International Game Exhibition: Gamestar (2)
There is nothing quite so grueling as a wait without a deadline.
Of course, in the meantime, bits of news had trickled out — an appearance on the YouTube channel LemonLemon's Game Show, interviews with gaming press outlets, the occasional scrap of information passed along by word of mouth…
But an indirect experience, refined and filtered through language, was one thing.
A direct experience, savored inside virtual reality, was another entirely.
Obviously the latter was more alluring, wasn't it?
And so…
Because starting now, every time the wait goes past another 24 hours,
I'm gonna smash my skull so goddamn hard that everything inside turns into scrambled mush!
If I can't remember waiting…
Doesn't that mean I never waited at all!?!
Just one night and FoG drops!
Just thinking about it makes me so happy~!!!!
The waiting had curdled into outrage that stabbed at the heavens.
It was being revealed at Gamestar?
Players didn't care about that…
They just wanted to play it right now…!
And so the waiting stretched on — one day, two days. A week… heads going crack… a month…
Then the Gamestar Organizing Committee released information on the featured content and major BTC exhibitors.
As always, the big domestic and international game companies piled in en masse.
And just as had been announced in advance…
It was finally happening.
A release date was still up in the air — but the fact that they were coming was what mattered.
The pottery-smashing brigade, whose firepower had been slowly dying down, roared back to life as if they meant to overturn the sky itself — crack! crack! — and the FoG gallery rang once more with nothing but the sound of porcelain shattering.
Expectations were a bumper crop.
The aggro was at full sail.
It had already been a god-tier game back then — how much more god-tier had it become by now?
The closed beta stories had been insane, but… eh, was it really that good?
Conflicting reactions still crossed paths in the middle of it all…
And the first real news came from a truly unexpected place.
Granted, there was a long-standing maxim on Behind that you should never trust anything posted by "NewCompany"…
But unlike the aggro-bait barcode baked into the username, the so-called "7i" had been a fixture of the gaming lounge for a while now, regularly dropping Fantasy of Galicia-related teases.
And more than that —
The spoiler was simply too plausible to dismiss…
At first it stayed inside Behind, the workplace community.
It took less than a day for it to spill out into every other community on the internet.
"What?! How did that already get out…?!"
Once again, Se-rin's shriek echoed through the CEO's office.
And then, time marched on…
November 19th, 2026. Thursday.
Opening day of Gamestar.
"Jeha! Jehahaha! It's been a while since I've done a live stream, right? Today, as promised, I'm in Busan! Live from BEXCO, where Gamestar is being held! Where did I sleep last night? Tsk, that question has impure intentions, doesn't it? Obviously I slept a-lo-ne! In a hotel."
Maximum high tension loaded into her head.
Selfie stick clenched tight in her hand.
ZeroIsGood. Lee Han-byul.
She descended upon the Gamestar floor alongside a throng of viewers.
Her goal today was singular.
"Nope, no time for that. Turn back, turn back. Not sure about tomorrow, but today is one hundred percent full-dive FoG. I'm lining up and lining up again. I'm buying every piece of merch. Heheh."
There were no side paths.
Life was a single road.
Make Galicia great again…!
Armed to the teeth with every flavor of unhinged fan behavior, and with the faint auditory hallucination of a CSAT examinee's wailing drifting from somewhere in the distance, her footsteps carried her toward BEXCO Exhibition Hall 2.
And when she arrived at Team Galicia's booth…
"Whoa…"
Lee Han-byul couldn't form a single coherent word. All she could manage was a gasp of pure awe.
The entrance to the exhibition space.
Marble columns stretched out in a row, evocative of a temple on the continent of Galicia, and beyond them a pure-white expanse of ground glittered in every direction.
Of course it wasn't actual marble — but the texture work was convincing enough, and compared to what she'd seen in-game, there wasn't a shred of dissonance.
As if entranced, she took a step inside.
And what met her eyes was a massive circular screen.
"Whoa, that…! That's from back then!"
Playing right now was footage captured from the World Quest that had been underway at the close of the closed beta.
A colossal evil dragon.
Heroes unleashing transcendent power.
"There, there I am! Whoa!"
Lee Han-byul somehow spotted herself in the footage and let out a cry of delight.
Tearing her gaze from the screen with effort and looking left, she found row upon row of capsules where ordinary booths would have lined up computers.
Mini screens were even mounted above the capsules facing the front — probably a way to broadcast the play feed in real time.
And looking right again…
"O-okay, let's hit that first!"
Merch was not something you could resist.
The game hadn't even launched yet, but the goods shop was open with a surprisingly solid selection, and Lee Han-byul swallowed hard.
You could wait in line for the game.
But merch was gone the second it sold out.
And the moment she stepped up to it…
"Welcome-eth! O my brave hero!"
"Eh — Elisha?!"
Confronted by the familiar face of the girl greeting guests at the front of the booth, Lee Han-byul nearly jumped out of her skin.
The most famous figure in Fantasy of Galicia was, of course, Se-rin.
But the cutest? That was obviously Elisha!
And here was a girl who looked exactly like her — right down to Elisha's signature clumsily tangled way of speaking.
Was it actually her?
The thought crossed her mind for a second before she shook her head vigorously.
No way.
If it were the real one…
That would be child endangerment…!
