Chapter 114
Chapter 114
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 114
Chapter Title: A Happening
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A chill ran down his spine.
As if a dagger had been thrust into him.
Cheol-su felt his head spinning faster than ever before in his life as he clenched both fists.
‘Cheol-su, you have to think this through!’
No matter what kind of a bastard he was, he was still the president.
In other words, one wrong word here and his head would roll.
The problem was that ‘You Lose’ easter egg.
Saying he’d hear him out meant he was giving him a chance to explain himself.
‘First, I should apologize…’
I have to!
The moment he was about to bow his head.
“I was surprised.”
Thump. Cheol-su flinched at Yeon-ho’s words.
A quick glance revealed an unbelievable sight before his eyes.
The ever-unsmiling Yeon-ho had faintly raised the corners of his mouth.
“…Pardon?”
“Small details like that become points of interest. Should I say it’s made me reflect on myself a little?”
“Uh…”
“I tried to rationalize it, telling myself it’s something one can miss when chasing the bigger picture. But still, seeing how wonderfully you’ve completed a part I overlooked, I have no choice but to acknowledge it.”
What is this crazy bastard talking about?
“Thank you. Thanks to you, Cheol-su, Identity has become a game with more to enjoy. It has been a learning experience. Easter eggs that stimulate the user’s curiosity… they have many uses.”
Funnily enough, the thought that filled Cheol-su’s mind at that moment was, ‘Am I saved?’
Come to think of it, his wanting to hear my side of the story, his request for a private meeting, and his demeanor throughout—none of it held any anger.
Look at him now, his eyes gleaming faintly. It seemed there would be no written apology or a pay cut.
Relief washed over him.
Cheol-su felt like he could blow a kiss to the heavens, thinking he would safely overcome this crisis.
His voice naturally rose in pitch.
“Th-thank you for looking upon it so favorably.”
“Is there any reason to see it unfavorably?”
“Well, it was something a programmer did without any consultation…”
“We are all developers. I believe such a deviation is within the bounds of appropriate self-expression. It’s not like you wrote curses about me, right?”
He made up his mind.
The fact that he had initially written ‘That bastard Cheon Yeon-ho, I’ll fight him’ and then erased it would be a secret he’d take to his grave.
“Haha…”
Whatever it was, it had turned out well.
It was the moment Cheol-su tried to wrap up the conversation.
Only then did he realize one fact he had overlooked.
The fact that nothing in this world comes easy.
“So, about that. What are you going to do from now on? You haven’t implemented anything beyond that in the easter egg yet…”
Thump. Cheol-su’s whole body jolted.
‘I have no idea.’
…There was no way he could say that.
Even a fool would know that the wrong answer would mean the end.
The answer came out instinctively.
It was his survival instinct.
“Leave it to me! Actually, I had something in mind, but I thought it would be overstepping my authority to proceed alone…!”
“Ah! As I thought!”
Yeon-ho exclaimed, placing a hand on Cheol-su’s shoulder.
“Then may I look forward to it? What’s the deadline? If possible, I’d like to see it finished before the end of the year…”
“I’ll get it done!”
The deadline was quite tight.
In other words, a realistic schedule.
It meant that while it would be tough, it wasn’t impossible.
Cheol-su’s pupils trembled as if in an earthquake.
‘Ah, I’m screwed.’
What plan? A momentary mistake made without a single thought had rolled and snowballed into something massive.
* * *
Back in the programming team’s office, they welcomed Cheol-su as if he were a victorious general returning from war.
“Cheol-su! You pulled a prank like that without telling us?”
“You should have told us! We would’ve joined in!”
“Go, Kim Cheol-su! Bravo! Our team is amazing!”
Cheol-su laughed hollowly.
The admiring gazes of his colleagues showed no sign of fading.
‘Damn it.’
What do I do?
How do I overcome this crisis?
Even as he thought this, Cheol-su smiled awkwardly and responded with false modesty to his colleagues’ praise.
“Not at all. I’m embarrassed that I did it without consulting anyone…”
The words ‘I was half-asleep and pissed off, so I did something stupid’ were on the tip of his tongue, but he barely managed to hold them back.
The chief programmer, Myeong-gyu, appeared.
“So, what did the president say?”
