An Inescapable Fate (2)
Mashup videos that hijacked famous people or creative works had been one of the internet's oldest pastimes for a long, long time.
The first wave to take off, naturally, was audio rather than video — voice was far less labor-intensive to butcher. A man who dreamed of becoming a god of a new world would suddenly spit out powdered banana. A fervent Communist Party supporter would start bleating about water deer.
Of course, the so-called "power users" occasionally produced high-quality video mashups as well… but those were always a minority compared to the audio crowd.
Then generative AI arrived.
No more painstakingly snipping voice samples word by word, stitching syllables together like a mad tailor. High-quality music and vocals now spun themselves into existence. If you had a video source you wanted to mess with, all you had to do was drop in the person or character of your choice — and out came something that, while a little janky around the edges, looked convincing enough.
Legally speaking, it was still a gray zone. Given how current AI worked — condensing countless oceans of big data into a single model — pinning down copyright was a nightmare. But the world had always belonged to the bold. And from that gray zone, one truly magnificent video was born.
"No — damn it — I already did everything…! Why are you doing this to meeeee…!"
That video was the original sin. The reason Se-rin was currently thrashing on the floor in a full-blown PTSD episode, dignity of a goddess completely abandoned, kicking her feet like a toddler having a tantrum.
From that day forward, the already extreme profession of game director had evolved into something worse: human instrument and dance machine. And when Se-rin saw the finished product, she staggered as if she'd just locked eyes with an outer god.
She'd always known this fate would come for her someday.
But wasn't this a little fast?
She'd only done one live stream. One!
Of course, she wasn't the only victim. A certain director in the same industry had once been rendered completely naked except for a pair of briefs, flexing his muscles while dancing a trot routine. Could you sue over something like that? Technically, yes — it was a violation of portrait rights.
But the moment you answered satire and parody with "I'm suing you!", public opinion would turn on you like a rabid dog. You'd be swept up in a force even more famous among Koreans than satire itself.
Han. The grudge.
Multinational warriors who had suddenly renounced their Korean citizenship for Asgard would come pouring in, howling, "I was bored and you just volunteered!" and tear you apart.
So what could you do?
What was coming had come. You just had to take it.
"Please tell me they're not going to ask me to dance again…"
Se-rin shuddered as a wave of dread washed over her. Then she fled — abandoning Earth, where human emotions still clung to the flesh, for the Galicia continent, where cold, unshakable composure reigned over all things.
Her shame was deferred a little longer.
(Screenshot of YouTube view-count growth curve)
(Screenshot of the Goddess statue in-game)
I guess… we should worship her?
"…Or so they say, Director."
"…Let's not chitchat during the meeting."
Se-rin shot a sharp look at Yoo Seol, who had been cheerfully reading out community reactions with a big grin. Then she surveyed the faces gathered around the conference table.
Nine people in total.
The content team, including overall director Se-rin: four. The design team, including art director Yoo Seol: three. One project manager. And the sound team — which was just Seo Han-ryang, working solo.
For a development studio, it was a deeply unnatural sight.
What made it unnatural? There was no programming team whatsoever — the people who were supposed to build the game's skeleton simply did not exist.
But that had already been explained. Se-rin had given them a rough cover story: a separate studio in the United States, led by Director Kim Ji-hyun, was handling the virtual-reality environment development. All they had to do was prepare content to fit the tools that studio provided.
That was the entire explanation.
Had it convinced them? Honestly, no — about half the nine people in the room still weren't fully sold. Even Yoo Seol hadn't completely bought it, though her version of doubt was more along the lines of, So when is the boss getting here?
But so what? Refusing to accept reality didn't change reality.
Se-rin had no desire to explain further and drag these already-suffering souls into the same nightmare she was living. And the rest of the team, left with little more than a vague "Can you even develop VR under those conditions?", had no choice but to go along with it for now.
"Anyway… our goal is three months. At the latest, we need to be ready to launch by the end of this year or early next year."
