Chapter 119
Chapter 119
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 119
Chapter Title: The Beginning (1)
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Breaks at Rewind are long.
Since starting development on *Hellic 3*, this was the second time they'd taken a proper team-wide break. Even so, it was long enough to establish a policy of “take a full quarter off after launch.”
There was no need for any other reason; it was all because of crunch.
Yeon-ho, the director and CEO, held the belief that “good games and good welfare can't coexist,” so the entire company had adopted a “work hard during development and rest hard after” mentality.
Few people had any complaints.
Anyone who did had already quit, and the ones who remained were those whose sense of accomplishment outweighed the workload, or those who had become slaves to the incentives.
In any case, for that reason, the development team’s office was usually half-empty during the break, and even the department heads would just come in to chat and pass the time.
Today was another one of those days.
The only major item on the agenda was deciding the winners of *Identity*'s modding competition, awarding the prizes, and finalizing the official modder contracts.
The few employees who were present welcomed them.
The new hires flinched at the screams and sounds of impact coming from downstairs (Development Team 2), their faces turning pale.
“Don’t mind them. It’s pretty fun once you get used to it.”
The new employees laughed awkwardly at Gil-sang’s words.
Gil-sang knew they would soon be dipping their toes into the sparring pools, but he didn’t elaborate.
He just glanced at his watch and hurried the new employees along.
“Let’s just greet the President and then we can go. Since he’s here, we might as well have a team dinner.”
Just because Development Team 1 was on break didn’t mean Gil-sang was.
His job was to oversee business and internal affairs, which meant he was busiest right after a launch.
Now that one big project was done, the next was the grueling march through tax season.
On that spring day, footsteps moved briskly through the office building.
“Presi—”
Gil-sang stopped short, his steps faltering.
A troubled expression formed on his face as he looked toward the planning office of Development Team 1.
He finally spoke.
“Um, I don’t think we can greet him today.”
The new employees showed a hint of disappointment.
It was understandable.
Within the company, he might be a son of a bitch, but to the outside world, he was a man writing a legendary legacy that every new developer would admire.
But what couldn’t be, couldn’t be.
“He’s started planning the next game. If you bother him now, he’ll pick a fight.”
Gil-sang recalled the time when Yeon-ho was first writing the design document for *Identity*.
—Yeon-ho, this document…
—…The bald guy’s here.
—?
—…Ah, sorry. I’m a little on edge.
The dagger Yeon-ho had plunged into his heart that day still gleamed menacingly.
Gil-sang had no desire to experience that a second time.
It was then.
“Senior, it’s time for lunch.”
Just as he’d said not to bother Yeon-ho while he was writing a design doc, Seo-rim appeared and did just that.
A faint irritation flickered across Yeon-ho’s face.
Seo-rim tilted her head and said.
“What.”
“…”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“…I was just wondering what’s for lunch today.”
“Let’s get gukbap. I’m suddenly craving it.”
“Did you drink yesterday?”
“A-yun begged me to.”
“You’ll spoil her if you give in to everything she wants.”
“Whatever, just get up.”
“Let me just finish organizing this.”
As if to prove Gil-sang’s warning false, Yeon-ho obediently complied with Seo-rim.
Gil-sang added a pathetic excuse.
“…It’s because she’s Team 1’s ace. The President has a serious soft spot for talented people.”
Come to think of it, I’m pretty talented myself, so why am I treated like this?
The question arose, but Gil-sang didn’t dwell on it.
It would only lead to more hurt feelings.
“Let’s go.”
The new employees were still staring at Yeon-ho, their eyes sparkling.
Gil-sang thought to himself.
‘How long will it take?’
For that adoration in their eyes to turn into hatred, that is.
He figured it wouldn’t even take a year.
If they were in Team 1 and had to deal with Yeon-ho directly, it wouldn’t take a month, but since they were practically classified as Team 3, he was being quite generous.
Gil-sang felt a strange sense of pleasure at the thought of more people coming to despise Yeon-ho.
“Shall we go for that team dinner then?”
“M-maybe about the new game…”
Oh dear, looked like he had a fan of Yeon-ho.
Gil-sang shrugged and said.
“I don’t know much either. The President doesn’t really talk about what he’s making until the project is officially announced.”
No, wait, he had heard something.
Thinking, ‘This much should be fine,’ Gil-sang casually let it slip.
“…It’s probably a *Hellic* game. He said now that the trilogy is over, he’s preparing a standalone title this time.”
Gil-sang’s gaze shifted back to Yeon-ho.
He remembered something he’d said.
—It’s a love story. *Hellic 4*.
A love story in hell. Thinking about it again, it was certainly an awkward combination.
