Chapter 55
Chapter 55
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 55
Chapter Title: Invincible
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The lab director was drinking wine alone at home.
He checked his smartphone notification and opened the lab management IOT application.
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<Name> <Status>
Admin PC ON
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“What the hell is this?”
The lab director racked his brain, trying to remember if he had left the PC on after shutting it down.
….
“No, I definitely turned it off properly.”
Paranoid by nature, he never let even the smallest things slide.
With an anxious look on his face, he called the security office.
[Yes. This is the K Shield situation room.]
“Ah— this is the CK Biochemical Research Institute director. Our database is on, so I was wondering if someone entered.”
[Nothing unusual to report. But we’ll check anyway. Where’s the database located?]
The gate security hadn’t reported Kim Na-hye’s entry, so the situation room had no idea what was going on.
“Lab basement……. No, ah— never mind. It’s fine if nothing’s wrong. I’ll stop by the lab myself shortly.”
The lab director started to instruct the guards to check the underground area but clamped his mouth shut upon remembering how much incriminating evidence was stashed there.
His anxiety amplified in the face of this uncontrollable situation.
It was a ten-minute drive to the lab.
He decided to check it out personally.
[Understood. We’ll notify the gate.]
Click.
The call ended.
He immediately got dressed and left the house.
Meanwhile, the situation room called the gate to confirm.
[Hey, Min-gyu, anything unusual at the gate?]
Hwang Min-gyu, who had been playing an idle game in the gate security booth, hurriedly set down his smartphone and cleared his throat.
“Yes? Ah— well, one researcher did enter, but her ID checked out, so it seemed fine.”
A loud voice exploded over the radio.
[You idiot! You think that’s not unusual? Didn’t they teach you at the training center to report anything suspicious?!]
“Uh…. Yes. Right. But she said it was urgent, and last time Senior Cheol-soon let her in without issue….”
[Shut up. This is an emergency. That woman’s suspicious. We’re calling everyone in, so hold that position tight. And the director’s on his way, so tell him to wait outside until things calm down.]
“Yes, sir!”
Hwang Min-gyu saluted crisply, but he couldn’t understand why he had let that woman through earlier.
‘Why did I do that? I should’ve just checked with the situation room.’
It was a ghost story in his book.
***
By the time Shin Noda released ‘Alpha,’ red emergency lights flashed on inside the lab, and sirens blared.
“This is….”
“Looks like we’ve been made.”
They hurried toward the control room.
Getting caught was expected, but now that it was happening, their human nerves couldn’t help but fray.
Just then, bulkheads began descending from the ceiling.
Shin Noda spotted them and shouted.
“Run!”
They bolted desperately, but got isolated right in front of the control room.
The corridor split them about ten meters apart.
‘Dark Knight’ clenched his fist and lightly tapped the bulkhead.
Thud. Thud.
It felt solidly heavy.
He calmly considered his next move.
‘Among the skills I can use, something to punch through this….’
“None.”
Shin Noda resolved to learn a skill with serious firepower.
He lightly touched Laura’s shoulder and made his request.
“Laura, magic.”
“You think magic solves everything?”
“Yep.”
Shin Noda nodded.
For utility, mages were the best.
That was why he’d brought her along in the first place.
“Wh-what? Well… no, the magic I wield is near-omnipotent, I suppose.”
Laura puffed up proudly.
She grabbed Shin Noda’s shoulders and pulled him down to her eye level.
A pair of identical vertical-pupiled golden eyes locked gazes.
“With the mana produced by the Philosopher’s Stone, it’s still insufficient. This is just to recharge.”
Laura suddenly seized his face and kissed him.
“Mmph!”
Alpha and Omega covered their eyes at the sudden act from ‘Dark Knight’ and his companion.
Though they peeked through parted fingers.
“K-Kiss…!”
Omega’s heart pounded at the scene she’d only seen on TV.
“Hah… What the hell was that?!”
As soon as Laura released him, Shin Noda demanded an explanation for the abrupt move.
He also noticed a chunk of mana drain from his body.
“I emptied my mana tank with that invisibility spell earlier. This is the second-most efficient mana transfer method.”
Shin Noda’s face flushed faintly.
Laura, by contrast, remained expressionless.
“I-I see.”
Shin Noda affirmed it with a faint smile.
It suddenly struck him just how stunningly beautiful Laura was, which suited him just fine.
"Flame Cannon."
Laura extended her hand toward the bulkhead and cast a high-tier spell.
This was her maximum output.
Scorching heat gathered in her palm.
A beam of flame shot straight ahead.
