The Eye of the Storm
The phrase “That man’s about to cause some real trouble” came from Yoo Jae-won.
It was spoken while he and his wife, having finished every item on their schedule, lounged in comfortable clothes inside the penthouse on the top floor of the ID Global Headquarters building in Seoul, watching the news.
“Me too! He looks seriously dangerous.” Tiffany agreed immediately.
The footage currently filling the television screen was the exact moment the final winner of the Unification National Party primary was announced. The broadcast cut back and forth between the victorious Jeon Jae-jun and the defeated Lee In-je. Their reactions could not have been more different.
Jeon Jae-jun thrust both fists into the air and shouted in triumph as if he had already become president, while Lee In-je clapped beside him with obvious reluctance. Yet it was Lee In-je’s face that truly stole the show. His mouth was stretched into a forced smile, but his eyes glittered with a manic light that suggested he was one second away from doing something drastic.
Yoo Jae-won had always assumed that any seasoned politician could hide their true feelings and speak words they didn’t mean. Watching Lee In-je, however, made him reconsider. Still, it seemed impossible that a man who had passed the bar exam, served as a judge, entered politics under former President Kim Young-sam, served multiple terms in the National Assembly, held the positions of Labor Minister, Gyeonggi Province Governor, and even Prime Minister, would have no idea how to control his expressions.
In other words, the fact that such a veteran politician had lost his composure so completely meant the shock he felt was enormous.
What had shaken him? Coming in second in the presidential primary.
In Lee In-je’s personal roadmap, the only scenario that mattered was winning the Unification National Party nomination in 2002. He had built a solid organization within the party; even if his public popularity was lacking, he believed victory was still within reach. Once he secured the nomination, Yoo Jae-won would throw his full support behind him—willingly or not—so any shortfall in the polls would be irrelevant.
That grand plan had begun to unravel the moment Yoo Jae-won returned to Korea. He had suddenly forced the party to adopt an open primary and introduced an entirely new voting system using the internet and smartphones. The result was the scene now playing on every screen.
Jeon Jae-jun had won. Lee In-je had lost.
At this point, Lee In-je could no longer sit still. Dangerous thoughts were blooming inside his head, and those thoughts were leaking plainly through the windows of his eyes.
The transition to HD broadcasting at television stations had nearly finished, timed with the World Cup. Most of the press cameras had been upgraded to HD models as well. Thanks to that, the Yoo couple could see the murderous glint in Lee In-je’s eyes with painful clarity from the comfort of their own home.
He can throw whatever tantrum he wants. In the end, he’ll just end up following the Phoenix route anyway.
Unfortunately for Lee In-je, his burning resolve no longer held any power to disturb a man who had already seen how this story ended.
-2002 Star League Winter Season finals attended in person by ID Group Chairman Yoo Jae-won and Ilseong Group Vice Chairman Choi Jae-young.
The moment the political segment ended, the television news switched topics. The screen now showed Yoo Jae-won and Choi Jae-young sitting side by side, watching the Star League finals.
“Was it fun?”
“Of course it was!” Yoo Jae-won answered, raising his voice with genuine enthusiasm at Tiffany’s question.
It was a shame Tiffany had not joined him at the finals. She simply could not find any enjoyment in StarCraft. Her taste ran toward FPS games rather than RTS. At least she found AOS games entertaining, which meant they would have plenty to talk about next year—once Fantasy Universe and the Legend League launched.
-Chairman Yoo Jae-won personally presented the trophy to winner Lim Yo-hwan and outlined major changes planned for next year’s professionalization of the e-sports league.
-Eight domestic corporations have founded professional gaming teams, and the world’s first e-sports professional league is set to launch.
-News of new game releases also generated excitement among gamers.
Although Choi Jae-young had sat beside Yoo Jae-won throughout the finals and joined the post-match ceremony, the news coverage focused entirely on Yoo Jae-won. To a man who remembered the former overwhelming presence of the Ilseong Group, the sight stirred a complex mix of emotions.
