Closed Beta Launch! (1)
July 1st, 2026. Noon, sharp.
"Let there be light."
With that shameless plagiarism of a famous line — Se-rin thoroughly drunk on the moment — the closed beta of Fantasy of Galicia officially began.
In the skies above the continent of Galicia, a crack opened that only Se-rin and Elisha could see. From it, countless lights began to rain down upon the earth.
A meteor shower in broad daylight was a spectacle beyond words.
Every star falling from another dimension was aimed at a single point: Pradera, the city of adventure — the place where heroes first set out on their journeys.
Among those stars were Yoo Seol, Seo Han-ryang, and every other soul Se-rin had known before her rebirth as a goddess. And at this very moment, they were all dreaming the same dream — the opening cinematic partially revealed during the live broadcast.
"Whew."
Preparations had gone off without a hitch. Pradera was large enough to comfortably absorb one thousand and four simultaneous arrivals — ten thousand, even.
Additional fortresses were already sprouting around the city in anticipation of the full launch, and expandability had been built into the design from the start. Give it a little time, and the city would welcome heroes without number.
So.
"Shall I take a look around?"
Unless something truly urgent cropped up, Se-rin had every intention of treating the day as a rest day. She lounged back and watched as the star-touched bodies slowly took shape — the character customization process unfolding before her eyes.
The default recommendation in virtual reality was a body as close as possible to one's real-world self. But push realism too far and you risked making people miserable, so Se-rin had dialed up the freedom a notch. A subtle cognitive filter that made everyone look a touch more attractive than reality. Enough leeway to sand down the flaws and complexes people had always fretted over.
Her gaze landed on Yoo Seol, who had just begun customizing. The chest slider was climbing to its absolute maximum.
Oh, Yoo Seol, Yoo Seol…
They are a little small, she thought — a remark she would never dare say to the woman's face — and looked around.
Balding scalps growing thick and full. Stick-thin frames packing on muscle. Bloated bodies settling into natural, healthy proportions. And there — a pair of legs that had been painfully wasted, now filling out with muscle, their owner staring down at them with tears streaming freely.
Almost certainly someone who couldn't walk in the real world. But here, on the continent of Galicia, those sturdy legs would carry them as far as their stamina allowed.
Something warm fluttered in Se-rin's chest. She let herself savor the feeling for a moment, then checked the balance of accumulated faith she had banked.
There was a reason she had capped the closed beta at roughly a thousand players. Given free rein, she would have summoned ten thousand — a hundred thousand. But the faith required to bridge dimensions was finite, and she needed reserves.
"Looking stable for now."
All those months of tirelessly working the continent of Galicia had paid off in hard numbers. She could probably sneak in another thousand mid-test without breaking a sweat. Of course, that hinged on one prerequisite: that people enjoyed the world she had cultivated, that they immersed themselves in the setting she had built. Fail at that, and the whole thing was dead on arrival.
"Well then. Let's see."
Se-rin tapped into the stream she knew best — the one with the biggest audience. Lee Han-byul's broadcast. ZeroIsGood.
"What? Why! Isn't this obvious?"
Lee Han-byul weathered the flood of spam chat without flinching and cranked the chest slider all the way to max. She finished customizing with a thoroughly satisfied little smirk. Everything else she left alone — her looks had always been part of her popularity, after all.
Then the opening cinematic began.
The teaser footage and other previews had already been dissected to death by the community, so there were no real surprises.
"Hey, hey! That could constitute targeted sexual harassment, you know. Tone down the body compliments, please. Or what — you gonna keep going? You've got twenty-four hours to read the room, buddy."
The moment that scene — the bondage bit — hit the screen, chat exploded, and Lee Han-byul was still wrangling it when a sudden sensation lifted her body into the air.
A thrill of something Earth could never offer. And then she arrived — standing before a massive temple.
One goddess statue towered there, modeled after the stern, generously proportioned goddess from moments before. Beside it stood another: a petite girl, the complete opposite in every way. An object she had never seen in any trailer, any screenshot, anywhere. Curiosity flared — and then the girl's statue cracked open with a sharp snap.
"Wh-what?"
"What are you even talking about?! I didn't do anything!"
Lee Han-byul was still grumbling when — poke, poke — a startlingly real jab in the back made her whirl around.
A tiny girl stood there. Snow-white hair. Ruby-red eyes that glittered like gemstones set in porcelain. A frame so small you could scoop her up in one arm. A cuteness that did not belong to this world. Lee Han-byul lost her words for a beat.
Then the girl's little lips parted shyly, and she said:
"Hi! I'm a god!"
"…?"
.
.
.
"She botched the very first line…"
Se-rin let out a long, deep sigh. And resolved, without question, to find a free moment and give Elisha a solid smack upside the head.
.
.
.
In the hearts of Lee Han-byul and her viewers, the story grade of Fantasy of Galicia dropped by one full tier — a minor incident, all things considered.
But after the tutorial encounter with Elisha, the moment Lee Han-byul finally dropped into Pradera, the city of adventure—
"Whoa…!"
She couldn't hold back the gasp.
A city overflowing with life and energy. Crowds of distinctly individual people — NPCs, presumably — chatting and laughing on every corner. Scattered among them, players who had clearly skipped the cinematic and tutorial and sprinted straight here.
To the viewers watching the stream for a look at Fantasy of Galicia, the scenery might not have hit quite as hard. But for Lee Han-byul — and for her longtime diehard fans—
"Wow… this is seriously incredible. How did a game change this much…?"
It was a deeply moving sight. Memories of the previous title, Galicia Online, came flooding back — that barely-a-village outpost in the middle of a barren wasteland, where you had to scrounge nearly everything yourself, food included. The rare NPCs you stumbled across barely reacted to anything at all.
But now:
"A new hero has arrived!"
"Welcome, hero!"
"Welcome to Pradera!"
Every NPC who passed Lee Han-byul as she stood there, soaking it all in, greeted her with a warm, genuine smile.
"Waaah! Pretty unnie! Are you a hero too? Does fire come out of your sword?"
A little girl even came toddling over, staring up at her with sparkling eyes.
"Ahaha…"
Lee Han-byul ruffled the girl's hair and laughed out loud.
First impression: pass. Full marks. Absolute jackpot.
Two hours into the closed beta of Fantasy of Galicia.
Two hours of playtime was nowhere near enough to properly dig into the content. But it was more than enough to completely bury every lingering doubt.
Testimony from the type of hero who couldn't rest until they'd sprinted straight ahead — a vivid report of the game's sheer scale.
Testimony from a hero who loved talking to everyone and had tried striking up conversations with every single person in sight.
The dazzling detail and spectacle of magic, showcased by a certain hero who had shamelessly leveraged insider knowledge to class-change ahead of everyone else.
And then the braggarts, the streamers, the cuckoos ferrying every scrap of progress from the broadcasts… every last one of them began to testify with one voice.
The teaser trailers and the live broadcast had not exaggerated a single frame. Not a whiff of the previous game's stench remained. It genuinely felt like living another life in another world.
In short: it smelled like a god-tier game.
People who had been on the fence started tuning into streams one by one, or hammering refresh on community boards, devouring every scrap of information.
And it wasn't just a Korean phenomenon.
"What the fuck is this game?!"
The closed beta lottery had reserved a handful of slots for overseas players, and the Western RPG addicts who landed them were already pouring out praise.
Which meant every gaming community on the planet was detonating — all because of a single new title.
Fantasy of Galicia.