His eyes were sparkling too.
Cheol-su tried to calm his pounding heart as he answered.
“Uh, he said to go ahead and implement whatever I couldn’t before…”
“Great! We were curious about your ideas too! So we were just discussing it—can we work on it together?”
…Huh?
“Pardon?”
“We can’t let you take all the credit! Let us in on it!”
“If we work together, we can raise the quality, right?”
“What’s the deadline?”
This… I might just survive this.
“…Before the end of the year, right?”
When he answered, the team members’ expressions weren’t bad at all.
It didn’t take long for Cheol-su to understand the cause and effect.
‘These guys, they’re aiming for an incentive bonus, aren’t they?’
It was right after the launch.
Once they finished monitoring the launch response and fixing minor bugs, Development Team 1 would be heading into a long vacation period.
In other words, since they wouldn’t have much to do for a while, they were planning to snag a hefty bonus during their free time.
Was that detestable?
‘Not at all!’
In fact, I’m grateful!
Cheol-su felt like he could die from gratitude.
He really felt like he could just die.
“That’s pretty tight. But it’s not impossible.”
“The idea! What’s the idea?!”
The area around him was getting busy.
Cheol-su realized he had reached the point where he truly had to come up with an idea.
His lips were just starting to part hesitantly.
“Oh, maybe a roulette?! If you win, you get to spin an item-gacha roulette!”
“Nah, that’s too cliché. What users expect is a hidden side quest, right? A secret related to the Oltore Empire could be revealed there…”
“Oh, and we could frame it as a ghost story? Right! We could expand this easter egg, have players collect information related to ghost stories scattered across the empire, and then head towards the origin of those stories…”
They were practically writing a whole novel among themselves.
But, that novel…
‘…is pretty plausible, isn’t it?’
He could see the potential.
Cheol-su stared blankly at the programming team.
Suddenly, a conviction flashed through his mind.
‘This is it.’
Kim Cheol-su, age 33.
Having lived an ordinary life with an ordinary name and ordinary looks, today he faced the greatest crisis of his life.
He decided to overcome it using the method he was best at.
“Y-you figured it out?”
“Ah! Was this really it?”
Going with the flow.
Since his competent teammates were already rolling the ball for him.
He decided to go along for the ride without any pressure.
* * *
In a game map, there are interactable and non-interactable buildings.
That is to say, buildings you can open the door and enter are separate from those you cannot.
It’s a matter of implementation efficiency, beyond just resource issues.
After all, when implementing a map, what’s the point of modeling the interior of every house that has no quests or items? It would only result in more wasted labor.
Such spaces are called ‘dead spaces.’
Some open-world games choose to utilize even those spaces to increase the freedom of exploration, but at least, that wasn’t Identity.
Of course, Identity was a game that prioritized freedom of content, not freedom of exploration, so this was natural.
Anyway, this was an extension of that concept.
“Let’s use the dead spaces!”
Designing and modeling a new map just to create one side quest is extremely inefficient.
It would be better to release a DLC at that point, but Identity was a game that did not release DLCs.
In other words, to create a side quest with limited resources in a short period, the right way was to decorate the insides of buildings—which only had exteriors modeled—using existing assets.
As the idea developed, the programming team began to coordinate with other teams in earnest.
First, a quest design was needed.
Ho-su and Ji-seok from the planning team took on that task, and next was the art.
No matter how much they reused existing models, they still needed a few related NPCs, so they helped out.
“Leave it to us!”
“Myeong-gyu! You have to keep your promise!”
Two senior modelers stepped up.
The quest created this way ultimately underwent Yeon-ho’s review.
The result was a success.
“It’s good. It’s light and enjoyable, and the rewards don’t break the balance…”
The side quest’s setting is the imperial capital.
As it covered the final chapter and the two preceding it, a point in time where the story wasn’t over yet, the rewards couldn’t be allowed to disrupt the balance of main items.
“The Screaming Face, was that your idea, Ji-seok?”
“Yep! The hunting life skill content was a bit lacking, wasn’t it? I took this opportunity to bolster the high-tier items for it.”
“Good.”
Yeon-ho was very pleased with the result.
And so, the final wrap-up.
“Cheol-su, have you ever considered joining the planning team?”