So Lee Han-byul simply patted Elisha on the head and moved on.
Then, in a very low voice:
"Mods? Ban every single person who just made a farming joke. I swear to — NPCs in the game are fine, but… hey? Live right, okay?"
The moment Elisha appeared on camera, the chat had erupted in a chorus of beast noises — grrr, nyaaaooong, woof woof, pant pant — and she issued a stern warning to every last one of them.
Reality and the game had to be kept separate!
That was Lee Han-byul's ironclad rule.
"Huh?! This is the armor I used to wear…!"
Of course, she completely lost that distinction about ten seconds later.
.
.
.
Regrettably, products that had been rated as having a fairly high chance of release — like the "Se-rin Mouse Pad" — were nowhere to be found.
But there was still plenty of merch at reasonable prices that both closed-beta veterans and complete newcomers could enjoy, and so…
"Overspending? This is rational consumption. Saying I already have over ten desk mats at home is a mean thing to say… a really mean thing. Do you not understand collector's value? You might never be able to buy these any other time."
Lee Han-byul bought one of everything until her arms were heavy, then left the goods shop with a deeply satisfied look on her face.
"It's an honor to meet you! Goddess Elisha!"
"Hwahahang!"
Before she knew it, a line had formed in front of Elisha — not even at the goods shop — and an impromptu handshake event was underway. Forcing her eyes away from that bizarre spectacle…
The Fantasy of Galicia booth was already packed wall to wall with visitors, a sea of humanity.
"Yo, isn't that the Captain of the Guard costume? And that's the Master Blacksmith — damn, they went all out on prep…"
Costumes that stirred up old memories dotted the crowd here and there, and Lee Han-byul found herself gasping in admiration before she could stop it.
Of course, compared to the genuine mega-corp booths she'd visited at past Gamestars, there was a certain awkwardness to it.
For all that the booth was enormous, the capsules themselves took up so much volume that more than half the space had been given over to the play experience area.
And yet.
A statue of Goddess Se-rin stood front and center.
A bridge shaped after the evil dragon Asile spanned the area before the temporary stage.
And if you looked carefully, every single cosplayer was wearing a staff badge — meaning they were all Team Galicia employees.
What she felt from that was affection and passion.
At the very least…
Inside those capsules, there was no chance of being disappointed.
"Alright, time to go try it! Wonder if I can set up the stream from inside the capsule? Probably can — can't exactly run it on my phone cam anyway. Ending the stream here for a bit!"
After a quick glance at the chat window flooding with messages at a deranged pace, Lee Han-byul slipped her smartphone into her pocket.
Then she went looking for a staff member.
She couldn't tell her viewers because of the embargo, but…
Today, she was scheduled to participate in a special kind of demo.
A 24-player raid.
Among the vertical content of any MMORPG, the type with the highest barrier to entry.
Of course, they wouldn't get to experience the whole thing — just a tiny fraction of phases built specifically for the demonstration…
But if even that fraction was fun?
Okay. Game over.
She'd be arresting every last hatetrain rider.
"Uhihi."
With her skull already half-cracked and brain matter dribbling out, Lee Han-byul grinned like an idiot.
"We're running out of mushroom hat merch!"
"Restock comes in tomorrow anyway, right? Just put up a sold-out notice for now."
"There's an argument in front of capsule thirty-eight…"
"That sounds like a job for event security."
"How many minutes until the cinematic swap?"
"About forty. Get the raid demo team ready soon, too."
"It's almost time for the cosplay team shift change!"
"Okay. Yoo Seol's the lead this round, right? If anyone runs into Seol, tell her that fighting with a visitor means a lifetime game ban."
In the middle of that absolute chaos, Se-rin was throwing herself body and soul into directing the event.
Months of preparation were finally being unveiled to the public, and it was no exaggeration to say that today's turnout and press coverage would decide the game's future success.
She'd even dragged the thoroughly unenthusiastic Elisha into mascot duty and stashed her at the front — she was burning her soul for real.
The short-term part-timers hired for this event alone numbered over a hundred.
For the visitors, it was a festival.
For the people running it, it was a special circle of hell.
The one silver lining:
Every single employee of Team Galicia had prior experience working Gamestar operations at other companies.
Without that, the environment would have been far more chaotic.
For now…
It was a success.
The crowds packing their booth were visibly larger than those at the others.
Not even a full day in, and more than half the prepared merch stock had already sold out.
Visitor feedback on the demo course — crammed into a tight thirty-minute session — was also overwhelmingly positive.
Day one's report card: roughly half a success.
And the other half?
"Raid demo team. Let's get ready."
If there was one game design philosophy Se-rin refused to compromise on, it was this:
That the true fun of an RPG came from cooperation…
In a way, a slightly anachronistic idea.
Which made this both a proof of whether Fantasy of Galicia could succeed as a game, and a challenge to whether developer Shin Se-rin's philosophy would land with the gamers of 2026.
"All the pre-selected demo participants have entered their capsules!"
"Thirty minutes left?"
"Yes, Director!"
"Good. Then…"
Se-rin took a deep breath.
"I'll be heading in as well."
How well could twenty-four strangers possibly coordinate in such a short time?
So for a successful WWE…
They needed a conductor and performer who could control everything.
The Goddess of Galicia.
Se-rin herself.