Chapter 123
Chapter 123
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 123
Chapter Title: Suicide (2)
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There was no immediate need to delve into why the man had attempted a spiritual suicide.
What was certain at that point, however, was that the man was searching for his own vulnerabilities, and that for some reason, they were in the possession of other murderers.
Back then, I had pushed my less-than-stellar deductive skills to their limit, trying to piece together the cause and effect.
As a result, I figured out quite easily why his vulnerabilities were a ‘cigarette case and lipstick.’
‘A photograph.’
Inside the man's notebook was a black-and-white photo of a woman.
The man missed her.
No, he harbored a feeling for her that went beyond mere longing, and it tormented him.
And on top of that, lipstick was one of the man’s vulnerabilities.
It wasn't hard to guess.
The reason the man had fallen into Hell was likely deeply connected to the woman in the photograph.
It was the moment I knew for certain what I had to see.
What the man intended to do after finding his vulnerabilities, and why.
From now on, that was what I needed to watch.
As always, Hell remained silent.
I wasn't worried.
The man’s journey would be the answer.
* * *
Work continued today on fleshing out the concepts for Chapter 1, related to a forest area, a church, and Rick Hartmann.
For the most part, it went smoothly.
If I had to list the reasons, I’d point to the intuitive grammar of the Soulslike genre, the smooth flow of our meetings, and the passionate feedback from a certain someone.
“If he’s a vampire angel, how about a sword of fire… no, a sword of blood?”
Mr. Kim Bae-seok was at the meeting again today.
What on earth was this man doing here instead of at his action school?
…I’d wondered about that for a while, but what kind of animal is man? An animal of adaptation.
I was starting to feel like he was just another employee.
And I wasn’t the only one.
The second team and the business department, unaware of the first team’s situation, even had some people who thought Mr. Kim had been scouted from outside as a motion specialist.
It reached a point where we ended up signing an external consulting contract with him.
In any case, that was the situation as of today.
And this change had brought a small source of amusement into my life.
“Even if he’s shaped like a mantis, he’s still an angel! He has wings and hands, it makes no sense for him not to hold a sword!”
“It’ll just get cluttered, I’m telling you!”
“What? A sword is cluttered? Excuse me, Ms. Han Seo-rim!”
“I’m not looking at you.”
“Hey now!”
Kim Bae-seok and Han Seo-rim bickered whenever they had the chance.
It was usually a pattern of Han Seo-rim suppressing Kim Bae-seok's excessive opinions, which were fueled by his obsession with cool factor.
The reason I didn't intervene?
I already said it, didn't I? The meetings were proceeding smoothly.
“Sunbae! Do something about this guy!”
“I think a sword sounds good.”
“Are you trying to get killed?! Adding a sword doubles the number of patterns! This is Chapter 1!”
“Mr. Yeon-ho! Let’s scrap the existing patterns! The more I think about it, a sword is the right call! As the phase changes, he flies into the air…”
“I said, this is Chapter 1! It can’t be that convoluted!”
There's an unavoidable human trait.
The formation of logic through rebuttal.
Simply put, in a debate, the very process of trying to prove ‘you’re wrong, I’m right’ by pointing out flaws in the opponent's argument gives birth to new ideas.
Today was no different.
It all started with a single sentence from me.
—Rick Hartmann has two phases. Phase one is a ground battle. So, what kind of change should we introduce in phase two?
This problem arose because the Rick Hartmann I saw in Hell died during what corresponded to phase one.
If I had left him alone then, he surely would have shown a different combat style, but I hadn't seen it, so now I had to fill in this part with my imagination.
I had too much else on my plate to think about it alone.
So, after pondering if there was an easier way to work, this is what I came up with.
A debate (an automatic idea-mining machine).
“A sword! It has to be a sword!”
“No way! It’s obviously better to mix in aerial patterns using his new wings with the existing patterns! Have you even played a Soulslike game?! Huh?!”
