The Philosophy in This Highlight
Do you understand the philosophy contained in this highlight?
And the moment Kayack's highlight video began to play—
the gallery's servers briefly crashed under the sudden load.
Advance. Advance again.
The girl's march was as relentless as the conquerors of ancient continents. How mighty the enemies of that bygone era had been seemed of no concern to her—and in truth, it wasn't.
Thump—
The drums of the pop song laid under the footage cracked out a fierce beat. In time with that pounding rhythm, Camilla on the screen took her steps.
They were footfalls that should never have come from such a tiny girl, yet somehow they fit her perfectly—proof, perhaps, of how well the edit had been done.
They say the books that hold the stories of the past contain the wisdom of the old sages.
And so it was.
The graphics were crude, the characters within them somehow shabby. It was only natural—the game had barely been released, still deep in early development.
Yet for all its roughness, the content the video carried was refined beyond measure.
Caster Lee Hyeok-jin swallowed without realizing it.
"Ah…"
The dance began.
The silver-haired girl—Camilla—began to dance once more.
And with her, enemies toppled one by one.
Sometimes in overwhelming fashion. Sometimes with barely a single bar of health left. Sometimes in slow, sticky, grinding brawls.
For a beginner, the fights that followed were so dense that even watching with your own eyes made it hard to grasp what had happened.
Yet every single battle shared one common truth: the one left standing on the final field was always Camilla.
A dance of death. A choreography laced with magic that doomed anyone who beheld it.
Most of the people watching this video right now probably have no idea how incredible these scenes truly are, Lee Hyeok-jin thought.
But he knew. He knew exactly what value this highlight—this play—held.
After all, the season when he himself had started Abyss was the very season captured in the footage.
As a living witness of that era, he could say it with absolute confidence.
With the Camilla of that time, against countless overpowered picks, and at the absolute highest level of play—
the only person who could play like this was the user in the video. Kayack.
Thump-thump-thump—
As if signaling the end, the pop song beneath the footage gradually faded, and Camilla came to a halt.
Then the zoom-in.
The ruined battlefield, the chaos of the background—none of it remained in the frame any longer.
Only Camilla's back filled the screen.
Slowly, she turned.
Silver hair. Eyes that held a blue light. Those eyes looked beyond the screen, as if meeting the gaze of everyone watching, with a faintly wistful air.
With that final shot the music cut out, and the screen slowly drowned in black.
The video was over.
"…"
Lee Hyeok-jin smacked his lips without thinking. For a moment the video had felt far too short.
Even though the runtime itself was surely identical to the other highlights that had come before.
It was the first time he had felt this way while watching the players' reels.
This is fun.
It felt like he had just watched a short film.
He glanced sideways. The two co-casters beside him wore the same stunned expressions. They must have felt something similar. Still, as people with their feet in the industry, they had eyes for the game.
Looking at them, Lee Hyeok-jin smiled faintly.
Truthfully he had only taken the casting job for the paycheck—they said they would pay, so he came.
Yet somehow this tournament already seemed to hold value beyond simply earning money. It had been a long time since a single video made him want to play the game again.
Among the casters who still hesitated to speak, he was the first to seize the microphone.
There was so much he wanted to say.
…No. Um. That is.
Honestly, I never expected the impact to be this big. It was old footage, and the quality wasn't great either.
I figured people wouldn't even be able to properly tell what kind of plays I was making in-game.
Was that just my own delusion? No—it probably wasn't a delusion.
The way things had turned out had a lot to do with the casters' influence.
The moment the video ended, the caster suddenly launched into an explanation of exactly what kind of highlight this was, which parts were incredible—
picking apart every past scene for the viewers like a professional game analyst, even throwing in metaphors so anyone could understand.
I had no idea why he went that far. He had already been hyping me a little earlier, and now this again.
It wouldn't even be strange if biased-casting controversy broke out. Or if people started suspecting collusion between the caster and me.
Anyway, the bottom line was that the current situation was unbearably burdensome.
"…I don't know."
It was hard to even find words.