A Director Must Sell Herself at a Premium (1)
The final moments of the closed beta test.
At the tail end of that historic instant destined to be forever recorded in the annals of the Galicia continent as the Day of the Demon Lord's Descent.
"I'll send you food later, so how about you wrap it up and head back for today?"
"Muiii…!"
Asile had suffered a colossal humiliation.
Of course, the original sin was hers — abandoning a Demon Lord's duties, falling for a wicked goddess's honeyed words, and dancing along to the tune of mere food. Still… she hadn't walked away empty-handed.
The ones gathered there had been souls from a higher dimension, after all.
Where do shadows come from, fundamentally?
If faith is rooted in the positive emotions beings feel — devotion, reverence, joy — then shadows are the opposite. They bloom from negative emotion.
So even if her flesh had been scraped a little by attacks poured out through borrowed golem shells, Asile had actually been able to stockpile even more power in that moment.
The arrogance of thinking that mere creations — higher-dimensional beings or not — could dare defeat a Demon Lord of an entire dimension.
The stinginess of hoarding consumable items in their inventories out of pure regret, just because the service was about to shut down.
The jealousy of glancing at the other heroes standing beside them who looked stronger still.
Every flavor of negative emotion became her power, piling up layer by layer, filling the world of shadows.
And the largest share of that power?
Lady Se-rin, all soft and bouncy, stroke-stroke-stroke.
Elisha, meow-meow, squish-squish, wriggle-wriggle.
The Demon Lord's own plump little tail, poke-poke-poke.
…It was lust.
Se-rin would have recoiled in disgust if she'd known, but for now, mercifully, only Asile was aware of the fact.
And though the higher-dimensional beings — the players — had no idea, by gobbling all that lust right up, Asile had actually helped them climb free of their negative emotions.
Well. That wasn't Asile's problem.
"Muhuhu… I get it now… your level…!"
Even after summoning higher-dimensional souls and sharing the goddess's power with them, they still hadn't managed to land a meaningful blow. Far from weakening, Asile had only grown stronger.
She'd been a little scared at first. But wait — wasn't this actually more profitable for her?
Conquering the Galicia continent with only the shadows gathered so far would still be difficult, sure. But if she kept nibbling away at negative emotions bit by bit, steadily growing her power…?
Then revenge against that cocky pair of tits wouldn't be a dream either. She could do it…!
Someday she would force that insolent pair of tits to her knees, make her raise both hands in surrender, and mock her right to her face — Muhuhu… so boring I almost want to die…!
"Muhihit…!"
That was what Asile had been thinking, at least.
Which was why—
"A ceasefire… you say?"
"Yeah. About fifty years? You can't beat us right now anyway."
"Muiii…!"
Asile's pride took a vicious hit. But she had no choice but to accept Se-rin's proposal.
Of course, it absolutely was not because she had just been pinned down and spanked on the rear. The great Demon Lord would never — never! — suffer such humiliation!
No. This was merely a minor retreat for the sake of a greater advance!
Asile resolved to conclude a ceasefire agreement.
"In exchange, you shall deliver extremely, extremely delicious food to my domain once every year!"
"Sure, that much I can do."
"Muhuhang!"
A fifty-year grace period.
It was a gamble for Se-rin as well.
As if she wouldn't know that shadows drew power from negative emotion?
Positive memories were fleeting. Negative ones lasted a lifetime.
So once those fifty years were up — four to six months in Earth time — Asile's power would be more vigorous than ever before.
But.
"I'll just win it back later."
What would happen when the heroes came flooding in en masse?
The essence of a game was fun, and nothing else. Even if you waited a whole month like a battered wife, the sweet fruit waiting at the end of that wait could wash away every negative emotion that had piled up along the way.
People enjoying adventure and romance in a world completely different from the reality they knew would naturally have hearts overflowing with nothing but positive emotion.
So even though Se-rin had burned through a fair amount of mental energy pulling off this bluff, the results weren't half bad.
And from everything she'd seen so far, Asile was hardly the meticulous type. Even if Se-rin quietly skimmed off shadows here and there in the meantime and reprocessed them into monsters, Asile probably wouldn't notice.
"Alright. Internal containment is handled…"
Next up: external schedule.
In her heart of hearts, she wanted nothing more than to pour every ounce of her strength into making the Galicia continent prosperous all day long. But reality had more than a few problems that needed attention too.
The maximum number of slaves — no, employees — Se-rin could afford was somewhere between ten and twelve. The revenue she could currently generate through Fantasy of Galicia was close to zero, while the places money was bleeding out were countless.
Without the savings Kim Ji-hyun had accumulated, she wouldn't even have been able to hire staff. The finances were that dire.
Which was why Se-rin was enduring a nightmarish work environment where she drew not an unpaid salary but a negative one, experiencing each year as if it were a hundred.
"Huh. Why are my eyes watering…"
Feeling a single thread of sorrow trail down her cheek, Se-rin forced herself to refocus on the real-world problems at hand.
Anyway — with the current budget?
Proper marketing was impossible. Hiring people for marketing was, of course, also impossible.
Word of mouth was spreading like wildfire, sure. But viral buzz was always like that — the moment attention dipped, it degraded into a vague "oh yeah, that thing existed, didn't it?"
So she had no choice but to hit the pavement herself.
Which was why Se-rin started going through the contact emails piled endlessly in her inbox, one by one.
"Excel Broadcasting… haah. I genuinely want to sue these people…"
There were garbage proposals not even worth answering, of course.
