Special Immunosuppressant
After wrapping up the deal with Ryusaki, I headed back to the abandoned factory.
As I shifted the heavy bag on my shoulder and stepped inside, a familiar mechanical voice rang out.
"Boss! Did the deal go through without a hitch?!"
Of course it was Doomdoom. The man acted like he'd pitched a tent right at the entrance—he was always there, whether I was heading out or coming back in.
At our first meeting I'd thought he was a lunatic, but the more I watched him, the more I realized his loyalty was nothing short of staggering.
Suzy, instead of answering, jerked her chin toward the bag in my hands.
"Went fine. All thanks to Jinwoo."
"Ohhh! Atta boy!"
Doomdoom's eyes lit up as he thrust a thumbs-up in my direction.
Suzy rubbed the back of her neck, looking tired, and started toward the back.
"I'm gonna rest a bit. Doomdoom, follow me."
"Ah, hold up a sec, Boss!"
Doomdoom stopped her, then shot me a sidelong glance.
"Would it be alright if I had a word with Jinwoo here?"
Suzy gave him an odd look, but nodded after a moment and walked off toward the office.
"Sure. Don't overdo it."
The second Suzy was gone, Doomdoom dropped a heavy arm across my shoulder.
"C'mon."
Why is this guy suddenly throwing his weight around?
Is he pissed I got praised by Suzy? Planning to rough me up or something?
It would only make sense. If a guy thought his position was under threat, of course he'd do something like that.
I kept my guard up as I followed him.
He led me to a sofa tucked away in a corner of the factory.
Thud!
Doomdoom plopped down, dug a small inhaler out of his pocket, and held it out to me.
"Here, take a hit. This stuff is mind-blowing."
I took the inhaler and turned it over, examining it from every angle.
A dreamy violet vapor was seeping out from inside.
A hallucinogen.
One whiff was all it took to know. A mild aphrodisiac crossed with a high-grade narcotic.
In a shit-tier world like this one, no wonder it was popular as an escape from reality.
I shook my head and handed the inhaler back.
"Not my thing."
"Tch. I try to share the good stuff and get attitude."
Doomdoom snorted, snatched the inhaler back, pressed it to his own mouth, and took a deep drag.
Ssss—!
"Hooo—! That's the stuff! Pure heaven!"
His eyes glazed over, and a blissful expression spread across his mechanical face.
"Could you make something like this?"
"I probably could. But this stuff wrecks your body. I want to make medicine that helps people, not hurts them."
At my words, Doomdoom clutched his belly and started bellowing with laughter.
"BAHAHAHA! You wiped out the Blood Bone Gang with the drugs you made, and now you're telling me you only make medicine that helps people? You're a walking contradiction, pal!"
"That was to protect myself."
Frowning, I asked,
"So what did you actually want to say? You didn't drag me over here just to crack dumb jokes."
Doomdoom exhaled another cloud of vapor, scratched the back of his head, and mumbled, almost embarrassed.
"Wanted to say thanks. Never got around to it."
"What?"
The unexpected words made me blurt out a reply before I could stop myself.
I guess handing me his inhaler was, in his own warped way, the highest form of hospitality.
"Ever since you showed up, the Boss laughs a lot more. And…"
Doomdoom fiddled with his own shoulder.
"If you hadn't done that coating treatment for me a while back, I'd have ended up rotting on the floor same as those Blood Bone bastards. Just thinking about it still gives me the chills. Thanks, Jinwoo."
Pfft.
A smile crept across my lips.
"Just words?"
"The fact that this great Doomdoom-nim expressed his gratitude at all IS the gift, you ungrateful punk!"
Doomdoom flared up and roared. Yeah—now that was the guy I knew.
He stowed the inhaler away again and added in a serious voice,
"If you ever need drugs or materials, say the word. I'll tear the black market apart if I have to, but I'll get 'em for you."
"I appreciate it, Doomdoom."
It felt like I'd gained one more reliable ally.
With a lighter heart, I picked up my bag and headed for the lab. It was time to test the premium materials I'd gotten from Ryusaki.
