The Employment Scam (2)
There was a woman here. The name she used to go by was Kim Ji-hyun. The newly given name was Se-rin. After all, it was an unwritten rule in RPGs that a goddess’s age remained a secret.
“Don’t give me that weird narration.”
“Eep!”
After rapping Elisha smartly on the head, Se-rin—who had once been Kim Ji-hyun—let out a heavy sigh.
Why on earth did I end up like this…
.
.
.
Rewinding time a little, back to the day of the interview when Se-rin was still Kim Ji-hyun. That was when he learned the truth of the world.
“So, to summarize everything you’ve said…”
The capsule was a conduit linking Earth to lower dimensions. Virtual reality games were the tool that created usable bodies in those dimensions so people could operate there.
“What the actual hell are you talking about?”
“It’s the truth, Mr. Kim Ji-hyun.”
Elisha simply beamed at the stunned Kim Ji-hyun, smiling brightly. Still, he could only frown as he scanned the contract. The poisonous clauses jumped out at him immediately; his CEO eyes missed nothing.
The contract period for Party B shall continue until the C-grade dimension ‘Galicia’ is promoted to B-grade. Any extension after expiration or early termination shall be subject to separate negotiation.
“This part needs explaining too.”
“Aha, the worldbuilding-first type? Very core gamer of you!”
Se-rin swiftly distilled Elisha’s long-winded explanation down to its essence.
As already mentioned, virtual reality wasn’t merely lines of code—it was a real, existing world. And if those virtual-reality games had anything in common…
They were all C-grade dimensions. In other words, worlds slated for destruction.
The solution they had arrived at after desperate deliberation was to pull souls from higher dimensions for help.
Earth was an S-grade dimension. The endless battles repeated on its battlefields? A way to prevent total self-annihilation once the war ended, since there were simply too many warriors. Hyper-FPS base battles?
A way to stop one side from monopolizing the spirit-stone mines disguised as strategic points.
The endless waves of zombies were obviously because zombies themselves caused the apocalypse, and the same went for colossal monsters.
“No wonder it felt disgustingly realistic…”
Kim Ji-hyun sighed. The reason was even more absurd than technology created by grinding up aliens. Still, only something on that scale could produce that level of quality, so he found himself accepting it naturally.
“Oh, right! Since I’ve already explained everything, the option of refusing the contract and leaving is no longer available! This is classified heavenly information, so your soul would most likely be annihilated on the spot, Se-rin.”
“Hey, are you really saying that right now?”
“Borrowing the power of someone from a higher dimension—Earth, specifically—is technically cheating, but I begged the god of Earth on my knees.
I told him I really couldn’t handle it anymore, that I needed saving… and he recommended you, Mr. Kim Ji-hyun. The God of Normalization.”
“What the hell does that guy… I mean, what exactly does that person do?”
“Hmm, think of him like… your boss at work? Something like that.”
Kim Ji-hyun let out a deep sigh. The story was moving at a pace an atheist could barely follow, but if he were to believe it…
“Then you and your boss are the ones who cut off my livelihood.”
“Ah, there’s a whole story behind that.”
“What story?”
“That… I can’t tell the current Mr. Kim Ji-hyun. It involves matters of divinity.”
After dangling every piece of bait imaginable and then hitting him with the classic I’m not telling you, Elisha left Kim Ji-hyun staring at her in utter disbelief.
“However!”
Elisha suddenly thrust a single sheet of paper toward him. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Don’t you want to make a virtual-reality god-tier game…?”
Up until that point Kim Ji-hyun had been able to brush everything off with a casual must be that kind of setting. But this was something he could not ignore.
A virtual-reality god game. A virtual-reality god game… made by him…!
It was the moment he realized the god of Earth had made an exceptionally good personnel recommendation.
* * *
It took Se-rin roughly a week to accept her new reality.
A woman who had suddenly become a lost soul in the cosmos. A brand-new C-grade dimension sub-administrator. Or, to put it another way, a newly minted goddess. Se-rin let out a deep sigh.
At first she had been drowning in disbelief, but she could now freely travel between Earth and Galicia. In Galicia, a mere flick of her finger could split the earth, summon springs of water, and make grass and flowers bloom—she possessed full creative-mode authority.
Unless she was experiencing an incredibly sweet and bizarre nightmare, she had no choice but to accept this reality.
Yet she was a legitimate former director who had ground countless employees into dust to complete projects. So she understood perfectly.
“There’s no overtime pay for this.”
This was absolutely not a job one person could handle alone.
