Chapter 122
Chapter 122
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 122
Chapter Title: Suicide (1)
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The conversation about the protagonist's action sequences continued even at the bar after the meeting.
...No, it went beyond that. It got to the point where Mr. Kim Bae-seok would come to the company just to talk about it.
I wasn't quite sure why he was doing this.
I was just grateful for his passion for the work.
Today was one of those days.
We had finished setting up the basic execution motions and were now in the stage of using polygon stick figures to adjust angles and direction.
At this point, the only real work left was combat implementation, so I was pouring all my energy into the planning meetings.
It was then that Mr. Kim Bae-seok showed up.
"I've been thinking. I really don't think we can leave out grappling from the Gun-Fu."
"What do you mean?"
"What's the core of Gun-Fu? It's subduing an opponent with joint locks, followed immediately by the decisive power of a bullet. But with striking alone, it's hard to replicate that kind of impact against a large monster."
"So you're saying..."
"We won't use joint locks. We'll target the joints with strikes."
Mr. Kim Bae-seok held out a sketchbook.
"This is some material I'm making for training purposes. This time, I tried drawing it with a werewolf... no, the game monster as the subject."
He continued his explanation as he flipped through the pages.
True to his word about it being for training, the drawings focused more on the flow of movement than on detail.
"The enemy is four meters tall. To get a clear shot at point-blank range, you'd obviously have to make it kneel, right? To do that, shooting its knees would be the best option, but..."
"...the number of bullets is limited."
"Yes, so we have to think differently. If it were me, and I had a revolver with only one bullet, I'd go for close-quarters combat."
"Even with its beam saber claws?"
"You use the blind spots created precisely because they're claws."
There was a strange gravity to Mr. Kim Bae-seok's words.
It made me focus on them even more intently.
I swallowed dryly without realizing it.
Mr. Kim Bae-seok said,
"At extreme close range, the beam saber claws become useless. It can't stab itself, after all."
"Isn't that a bit too optimistic?"
"Unless it's aiming for a mutual kill, taking that action would be a bigger risk. If you think of it as having the skeleton of a canine, its chest would be quite prominent."
"Ah!"
Only then did I realize something I had missed.
"You're right, a werewolf would have a different skeletal structure."
The idea of a shooting style combined with martial arts seemed to have given me a fixed mindset.
I myself had said we needed a martial art for fighting inhuman creatures, yet I'd been thinking of the werewolf's skeleton as human.
What a terrible mistake that could have been.
This is why you need an expert.
My heart pounding with excitement, I asked,
"So how do you win?"
Mr. Kim Bae-seok grinned and answered with confidence.
"You use its digitigrade legs as a foothold for the protagonist to climb. First, you get close, step on its thigh, and jump, then you hit its nose with the butt of the revolver. It's bound to be incapacitated, even if just for a moment. You don't need a long opening anyway. For that one instant, if the enemy is stunned at point-blank range, there's only one thing to do."
Mr. Kim Bae-seok made a gun shape with his fingers and placed it under his own chin.
Then he flicked his finger.
"Bang! You just shoot it like that."
The hand-gun stylishly returned to Mr. Kim Bae-seok's hip.
I couldn't help but applaud.
"Brilliant..."
Just then.
*Bang!*
"President!"
"Director-san!"
The meeting room door flew open and two people entered.
It was Copson and Nishimura.
I stared, dumbfounded, as they spoke.
"Why are you designing martial arts without us?"
"Aah! When it comes to real martial arts, we can't be left out!"
Their voices were desperate.
The muscles bulging under their muscle-fit t-shirts were so pumped it was clear they hadn't skipped their workout today, and the heat in their eyes was no less than a professional fighter's.
My first thought wasn't about etiquette, like whether they were interrupting a meeting or what they were doing in front of a guest.
I was insensitive to such things to begin with, and Mr. Kim Bae-seok in front of me didn't seem to care much about them either.
It was just... I suddenly felt uneasy.
*...Are these guys even making their game properly?*
All the demos for *Demon's Relic* had been released.
The full game would launch in seven months.
Yet here were these guys, who should be busy with the final integration work, bringing up real martial arts and expressing interest in another project.
Even so, the two of them were still spouting nonsense.
"We don't just do boxing anymore, you know?!"
"Aah, of course! We've been switching to mixed martial arts lately so we can't use weight class and reach as an excuse!"
Information I had no interest in came pouring out.
Whatever the case, one thing was certain.
