Reality Quest: Questism

Jihyun Yoo sat in his study, the soft hum of the city beyond his penthouse nothing but white noise against the quiet precision of his thoughts. 

He rarely spent time in this room, not unless something required his full attention.

The walls were lined with books, not for decoration but for reference… volumes on genetics, behavioral psychology, military strategy, and the history of Korea's most influential dynasties. A subtle reminder of the past, of what true power had always been.

Yet tonight, none of them held the answer he was looking for.

He turned his gaze back to the holographic display hovering above his desk. Strings of biometric data scrolled past in neat columns, each one impossible.

Jihan had changed.

Jihyun's fingers tapped a measured rhythm against the armrest of his chair. The nanite trackers embedded in his son's body had been designed for observation, a failsafe in case his in-utero experiments had unforeseen consequences. They had never been meant to interfere… only to report.

And what they were reporting now…

Increased muscle fiber density. Enhanced reaction time. A 317% jump in strength. Bone microfractures healing at abnormal rates.

Not impossible, in theory. There were individuals in the world capable of such feats—men sculpted through decades of training, genetically gifted anomalies, or the occasional subject of advanced experimentation.

But Jihan was none of these things.

Nothing unusual for years. That's how it should've been. After all, Jihyun Yoo had ensured his son's development was precise, controlled. 

Enhanced memory, but tempered physicality. Jihan had always been... weaker. But that wasn't a flaw in the grand scheme of things; it was balance.

Yet that night, that night… everything changed.

June 26th 23:49.

The trackers had begun flashing irregular data in ways Jihyun had never programmed. 

Every cell in Jihan's body had shifted at once, as if a new program had been written into his DNA. 

An exponential spike in physical capability. Muscle density, agility, endurance—all vastly beyond the scope of any genetic modification Jihyun had conducted.

The numbers were off the charts.

No, no... Jihyun shook his head. It wasn't just that. There was more to it. How? How could such an increase be achieved? Not even Jihyun's most ambitious experiments with CRISPR and genetic splicing had ever yielded results like this. 

Those kinds of enhancements… instantaneous, measurable physical growth, were not possible with his methods.

He'd used all available technology on Jihan. Monitored every stage. He'd experimented when necessary. Everything had been calibrated.

Except... there had been one change in Jihan's life… one variable. 

A certain boy.

Jihyun leaned forward, expression unreadable. The pieces were forming a picture, but it was still unclear. He did not believe in sudden miracles. He believed in cause and effect. If Jihan had changed, then something—or someone—had changed him.

And the only new factor in his life was Dowan Ha.

Jihyun exhaled slowly, fingertips pressing together. The boy had intrigued him from the start. A healer? No. The way his wife had recovered, the way her body had rewritten itself, it was not mere medicine. It was something else entirely.

So he had offered. Anything the boy wanted. A blank check, an open-ended promise.

And Dowan had refused. 

That was what had unsettled Jihyun the most. Because in his experience, everyone wanted something. Power, wealth, protection, knowledge... something. But Dowan had turned him down, as though what Jihyun had to offer was meaningless.

As though he had something better.

Now, Jihan was changing. Strength, speed, endurance. Not overnight, but steadily. And Jihyun knew his own work better than anyone. His genetic modifications had not been designed for this.

So the question was simple.

What did you do to my son, Dowan Ha?

A soft chime echoed in the room, breaking the silence. Jihyun glanced at the past surveillance feed hovering in the corner of his display.

Jihan and Dowan, talking.

Laughing.

There was nothing suspicious. No secret exchanges, no strange rituals, no whispers of power. Just two boys, attending school like every other teenager in the district.

Jihyun Yoo didn't believe in coincidences. If Dowan was hiding something, it meant he was being protected.

Which meant he had a backer.

Jihyun Yoo's fingers tightened against the armrest of his chair… faint cracks spider webbing along its lining. He wasn't naïve enough to think a high schooler had done this alone. Someone was behind him… someone with power. But who?

His mind shifted through the names of Korea's true elite, those who held power not just in corporations or politics, but in the shadows, where real influence lived.

Im Seongho was a man who shouldn't be a suspect. Mirae BioTech was Korea's leading pharmaceutical giant, a pioneer in medical advancements and biotech research. Officially, their focus was regenerative medicine and cybernetic prosthetics.

Unofficially?

Human experimentation.

Jihyun Yoo knew because he had once worked with them. For all their resources, their breakthroughs were incremental. Slow. Careful.

This… this wasn't slow.

If Chairman Im was behind Dowan, it meant Mirae BioTech had achieved a quantum leap in human enhancement. And if that were true… Jihyun would have heard rumors. Even the most well-kept secrets bled eventually.

Unlikely.

Baek Yoonseok was a man who understood that real power wasn't just in policy, but in who controlled the future. Korea had many black projects—clandestine government-backed research into things that shouldn't be legal.

And Baek Yoonseok?

He was at the center of many.

If he had taken an interest in Dowan, then Dowan wasn't just an anomaly. He was a government asset. And if that were the case, Jihyun had stepped into dangerous territory.