"Let's get started, shall we?"
When I opened the military supply crate, the reagents were sorted neatly by category.
// Material grades confirmed
Purified Neuro-Active Solvent [A]
High-Concentration Synthetic Adrenaline Extract [A]
Nano-Catalyst Agent [A]
My mouth went dry.
Everything I'd worked with until now had been, at best, C to D grade. But this—this was A-grade. The tier had skyrocketed in a single leap.
Well then. Shall we make something?
With materials this good, in theory I could go beyond simply suppressing Chrome Syndrome and produce something genuinely revolutionary.
My heart pounded. A tension greater than when I'd led billion-won projects back at the pharmaceutical company coursed through my whole body.
Sizzle! Bubble bubble.
Even the color of the liquid flowing through the glass tubing was different.
I carefully blended the solution—so transparent it almost gleamed—then set the centrifuge spinning.
A few minutes later, the finished drug sat loaded in a syringe.
◈ Effect: Alleviates Chrome Syndrome progression by 30%.
◈ Description: Excellent materials were used, but the crafter's insufficient skill failed to draw out their full potential. Honestly! What a waste of good materials!
"…Thirty percent?"
A hollow laugh escaped me. Compared to the old twenty percent, that was a full ten-point jump.
But the system's description scraped right against my pride.
My skill is lacking?
I couldn't believe it. I immediately pulled the crafting guide back up and started dissecting it line by line, word by word.
The blending ratios were definitely perfect.
The centrifuge speed, the timing of each addition—everything matched the guide.
Where the hell did I go wrong?
I was replaying the records, running simulations in my head, when my eyes snagged on one section.
The extraction process for the high-performance drug—something I'd never attempted before—was the culprit.
The system, as if it had been waiting for exactly this moment, had thoughtfully left me a hint.
> Caution: Pay close attention to humidity and temperature control during processing.
"Ah…"
A sigh burst out of me. So that's where the quality diverged.
Materials of A-grade or higher reacted with extreme sensitivity to their external environment.
If the humidity rose even one percent, or the temperature dropped even half a degree, the compounds would degrade.
And the problem was this sorry excuse for a lab.
Precision climate-control machinery didn't exist here—never had.
I need to completely internalize the crafting process.
If there was no machine, then I'd have to cover that margin of error with my own fingertips.
The skill of reading the ambient temperature by feel, of fine-tuning the timing of each addition to match the humidity.
In the end, there was only one way: learn it with my body.
I pulled out a sheet of paper and started jotting down a list of everything I needed.
Then I ran back out the door to find Doomdoom.
"Doomdoom!"
"What?"
Instead of answering, I shoved the note right up to his nose.
"Can you get your hands on as much of this stuff as possible?"
Doomdoom blinked his mechanical optic as he scanned the note.
"This junk's lying all over the black market. Easy! I'll have it for you in no time!"
"Much appreciated."
Before long, Doomdoom came crashing into the lab and dropped several enormous sacks on the floor with a bang.
Inside were worthless low-grade reagents, packed to the brim.
Alright. Let's try this again.
I fired up the extractor right away.
Dumping in the worthless materials, I repeated the same extraction process—again and again and again.
Sizzle!
Failure. Again.
Ssssss—!
Temperature's too high. Again.
In the silent lab, the only sound was the endless bubbling of boiling drugs.
'Jinwoo, overtime again? Man, your work ethic is killer. Lock up tight on your way out.'
My old supervisor's parting words from quitting time echoed in my ears.
I'll keep at it until it works.
Because right now, this was the only thing in this world I could actually do.
Suzy sat in the office, checking her cyber parts one by one.
The drugs Jinwoo gave me should keep me holding on. But…
Medicine wasn't a miracle cure.
It was nothing more than a handful of sand thrown over a blazing fire—smothering it for a moment, nothing more.
Once a life of overworking her cyber parts and papering over the side effects with drugs became routine, one day her body would simply adapt to the medication.
The moment tolerance set in and the drugs lost their potency, every ounce of accumulated strain would come crashing out at once.
