Sound Director (1)
Gamers were such simple creatures. All they wanted was one thing: fun. Yet that very simplicity made them endlessly complex, for each person found joy in different places.
Some sought relief from daily fatigue in games that only featured mating, only to end up more exhausted. Even in a world where virtual reality had become commonplace, there were gamers like Yoo Seol who clung to keyboards and mice, licking pixels.
Others chased the thrill of victory in competition, while some preferred healing games to unwind from the stresses of society. A truly god-tier game would need to encompass far too many tastes to satisfy everyone, which was why such a thing might never exist in reality.
That was why game conceptualization always began with identifying the target audience. Who would play? What kind of fun would they seek, and how would they experience it? Those questions formed the first step.
“We need to create a game where the capsule becomes both cradle and grave.”
Here stood a woman harboring the grand dream of encompassing every age group.
Se-rin spent a long while roaming the Galicia Continent without accelerating time. Her gaze swept not only across villages and cities but also deep forests, high mountain ranges, and the shadowed outskirts of the borderlands—places she rarely paid attention to.
「Oh, oh, oh──!」
“Ah, shit. Annoying pests again.”
Even after clearly recognizing her presence, the shadows swarmed like flies. With a single gesture she purified them and sealed them neatly into a gourd. Then she gazed upon what people called the boundary between life and death.
After the large-scale invasion not long ago, the shadows had grown quiet for a time, but now they were stirring once more. The Demon God was no fool; it had noticed their preparations to fight it.
“We’ll need to gather users quickly……”
Reminding herself of her duty once more, Se-rin made sure to record even her own shadow-purifying scenes with the recording device, since the footage was already quite beautiful.
“This should be enough.”
She carefully selected the videos she believed best showcased the charm of the Galicia Continent and sent them to Yoo Seol.
— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding— Ding—
“Fuck.”
Staring at her smartphone as it spewed notifications like mad, Yoo Seol cursed without thinking.
— Seol-ah. Mind your language a little.
— Uwaaah! Such bad words!
Her boss’s and Elysia’s scolding echoed in her ears, yet shaking off a habit ingrained over half a lifetime like a hedgehog was still a distant goal. Still, the fact that she could even recall their nagging counted as remarkable progress.
“No, how many of these are there……”
The situation was still curse-worthy. The videos Se-rin, who had apparently lost all human sense, had sent totaled twenty-six files. Each one exceeded thirty minutes, amounting to over eighteen hours combined.
Yoo Seol barely swallowed the curse rising in her throat and let out a sigh instead.
“How is everything she does exactly the same?”
Over the past three months, while working with Se-rin, Yoo Seol had instinctively realized it. This woman was a little Kim Ji-hyun. The ability to assign just enough work that a person wouldn’t die, yet the judgment to forcibly grant rest the moment any sign of fatigue appeared. If her beloved boss had been born a woman, wouldn’t she look exactly like this? The thought crossed her mind unbidden.
Well, still. Both Kim Se-rin and Kim Ji-hyun showed such passionate dedication to their work that even Yoo Seol was gradually feeling motivated. Though she had yet to see the boss in person, the occasional work instructions and feedback via messenger showed that his sharpness remained intact.
What was it he said again? He was absorbing know-how from the headquarters developing virtual reality, but because security was important, frequent contact was difficult.
Yoo Seol had originally been an outsider to programming anyway, and after stepping into the Galicia Continent she had even wondered, “Is this really a game?” So she had no choice but to believe him. If the boss said it, she had to believe it. There was no way the boss would lie to her, right?
Her faith had always bordered on fanaticism. Even now, seeing certain parts of Kim Se-rin, the boss’s blood relative, still stirred an inexplicable irritation……
“I have to do what needs to be done.”
She returned to her professional mindset. The slightly dazed look in her eyes sharpened once more. Her multitasking ability, which usually let her split the monitor into four sections to simultaneously observe and control replay footage, idle games, OTT, and stock charts, sparkled to life. She played multiple videos at accelerated speeds at once, repeatedly finding usable sequences and noting them down.
While doing so, Yoo Seol couldn’t help but acknowledge it instinctively.
“She’s got quite the sense……”
The lengths were ridiculously long, so she had assumed Se-rin had just filmed everything and anything, but the meticulous attention to detail was obvious. Even if she uploaded these unedited clips to YouTube with some BGM slapped on, they would probably rack up decent views. With this level of foundation laid, if her own results turned out mediocre, that would be a problem in its own right.
Her concentration began to burn like fire.
“As expected.”
Seeing the results she had thought would take at least two days already arriving one after another, Se-rin smiled in satisfaction.
As expected, our art director worked best when pushed hard. Now, how should she lure and push her next time? While entertaining the terrifying thought that would have made Yoo Seol grab her by the hair and shake her if she knew, Se-rin checked the deliverables.
The first result focused on backgrounds. Landscapes Yoo Seol had designed with all her might, naturally blended after thirty years had passed, were captured intact. Starting from the base of the massive World Tree, the frame slowly zoomed out, smoothly transitioning into a bird’s-eye view overlooking the grand temple and great city.
The next sequence showed an open plain. A hyper-lapse shot swept across the view, sucking the gaze into a forest draped in darkness as if filmed by a low-flying drone, then fading to black.
And the moment the screen brightened again, a low-angle shot of a desert holding a suffocating heat, overlaid with a jagged effect, contrasted intensely with the massive volcano rising at its center.
Along with erupting flames, the final image showed the rest of the continent shrouded in shadow. The sight of the continent eroded by the Demon God’s shadow was captured in the video, appearing like an unknown space not yet revealed, before the game logo emerged.
“As expected, she has talent.”
Within the short video, the diversity the heart of the Galicia Continent could offer flowed naturally. However, there was one slightly disappointing point……
“Ugh, my head.”
It reminded her of the teaser for the sixth installment of the Olden Page series, the PC game that had once made Se-rin’s heart race wildly.
After the fifth game where a hero slaying a dragon was the protagonist, the sixth teaser had been just like this. ……Eighteen years of nothing but background footage in a single teaser, and even now there was no news of release, let alone whether development was ongoing. Of course, the direction here was far more dynamic……
“The reason Galicia Online failed wasn’t the graphics.”
Regrettably, it was too lacking to use on its own, so it was rejected.
As if reading Se-rin’s mind, as if hearing her mutterings, the next video arrived at the perfect moment.
“Seol-ah, this is it……!”
Se-rin let out an exclamation. The overall composition of the video hadn’t changed much. What had changed was the focus. Previously, it had emphasized the grand and beautiful feel of nature using various techniques……
Now it showed priests praying at the temple. Citizens of the great city brimming with energy during a festival. Farmers harvesting golden ears of grain. Explorers navigating dark forests relying on light from their staffs. Merchants hurrying along with camels in search of a distant oasis. And finally, her own figure reaching out to purify the shadows flowing from the continent’s edge.
“Couldn’t we cut the last part……?”
Though she grumbled, Se-rin instinctively knew there was no better scene to convey what kind of world this was. Yet even as she thought, This is it, this is the best, in her heart, she couldn’t shake a sense of incongruity. But it was resolved soon enough.
“Aha.”
A part she hadn’t paid much attention to until now had caught her by the ankle. In that case……
“Guess I’ll have to pick up another one.”
She would have to be more careful, lest she someday send a message to Yoo Seol from a smartphone registered under Se-rin’s name by mistake. While organizing that anxiety, Kim Ji-hyun contacted his old colleague, an acquaintance from long ago, just like Yoo Seol.
“……”
This guy. His game preferences were certainly firm. Se-rin began formulating a plan to kidnap the prospective sound director.