Among those emotions, pride was by far the strongest.
The next day.
-Representative Lee In-je suddenly resigns!
-“I will step back for a while and reflect on what I can do for the people.”
“Wow, that was fast.”
Yoo Jae-won, who had moved to his study to begin work, clicked his tongue at the urgent morning bulletin. Just yesterday, when Lee In-je had tasted bitter defeat in the final round of the Unification National Party primary, those eyes had looked ready to cause chaos. The man had not disappointed.
-Unification National Party presidential candidate Jeon Jae-jun rushed to Representative Lee In-je’s residence to dissuade him, but was unable to meet and returned empty-handed.
It was customary for the party chairman to become the presidential candidate. When that was not possible, the chairman would usually take the role of election campaign committee head. Following that precedent, the ideal scenario would have been for Lee In-je to serve as Jeon Jae-jun’s campaign chief. But by resigning from the party chairmanship, Lee In-je had effectively cursed Jeon Jae-jun’s first day as a presidential candidate.
The one improvement in Jeon Jae-jun was that he had immediately run to Lee In-je’s house upon hearing the news. The old Jeon Jae-jun would have thought, How dare he ruin the mood? and simply ignored it. It seemed that the harsh winds of real life had dulled his sharp edges and turned him into a slightly better person.
-Democratic Party primary: The Roh Wind is blowing.
-Against all expectations, Roh Moo-hyun wins the Gwangju primary!
The next story concerned the ruling Democratic Party. Unlike the chaotic Unification National Party, the Democratic Party’s primary was proceeding smoothly. With President Kim Dae-jung’s immense popularity behind them, the clear successor was, as expected, Candidate Roh Moo-hyun.
The National Assembly member who had once hurled his nameplate at former President Chun Doo-hwan during the Fifth Republic corruption hearings—unable to contain his rage at the man’s evasive answers—was now becoming the new face of the Democratic Party.
However, he was too new a face, and without any faction of his own inside the party, he was facing fierce checks from the Democratic Party’s heavyweights. The party was selecting its candidate through a nationwide tour of primaries. Although he had taken first place in his home ground of Busan, his ranking had dropped sharply in Gyeongnam, Gyeongbuk, and other regions. Then he arrived in Gwangju and reclaimed first place, successfully reviving his campaign.
Finally, in the main opposition Grand National Party, Lee Hoi-chang was the undisputed choice. With no meaningful challengers, the primary was pointless; he would simply be nominated by acclamation.
Smaller parties had also named their candidates: Jang Se-dong for the Democratic Korea Party and Kwon Young-gil for the Democratic Labor Party.
“So the 2003 presidential lineup will be Jeon Jae-jun, Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Hoi-chang, Jang Se-dong, and Kwon Young-gil. Is that how it’s going to play out?”
The names carried real weight. At the same time, it was a lineup that made the phrase “the president has to be Roh Moo-hyun” feel almost inevitable.
“By the way, I wonder if Lee Hoi-chang is going to pull another car scandal?”
A presidential election was the biggest political event of all, and it required enormous sums of money. Among the candidates, only Jeon Jae-jun could remain detached from financial concerns. Even Roh Moo-hyun had suffered greatly from campaign finance issues after his election.
But the worst offender had been the Grand National Party’s illegal campaign funding scandal—the very incident that had coined the term “car parade.”
“This time should be different, right?”
When Yoo Jae-won calmly assessed the probability of the same scandal repeating, he put it at less than thirty percent. First, the Grand National Party was no longer the dominant force it had once been. After Yoo Jae-won’s appearance, the political group that had suffered the greatest loss was the old military dictatorship faction. Its successor, the Grand National Party, had shrunk into a regional party based in Daegu and Gyeongbuk. Even corporations sensitive to the flow of power had little reason to donate to a party with no realistic chance of winning.
Next came the existence of the powerful anti-corruption agency, the Gongsucheo. In the past, crimes by the powerful had ended with token punishments. That era was over. The clearest proof was the fact that Choi Hyun-hee, chairman of Ilseong Group, was still sitting in prison.
