Late at night.
Research facility, entrance gate.
A domestically produced midsize car stopped in front of the barrier.
A security guard who had been playing an idle game inside the booth was startled, putting down his smartphone and coming out.
“What is the matter? Access time is over. If you have business, please come back tomorrow…”
“Ah, I’m Kim Naye, a researcher here.”
Kim Naye rolled down the car window and showed her ID.
The guard bent his head to peer inside the car, confirming that there was no one else but Kim Naye.
“Even so, is it permissible for you to come in at this hour? Let me make a quick call to your supervisor.”
He was a security guard employed under ‘K-Shield’, someone who had been hired due to brute strength alone, and therefore not very familiar with standard procedures.
“Please… don’t do that. I’m in a rush. The supervisor sent me here.”
Kim Naye’s heart was pounding.
It wasn’t easy for an ordinary person like her to be seated in the back with two Chinese agents and lie to the guard.
“It can’t be helped…”
Unable to bear the situation any longer, Laura secretly cast a light enchantment spell.
The guard became more susceptible to persuasion.
“One of the new researchers didn’t store the ‘CH-07’ specimen in the refrigerator. It’s worth over ten million won. If we wait any longer, we’ll have to discard it. I’m here because the supervisor urgently called me.”
She fabricated a plausible story.
The guard faltered.
‘Should I let her in?’
Then Kim Naye made her closing remark.
“About a week ago, didn’t the security staff let someone in under similar circumstances? Isn’t that how it’s usually done?”
“Ah… was that the case?”
The guard recalled his work schedule. If it was a week ago, then it must have been the day of his senior colleague with two year’s more experience, who might have allowed it.
‘Hmm, it will probably be fine.’
He nodded and returned to the booth, raising the barrier.
“Then please come in and be quick.”
“Yes, thank you. Have a good night.”
Kim Naye bowed her head in gratitude and pressed the accelerator.
From there, everything went smoothly.
All the security gates inside the facility opened with her security card.
Shinnoda and Laura trailed behind her in an invisible state.
The long-awaited basement of the research facility.
This area’s security was a biometric recognition system.
Kim Naye had to undergo both fingerprint and iris scans to open the door.
Shinnoda thought to himself from behind.
‘The security is quite substantial. We made a good call not to try a frontal assault. All the trouble was worth it.’
The security system was as expected based on the information provided by the informant, but the barriers separating each zone were thicker than expected.
‘As if they anticipated attacks from Awakened Ones.’
It was a common cliché that research facilities conducting human experiments would end up being overturned by their test subjects. It was reasonable to prepare for such an eventuality.
[Researcher Kim Naye has been verified.]
Once Kim Naye completed the biometric recognition, the security door opened with a robotic voice.
“Did you say you wanted to extract the data first?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, we should head to the control room. That is where the internal network is managed.”
They headed to the control room.
The control room had a large display at the front and was otherwise similar in form to a regular office.
When Kim Naye turned on the power, the dim control room lit up.
On the display, the video feeds of the two test subjects, Alpha and Omega, appeared. They were curled up asleep in their respective rooms.
“This PC is for administrative use, but as I mentioned before, turning it on will send a notification to the supervisor.”
Kim Naye pointed to a computer as she spoke.
“From here on, it’s a race against time, I assume. By the way, there’s no CCTV in this room, right?”
“Yes.”
Laura immediately canceled the invisibility spell. The artificial body that relied on the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ drained her mana.
As the invisibility spell wore off, the figures of ‘Dark Knight’ and Laura gradually became visible.
Kim Naye flinched slightly.
“The Dark Knight’s disguise… it’s so realistic.”
“We put quite a bit of effort into it. Could you collect all the data on a USB? And once done, could you delete the entire database? Can you make it difficult to recover?”
“It will take some time, but it’s possible. You want to make restoration difficult, correct?”
Shinnoda nodded seriously.
“Of course. Since they dared to steal our things from China, they must pay the price.”
“Understood. Though I’m not a programmer, I’ll try my best. In exchange, please remember our agreed-upon compensation…”
“Of course. The People’s Republic of China is a country that never forgets its promises.”
Extract important data onto the USB drive and delete the existing database.
Kim Naye kept this in mind as she switched on the computer.
“We will go to rescue the children.”
She gave a slight nod to Shinnoda’s words and focused on typing.
Shinnoda roughly knew the layout of the place from the information given by his informants.
They used the invisibility spell again and headed first to Omega’s room, prioritizing her rescue.
The experiment subject’s rooms had a keypad system where you had to input a number to open the door from the outside.
Shinnoda entered the number.
473697.
He had learned this beforehand from Kim Naye.
With a cheerful sound, the steel door opened.
As the invisibility spell began to wear off, their forms started to become visible.
*
The first memory.
It was the gaze of multiple pairs of eyes.
‘I dislike it.’
Even without learning language, she instinctively knew her emotion was negative.
They arbitrarily gave her the name ‘Omega’ and then promptly ignored her.
When she reached the stage of understanding fundamental education and general social awareness, other test subjects began to ‘Awaken.’
