Making the Game Feel Like a Game (2): Gods Do Exist
Gods exist. No one had ever seen them, yet nearly everyone living on the Galicia Continent could agree on that much. Of course, how deeply one felt their presence depended on where they grew up and what they did for a living.
Those dwelling on the outer edges of the continent had no choice but to praise the gods. After all, they were the ones who had received intangible aid while fighting the ever-spreading armies of shadow that sought to devour the entire land.
In contrast, the closer one moved toward the safe, central regions of the continent, the less tangible the existence of gods became.
That had always been the case… until now.
“What… am I looking at?”
“A tree… an unbelievably massive tree…!”
Overnight, the barren plains had transformed into a sea of lush greenery, and at its heart stood a colossal tree so immense that craning one’s neck still failed to reveal its crown. The locals could only stare in stunned silence.
While some might shy away from such anomalies, the brave stepped forward to investigate. What they witnessed was this: before the great tree, two women bathed in radiant halos gazed upward at its branches.
Instinctively, they understood.
“A goddess…?”
“The Goddesses… have descended…!”
Some collapsed to their knees, tears of awe streaming down their faces. Others simply blinked, trying to etch the scene into memory. Still others, overcome, rushed forward as if entranced.
“Goddess…! Goddess…!”
Perhaps their voices reached the divine pair. The two goddesses turned.
One was a black-haired goddess whose every feature embodied fertility itself—expressionless, yet flawless. The other was a small, childlike figure with snow-white hair, beaming brightly as she waved, as though she symbolized newborn life itself.
Black and white. A pair so starkly contrasting that their holiness only seemed to intensify. Yet, little by little, their forms began to fade, as if the time had not yet come.
Just as disappointment and sorrow began to cloud the humans’ faces, a voice whispered beside every ear.
Build a temple here for us.
With the power of Elysia and Se-rin, erecting a pristine temple would have been trivial. But what kind of god personally constructs their own place of worship? Besides, doing so would likely be judged as exploiting the system’s intent and yield no effect anyway.
They could provide the design, but the first shovel would have to be theirs.
That was the meaning behind the very first divine oracle delivered to the Galicia Continent. It was the day vague faith first coalesced around two tangible goddesses… and, far in the future, the opening act of an eternal conflict that would one day split the faithful into the Church of the Harvest Goddess and the Church of the Bread Goddess.
* * *
“Ha, fuck.”
“Hey! Bad word!”
Se-rin writhed in self-loathing for a while. The flowing, ethereal robes. The deliberately revealing dress that accentuated her chest. The unpleasant sensation of wind slipping between her thighs…
Being mentally prepared was one thing. Actually appearing before people like this was another matter entirely.
And then there was this.
“Why the hell did they make something like that…!”
She glared down at the humans sculpting statues in their likeness, feeling as though her dark history had been permanently preserved.
In the live broadcast, she had clearly spoken in a calm, measured tone:
“Balance adjustments are planned for the near future.”
“The discomfort from this boss pattern… I can assure you it doesn’t exist in practice. We’ve made it as intuitive as possible…”
“New avatars? They’re the result of the art team’s obsessive philosophy. We reassembled language fragments like puzzle pieces.”
Yet somehow it had all been twisted into: “No balance patch, you idiots. Expect new discomfort soon.”
Se-rin felt deeply wronged, but what could she do? The era had already redefined the job of game director as “human instrument” and “human dance machine.”
‘Surely not…’
A sudden chill ran through her. Would her now-female body and voice also become someone’s plaything? She trembled slightly, then shook the thought away. Worrying about things that hadn’t happened yet wasn’t exactly positive thinking.
Se-rin moved on to the next step.
“You remember, right?”
“Yep!”
Even without building temples, they needed to imprint the goddesses’ existence upon the world.
. . .
They wandered across the continent for days— one, two, three, then a full week.
“Hya! We should’ve done this from the start!”
“You’re such an idiot, seriously.”
A faint, hopeful light began to touch a world that had long been steeped in despair. What the two had done wasn’t grand. They had simply revealed themselves, proven they existed, and performed minor miracles when needed. Yet the positive impact on the Galicia Continent was far from small.
The most visible change was…
“Ugh… there’s no mosaic function, is there?”
“Huh? Se-rin, are you embarrassed? Are you actually embarrassed right now?”