These guys, I don't know where they went wrong, but they were getting way too serious about fighting.
...I had no choice but to take drastic measures.
"...Come to think of it, I haven't reviewed Team 2's project lately."
"Ah."
"Aah..."
The two of them looked at each other.
Breaking into a cold sweat, they began to slowly back away.
...Normally I would have let it slide, but at this point, I was genuinely worried.
"Get your report ready. I'll be there in a bit."
"..."
The two of them, their spirits dampened, disappeared from my sight.
I let out a sigh.
Jo A-yun, and now these guys... I get the feeling they've gotten worse in this life. Is it just my imagination?
It's gotten to the point where I wonder if the problem is me.
I shook my head.
*...Probably not. It's not like I've done anything major.*
Pushing aside the unnecessary thought, I turned back to Mr. Kim Bae-seok, who had been standing there awkwardly.
Mr. Kim Bae-seok laughed awkwardly before returning to the main topic.
"So, about this werewolf's modeling. To create more detailed motions, I'd need to see the real thing..."
"...Ah, I don't think the werewolf will be rendered for another six months or so."
"Huh?"
Mr. Kim Bae-seok's face fell with disappointment.
No, was it impatience?
"Wh-why is that? I heard from Ms. Han Seo-rim that the art team was going to start working on it individually right away..."
Did he like the werewolf that much?
But, unfortunately, I couldn't change the schedule.
"That one is a mid-game chapter boss. The Chapter 1 boss is someone else."
"Aah..."
He looked a little deflated.
But Mr. Kim Bae-seok quickly shook it off and asked,
"...Then what is the Chapter 1 boss?"
I answered.
"A vampire angel."
"...Aah?!"
Mr. Kim Bae-seok's eyes sparkled.
He's a man of rather dramatic facial expressions.
***
To talk more about Chapter 1, I needed to recall the Hell of Slaughter.
In that grotesque forest, the man wandered around the church, killing prisoners.
He also explored the surroundings, continuously collecting certain items.
He would combine them inside his solitary cell in the Ant Tunnel.
Profiling, a process of combining elements to solve a puzzle. Through it, I realized that all the clues collected so far were data on a single person.
The man wrote a name in his notebook.
'Rick Artman.'
An unfamiliar name, almost like a stage name.
Beneath it, the man listed several sentences.
『—Presumed to be a medieval religious figure.
—High probability of being a serial killer, as expected.
—The expression of self through a signature likely serves as a boundary line, separating the public persona from the killer's persona.
—Bloodstains are messy compared to the clean killing method.
—Appears to have a blood fetish.
—Observed nearby corpses that had been drained of blood, like mummies.
—No external activities.
—Ego is likely already lost.』
One might say he was writing a novel based on mere circumstantial evidence.
But I knew how cautious he was, too much to dismiss it so easily.
I couldn't help but realize.
This deduction, which was close to a work of fiction, was an inference based on the experience he had gained living as an actual police officer.
*Thwack!*
The man closed the notebook and stood up.
He then left the Ant Tunnel and walked straight toward the church he had only ever circled before.
I, too, had some growing questions about the church.
So, when he entered, I was quite surprised.
*...This place.*
Could you even call it a church?
Of course, from the outside, it was indeed a church.
But upon entering the seemingly normal building, what I saw was the scenery of a dark cave.
That was the biggest source of the dissonance.
*'It definitely wasn't this spacious when I saw it from the outside.'*
The space had expanded dramatically.
The ceiling was higher than any church I knew, and the same went for the width of the corridors stretching out to the sides.
The only things that allowed me to distinguish my surroundings were the green and yellow minerals embedded in the walls.
Even though I was sure no harm would come to me, I couldn't help but be gripped by tension.
But what could I do?
The man walked inside, so I followed him.
In the process, I felt something else strange.
How should I describe it? It felt as if I were crawling through the inside of a snake.
Even though the walls were made of black rock, I had the illusion that they were squirming.
In any case, after moving through the dark cave for a long time, I finally arrived.
—Ah, may the Lord's grace always be with you.
The widest cavern in the depths.
There, an old white man in a pure white priest's robe was kneeling at an altar, praying.
The object in his hand was familiar.
A cross, the exact same size as the one the man had found, which was how I knew it was a dagger.
What was nauseating was what lay at his feet.
The faint light from the minerals illuminated the priest's surroundings.
The pure white robe was soaked in blood from the waist down, and right beside where he knelt, a large tank was filled to the brim with blood.
