The Madman of the Dev Room

"Is this even possible to implement in the first place?"

That was Bisque's honest reaction the moment she laid eyes on the blueprints.

The sheer volume of data was staggering.

Only two people in all of Jucheongwang were currently capable of working on it: 5555 and Bisque. herself.

Slap together a rough shell, and Yggdrasil 2.0 would never accept it. But building out every single required component from scratch would take far too long.

Thanks to JYS, the development environment had improved enormously, and they even had a lab that let them work at 'ten times speed'—but with only two of them, building this game labyrinth was flat-out impossible.

Dragon Qualia.

Finished, it would be a masterpiece for the ages.

If it were ever finished.

"Of course it's impossible! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠We're short on funds AND development staff!"

"Hey."

5555, wearing an overturned paper envelope like a hat in the dev room, answered with complete nonchalance.

Hearing that reply, Bisque immediately conjured a gag hammer out of thin air and brought it down on 5555's head without mercy.

Another advantage of the dev room was that anything in development could be instantiated on the spot and tested directly.

When Ryu Hwi had first heard about that feature, his only thought had been, Why not just spin the Random Box in there?—but the only reply he got was a cold refusal: anything not built from data generated through the sapling couldn't be pulled.

"So what you're saying is, you've been clinging to something you can't even build!"

"No, what I'm saying is it's impossible *right now*. You remember that thing we were developing on Ragna's suggestion? I'm planning to introduce the blueprint's tech into that labyrinth first, as an experiment."

Hovering in the air was a whiteboard bearing the title ⟨Legend of Lambda⟩ along with its design concepts.

"We gather data with that, then make 'Part 1.' We use that data for a sequel, Part 2, and then finally complete the vision with Part 3. Does that picture work?"

"Ah... so we build them step by step, release each one as its own game labyrinth, and then drop the finished version as 3. Something like that?"

Development funds could be expanded that way, and the dev team would grow in the meantime.

It would become a long-term project—but this blueprint was worth it.

"Doesn't feel like we're making a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠labyrinth that's really *ours*, though."

That was Bisque's one complaint.

"Can't be helped when the blueprint was stolen from someone else. Still, I'm not the type to grind away at something that boring. Besides, I never intended to build it exactly as written in the first place."

In the end, a blueprint was just a blueprint. How you reassembled it was up to the heart of the person doing the building.

"Using this blueprint should also move up the release date for Legend of Lambda. Oh, and before that—the CEO has a request for us."

"You mean that CEO who handed us this thing without even revealing who he is? What ridiculous stunt is he pulling this time...?"

Bisque grumbled, smacking the gag hammer against her own palm.

"Somewhere in this blueprint's massive sea of data, there's a skill called 'Mental Tolerance.' He wants us to prioritize implementing that skill in whatever we make next."

"That's it? Isn't that a pretty common skill?"

"Not quite, hmm."

5555 clasped her hands together once, then spread them, and a cylindrical holographic model materialized—a visual rendering of the blueprint, made easier to parse at a glance.

"In the blueprint's data there's something called the 'Dark Robe.' That's almost certainly what our oh-so-great CEO meant by 'Mental Tolerance.' It's implemented as a boss-exclusive skill, and... roughly speaking, the source code is about this big."

5555 pointed to the portion of the blueprint the data occupied.

Nearly one twentieth of the whole.

Considering how vast this blueprint's data was to begin with, it was an absolutely monstrous amount.

"Are you kidding me?! How is a skill's source code THIS big?! No way. How are we supposed to cram a source that size into Legend of Lambda?"

"Obviously we can't implement it perfectly right away, so I figure we'll practice by building just part of it. The CEO already said that's fine for now."

It would be a lesser version of the original, but a similar skill would be born from it.

"Alright, let's get moving! We're calling Ragna in too. The boy's got potential, so I'm going to hammer the fundamentals into his skull! The one who pitched the idea takes responsibility."

"Uh, yeah."

Bisque left the dev room and headed for the office to fetch Ragna.

Halfway there, she paused, then glanced back toward the dev room.

"It feels like we're forcing something we're not ready for... is that really okay?"