Omega never awakened.
The researchers’ attention shifted entirely to the awakened, leaving Omega in isolation.
Though she despised them, she was horribly lonely. She even wished they’d briefly conduct experiments on her.
One day, Omega met another child who was similar to her. His name was ‘Alpha.’ Just like Omega, he was abandoned in apathy because he had yet to awaken.
“Let’s be friends.”
“Yeah.”
They always stuck together during group activities and formed a deep bond. About a year later, they both experienced their ‘Awakening.’
《You have Awakened.》
A translucent message appeared before her eyes.
Omega was bewildered.
“Can you see this?”
She asked Alpha, and he nodded in response.
“Yeah. My skill is ‘Reflection.'”
“Skill? Uh… mine is ‘Shard of Chronos.’ I can speed up or slow down time, and once, it allows me to send a person back in time. Depending on the rank, the extent of the time shift varies.”
After that day, they received a lot of attention. Especially for Omega, the researchers began intensive care, conducting the overdue experiments.
“Can we use this ability to create something akin to a time machine?”
“Although the range is extremely short, it might be possible to achieve if enhanced.”
‘Shard of Chronos’ was an unprecedented skill. It was discovered independently by introducing variables into DNA samples within the lab.
Currently, the limit was one day.
However, no one knew what could happen if her intelligence rating increased and her skill proficiency was fully developed.
Now sending someone back just one day is a far-fetched idea, but the lab director had grand plans. He had measured how far back in time one could go as intelligence and proficiency increased through extensive experiments.
The result was a maximum of 150 years.
This was achievable if both intelligence and proficiency reached S-rank.
An ambition formed in the director’s mind.
It was a story he couldn’t yet tell anyone for fear of being ridiculed as crazy.
‘If we can only go back 100 years…’
If an awakened superhuman could be sent back, they could avoid the national humiliation of the Gae-Sul Treaty and prepare for the gate that would appear in the next generation.
If it were possible, their country could become a great power in this era of gates.
“Focus the research on Omega.”
Even if it caused losses, the directive was to get results as quickly as possible.
It didn’t matter even if Omega died under extreme experiments. They could simply create a clone.
Although there was no guarantee that a cloned human would awaken, about one out of ten clones would awaken similarly.
Following the director’s orders, the laboratory primarily aimed to amplify Omega’s abilities.
They did research on the Awakened One army, but that was secondary.
The main goal was to enhance Omega’s skills.
Omega, however, only suffered more.
When she wasn’t receiving attention, the neglect was heartbreaking, but now her daily intake of harsh experimental drugs and the untested machinery strapped to her head was torment.
The thick metallic exterior walls erected to prevent escape chilled her to the bone.
Tears streamed down her face every night as she curled up in her tiny bed.
“Why must I endure such pain? I wish I could have had just an ordinary ability like Alpha…”
Her comprehension, accelerated by growth enhancers, allowed her to roughly understand why the researchers were so fixated on her.
Even so, sorrow was an inescapable principle.
She longed to live a normal life, going to school and being raised by nurturing parents, just like the children in the educational videos she’d watched.
“Why me…?”
She fantasized about a prince from the fairy tales rescuing her, only for Alpha’s face to pop into her mind. The genetically designed Chinese children, regardless of whether they were Alpha or Omega, all possessed classic Western beauty, resembling princesses and princes from stories.
“No, that child is in the same position as me…”
Both Omega and Alpha were no more than livestock in essence.
Omega hoped every day to escape this prison.
Then one day, there was a major experiment.
“Finally, they’re implanting the power amplifier.”
“Yeah. Gamma succeeded, but died from the infection. Too frail though.”
“Is there a countermeasure?”
“They did some kind of semi-permanent bio-coating. Though I’m not in that field, so I don’t know much.”
The researchers discussed the deaths of other subjects and their supposed weaknesses without regard for Omega’s feelings.
‘If I only had the combat abilities to crush them all.’
Omega could only fantasize about demolishing the lab.
Reality was cruel.
She was taken to the experimental table as planned and had the amplifying device implanted in her abdomen.
Omega returned to her cold room and lifted her shirt.
An ugly, long scar ran across her stomach.
Something foreign existed inside her belly.
If she had not been an Awakened One, she might not have survived the poor surgery.
She cried uncontrollably that night.
In this facility, there was no kind-hearted person to console her.
The only ones who could understand her pain were other experiments.
Alpha was also in a similar situation, rarely meeting her and too preoccupied with his own problems to console her.
Night after night, Omega cried herself to sleep.
Beeep, Clang.
At that moment, the sound of a mechanism opening filled the air, and the door to Omega’s prison opened.
“Are you Omega?”
A cloaked figure in a black robe appeared.
Perhaps the prince on a white horse to rescue her from this hell had finally come.
She had basic knowledge of heroes and villains, as the researchers played news and entertainment programs to manage the test subject’s stress.
“Dark Knight…?”
A tear slid down Omega’s cheek.
It was not the usual tear of sorrow but one filled with hope for the future, a positive kind of tear.