Pieces of what looked like human corpses seemed to be floating in it.
He looked at the man.
The man silently drew his revolver.
The priest spoke in a wizened voice.
—May grace be with you.
In that moment, I flinched.
Because the priest's face, looking this way, had empty eye sockets.
As a sense of foreboding rose within me, the priest smirked and whispered,
—May the grace of blood be with you.
Immediately after, he threw himself into the tank full of blood.
Soon, with a tremor, a monster burst out of the tank.
It was the priest.
Below the face with empty eye sockets was a long neck and a short torso, with six legs and a short tail... yes, it looked just like a red praying mantis with a human head.
Its height, which seemed to exceed six meters, was just a bonus.
The priest brought his hands together as if in prayer.
Then, a change occurred.
*Crack!*
Behind its skeletal torso, blood intertwined to form the wings of a moth.
The man aimed his revolver at the priest.
*Bang!*
The gunshot rang out.
***
Naturally, there was no Gun-Fu in the fight.
There was no strategy using revolver stacks, and in fact, there was no close-quarters combat at all.
The man tenaciously maintained his distance, reloading his revolver and firing at the priest.
It was immediately obvious he was aiming for something.
Of course, the seemingly insane priest didn't seem to notice.
I soon realized what the man was targeting.
*Bang!*
For the first time, the man aimed not at the priest, but at the tank from which he had emerged as a monster.
—Ah, aaaaaah!!!
The priest screamed.
Bloody tears gushed from his empty eye sockets.
I don't know if this is the right expression, but what I felt from his grief was sadness and regret.
He was venting his rage purely because the tank had been broken.
He was a monster without an ego.
As if to plug the hole in the tank, he folded his wings and frantically rushed over, trying to stop the leaking blood with his entire body.
Amidst this, the man's actions were quite cruel.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
He shot holes in the tank at awkward intervals that the priest's body couldn't cover.
It was only then that I realized exactly what the man had been aiming for.
*'Blood fetish.'*
That was the key phrase.
The blood the priest had stored in the tank was the only meaningful object to him after losing his ego, the very identity that defined him as a murderer.
Looking back now that I know everything, it was his trigger.
I, recalling this now, also know the reaction at the moment the tank was lost.
The priest ceases to be the priest.
Since this is already hell, I don't mean he dies.
Nor does it mean he is annihilated.
*'He just becomes a corpse.'*
He becomes an eternal object of hell, unable to think, unable to feel.
In other words, he loses all the individuality of thought that defines a self.
He even loses his status as a sinner in hell.
It's probably the most terrifying punishment that can occur here.
—Aaaaaah!!!
The priest, as if instinctively realizing this, began to gulp down the blood in the tank.
His form twisted even more grotesquely, and his body swelled.
It was in that moment.
'...Ah.'
Inappropriately for the situation, I had let out a gasp of admiration.
It wasn't because of the priest's appearance.
*'The ceiling...'*
The glistening red blood caught the light from the minerals embedded in the ceiling, casting a shimmering image on the rock wall.
That shimmer coalesced into a picture.
It was a grotesque and artificial, yet captivatingly beautiful sight that one couldn't help but stare at.
You could call it an inversion of light and shadow.
Behind the hideous form of the priest trying to protect his tank, the shadow of blood on the wall formed the image of an angel with outstretched wings, reaching for children.
To me, it felt like a manifestation of the benevolent religious figure the priest had worn like a mask.
And so I gave it a name.
'Rick Artman.'
The Vampire Angel, Rick Artman.
It's a fitting name, isn't it?
The man moved while I was lost in that sense of awe.
As if to stop the priest's transformation, he rushed forward and shot him precisely between the eyes.
*Bang!*
The blood lost its shape and collapsed with a splat.
All that remained was the priest's head, rolling on the ground.
'...No.'
There was one more thing.
The man dug through the pile of blood and picked something up.
It was a pack of cigarettes and a tube of lipstick—truly modern items, and quite strange for a medieval religious figure like the priest to have.
My confusion was brief.
The man's expression contorted as he looked at them, and from that, I knew.
*'...His things?'*
The two items were clearly the man's belongings.
He must have come all this way to find them.
And one more thing.
As I recall this now.
*'It was his trigger.'*
It was one of the man's triggers.
Like any other sinner in this hell, the man had his triggers, and he had been going around collecting them.
For one single purpose: his own psychological suicide.