Becoming A Tech Tycoon Begins With Regression

Ethan leaned on the wall in the darkness watching as Nathaniel convulsed while the helmet did its work.

With each second that passed, the closer to Nathaniel's demise they got. watched as the helmet forcefully uploaded memories directly into Nathaniel's brain.

Memories that belonged to the past Ethan. Memories that started from the moment the two met in his past life to Ethan's eventual death in the hands of Nathaniel.

Unlike Ethan whose brain had easily handled uploading memory to the helmet, mostly because of its upgrade, Nathaniel's brain was only a minute away from turning to liquid.

Lucky for him, the memory upload was soon completed....or maybe it was pretty unlucky since he now knew exactly how much hatred the kid...or rather, man stuck in his younger body, held for him.

Slowly, Ethan approached the out of breath and sweating Nathaniel before slowly taking off the helmet.

"See," he commented with a smile, "it's really not that bad."

Not that bad?

Nathaniel couldn't even begin to explain what he was put through under that helmet. He felt like hot lava was being actively poured in his head.

It felt like his brain was being unraveled one cell at a time.. But he couldn't say all that right now because he had just witnessed something even more terrifying.

"H...how-" his voice came out hoarser than when he had just gained consciousness, but it was pretty impressive that he could even speak at this point.

Normal humans would just go insane and pass out, but he had held on until the end and he could still form proper thoughts after that.

"How did I return to the past?" Ethan completed, "well, I'm not completely sure but let's just say I'm a bit special."

"What the hell are you?" Nathaniel forced out, his previous cockiness completely and utterly stripped from him, replaced by only fear.

The memories seen in the helmet could have been fabricated for all he knew, but how had the Ethan gotten the tech to upload it directly in his brain.

Even in the memories of the earth he saw, tech like that was found few and far between.

At his question, Ethan just shrugged and said, "I'm just the guy who got lucky."

And he wasn't wrong, if the system hadn't chosen him when he was on the brink of death, maybe he'd just be a name that was buried and forgotten immediately after his death.

Or as Nathaniel had promised, he'd have been the villain in America's history, one responsible for supplying the enemies with tech.

Nathaniel's head just slumped at the reply, he now knew that there was no way out of this for him.

The thought that Ethan was just a kid who was way in over his head had been forced out of his head.

With all he knew now, he realized that Ethan was the biggest threat he could've ever faced in this timeline.

But.....

"Hahaha.." a hoarse laugh escape Nathaniel's throat causing Ethan to look at him in confusion.

"I guess you really are special," he took a small pause, "but, not special enough for your b#tch to stay with you."

"What's her name again?" Nathaniel's face took on a mock thinking expression, "that's right, Olivia Carter.." licking his dry lips as he call her name out.

Since he was going to die anyway so he preferred dying knowing he got the last laugh.

But the reaction he wanted out of Ethan was nowhere to be seen. On Ethan's face was only an unimpressed looking before he spat out, "you really are pitiful, Nathaniel."

"I at least expected you to remain prideful till the end," he continued, "but to resort to trying to agitate me is..... disappointing to say the least."

Nathaniel was pretty shocked at the reaction, since he saw the memories from Ethan's perspective, he knew that he genuinely loved Olivia, even when he was dying.

Even through the betrayal, he knew that Ethan held a bit of hope that he was just in a bad dream and his wife hadn't really betrayed him.

So what was this reaction?

Well, maybe the helmet did end up fry a few important cells in Nathaniel's head after all, or at least that's what Ethan thought.

"Now then, since you're aware of my reasoning," Ethan walked back to the darkness and put the helmet on what seemed to be a table before picking something else up and walking back.

All Nathaniel could see was blue glowing eyes in the dark but those eyes felt so cold that genuine fear that wasn't for his father gripped him.

He saw Ethan as the Grim reaper walking towards him with a scythe, which in this case was a tray containing some syringes and bottles of unknown liquids.

"I really had to waste SP on these but it was worth it," Ethan explained, "since they'll end up erasing any loose ends that puts me in the equation of your death."

Turns out the system blueprint shop didn't just have blueprint for tech, it also had some chemical formulas that were pretty useful.

Though they were pretty scarce there.

"What the hell is that?" Nathaniel asked, his instincts screaming for him to run but unfortunately, he was tightly bound to the metal chair.

"You know of death by lethal injection right," Ethan calmly explained as he used one of the syringes to mix the liquids making them go from clear to what seemed like yellow, "well this is pretty much the same but different at the same time."

"Yes, this also kills you," he continued, "but in a way that makes it seem completely natural, oh and it comes with a hellish world of pain too."

Ethan plucked a syringe from the tray and held it up between two fingers, watching the fluid bead at the tip like a pearl. The light from the single lamp made it look almost beautiful—too beautiful for what it meant.

"Now hold steady," Ethan said, "this is my first time doing something like this so I can't promise I'll get it right on the first try."

"But no worries," he said with a smile, "I've got a lot more syringes."

"No," Nathaniel let out in panic, "get that away from me."

But there was nothing he could do as Ethan approached and stabbed the needle in his neck causing him to scream in pain.

------10 minutes later-----

It took a couple of minutes and five syringes, but Ethan successfully administered the drug.

At first Nathaniel felt like nothing happened, there was no pain, or feeling of impending death. Only a couple of stings in the places where he had been stabbed with the needles.

At first, Nathaniel thought maybe it was a bluff. Maybe Ethan was just posturing, trying to scare him into submission. He even let out a shaky laugh, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth where he had bitten his tongue during the injections.

But then it hit.

It started in his chest—like something had grabbed his heart and wrung it dry. His breaths came ragged, his throat tightening as if invisible hands were crushing his windpipe. His vision blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again, like the world itself was glitching.

And then the fire came.

Every nerve ending in his body lit up, searing white-hot pain racing through him. It was as though molten lead was coursing through his veins, burning him alive from the inside out.

Nathaniel's back arched so violently against the restraints that the chains rattled like they were about to break, the metal grinding into his wrists and ankles.

His scream tore through the darkness, sounding raw, animalistic and nothing like the sharp, calm man he prided himself on being.

Ethan crouched down in front of him, watching calmly, his glowing blue eyes reflecting Nathaniel's convulsing body.

"Fascinating," Ethan murmured, tilting his head like a scientist studying a specimen. "The system's description didn't quite do it justice. I didn't think the pain would manifest that strongly."

Nathaniel's eyes bulged, veins spiderwebbing across his face as his body twisted violently.

He tried to form words, curses, pleas—anything—but the only thing that escaped his throat was a strangled gurgle.

Ethan leaned closer, speaking softly enough that only Nathaniel could hear, "this is your punishment."

"This is the hell I personally created for you," he added, "make sure to savor it."

Finally, after what felt like hours compressed into minutes, the convulsions began to slow. His body went slack against the chair, chains rattling one last time before falling still. His head lolled forward, blood and saliva dripping from his mouth, his chest rising only faintly before stopping altogether.

Ethan exhaled and straightened, setting the empty syringe down on the tray with a quiet clink. He regarded the corpse for a long moment—expression unreadable, somewhere between satisfaction and calm.

Slowly he turned away from the body as he walked back into the darkness.

"Well," he muttered, "that was anticlimactic."

"Now then, should we tie up one more loose end." He opened the door to the room he was in, revealing another similar door just beside it and he pushed it open.

Walking to the spotlight, he came upon another, tied to a metal chair and he said, "hello again...."

"Dmitri."