"Next-gen VR project… I can't even stick a spoon in this one. Politely decline…"
Super-over-technology like virtual reality was never going to be realized in the twenty-first century to begin with, so the proposals from megacorps grinding their engineers into dust for "inspiration" got a pass as well.
After filtering and filtering again, what remained was:
Two interviews with gaming media outlets.
One appearance on a gaming YouTube channel.
Not immediately, of course. How many days had it even been since the closed beta ended?
She'd already peddled the hype with a cinematic, sure — but that was a scam coin that was still only a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a quarter implemented. Whether it was an interview or a YouTube appearance, she needed material to actually run her mouth about.
If she went out right now and spoke with complete honesty, the restaurant analogy for what she could currently offer would be:
Chopsticks sterilized!
Wet towels set out!
Card payments accepted!
And after a dramatic pause…!
Free side-dish refills!!!
…That was roughly the volume of development content she had to talk about.
So she replied with slightly generous scheduling windows, politely declined everything else, and before she knew it, it was quitting time.
Sighing, Se-rin stepped out of the CEO's office — and her eyes fell on the subordinates still buried deep in development work.
"Alright, alright. Everyone go home. No overtime tonight."
Of course, some of her passion-drunk employees would volunteer for overtime of their own free will, but Se-rin was still encouraging on-time departures.
Why?
Squeeze them now, and they'd break later.
Crunch had its proper season. For now, she had to manage their HP!
Oblivious to their boss's calculating ulterior motives—
"CEO's the best!"
"Then let's call it here for today… We got a lot done, right?"
"I cranked out fifty quests today alone… I'm dying…"
"City Number Eight is starting to take shape too. Think a lot of residents will move in tomorrow? Hehe, I'm looking forward to it."
The employees chattered in little clusters, savoring their liberation, when Yoo Seol approached Se-rin with an uncharacteristic smile on her face. Had she scored some rare loot last night or something?
"Se-rin! I prepared an outfit just for you."
"…What?"
Se-rin's eyes went round.
Yoo Seol. That Yoo Seol was giving someone a gift…?
This attack dog had somehow acquired that level of social competence…?
Se-rin found herself recalling the past.
"Humans are all trash. …Except the boss."
"Haaah… I just want to play games and live… I could probably make a living off ssal-meok alone. Should I quit? Kidding~"
"Can I work from home? Ah, I seriously won't play games. I'll work hard. For real!"
The Yoo Seol who had uttered that last line had been immortalized on the company chat that very day, and the next day Kim Ji-hyun had chewed her out thoroughly.
Anyway — that same Yoo Seol, giving a gift?
Faced with something she had never even imagined, tears welled in Se-rin's eyes.
"…Thanks, Seol-ah."
Thinking, with a heart full of faith in humanity, that people really could change, she accepted the shopping bag Yoo Seol held out.
And then—
"…"
Se-rin saw gray.
Her expression hardening to stone, forgetting even the basic courtesy of receiving a gift, she pulled every last item out of the bag right then and there.
The contents:
A gray sweatshirt.
And matching gray sweatpants to complete the set.
"It looked… good on you? Heh heh."
"Hey!!!"
"I'm clocking out first——!"
Watching Yoo Seol's back as she fled with impressive speed, Se-rin desperately repeated her breathing exercises.
And then a thought struck her.
No way… right?
As a rule, "no way" was exactly how people got caught.
And then a month passed.
"I can't… anymore…"
"Is this birth rate even legal? Holy crap. How many times Korea's is this…?"
"Elves are popping up like Russians getting harvested from a field."
"Finally… the twenty-seventh city project… complete…!"
"I can't think of any item ideas… I can't think of any… Youmu's Thunderblade? The name's kinda mid…"
"Hehe, make a river, hehe, make a mountain, hehe."
"Our Prince Alfred is so cool today too… hehe…"
Team Galicia's concentration of mental illness rose at an exponential rate.
The initial euphoria over a genuinely absurd, super-monthly-salary-tier development tool that could implement any idea the moment it struck you had been brief.
The applications were infinite. The ideas that came out of a single human brain were finite.
Which meant the content team was suffering the most.
The employees wringing their brains for ideas were dying, and Se-rin — stuck cleaning up after the ones who just yelled "Screw it, Golden Chain Fist!" and jammed in whatever garbage came to mind — was taking a solid decade's worth of stress straight to the face all by herself.
The design team had it relatively better.
Yoo Seol, it bears repeating, was a genius. She alone could churn out every rough sketch and rough concept illustration for the entire project.
So the design team employees just had to take the feed she tossed them and apply it to the Galicia continent…
"Alright! I've touched up the southern region a bit more, so take care of it, okay?"
"Uuuugh…"
"Gaaah…"
…In theory.
Turning those roughs into actual convincing terrain was entirely the job of the remaining two, so they were dying too.
Seo Han-ryang, their sole sound man, had been out of the office for over a week trying to book an orchestra and capture living, breathing audio.
And from the heart of that living hell…
"I'm heading out for an off-site."
Se-rin set off for her scheduled gaming YouTube channel appearance.
"Wait, wait, wait a second!"
She tried to set off.
"No, boss! You're going on YouTube and you're wearing that suit again? No way, no! Absolutely not!"
"She's not wrong. It's stale."
"…Excuse me?"
But before she could even take a step, Se-rin found herself seized by Seo I-hwa, the design team's fashion lead, and Team Lead Yoo Seol.
"W-wait…?! Wh-where are you taking me?!"