“…Shut up.”
Birth rates rose. Newborns increased. Everywhere they visited, the sounds of life and prosperity echoed, along with sights Se-rin would rather not see. A remixed version of a song from her past life that had traumatized her now played on loop in her brain.
Still, population growth… would happen in the future. Though with time acceleration available to her, it wouldn’t be too far off.
* * *
“You’re already here. Oh… was this place always like this?”
Yoo Seol, who had clocked out yesterday in accordance with Earth’s labor laws, tilted her head upon returning to work.
‘Wow, she’s sharp.’
Se-rin couldn’t help but admire the art director’s eye. To Yoo Seol, it had been just one night of good sleep, but an entire month had already passed in Galicia.
Well, that wasn’t important right now.
“Please take care of things again today.”
“Hmph. When’s the boss coming back?”
“Ahaha…”
Yoo Seol still blew cold winds whenever she addressed Se-rin. At least her fondness for cute things hadn’t changed—she was treating Elysia like a beloved doll, which was a relief. Otherwise, she’d probably be grabbing Se-rin by the collar every day demanding Kim Ji-hyun’s return.
[Yoo Seol: Boss]
[Yoo Seol: When are you coming back?]
[Yoo Seol: I’m bored]
…She was already doing plenty of that via messenger.
A team dynamic balanced on thin ice. Was this really okay?
Either way, it wasn’t a problem she could solve right now. Se-rin set aside her worries about Yoo Seol and focused on the immediate future.
Make the game like a game.
If so, what was indispensable in an RPG?
Se-rin’s top priority: NPCs. Non-player characters.
Monsters were already planned. Now came the friendly inhabitants. Their potential uses were endless. Simply shouting “Good day!” as players passed by could give them presence. They could hand out quests through interaction, manage warehouses under plausible names like “Wyrmflight Trading,” or sell rare items.
They could provide positive influence… or occasionally force players into absurd quests like “Deliver a letter to Dr. Kim,” effectively drafting them into Earth’s defense force.
They were essential for making players feel truly immersed in this world.
“Giving every single one of them a backstory at this stage would be impossible, though.”
While every living being on the continent could theoretically serve as an NPC, meaningful interactions wouldn’t occur without proper design. That was Se-rin’s responsibility.
Obviously, she couldn’t visit each one individually and say, “I’m a goddess, so do this.”
Fortunately, service launch was still roughly six months to a year away. From the continent’s perspective, the arrival of players—the “heroes from beyond”—would be at least fifty to a hundred years in the future. Long after the children being born now reached adulthood, or even after those children had children of their own.
So.
“Let’s create bloodlines.”
She would identify particularly talented individuals, grant them a fragment of divine power, and ensure their lines flourished. Then she would weave in natural-sounding settings—duties passed down through generations, bestowed by the goddesses themselves.
If done right, families and factions would naturally form and grow around specific regions…
“And we can tie the job system into it seamlessly.”
For example, the prestigious swordsmanship family Drizzle. In exchange for granting sword talent, they would be obligated to serve as instructors. When heroes eventually arrived, they would teach swordsmanship, naturally giving rise to the Swordsman class. Those who displayed exceptional talent could then unlock higher classes like Moonlight Swordsman.
The job types and family names had already been implemented. After all, Project A—the game Se-rin had been developing until recently—was designed with extreme freedom in job selection.
“Well then, time to go meet them.”
Se-rin had already spent considerable time observing exceptionally gifted individuals from the celestial realm.
It was time to start farming talent.
. . .
“Goddess or whatever, can you even use a sword? Let’s have a match!”
“…? Did you perhaps not understand what I said?”
“Haha! I don’t get complicated talk. If you beat me, I’ll do whatever you want!”
One thing Se-rin had overlooked: among geniuses, eccentrics were plentiful.
Thus—
Combat encounters: 8 times.
Verbal sparring events: 16 times.
Other bizarre incidents: 27 times.
“Ha… I want to go home…”
Se-rin had finally awakened her past-life habit of complaining.
Still, thanks to Se-rin’s tearful sacrifices, the future players—the heroes—would successfully obtain a wide variety of job options.
“A bloodline? Hmm, I don’t really want to have someone’s kid… I’ll just kidnap a disciple when I feel like it, hahat!”
The difficulty of class changes could certainly be… colorful.