Ding!
While Yoo Jae-won was grumbling over the presidential lineup, an alarm sounded. The sender was President Mike.
Chairman! We’ve finally completed the alpha build!
“Whoa! Really?”
Yoo Jae-won jumped up from his chair the moment he read the message. It had arrived several weeks earlier than he had expected. Color immediately flooded his face.
After suffering through headache-inducing political news, the arrival of something he actually enjoyed felt like pure joy.
President Mike was the head of Blizzard Entertainment, so one might assume the alpha build referred to a new Blizzard title. In reality, he had been secretly overseeing the second development team at Firefist Games. Therefore, the alpha build he mentioned was for the new game currently in development at Firefist Games—Fantasy Universe: Legend League.
I’ll send it right away.
Along with President Mike’s new ID Talk message, an encrypted compressed file began transferring via the file-sharing function. The size was 542 megabytes—one CD’s worth of data—yet the progress bar filled with surprising speed.
Ding!
The cheerful download-complete sound rang out in less than thirty seconds.
“The world really has gotten better.”
The words slipped from Yoo Jae-won’s mouth naturally. He still remembered vividly how it had taken hours to upload a 720-kilobyte file—two 2D diskettes—to the United States in the past. Now he had received 542 megabytes in under a minute.
It was possible because an optical cable from Daekom was connected to the computer in his study, but this was not a privilege reserved only for him. A pilot service had begun that ran optical cables all the way into residential apartments, allowing anyone living in the test area who could afford the expensive 50,000-won monthly fee to enjoy astonishing speeds of 100 Mbps.
Yoo Jae-won immediately extracted the downloaded file. The password had been generated according to a rule based on the date and time, so he had not needed to receive it from President Mike. With a simple mental calculation, he produced a sixteen-character password consisting of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. When he entered it, the file opened without issue.
His security awareness was truly impeccable.
Once the file was extracted, installation proceeded smoothly. He double-clicked the crude “LL” icon that appeared on the desktop, and the game launched.
Thud!
The Firefist Games logo—a burning fist—slammed onto the monitor, followed by the ID Entertainment logo. Then came a list of the licenses owned by Fantasy Universe: from Shueisha to Marvel and DC, even The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Any manga or movie enthusiast would have been left speechless by the lineup.
The title screen appeared next. In a normal single-player game, options such as “New Game” or “Load Game” would have appeared beneath the title. Legend League was different. The first things displayed were the player’s rank, recent match history, owned heroes, and costumes.
Unlike any game ID Entertainment had released before, Legend League would be the first to implement a partial pay-to-play model. The hero packs were the key.
Because AOS games had no single-player mode, traditional sales models made revenue generation difficult. Hence the decision to sell hero packs. Rather than selling heroes individually, they would be released in category bundles. For example, purchasing the Dragon Ball pack would unlock eight characters at once—from Son Goku to Frieza. That would lighten the burden on gamers.
Since Yoo Jae-won was logged in with the master account, every hero appeared as unlocked. Even though it was only an alpha version, all sixty-four heroes from Fantasy Universe: Storm of Time and Space were selectable.
“It’s a bit rough around the edges, but the composition is solid. The real version will be even better.”
Yoo Jae-won immediately clicked the matchmaking button. The alpha test team must have been playing diligently, because a match was found instantly. Hero selection also went smoothly. No one yet knew what constituted an overpowered hero, and balance had not been finalized.
Having enjoyed the AOS version of Fantasy Universe: Storm of Time and Space in his previous life, he chose Gandalf—one of his most frequently used characters.
Once all ten players had selected their heroes, the game began.
“Ah…”
Three minutes after starting the alpha version, a sigh escaped Yoo Jae-won’s lips.
He had deliberately lowered his expectations because it was an alpha build, but apparently he had still expected too much. It looked like he would have quite a lot of work ahead of him.