“I can’t allow that. Cheol-su is our team’s ace.”
Yeon-ho’s jest was met with Myeong-gyu’s hearty laughter, completing the warm atmosphere.
“Cheol-su! I knew I could count on you!”
“That’s our ace, all right!”
Kim Cheol-su, age 33, had inadvertently become a talent skilled in both planning and programming, the one who devised the hidden side quest.
‘What is this, it’s scary…’
In truth, whenever someone stated an opinion, he just piggybacked on it, saying, “Oh? That sounds good.”
He had only been acting authoritative, pretending to give directions, just to avoid a pay cut.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel awkward about becoming a hero.
However, there was one thing Cheol-su was overlooking.
Directing, in the first place, was a managerial role of coordinating opinions when someone brought something to the table.
He was, in fact, a person with considerable talent for directing.
Of course, neither he nor the other team members had any way of knowing that.
And whether that talent would also shine on a main quest, not just a side quest, remained to be seen.
In the current situation, only one thing was important.
“It’s all thanks to you, everyone! Thank you!”
“Waaaaaah!!!”
Kim Cheol-su, age 33, had survived.
* * *
『PoppysWalkTime: Hidden Quest Guide!
The quest starts in a stone chamber near the well on Oltore Empire’s 3rd Street.
At dusk, a kid with a defiant face appears in front of it.
When the kid sighs in front of the chamber, you have to time a basic attack to hit the door, which will then open.
There’s no other house behind the door.
(Screenshot of a wall blocking the way with the words ‘Winner! Congratulations!’ written on it)
There’s text like this, and if you press the glowing part below it, you get a book!
Its name is [Imperial Ghost Story Investigation Record]!
The quest starts from this point….
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·
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…Once you complete all the quests, all the ghost stories are collected in the book.
Below is the table of contents for the completed investigation record!
[1. The Naked Imperial Administrator
2. The Liver-Eating Artist
3. The Scream of the Grand Cathedral’s Pipe Organ
·
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7. The Wailing Earthbound Spirit of the Imperial Engine Room]
There are a total of 7 ghost stories.
The one I liked the most was number 3, the pipe organ!
The idea of an instrument that feeds on the screams of the faithful who visit the cathedral was especially creepy…!
Anyway, once you’ve collected all the ghost stories, you have to go to the sewers!
You have to rub your body against a crawlspace behind the sewer boss room, and when you’re done, you fall into a dark space.
There, you meet the final NPC of the quest, the ‘Root of All Evil’!
It’s a faceless ghost character, and its backstory is pretty unique.
I think you can understand it as the villain who created all the ghost stories in the empire, an anomaly that has existed since the empire’s beginning!
There’s no battle with the Root of All Evil!
After a short conversation, it says, “I shall give you a prize for coming this far. May the strange always be with you,” and gives you the Screaming Face!
The effect is unlocking the crafting recipe for the final build of the hunting trap!
That’s it! Happy gaming, everyone!!!
IdentityIsAGodGame: They made a quest like this and hid it so no one could find it…?
└ KingOfTheNextLevel: Are they actual perverts?』
The quest was successfully integrated into the game.
The final room, which had to be implemented, was finished by making the background completely blank to prevent any other collision issues.
A matter that could have easily become an accident had rolled in as a blessing.
‘With this, I can breathe a sigh of relief.’
I was so surprised by the suddenly discovered easter egg.
I had no intention of reprimanding Cheol-su.
Whatever the case, it was true that it gave the users something to enjoy, and this kind of easter egg can be even more special precisely because it’s an unplanned happening.
Of course, I needed to give a warning next time to ensure such things don’t happen often.
That was the end of that.
“Sunbae, you’re spacing out again. What are you doing?”
“I was looking at the community forums.”
“Ah, are they all talking about the side quest right now?”
“When did you see it?”
“…”
Han Seo-rim’s lips pressed together firmly.
Why did her silence sound like the answer was ‘always’?
“…Stop talking nonsense and hurry up. It’s time for our flight.”
I nodded.
The airport scenery unfolded before my eyes.
The people with me were the lead personnel from Development Team 1, Yang Gil-sang, and two secretaries.
“Let’s go.”
I started walking.
It was the start of our trip abroad for the awards ceremony.