The moment Bisque was gone, 5555 sank down where she stood.

Inside the data Ryu Hwi had given her was the record of the 'accident' that had shattered her life.

Many people had been sacrificed to eliminate a single individual.

Those who freely experimented on 5555's body had certainly been connected to Latia—but the origin point of it all was the experiments of S.E.N's Britra.

5555's body began to flicker, wavering like static-laced noise.

A moment later, it was not 5555 who stood there, but 'Zero.'

The instant the personality changed, even the data composing the body changed with it.

"......"

The rage that had refused to die even after Latia was crushed began to blaze all over again.

In those eyes, burning with hatred and fury, a faint ring of gold took shape.

The Heaven Realm Challenge video series kept uploading steadily.

Plenty of viewers said it lacked the thrill of the Deep Sea Escape arc, but every upload still pulled in massive view counts.

Heaven Realm Challenge 18 — Racing Through the City of the Demon God.

The most recent upload was a City of the Demon God video.

He was still grinding through the City of the Demon God's content.

Ever since the 'play' aspect of game labyrinths had grown stronger, he made a point of fighting in ways that adhered to each labyrinth's own system whenever he uploaded challenge videos.

For example, weapons and items could only be ones that dropped within that particular labyrinth.

In the old days, he could have just bulldozed everything with UR power—but game labyrinths these days were no longer the exclusive playground of elites. They were 'play' for everyone in the world.

Carelessly trampling a game's system would naturally start drawing complaints.

"If all I cared about was clearing it, sure. But now that I've finally made Silver, I can't keep running around with an 'outlaw' image, can I? I've got to be careful with everything I publish."

"I do need to think of something...... Is there really no way I can go wild without system restrictions and still keep my image clean?"

The fact that the City of the Demon God had a 'Spectator Mode' made him even more cautious, which was why his progress through it had slowed to a crawl.

And because progress was slow, he'd only managed to bank enough for 40 Random Box pulls.

It was at least enough to reach the pity line, but the whole thing was dragging out far later than expected.

Before running the Random Box, he took a deep breath and steadied his mind.

Couldn't they hurry up and implement Mental Tolerance already?

It wasn't just because of Intuition—every single pull drained his body and spirit so badly that he genuinely wanted a dose of inner calm.

"Including SR tickets, I'll spin exactly a thousand times. They said Legend of Lambda's release is still a month out, so until then I need to hoard RP and tickets again."

"......"

"And that realization would be?"

He ground his foot into YggON, stomping down hard again and again, and let out one enormous breath.

"Here we go!"

Amid a downpour of NNNs, an SR appeared.

"Huh? An SR? Next."

"I'm the guy who pulled an MR in a single spin. You think I'm going to get excited over one SR now? Come on—next! Next! Random Box!"

The final tally: two SRs, including an SR Select Ticket, and the rest was all trash.

The SR results weren't anything to write home about, either—one duplicate Ice Lance, and a new grimoire called Wind Blaster.

"Don't need the grimoire. And why do I keep getting dupes?"

"That's that, and this is this! Ugh, fine, I'll grind them into skill EXP. Don't need any other grimoires anyway."

He decided to split the two SRs into EXP for different skills.

It was perfect timing, too—Heavenly Demon Divine Art demanded so much EXP that leveling it had felt like a burden.

Which left just one thing.

"The pity."

He could pull the SSR grade that appeared in the City of the Demon God.

No gamer had cleared the City of the Demon God yet. He couldn't even imagine what its SSR might be.

He ran the Random Box immediately.

SSR — Sage's Spellbook

Another grimoire.

He'd been treating magic as a passing hobby of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a skill at best, so a sigh escaped him on its own.

He wouldn't know how the magic performed until he tried it, but this was not exactly a result that thrilled him—

"What?"

Now that he looked, there was no level notation.

"What the hell IS this performance?!"

He urgently needed to revise his policy of treating magic as nothing more than a skill he happened to be passing through.

"Damn it! I did NOT just grind Wind Blaster into paste for nothing!"

"How was I supposed to know THIS would come out!"