Whatever it was, one thing was certain.
‘The good old days are over.’
Team 1’s long, long break had come to an end.
***
From the moment I open a blank Word document to write a design doc, I begin to enter another world.
As if my consciousness is being transferred, the white page that needs to be filled with letters becomes a canvas, and the characters become a brush, etching the world of my memory into reality.
This time was no different.
Working on *Hellic* instead of *Identity*, my thoughts sank deeper than usual, heading toward the unconscious as I depicted a fragment of the hell I wanted to create.
It was as if that time, neither past nor future, was pulling me in with an unknown force.
And thus, a scene was revealed.
—Haha!
It was not a place filled with screams like the other hells.
This hell possessed a nature different from any I had experienced before.
That didn’t mean it was more special.
On the contrary, for a hell, it was too ordinary… that is, it was a ‘hell understandable through conventional thought.’
The sky was red, the ground white.
Architectural structures from all different eras and places were jumbled together chaotically, obscuring the background.
The people there seemed peaceful, almost as if they were part of a functioning society.
But only for a very brief moment.
*Stab!*
One of two pedestrians walking down the street stabbed the person next to them in the side.
The one who was stabbed then drew a knife of their own and plunged it into their assailant’s chest.
Their blood scattered, forming like soap bubbles in the air.
*Pop, pop.*
As the bubbles burst, it created the illusion of red paint spreading across the space.
When the blood finally fell, it left a red stain on the gleaming white ground.
The next thing that happened was surreal, beyond just being incomprehensible.
As they collapsed into corpses, the ground swallowed them and the traces of their blood, then gleamed white again as if nothing had happened.
My experience was that the name of a hell is revealed to me by someone only when my understanding aligns with that hell.
I knew the name of this place not long after I arrived.
‘The Hell of Slaughter.’
A place for sinners who had killed another with clear murderous intent.
A place for those who committed the taboo of killing their own kind.
This was a society of murderers, one that even I, who had questioned every hell, could understand.
A society of murderers who could not escape, even in death.
*Swoosh—*
The ground rippled, beginning to mold the very people who had just died, as if shaping clay.
They looked at each other, their smiling faces contorting as they began to back away.
The two men, now separated, soon encountered different people and started walking again.
*Stab!*
And so, the slaughter happened again, and the ground erased them, only to spit them out clean once more.
No one questioned any of it.
It wasn't just that they didn't question the strange phenomenon; they didn't even wonder why they were killing people, or why they resented those who killed them, only to form new grudges with new people.
It was simply a repetition of such events, and the result was.
—Aaaargh!
The further one moved from the center of the city where eras were entangled, the more one repeated the cycle of death and rebirth, the fewer allies a murderer had left.
That was the nature of the Hell of Slaughter.
A place where one eternally suffers the same slaughter they inflicted, in the exact same manner.
A place designed for one to be killed by the entire world.
The unsettling feeling was, at least, befitting of a hell.
However, what I focused on back then was not that.
I had already experienced too many hells.
My mind had been slowly worn down over a long time, becoming numb to death and pain. The void left behind was filled with an obsession to see ‘the scene I was meant to see here.’
I frantically searched for the protagonist.
I had realized that hell had assigned me the role of an observer and presented a protagonist in each space.
…And that’s how I met the man.
*Swoosh—*
Between the medieval and ancient buildings, in an alley reminiscent of mid-to-late 20th-century North America, an artificial rain was falling.
A man was squatting there, miserably getting soaked.
He appeared to be of Latin descent.
He was between his 30s and 40s, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, with a revolver peeking out from his waistband.
I realized his profession only after getting a little closer.
‘…A police notebook.’
He was looking at a police notebook that fit in the palm of his hand.
More precisely, at a worn-out photograph tucked inside it.
It wasn’t a picture of him.
Of course, the smiling person in the black-and-white photo was a woman, leaving no room for doubt.
Perhaps his wife.
What strengthened this conviction was the man’s expression.
‘Is he in pain?’
I didn’t know much.
This was not the Hell of War.
The Hell of Slaughter was a place for those who killed with clear intent, not for accidental killings.
If so, the reason this man was here must be because he had deliberately killed someone.
The man’s profession was a police officer, and he was longing for someone who appeared to be his wife.
‘Revenge?’
Did he come here after avenging his wife’s death?
The frustrating wait was quite long.
Convinced he was the protagonist, I stayed by the man’s side for a long time in that alley where time was a blur and the rain never stopped.
Then, one day.
*Splash, splash.*
Footsteps overlapped with the sound of the rain.
The man let out a low breath, quickly drew his gun, and fired.
*BANG—!*
At the end of the long gunshot, someone who had been approaching with a knife was dead.