Still, government-backed research took time. Too much bureaucracy, too many people involved. If Jihan was changing now, it was unlikely this was a state-sanctioned project.

Possible, but not certain.

On the other hand, the Choi Family was old money. Not like the politicians and tech CEOs who clawed their way to the top… no, the Choi name had been etched into Korea's history for centuries.

And they were obsessed with control.

If anyone had access to secret biological enhancements, it would be them. They had ties to military contractors, black market specialists, and underground labs that weren't bound by ethics.

But the Choi Family didn't waste resources on random teenagers.

Unless…

Unless Dowan wasn't random.

A troubling thought.

If physical enhancement was the key factor, then Kang Dongwon was a name worth considering. His private security firm had grown too fast in recent years, rumored to be testing combat augmentations on their own soldiers.

But he wasn't a scientist.

If he had his hands in this, then he was using someone else's research.

Possible, but lacked motive.

Jihyun Yoo exhaled, rubbing his temple.

No answer was satisfying.

If Mirae BioTech, Baek Yoonseok, the Choi Family, or Kang Dongwon were involved, then Dowan was backed by someone far more powerful than Jihyun had initially assumed.

If none of them were involved…

Then someone else was playing in his territory. Someone he hadn't accounted for.

And that was unacceptable.

His mind expanded beyond Korea's borders, to those who weren't just powerful... but those who operated on the bleeding edge of human potential.

Japan had embraced technical evolution like many. But one man came to mind.

Takeda.

A man who rarely spoke but never needed to, because his work spoke for him. A company that produced some of the most advanced medical and robotic technologies in the world... but whose private projects whispered of something else. Something closer to evolution than invention.

China had Wu Jianhong, a name that moved between sanctioned research and unsanctioned results. Some said his people had mastered ways to unlock the body's full potential, that he worked with programs no government would admit existed. Others said he was simply a ghost story. Jihyun Yoo knew better.

Sergei Volkov, a former FSB officer turned Oligarch, who had always been more interested in control than power.

A former intelligence officer turned businessman, whose projects blurred the line between mind and machine. Cybernetics, neural manipulation... things that turned soldiers into something more. Or something less.

And then there was Al-Faraj, from the Middle East. Not a politician, not a warlord, not quite a scientist... something in between. The kind of man who invested in futures before anyone knew they existed. The kind of man whose experiments were spoken about in half-truths and unfinished sentences.

Any one of them could have found a reason to meddle. A reason to use Gwanak as a testing ground.

Jihyun Yoo glanced back at the biometric data. The changes were still happening. Bit by bit, shift by shift.

The only certainty was that it wasn't stopping.

He exhaled, his fingers gaining a gradual black tinge… tightening against the desk, cracks similarly spider webbing across the wooden grain.

He would figure this out.

And when he did—

He would find out exactly what kind of monster Dowan Ha truly was.

But from what the boy had asked… he seemed to be using the power of whoever was his backing to investigate the murder of his father.

A car crash, that's what the official story said. A tragic accident. 

But Jihyun Yoo knew better. He had the means to know better. 

A few well-placed bribes, a handful of quiet conversations with the right people in Seoul, and soon enough, he had access to the details that had been carefully scrubbed from the public eye. It wasn't an accident.

It was a planned, premeditated murder… something the boy seemed to be aware of.

A glimpse into his son's laptop had revealed more than he expected. Ten names—ten possible culprits responsible for his father's death.

Dowan had already begun unraveling the truth.

Jihyun Yoo had already found it out.

Ji Sunghyun.

What an unfortunate individual. A victim of circumstance, of power, of the very world he had tried to survive in. Perhaps, at some point, he had been something more... a predator rather than prey.

But in the end, it hadn't mattered.

The cycle of violence always came full circle.

And yet, what truly intrigued Jihyun Yoo wasn't the boy himself, but the organization he had belonged to. A council built by mere teenagers, ruling with the kind of fear and influence that even seasoned criminals twice their age struggled to maintain.

It was almost amusing. Boys playing kings. Children dictating the laws of the underworld. And the worst part?

They were frighteningly good at it.

Jihyun Yoo nearly chuckled.

Even so, potential meant nothing without results. No matter the support, no matter the ambition, if Dowan failed to take everything Gwanak had to offer, he would be of no use. A pawn that couldn't move forward had no value.

So, Jihyun Yoo would wait.

He would wait for Dowan to uncover who his father truly was... not just the man he had known, but the secrets buried beneath his name. He would wait for Dowan to peel back the layers of deception, to see the world as it truly was.

And when the time came, when the Bully Council of Gwanak lay in ruins, when Dowan stood amidst the wreckage of his own making…

Jihyun Yoo would finally discover who Dowan really was.

And whether he was worth it.

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I had so much fun with this, it's not even funny. 

I basically consider that the end of the second arc of this story.

May have gone overboard with the World's elite, had fun with that too. Used ai to generate the names because making up names is hard.

Power stone meeeee

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Patreon: Teddartic