It couldn't be any easier.
Come to think of it, this was probably how the directing process for Development Team 2 worked. Why hadn't I thought of it sooner?
Anyway, putting that aside and looking at the current situation, the people in the meeting had each taken a side, standing behind one of the two to cheer them on.
The planning side, who had a lot they wanted to do, supported Kim Bae-seok. The art side, who hated seeing their workload increase, supported Han Seo-rim.
Jo A-yun was dozing off between them.
She was sleep-deprived from creating the execution sound effects.
I gently tapped Jo A-yun’s shoulder.
“A-yun, you can’t sleep during a meeting.”
“Mmmh…”
“Here, have some of this.”
Thinking she wouldn't fall asleep if she had something in her mouth, I unwrapped a piece of chocolate for her. Jo A-yun flicked her tongue out to take it and began to munch.
Her eyes opened halfway.
She still looked drowsy, like a squirrel hibernating in winter.
“Sunbae!”
“Mr. Yeon-ho!”
The two of them called my name at the same time.
It seemed a verdict was required.
Alright, I had heard enough. It was time to make a decision.
I nodded and replied.
“He’ll use a sword. But we won’t change all the patterns, just tweak the attack motions. And we’ll add one new pattern exclusive to phase two.”
It was a compromise.
The two of them frowned for a moment, then sighed and showed their acceptance.
A satisfying picture.
‘Nice.’
No matter how I looked at it, this was a useful method.
* * *
If you were to name the largest department in Rewind’s Development Team 1, it was, without a doubt, the art department.
It wasn't just large; the number of art team members was so overwhelmingly high that it was only slightly less than all the other teams combined.
The reason, of course, was that they had to handle Yeon-ho's murderous development schedule.
Other departments also suffered under that schedule, but it was particularly severe for the art team.
After all, how could it be easy when they had to perform detailed, almost mind-numbing labor, one by one, by hand?
What little humanity Yeon-ho had left had led him to decide on a massive influx of art personnel to alleviate the issue.
Of course, the irony was that even with so many people, once full-scale development began, they were ground down day after day… but what mattered was that the massive team was somehow functioning.
There was one reason for this smooth operation.
“Gather the reference materials.”
It was thanks to the charisma of the Art Director, Seo-rim.
“Kim Hye-ji, make Rick Hartmann’s tail blunter. Yu-mi unni, get that damn sword model done. Yu-rim, how’s the rigging?”
“By the end of this week…”
“Got it. You can go.”
The art field is generally female-dominated.
With so many people, you’d expect work delays due to office politics or bullying, but such problems were nonexistent in Development Team 1.
They were all intimidated by their director, Seo-rim.
Another reason was that Seo-rim didn't run the team leniently enough for such situations to arise.
You know the rumor, that the further you go to the rear in the military, the more comfortable life gets, and the more bizarre hazing rituals appear?
Just like that, by creating an environment where people were too exhausted from work, there was no time for them to bicker amongst themselves.
To reiterate, the team ran well.
But there’s no such thing as a perfect team.
Even a team as machinelike as this had moments when it sputtered.
It happened in exactly two scenarios.
The first, and main reason, was when the director’s mood was foul because someone had posted insults about her on an office worker community forum.
The second was when work couldn't proceed due to a problem with Seo-rim’s own progress.
Today was the second.
‘Ah, I have no idea…’
After giving instructions to her team members, Seo-rim let out a long sigh and pressed her temples.
It was because of the boss fight’s direction.
—The phase two mid-air ground slam is a pattern that only happens once per playthrough. If it hits, it’ll take out half your health, so it needs to feel really intimidating, right?
—Ah, so then…
—I have something in mind. The boss will ascend, holding its sword as if in prayer. At that moment, the camera angle should capture both the minerals embedded in the walls and the boss’s wings in a single frame.
—Mm, I understand. Anything else to add?
—At that point, make the boss and the wall blend together to look like a painting. A reverent image, like stained glass.