Only then did I realize something.
‘He can tell when someone is approaching if he’s in the rain?’
He had been in this rainy alley to watch for anyone approaching.
The dead person’s blood flowed with the rain and soaked the man’s feet.
The man looked at the blood, his expression suddenly crumbling as he stood up.
He walked out onto the white street.
He stood for a long time, staring blankly at the red sky, before he began to walk.
I couldn't tell from his expression alone, but I knew he had finished contemplating something and was about to move forward.
Convinced that his decision was what I was meant to see, I followed him.
The man was heading far from the city center.
To the place where the denizens of this hell, where screams never ceased, lived.
…No.
‘…It’s far.’
His gaze was fixed on a place even farther than that.
To put it another way, it was as if he were looking at the very end of hell.
He walked.
I simply followed him.
After all, what else could I do when that was my role?
All I can say is that I had little information to go on during this strange journey, and as always, I only understood the trajectory of his journey when I saw the end of the story.
To state the conclusion, after seeing the end, I described this story as such:
A love story.
***
March arrived.
In the still-chilly spring air of the conference room, I turned on the projector.
“This is the next project.”
I announced the project to the key members of Team 1.
*Beep—*
Text appeared on the screen.
[Hellic 4: The man is]
“The man is?”
Han Seo-rim narrowed her eyes and murmured.
I nodded.
“Basically, a man who committed murder falls into hell. The story is about why he’s there. Why he’s wandering through hell. That kind of thing.”
“That sounds cryptic.”
“It’s not cryptic at all. We’re going to show it intuitively.”
As I said, it’s a love story.
The story’s trajectory will focus solely on the man and the woman in the notebook.
It will speak only of their relationship, the man’s sin, and its conclusion.
“The volume won’t be huge. But the workload will be immense.”
The Hell of Slaughter employed a surrealist background.
It’s a setting that distorts perspective, the distinction of objects, and common sense to create optical illusions, so it will require a massive amount of artistic resources.
Especially considering the genre I’m choosing this time.
As I said this, Kim Hye-ji and Jeon Yu-mi began to tremble.
I continued.
“The main focus will be on narrative and combat.”
Solely highlighting those aspects.
“The genre is…”
There was only one choice.
The man’s journey had been so desperate, so full of hardship.
“…soul-like. But a slightly lighter version of it.”
A ‘lite’ version of a ‘like’ to lower the entry barrier.
“Soul-lite.”
“Ah, l-like *Demon’s Souls*…!”
“It’s easier than that. As the ‘lite’ suggests, the combat fatigue won’t be high. No, we’ll add a gimmick to offset the high fatigue. Next, the endings.”
At the mention of endings, the team members’ expressions stiffened.
It made sense; the more endings there were, the more work it would take to reach them.
I said with a smirk.
“Let’s just do two. This time.”
The canonical story I witnessed.
And, as always, a happy ending to erase the bitterness.
There was no need to overdo it this time.
Adding more would only be superfluous to the man’s story.
*Clap!*
I clapped my hands to lighten the mood.
Anyway.
“Check the design doc for the details, and for now, let each department know that the project is starting.”
The most enjoyable time had come.
***
The evening after the meeting, I called Han Seo-rim over separately.
“You don’t know what a soul-like is, do you?”
“…I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“…”
Having been in the game industry for quite a while, Han Seo-rim had played a fair number of games.
She had also become very diligent in her research.
However, there was one genre that Han Seo-rim would never touch.
I still remembered.
—What’s so fun about a game where you just keep dying?
That’s what Han Seo-rim had said back in 2009 when we had just met and I was playing *Demon’s Souls* after releasing *Hellic 1*.
Since that day, Han Seo-rim had tried games of all genres, but she absolutely refused to touch soul-likes.
Sure, from an observer's perspective, a game where you just keep dying might seem to have a high barrier to entry.
However, it was unacceptable for an art director to be ignorant of a genre.
“Let’s go.”
I gestured toward the soundproof room.
Inside, a PlayStation and a soul-like title were waiting for Han Seo-rim.
Han Seo-rim’s expression hardened.
The corner of her eye twitched slightly.
“…I told you I’ve played it.”
“I can smell the lies.”
“I’m serious!”
“Then prove your innocence by clearing it.”
Han Seo-rim’s resistance didn’t last long.
It seemed she knew her lie wasn’t getting her anywhere.
Two hours later.
*SLAM!*
“Aaaargh!!! Seriouslyyyy!!!! Ah, stop iiiiiit!!!! Why are you doing this to me!!! Aaaargh!!! Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
A familiar scream echoed through the soundproof room.
“Hehe…”
Jo A-yun giggled, holding a recorder.