The best solution, of course, was to tear the Chrono Drive out of her body.
Not an option.
Suzy clenched her fists.
Without that overwhelming power, she wouldn't just fail to avenge herself on the Black Dragon Society—she'd be crushed under the gangs that had entrenched themselves in the Upper District and die a miserable death.
Maybe I should cut back on using it.
But tempering the body had its limits, and in the end, overwhelming force meant leaning on the chrome.
The paradox was cruel: the more she depended on the parts, the more her humanity fractured and crumbled away—and at the end of that road waited a cyberpsycho, self erased entirely.
But I have to get my revenge.
Her brother's death. The fall of Nemesis. If she could pay it all back, she didn't care if she became a monster.
Just then, something Jinwoo had said earlier flickered through her mind.
'I won't abandon you. I mean it.'
The man who'd sworn, flatly, that he wouldn't throw her away.
If she really did lose herself and turn into a cyberpsycho—what kind of face would he make then?
He'd probably taste a despair like the world was collapsing, exactly as she had on the day she lost her brother.
She hated that. Offloading that kind of burden onto someone who believed in her would be unbearably selfish.
Suzy shook her head hard, shaking off the idle thoughts.
Jinwoo will find a way. And Ryusaki said she'd dig up information too.
Right—like Ryusaki said, she couldn't afford to get reckless.
The Black Dragon Society was a giant. Rather than rushing in, getting caught, and being stomped flat, she had to swallow the poison, hold her breath, watch for the opening, and bring them down slowly.
Lost in these dark thoughts, Suzy suddenly glanced at the clock on the wall.
Three in the afternoon. Training time—her appointment with Jinwoo.
Lately Jinwoo had grown quite comfortable with firearms, and the self-defense moves she'd clumsily taught him had come along nicely too.
He didn't have a fighter's body, but he was sharp, and his grasp of technique was unnaturally fast.
I wonder what Jinwoo's up to right now.
Suzy left the office and made her way toward the lab.
Beyond the factory basement, she spotted Jinwoo's back, hazmat suit layered over his clothes.
He had piled the junk materials Doomdoom brought back into a mountain and was ceaselessly brewing something or other.
Not wanting to interrupt, Suzy stopped near the entrance and folded her arms.
One hour. Two.
Jinwoo grappled with the machinery, completely oblivious to the passage of time.
When something refused to go his way, he tore at his hair in despair; he spat low curses and slammed failed drugs roughly into the trash bin.
Pfft.
Somehow, watching that stubborn figure refuse to quit and light the burner yet again was quietly delightful.
Just observing the man's back as he wiped sweat away with an irritated grunt made her head feel strangely, wonderfully calm.
I'll skip training today.
Dragging him out when he was this deep in the zone would just be rude.
With a faint smile on her lips, Suzy turned away without a sound.
Inside the lab, the sound of drugs boiling began to rise once more.
.
.
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Tenacity of a Genius
Description: The more you repeat the same task, the more efficiency increases exponentially.
.
.
.
"Got it! Temperature! Humidity! Perfect!!"
After hours of wrestling with the process, I had finally nailed a flawless extraction.
Inside the sweat-soaked hazmat suit I felt utterly gross, but staring at the system message floating before my eyes, the fatigue just melted away.
> Tenacity of a Genius mod effect activated!
> Repetition of an identical task has pushed your extraction proficiency to its limit. You can now intuitively perform precise temperature and humidity control.
"Straight into the real thing, then?"
I carefully brought out the A-grade materials I'd been saving.
This time, failure was not an option.
I fired up the extractor and fed in the reagents.
The moment humidity threatened to spike even slightly, I eased the valve; just before the temperature drifted out of range, I added the catalyst.
Sizzle! Bubble bubble.
The liquid flowing through the glass tubing was clearer and more translucent than ever before. A pure crystalline essence, without a single impurity.
With trembling hands, I drew the final product into a syringe.
"Fifty percent…!"
My lips trembled.
Far beyond the previous thirty percent—I could now suppress half of the syndrome's progression.