Seo-rim understood what Yeon-ho was aiming for.
Since the playable character’s position and viewpoint were fixed in one direction when that pattern began, it was just a matter of getting the composition right.
There was just one problem.
‘How many minerals are there even on the map?!’
The church interior model primarily relied on the light from minerals embedded irregularly within the black rock.
However, those minerals weren't very large or numerous, nor were they shaped prettily enough to blend well with the boss monster.
But the biggest problem of all was that she had to add an illusory element so that ‘the minerals would only look like stained glass from a specific angle.’
It was easier said than done. For the one implementing it, there was no instruction more troublesome.
She couldn't ask him to be more specific, either.
After working together for this long, she knew.
Yeon-ho gave art direction based on a ‘feeling’ when he determined that his own imagination couldn't bring the vision to life.
For that reason, she had been racking her brain for a long time.
A clicking sound came from Seo-rim’s tongue.
‘…It’s hopeless.’
It was already 9 PM.
In the end, Seo-rim accomplished nothing that day and went home.
Greeting her at home was her eldest son, Han Jin-gyeong.
“Oh, you’re back, sis.”
“Yeah.”
In a sleeveless shirt and boxer shorts, scratching his belly, he looked every bit the part of a man in his forties. Few would believe he was only in his early thirties.
And it wasn't just that.
His face was scruffy with an unshaven beard, and his unwashed hair was a bird's nest, reminiscent of an unemployed bum.
He was, in fact, unemployed.
As Jin-gyeong’s lifeless eyes stared blankly at the TV, Seo-rim sighed.
“Did you eat?”
“Yeah. Ramyeon and kimchi.”
His voice lacked any energy.
Anyone who knew the college-era Jin-gyeong… like Yeon-ho, Yu-mi, or Hye-ji… would probably be shocked to see him now.
But she didn't find her brother pathetic.
Quite the opposite.
Seo-rim felt a sense of guilt for him ending up like this.
“…Try to eat better.”
“O-kay.”
Facing him just made her feel sorry.
Seo-rim didn't press him further and went up to her room.
She planned to work a bit more before bed.
*Clack.*
The work she was doing, tapping away at her keyboard, was organizing schedules.
Being in a management position meant there was a lot of work to be done to keep the entire team running, even if it wasn't her own direct task.
She was making up for the work she couldn't do today while trying to brainstorm ideas.
She was deep in her work when something happened.
‘Huh?’
Something caught Seo-rim’s eye as she checked her emails.
It was a notification email.
[Your Say World account is now dormant.]
It was a name from the past.
The social media platform she had been obsessed with before smartphones came out.
These days, she only browsed online communities and had completely given up on social media, so Seo-rim suddenly found herself lost in nostalgia.
Her mouse cursor was already hovering over the link in the email.
*Click.*
After a short process, her dormant account was reactivated, and her mini-homepage appeared. A smile spread across Seo-rim’s face.
‘Wow, look at that tacky makeup.’
That’s how old photos are.
Unexpected memories come flooding back, making you forget the present.
With photos, the visually captured nostalgia paints the memories of that day even more vividly.
And that feeling becomes more intense the harder your present life is.
The thought, *things were good back then*, blocks out all other thoughts.
It was the same for Seo-rim.
There were so many photos and posts.
Scrolling through them one by one, Seo-rim forgot about work for a moment.
Then, a post from 2008, when she first entered college and met Yeon-ho, appeared before her eyes. It was from when they were making Hellic 1 in the club room.
[(Photo taken with Yeon-ho in front of the club room)
This crazy bastard]
*Pfft*, a laugh escaped Seo-rim’s lips.
She remembered this.
‘This was when he told me to draw the anus sprite.’
Hellic 1 used a one-take technique.
To utilize this technical element, the doors connecting rooms were designed to look like anuses, and the loading screen was planned to be a crawl through intestines.
Thinking back, she remembered.