Of course, the degree of freedom and power she now wielded was so vast it felt almost unfair to compare it to the creative mode of some blocky building game. Still, handling every village, city, field, dungeon, and boss by herself was impossible.
Not that she couldn’t do it if she forced herself. The flow of time between the highest-grade dimension and lower ones—in other words, between Earth and the Galicia continent—was different. This too was one of the powers available to her as a goddess.
A single day on Earth could equal an entire month in Galicia.
So if she ground herself to the bone, it was technically doable. But why should she?
Se-rin scratched near her collarbone out of habit, then fell into thought.
What had always been her motto?
If it’s something you can do, do it immediately.
If it looks impossible, keep going until it works.
Especially when she set her sights on the latter, her drive for achievement blazed like wildfire.
But achievement only meant anything when it came with proper compensation.
Time to harass her superior.
.
.
.
Se-rin stopped gazing down at the barren landscape of the Galicia continent, tore open a path through dimensions, and returned to Earth.
The moment she saw Elisha—who had trapped her with an unfair fraudulent contract yet was now rolling around on a cheap bed in the corner of a cramped office, giggling at her smartphone—a solid knock landed directly on the crown of her head.
Thwack!
“Eep!”
Ignoring Elisha’s whining about input lag or whatever nonsense she was spouting, Se-rin fired off another barrage of questions.
“But why did you choose RPG for Galicia?”
“I lost the genre-allocation fight…”
“That’s such a pathetic reason.”
“Ugh.”
By now their speech had become completely casual. Se-rin had always preferred horizontal leadership, after all.
Demanding flat hierarchy from her superior was very much in character—though it helped that said superior looked far too easygoing to begin with.
“So what’s the actual cause of Galicia’s destruction? You said it’s a dimension scheduled for ruin.”
“The Demon God’s resurrection! Doesn’t that fit RPGs perfectly?”
“So there really is a demon god…”
“In programmer terms? It’s basically a virus. Zombies have zombie viruses too, right?”
Even with the bizarre explanation that somehow bridged computer science and biotechnology, Se-rin nodded in understanding. As long as the meaning got across, that was enough.
“Then, like the contract says, once it’s promoted to B-grade, the Demon God can be defeated?”
“Hmm… not exactly. It’s the minimum threshold where you can suppress it with raw power. This is a little embarrassing, but… the Demon God is too clever, so there’s a limit to what I can do…”
“Hmm…”
Se-rin pondered. What was the greatest motivator for a salaried employee? Paid leave, or incentives.
For Se-rin, who had been saddled with the nightmare contract clause of “lifetime employment upon failure,” paid leave held no real meaning. That left only incentives—sharing the surplus when targets were exceeded.
“Elisha.”
“Yes?”
“If I create a god-tier game that goes beyond B-grade… one capable of completely eradicating the Demon God, you can give me a substantial reward, correct?”
“Hmm… of course! The destruction of a dimension is a massive headache! The Dimension Management Bureau will provide generous support as well!”
Another “what the hell is that, you damn nerd” setting had appeared, but Se-rin’s interest right now was not in the Bureau or its procedures. If big rewards were possible, then small ones should be negotiable too.
The critical issue she had failed to resolve no matter how hard she shook Elisha by the collar after signing the contract—“An already fixed divinity cannot be changed…!”—was the body swap.
Se-rin still found this body unbearably awkward. The weight in her shoulders every time she moved her arms, the enormous breasts that interfered with even simple motions like bringing her hands together, the slightly lowered eye level, the soft, muscle-less frame…
Of course she had enjoyed looking at such a body as an artistic subject, but experiencing it firsthand was an entirely different matter.
Therefore Se-rin made a firm vow.
She would reclaim her original body and the lost avatar of her lower half no matter what.
Though it wasn’t a phrase she particularly liked, normalizing failed games… had always been her specialty.
* * *
We regret to inform you that Galicia Online will officially end service on June 30, 2026.
The tale of the Galicia continent pauses here for now, but we eagerly await the day we meet our adventurers once again.
Among the handful of virtual-reality games in existence, the only fantasy MMORPG had reached the end of its short service life.
Many people felt genuine regret.
A tiny minority mourned because they had genuinely enjoyed the game. The vast majority lamented that a title with so much potential had been made so terribly.
And like most failed games, it was quickly forgotten.
Half a year later.
Turn your adventure into reality──
Fantasy of Galicia
Closed Beta Testers Now Recruiting!
It was just before the full revamp and re-opening were officially announced.