Chapter 128: Graveyard
Chapter 128: Graveyard
“We are certain that the internet era will arrive soon. Spreading it will require enormous costs, but considering economies of scale, we believe those costs will rapidly decrease.”
“That’s certainly true.”
Li Zhaomin did not bother saying it aloud, but among those costs, there was also the calculation that personal computers, which individuals had to bear the expense of, would continue advancing, causing previous-generation machines to flood the secondhand market. That, in turn, would help raise computer penetration in underdeveloped countries like China.
After talking with Li Zhaomin for quite some time, Hyein and Seongcheol confirmed that XinLink definitely possessed a solid vision and concrete calculations.
For a moment, Seongcheol wondered why, if they were this confident, they were giving them as much as 60 percent instead of trying to take everything themselves. But then he recalled the situation in China that he had learned while distributing games and understood.
In other words, XinLink’s plan was likely to swallow the Chinese market in one strike using this side’s technology, know-how, recognition, and influence.
Indeed, Li Zhaomin and XinLink could not possibly be the only smart people in that vast China. Even if they moved the fastest, once others saw their success, there would certainly be imitators. Moreover, China had extremely strong regionalism and lacked unified authority, so there was a high chance that competitors would gain protection from local powers and steal market share.
That was why they intended to strike so powerfully and quickly that others would not even be able to hold out. They also intended to use being an American company as a shield.
Free China was corrupt and chaotic, but because it had long received American support, American influence there was powerful.
If XinLink attempted this alone, at best it would barely secure one region among China’s many areas. One province out of eleven was not even 10 percent by simple calculation. So even if they gave up 60 percent, aiming for 40 percent was not such a wrong choice.
And XinLink probably had no intention of remaining at 40 percent forever either.
“We’ll discuss it internally first.”
“Ah, of course. I look forward to a positive answer.”
Li Zhaomin seemed slightly disappointed that they did not immediately agree, but considering the scale of the business, he knew it was natural, so he quickly returned to a smiling expression and withdrew.
“Doesn’t it seem good?”
Although he had not answered immediately, Seongcheol viewed the proposal very positively.
“Yeah. Especially since we get 60 percent.”
Of course, ideally they would have liked to take everything themselves. But as already mentioned, the world was full of smart people. Even XinLink itself would probably go to WET’s competitors or attempt an independent service if they were rejected.
But Parallel Soft lacked the capacity to enter China immediately, meaning they would end up giving XinLink or other latecomers a huge amount of time.
Of course, WET possessed recognition and technological superiority. But that would not last forever. A technological gap strategy sounded easy in words, but was extremely difficult in reality.
Once a technology’s usefulness was proven, many people would try to copy it, and already-public technology could be recreated much faster than developing it from scratch. Moreover, spies existed in the world.
And China was particularly skilled at utilizing such methods, while international pressure and common sense did not work very well there.
This was not even unique to China. All latecomers developed by imitating those ahead of them. Korea itself had also grown massively by copying Japanese and American products and technologies.
And even if they maintained technological superiority and recognition, engaging in hostile competition against local companies was not easy.
Even in Korea, Google maintained superiority over Naver in many areas such as recognition, technology, and user experience, yet they still fought neck-and-neck for market share all the way into 2025. In China, Baidu still maintained a high market share, while BING, which cooperated with China, also held considerable market share.
(Translator’s Notes: Naver — Major Korean internet portal and search engine company that competed heavily against Google in Korea.)
(Translator’s Notes: Baidu — Major Chinese search engine company that maintained dominant market share within China.)
(Translator’s Notes: BING — Microsoft’s search engine service. In the novel’s context, it is described as cooperating with Chinese systems and maintaining market share there.)
“And they’re even giving us fifty million dollars. There’s no reason to refuse, right?”
“Exactly.”
At his parents’ summons, Insu came up to the office and was briefed on the situation.
“Honestly, this is the kind of deal where it wouldn’t even feel like a waste if we were the ones paying them.”
XinLink was rushing because they firmly believed in the internet and wanted overwhelming power through full support from this side, which was why they were spending the money. But Parallel Soft had always intended to enter China eventually anyway; it had merely been pushed down in priority.
Moreover, considering the characteristics of Free China, even if the system did not outright force it like Japan, local cooperation would still likely be strongly demanded, making it highly probable that they would eventually need a joint venture anyway.
If they could start the business early while even getting paid, there was no reason to refuse.
Furthermore, fifty million dollars was objectively a huge amount of money, and although Parallel Soft had only just barely gained some breathing room, it already had numerous ongoing and future projects. For the company, it was truly welcome funding.
“Of course, we’ll still have to invest a considerable amount into China.”
They would need to establish infrastructure such as servers across that enormous landmass, create local companies, hire employees, and conduct marketing, so initial costs would likely exceed ten million dollars at minimum. Even so, forty million would remain.
Of course, that calculation might be overly simplistic and optimistic, but the fact that it would immediately improve cash flow was undeniable.
Insu felt the burden pressing on his shoulders lessen significantly.
Afterward, Insu and his parents discussed entering China, as well as expansion into Korea and Europe.
Korea had originally been fairly low priority, but since they would now be entering neighboring China anyway, and since they would place servers across various Chinese regions, they decided to expand by placing servers in border regions near Korea to partially cover Korea’s northern regions.
