon’s answer was firm.
“A component that slipped in by accident wouldn’t respond exclusively to monster Mana. And not in the same location across all three units.”
She pointed to the text on the Recording Stone.
“They function normally during routine inspections and fail only in real combat—someone deliberately engineered it that way.”
Every gaze in the conference room converged on the black slate.
The reason general diagnostics had remained normal throughout.
The reason the barrier had collapsed every time monster Mana touched it.
The cause of twelve consecutive failures was laid bare—a single black component no larger than a fingernail.
Kim Do Hyun looked at Sang Hyuk.
“You suspected sabotage from the start, not random defect.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you mentioned Taeseong before we’d even checked the prototypes.”
Sang Hyuk did not deny it.
Kim Do Hyun’s finger came to rest on the table.
“You think Taeseong is behind this?”
Before the return, when Taeseong’s interference had come to light, Ilseong had already been disqualified from the verification and stripped of every opportunity.
But this time, he’d found the trap before the verification began.
There was still time to act.
Sang Hyuk didn’t hesitate.
“Yes. It’s Taeseong Group.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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