The silence in the penthouse was a physical presence. It was heavier than the darkness, thicker than the dust motes dancing in the faint light from the city below. One moment, the room had been filled with the hum of immense computational power. The next, a profound, deafening quiet. The death of the servers was the death of the room's soul.
Han Yoo-jin stood motionless, a statue carved from shock, his eyes fixed on the blank laptop screen that had delivered his life's shattering truth. His power, his genius, his very identity—all a lie. A decade of success, of infallible judgment, of seeing the world in a way no one else could… it had all been a symptom of a stolen piece of military hardware rewriting his brain.
Kang, his stoic Head of Security, took a cautious step towards him. "CEO-nim? Sir? We need to leave. The police will be responding to the alarm soon."
Yoo-jin didn't move. He didn't seem to hear. His mind was a maelstrom of white noise, the last ten years of his life replaying in a fractured, horrifying new context. Every successful decision, every brilliant insight, every S-Rank discovery was now tainted, no longer a product of his own talent but the output of a machine he never knew existed. Who was he, without it? The question was a black hole that threatened to swallow him whole.
Nam Gyu-ri was the first to fully grasp the sublime, terrifying magnitude of what Ryu had done. He looked from Yoo-jin's catatonic state to the dead, silent racks of servers, and a look of horrified, almost religious, understanding dawned on his face. This wasn't just a victory for Ryu. This wasn't just a clever escape. This was an act of god-level psychological warfare.
"He didn't just win…" Gyu-ri muttered to himself, his voice a whisper of awe. "He took the other king off the board entirely. That magnificent bastard…"
He had come here expecting a brutal, physical confrontation. He had been prepared for a fight. Instead, Ryu had delivered a single, perfectly targeted piece of information, a truth so potent it had done more damage than any bullet could. He hadn't killed his rival; he had erased him.
Kang, seeing that his words were having no effect, made a decision. He moved to Yoo-jin's side and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "Sir. We are leaving now." There was no room for argument in his voice. He gently but irresistibly turned the unresponsive Yoo-jin around and began to guide him towards the door. It was like leading a sleepwalker out of a burning building.
The journey back to the temporary command center was conducted in a thick, oppressive silence. Yoo-jin sat in the back of the SUV, staring blankly out the window at the blurred city lights, but he saw nothing. His internal world, once a vibrant, orderly stream of data, probabilities, and potential, was now a void.
Out of pure, ingrained instinct, he tried to activate his Producer's Eye. For ten years, it had been as natural as breathing. A thought, a flicker of intent, and the world would resolve itself into the familiar, comforting blue interface.
He tried.
Nothing happened.
There was no flash of light behind his eyes. No data streams. No neatly organized stats and percentages. There was only a dull, throbbing ache deep in his skull, the ghost of a presence that was no longer there. The silence in his head was the most terrifying sound he had ever heard. It was the silence of being completely and utterly alone in his own mind for the first time in a decade.
They arrived back at the anonymous office building. Min-ji, Ahn Da-eun, and Go Min-young were waiting in the main room, their faces etched with anxiety, desperate for news. They looked up as the team entered, their questions dying on their lips as they saw Yoo-jin's face.
He was a walking ghost. His usual aura of intense, controlled energy was gone, replaced by a profound, frightening emptiness. He walked past them as if they were furniture, his eyes vacant and unfocused. He went directly to the small private office he had been using, walked inside, and closed the door with a soft, final click.
The three women were left staring at the closed door, confused and terrified. They turned to the others, searching for answers.
Da-eun was the first to speak, her voice tight with a new kind of fear. She looked at the monitor where Gyu-ri's face was still visible, his expression a strange mixture of shock and professional respect. "Gyu-ri. What happened in there? What did Ryu do to him?"
Gyu-ri was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts, trying to find the words to describe the intellectual carnage he had just witnessed.
"Ryu didn't beat him," he finally said, his voice quiet, stripped of its usual mockery. "He erased him." He took a breath. "He told him the truth. The 'Producer's Eye'… Yoo-jin's gift… it wasn't a miracle. It wasn't a talent. It was a machine. A piece of technology lodged in his brain. And Ryu just found the off switch."
The words landed in the room with the weight of an anvil. Min-ji's hands, which had been hovering over her keyboard, fell still. Go Min-young sank into a chair, her hand covering her mouth. Da-eun just stared, her mind struggling to comprehend the impossible information.
The source of their leader's genius? The foundation of their company's miraculous success? The infallible insight that had discovered her, that had built Chimera, that had defeated Stellar and OmniCorp? It was all just… a machine? And now, it was gone?
The revelation was too vast, too reality-altering to fully process. They could only stare at the closed door, behind which the man they thought they knew was confronting the fact that he had never really existed at all. The sound of silence from behind that door was the scariest thing any of them had ever heard.