The underground layout was a straight ‘—’ shaped corridor.
Her magic pulverized the bulkhead in front of them, then the next one, and the one after that.
“Eek!”
“Scary….”
Alpha and Omega huddled up, terrified by the immense heat so close by.
“Impressive. Could I learn magic too?”
Shin Noda marveled at the high-tier magic unfolding before him.
“It’s possible, but with your talent, it’d take a solid twenty years of training to barely scratch Fourth Circle. And that’s only feasible because your soul’s been altered.”
He grumbled inwardly.
‘How utterly talentless was I originally?’
Shin Noda grabbed the huddled kids by the scruffs of their necks, hauled them up, and entered the control room.
“Ah. You’re here!”
Kim Na-hye greeted them tearfully upon their entry.
The sudden siren and descending bulkheads had convinced her everything had gone horribly wrong.
“Yes. You finished the job?”
“I moved all the critical data, and the database is overwritten with dummy info. It’ll take time, so we have to leave it running.”
“Does it handle itself automatically?”
“Yeah. It’ll finish on its own even if we leave. We need to escape fast—let’s go!”
‘Dark Knight’ extended his hand toward her and crooked a finger.
A gesture demanding the USB drive.
Kim Na-hye pulled the USB from her pocket and handed it over.
They left the control room and headed for the elevator to the surface.
A biometric scanner blocked the path, which Kim Na-hye quickly cleared.
With that, she had flawlessly completed everything ‘Dark Knight’ had ordered.
“Good work.”
‘Dark Knight’s’ cold voice.
Kim Na-hye sensed something was off.
“W-Wait. I did exactly as you said….”
As a regular human, she couldn’t even perceive the speed of the Dragon Flame Sword’s swing.
From draw to slash, it happened in the blink of an eye.
Her head flew into the air.
“You’re not innocent.”
At first, he thought she was the whistleblower from the original story who exposed the lab’s secrets.
But on second thought, that person was a new hire, while Kim Na-hye was a veteran researcher here with high rank.
Plus, the incident was supposed to happen a year from now, so the whistleblower likely hadn’t even been hired yet.
Definitely not the same person.
In other words, Kim Na-hye was a participant in inhumane experiments and an industrial spy selling secrets to China for cash.
‘Dark Knight’ had shown her his face precisely because he’d weighed all that.
“You planned to kill her from the start?”
Laura kicked the corpse aside and asked.
“Yes. Plenty of reasons to kill, none to spare her.”
They rode the elevator to the surface in silence.
Ding.
The doors opened.
Gunfire erupted instantly.
K Shield snipers.
They had tracked ‘Dark Knight’s’ movements via CCTV.
An expensive mana-infused bullet struck ‘Dark Knight’ square in the chest.
“Guh.”
He nearly toppled from the impact but managed to steady himself.
“How’d they get guns?”
K Shield imported firearms under the pretext of dungeon raids.
A legal loophole, essentially.
‘Dark Knight’ pulled back his robe to check his chest.
The bullet hadn’t penetrated, lodged in his scales.
Scales boasted high magic resistance, rendering mana bullets useless.
‘A regular round would’ve bounced right off. Mana bullet, huh.’
No big deal since it hadn’t pierced.
He left the others in the elevator and stepped out slowly.
Bang. Bang.
More shots rang out.
‘Dark Knight’ closed the distance without flinching, even from the designated marksmen.
The K Shield guards backpedaled.
They had tried using skills from the moment ‘Dark Knight’ appeared, but somehow couldn’t.
“Dark Knight…. So the rumors about him blocking skills are true.”
The security team leader bit his lip hard as he said it.
“What do we do, team leader?!”
“Damn it, the guns aren’t working!”
Panic gripped the team.
The leader made the call.
“Draw swords! We go to close quarters!”
‘Dark Knight,’ known as an A-rank villain.
They knew charging with their low Awakener ratings was suicide.
But fleeing would ruin K Shield’s reputation.
Who’d hire a firm that abandoned its post?
He couldn’t face the K Group chairman who had taken him in.
“We’ve got the numbers! No A-rank beats a swarm!”
The team leader tried to rally morale.
But silence surrounded him.
When his team didn’t respond, he turned to berate them.
His men stared back, pale as ghosts.
“What’s with you guys all of a sudden?”
“T-Team leader… behind you!”
‘Dark Knight’ stood right behind the team leader, pressing a blade to his throat.
“You must be the boss.”
The team leader rolled his eyes to glimpse his own neck.
A short sword halted right before his carotid artery.
Blood trickled from the blade tip, dripping onto his nape.