He'd never imagined a system would show up that outright screamed, 'Use magic, you fool!'

First, he unequipped every magic skill he had equipped, then slotted them all into the Sage's Spellbook.

Having confirmed the spells stored without incident, Ryu Hwi regretted grinding up Wind Blaster even more.

"Shut up!"

Ryu Hwi pondered whether there might be some way to make this robotic vacuum cleaner suffer as painfully as possible.

His current EXP stood at 114,000 EXP.

Taking Heavenly Demon Divine Art to Lv5 was possible.

Right—I've never pushed anything other than SRs up to (ygg) before.

He dumped every point of accumulated EXP into raising the Heavenly Demon Fist's level to 5.

He pressed Grade Ascension at once.

It was nothing like the promotion animations he'd seen until now.

A glittering golden ring shone in the heavens, and its radiance poured over a colossal tree that looked for all the world like Yggdrasil itself.

Then the gold-glowing Yggdrasil transformed into the shape of a 'card' and drifted toward him.

He reached out his hand toward the golden card.

A absurdly overpowered ability—a debuff and a pure burst-damage finisher fused into one.

On raw numbers alone, it looked like something that could dominate entire game labyrinths by itself.

In practice, though, the internal energy cost scaled right along with it, making it brutally hard to fight on Heavenly Demon Divine Art alone.

Unleashing the Great Calamity at maximum power demanded burning through every last drop of internal energy.

A mind-boggling 1,000% damage at full charge—enough to shatter any notion of balance—but the conditions to pull it off were every bit as steep.

After all, chaining it with Heavenly Demon Dominion made unleashing maximum attack power flatly impossible in the first place.

"Still, I'd love to take it out for a test run somewhere. Isn't there some suitably durable punching bag out there?"

There it was!

Rematching the Super Gemini boss meant restarting from the last stage, but that was hardly any trouble at all.

"Oh, right."

An MR guaranteed ticket!

He was about to burn it on the spot—then hesitated.

There were only three possible MRs right now. He'd already pulled two, and the only one remaining was True — Blessing of the Demon God.

Could he actually land exactly that one here?

Even when an MR dupe popped these days, it couldn't even be designated as a 'Skill Combination' ingredient.

No doubt the achievement had locked the system behind a restriction because of that.

Which meant the duplicate MR Heavenly Demon Divine Art was lying dormant in his skill storage, never once seeing the light of day.

The odds were 1 in 3...!

Low? No, not exactly. But still...

"I'm spinning it!"

"Spinning it anyway!"

He used the MR guaranteed ticket.

MR — Heavenly Demon Divine Art

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"WHY DOES THIS DAMN HEAVENLY DEMON DIVINE ART KEEP STALKING ME?!"

The one precious MR guaranteed ticket he'd finally obtained vanished into thin air.

"Goddammit. Off to Super Gemini!"

He needed something to take his anger out on.

At the final stage, King Dropper was waiting.

Did the thing remember him? The instant it laid eyes on him, its face twisted into something ferocious.

Its design was terrifying to begin with, so the effect was truly overwhelming in its menace.

But to the Ryu Hwi of this very moment, it was nothing more than a stress-relief target.

"Going in at full charge."

"This thing's first pattern is a charge attack. I'm going to counter it head-on."

Just as Ryu Hwi said, King Dropper lowered itself into a charging stance.

It was a brute, simple-minded rush—but every footfall shook the earth and kicked up ferocious gusts of wind, making it surprisingly difficult to respond to.

The time needed to draw out Heavenly Demon Great Calamity's internal energy to its limit was roughly ten seconds.

King Dropper always performed its entrance animation before charging, so there was more than enough time.

King Dropper hurtled itself at Ryu Hwi.

The ground quaked as if an earthquake had struck, but Ryu Hwi's stance did not so much as waver.

The power of 'Fist Supreme,' raised to its absolute limit, was what kept him balanced even amid this.

...8, 9.

King Dropper closed to within a hair's breadth of him.

10.

In perfect sync, Ryu Hwi stepped hard forward and unleashed the Heavenly Demon Great Calamity, its internal energy concentrated to the very limit.