Groans erupted around the table. Everyone here had played the closed beta. On top of the content they'd already licked clean themselves, they now had to build enough to handle what looked like hundreds of thousands of concurrent users from around the world?
Even if they poured every one of the twenty-four hours in a day into all-nighters stacked on all-nighters, would it be enough?
But then supporting fire arrived for Se-rin's tyranny.
"I've tried it — three months… it's tight, but I think it's doable. We need to compress the schedule as much as possible… so that my world… can… again…"
Yoo Seol started firm, then gradually dissolved into a teary mumble. True to her status as the unofficial closed-beta ranking #1, her love for the Galicia continent was overflowing.
…Or maybe she could already see all that unharvested RMT gold glittering before her eyes.
Se-rin took the floor again in her place.
"Once you actually start development, you'll understand… this is completely different from any existing game-development environment. If I exaggerate a little, you can think of it as turning imagination directly into reality. So please don't get scared ahead of time. I'll do everything I can to keep overtime to a minimum."
The least trustworthy words a boss could ever utter: We'll minimize overtime!
And so, even as they listened to the practical discussion of task assignments, the team members' shoulders were already sagging with dread…
But after the meeting ended — after each of them sat down at their stations, read through the development tool's manual, and started tinkering for themselves…
"Is this… even real?"
The gasp came from Je In-soo, who had ground his life into dust to finish the project handoff in under a month and join the team at breakneck speed.
This wasn't a development tool.
It was a game unto itself.
A god simulator.
As if you yourself had become a deity, you could reach into the world, interact with it in every way imaginable — and those interactions would be made real. Even the UI looked remarkably like a game's.
Of course, you couldn't control everything with perfect godlike authority. NPCs, for instance. Click one and every detail appeared — name, age, the works — but you couldn't issue direct commands the way you would in a normal game. It was as if free will had been granted to them.
Se-rin had even issued a stern warning back in the meeting room: "Any operation that could harm the NPCs inside the game is strictly forbidden."
Je In-soo swallowed a private laugh. What, were they living people or something?
While he sat there staring blankly at the screen with that thought in his head… a cursor suddenly appeared in front of the character he'd been focused on. The cursor moved — and began sculpting a river in real time, carving it across the land near that person.
Terrain modification. The design team's work.
From that NPC's perspective, it must have felt like witnessing a divine miracle. If they were actually alive, that is.
And then…
"…Whoa."
The figure on the screen dropped to their knees, offering worship before the miracle of a river rising from an empty plain.
"Je In-soo? Is something giving you trouble?"
Se-rin's voice finally snapped him out of the trance he'd been stuck in, staring at the monitor. He turned his head toward the sound.
A goddess.
The goddess of the Galicia continent.
And… the goddess of games herself was smiling at him.
Work motivation: +200%.
Se-rin had thought long and hard about how to deploy her team most efficiently to reshape the Galicia continent.
Her conclusion: on every day that included the employees' regular working hours, she would issue a divine oracle across the entire continent, declaring it a national holiday — "The Day the Miracle of the Gods Descends Upon This Land."
Watching the changes unfold in real time would let the staff work faster. And it would also keep the people of Galicia from panicking — or worse — as their world transformed around them.
Then, from the moment the employees clocked out until they returned the next morning, time on Earth would accelerate — night through dawn through morning.
Even if the design team went berserk and raised an entire massive city in a single day, who would live there? Even with a goddess's authority, you couldn't create countless people overnight. You had to secure migrants in advance and gently guide them into settling naturally.
And so, the Galicia continent that had already aged decades — or even more than a century — past the closed-beta era would become the main stage for the official launch.
Se-rin pictured it. Countless people of Galicia living happily in the world she had built. And countless heroes settling among them, enjoying a second reality of their own.
It was going to be an extremely satisfying sight.
But before that… two matters still needed tying up.
On the Galicia continent, she had to lock down Asile — that unpredictable, volatile variable whose next move was impossible to forecast — for at least a hundred years.
And on Earth…
"This is getting annoying…"
She was going to have to endure a flood of handshakes.