“Wouldn’t it be better to place servers in Korea and cover China from there instead?”
“Hmm. Well, in terms of overall users, maybe not, but by ratio, Korea’s internet usage is definitely higher.”
“And considering social stability, Korea is better too. We’re planning to connect submarine cables there later anyway.”
They currently lacked the money and technology, but since they planned to provide internet services and virtual reality worldwide, they intended to lay submarine cables to maintain service quality.
Eventually, hubs would also connect to China and even the Soviet Union, but during the early period, when user counts and data volume were still low, they would likely connect to only one or two places first and expand indirectly from there.
Of course, there was no rule saying server centers and cable hubs had to be in the same place, but being nearby definitely made management easier and reduced costs.
As for Europe, they planned to start with Britain, followed by Germany and France.
In Britain’s case, there were already quite a few people accessing and using the American WET.
Intercontinental submarine fiber-optic cables had already been installed since the 1980s, and Britain was a major node directly connected to America. British ISPs were also connected to American backbone networks, allowing surprisingly comfortable access.
(Translator’s Notes: Submarine fiber-optic cable — Undersea communication cable used for transmitting internet and telecommunications data between continents.)
Moreover, many people in other European countries could speak English, so both recognition and market share had already accumulated to some degree.
Thus began WET’s expansion into Europe. Parallel Soft planned to firmly establish roots throughout Europe before the year 2000.
TLF Online underwent maintenance every Tuesday. Even regular maintenance itself was a new standard in this era. Previous online games, mainly MUD games, typically lacked scheduled maintenance and instead underwent maintenance only whenever necessary.
(Translator’s Notes: MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) — Early text-based online multiplayer game genre that heavily influenced the development of MMORPGs.)
That was why even games like The Kingdom of the Winds and Ultima Online from Insu’s previous life originally used irregular maintenance whenever needed rather than scheduled maintenance.
However, MMORPGs had many users and heavy traffic, causing overloads to build quickly and bugs to appear frequently, so periodic inspection and management were necessary.
Additionally, from the gamers’ perspective, it was less stressful to know maintenance in advance rather than suddenly being unable to play due to unexpected maintenance. Understanding this, Insu introduced scheduled maintenance immediately instead of learning through trial and error.
“Major update?”
As maintenance day approached, Jamie checked whether anything special was coming. Since maintenance happened during school hours anyway, it did not affect him, but patches occasionally fixed bugs, making them a hot topic among players.
But this time, it was not simply bug fixes. There was an update.
“Graveyard system?”
At first he wondered what it was. The explanation simply stated that if a player’s character or companion died, up to ten of them could be recorded in the graveyard.
But Jamie was a fairly hardcore gamer and knew a significant portion of the game systems, so he quickly understood the graveyard’s effect.
“Ah. So it can basically be used like a save file.”
This game had a system called Grand Magic. These were special spells that required enormous costs and sacrifices but produced extraordinary effects, such as changing races, altering terrain, or even reviving the dead.
However, until now, reviving someone required the target’s “corpse.” That meant only characters who had died recently could be revived. And it could not be used on oneself. Dead people could do nothing at all, let alone cast magic.
But with the graveyard system, many of those restrictions were lifted.
Most importantly, it removed the restriction imposed by the descendant system that forced players to change characters every week. In truth, there had already been ways to continue playing a single character before.
One could use Grand Magic such as <Life Extension>, become an immortal race through <Race Transformation>, or use spells like <Immortality>.
More creatively, there were also methods like <Clone> or <Doppelganger>, which duplicated other characters.
But these methods had enormous difficulty and cost, along with several penalties. More importantly, they prevented use of the descendant system, making it impossible to further improve bloodlines or create potentially better characters.
Of course, some people used such Grand Magic simply because they were annoyed by their characters constantly dying and having to restart with randomly generated characters.
Still, it would feel disappointing if that blocked content and possibilities others could enjoy.
But this graveyard system removed those restrictions.
Players could continue being reborn until they got good characters like before, but they could save characters they considered worthwhile into the graveyard and reuse them later. Rather than waiting endlessly until they assembled the perfect team, they could now form the best possible team whenever they wanted as long as they paid the cost.
‘The prices of resurrection-related Grand Magic items are going to rise.’
Needless to say, spellbooks would increase in price, and magical materials would as well. However, because this game had a decay system, hoarding was difficult, so prices likely would not rise too extremely.
The next day, after school ended, Jamie returned home and downloaded the patch.
Insu had tried to introduce automatic updates as well, but due to the slow and unstable internet environment, weak computer performance, and lack of related technology, developing a patch program was too difficult. Additionally, because operating systems were unstable, it was hard to properly manage file permissions and network settings.
He could probably force something together somehow, but he could already picture endless failures, exploding server loads from customer inquiries and repeated retries, so he simply gave up and chose manual patching instead.
Fortunately, Jamie downloaded the file without problems, installed it, and connected to the game.
‘So this is how it feels.’
The graveyard could be accessed from cities or villages, but it had no physical location. Choosing the menu simply switched the screen to a shared cemetery-like place.
Naturally, since this system had only just been updated, the graveyard was empty.
So there was not yet any way to use it. It would take more time before it had any real impact.