At the time, Seo-rim had felt extreme revulsion toward Yeon-ho, who would say things like, ‘This isn’t the right anus. It’s too star-shaped.’
Now she knew he was just a man obsessed with detail, but how could she have known back then?
Anyway, as she was chuckling at the photo, a thought crossed Seo-rim’s mind.
‘The quality is so bad.’
Well, what could you expect from a photo taken with a feature phone?
It was shot at a resolution of 480p at best.
No matter how much she zoomed in to see more clearly, it was quite difficult to make out the fine details of their faces.
Seeing Yeon-ho’s face made her think about work again.
Not a good sign.
‘Whoa, an optical illusion.’
Yeon-ho’s hair and the word [rewind] printed on the wall behind him merged together, creating the effect of his hair sticking up.
It was in that moment.
‘Did this guy’s hair used to be this long…’
*Thump.* Seo-rim froze.
Her eyes twitched for a moment, and then her gaze fixed on Yeon-ho’s head.
The smile vanished from her face.
*Scroll, scroll.*
The mouse wheel moved, zooming in on his head.
As she examined it, a thought flashed through her mind.
‘…Resolution.’
An optical illusion.
Why did two things appear as one?
The answer came to her in a flash.
‘…The boss’s aerial phase is only once.’
The descent pattern is an ultimate attack that only occurs once during the fight.
The camera angle has the player looking up at the wall and the boss.
The boss hovers for about three seconds.
It holds its posture and gathers energy for that long, then dive-bombs to impale the player.
Seo-rim erased the impaling process from her mind.
She also erased the ascending process.
She focused on only one thing: the energy-gathering motion while hovering.
‘It gathers blood.’
During the pattern, blood, extending like branches around the boss, wriggles and converges on its sword.
That was the basic concept, and the illusion based on the camera angle was the effect that needed to be shown there.
Seo-rim had thought it was impossible to do something like that within the map itself.
But now, that thought had changed.
‘What if I lower the resolution? What if I break the screen?’
The problem was that the screen was too clear.
In other words, technology had gotten too good, leaving little room for misinterpretation.
So, she just had to make it unclear.
She could add an effect where space shatters while the energy is gathering.
‘Not just shattering. Add red noise, fizzing and crackling.’
That would create a light bloom effect.
Then she could manipulate the defined shape of the mineral light into an amorphous form.
And that wasn't all.
‘Let’s add vibrations, too. Make it even more uncertain.’
Let’s shake up all the visual elements like fruit in a blender.
Then, at a certain moment,
‘Freeze the screen. Right before the descent.’
The idea took concrete form.
Seo-rim had played Soulslike games before starting development.
So she knew something.
In the games she had played, a boss's major attack pattern always gave a hint before it was triggered.
A certainty dawned on her.
‘Unless you’re a complete idiot, you’ll know.’
The moment the screen starts moving again, the boss will charge faster than the eye can see.
The only way to dodge is to prepare to evade at the right time during the freeze.
Of course, that wasn't the important part right now.
For Seo-rim, only one thing mattered.
‘The freezing of the screen.’
The moment all the indistinct blurs freeze in place, what if the painting only reveals itself then?
‘It’s possible to create a picture with just color. To make a 3D screen feel 2D.’
To add a little more flair to the idea.
‘The noise disappears as it charges, as if waking from a dream.’
So, as if drifting through a dream, for that one moment, she could show the piety that was Rick Hartmann’s mask as a low-resolution painting.
‘…It’ll work.’
She could make it.
She could create a stained-glass window from the cave, the light of the minerals, and the branching veins of blood.
Seo-rim smiled brightly and shouted internally.
‘That bastard Cheon Yeon-ho!’
There was no direction as poor as this.
Of course, the direction itself had been wrong from the start.
‘What do you mean, an illusion from the camera angle!’
The answer wasn't in the angle, but in the visual direction.
*Tap-tap-tap!*
Seo-rim immediately began to write down the ideas that came to her.