Chapter 144
Chapter 144
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 144
Chapter Title: E3 - Hellic 4 (4)
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The battle with the Whip of the Abyss was mentally draining.
That was true even setting aside its grotesque appearance and the unfortunate sight of Gil-sang’s cosplay.
As a soulslike aficionado, Woo-hyeong was reminded of something as he faced this monster.
‘Ah, it’s one of those.’
The kind of monster found in every game, designed specifically to piss players off.
This damn octopus was a malicious creation born from the singular thought, ‘How can we get under the player’s skin?’
Its attack rhythm was the proof.
It would lazily dangle its middle leg before suddenly extending it with a ‘thwip!’ sound. The timing of this attack alternated between on-beat and off-beat rhythms, completely throwing off the player’s dodge timing.
That wasn’t all.
Its attack range was relatively long compared to other monsters, making it difficult to approach.
Every battle Woo-hyeong had experienced in *Hellic 4* so far had been tailored for close-quarters combat, so this change in engagement distance was quite the headache.
However, if it were merely difficult, it would have been a failed monster design.
And the Director Cheon Yeon-ho of Rewind that Woo-hyeong knew was someone who would never tolerate such a mistake in detail.
‘He’s managed to weave a strangely casual feel even into a monster like this.’
Indeed, the monster’s design itself was an ideal form, allowing players to intuitively grasp how to counter it the moment they saw it.
Pointing out its various visual characteristics made that clear.
‘It’s not about approaching with on-beat or off-beat timing. The dodge window is the exact moment its middle leg trembles and then stops.’
He had to trust what he saw.
That was how he had to dodge, and as for how to defeat it…
‘I need to watch for the follow-through. After it swings a leg once, it takes time to recover. Even for a mid-range monster, its attack intervals are quite long.’
A leg, once swung, would lie limp on the ground, leaving a trail of slime as it slowly retracted back to the octopus.
Putting aside the visual disgust, its retraction speed was identical to the playable character’s running speed.
Having made his judgment, Woo-hyeong ran in and landed a dashing attack.
*Schwing!*
The octopus had so little health that it burst after a single normal attack.
In other words, it was a monster that could be easily dispatched as long as you knew its gimmick and reacted properly.
‘Phew, cleared for now.’
There was a sense of accomplishment.
It was the mental stimulation that came from solving a well-laid-out puzzle on his own.
This was a perfect application of the core tenet of the soulslike genre: the pleasure derived from the player’s growth, not the character’s.
Of course, Woo-hyeong didn’t think that far.
He simply reveled in the primal stimulation of having won.
However, the ordeal was not yet over.
One of Yeon-ho’s principles was that a game is no fun if it’s too easy.
The malice of the man they called ‘that bastard’ was on full display, even in this demo version.
The moment he approached the second, faintly glowing clue in front of the wall, Woo-hyeong let out an involuntary curse.
“Fuck!”
It was a stroke of luck that he was wearing a headset and couldn’t hear the surrounding chatter.
…Then again, anyone who played *Hellic 4* would likely have the same reaction, so maybe it didn’t matter.
The trap Woo-hyeong had encountered was none other than…
‘Ah! Camouflage! I could have dodged that!’
It was a mob, camouflaged as it loitered in front of the altar.
Its only attack was to suddenly warp its form into view and swing a club.
It didn’t hurt that much.
But given the nature of soulslike games, any loss of health was a significant risk.
‘I was too hasty. There’s no way they’d let me get an item this easily…!’
Even though it was camouflaged, the monster’s movements were large, so if he had just looked around a little, he could have noticed the shimmer and attacked it.
The monster's intent could be summed up in one phrase.
‘If you don’t know, you get hit? Hah… that’s just vicious.’
It was a basic gimmick—you get hit if you don’t know, but you can avoid it if you do.
You’d only get hit the first time and would be unlikely to fall for it again, but it would still be annoying every time you let your guard down.
Woo-hyeong let out a dry laugh.
In any case, he had figured out the pattern.
And he now had two clues.
He didn’t know how many there were in total, but it was likely this was the last one, or there was just one more.
‘I’ve already been playing for over fifteen minutes.’
The allotted time was twenty-five minutes.
Even if he generously estimated the boss fight to take five minutes, that still left five minutes to spare.
They could have been generous, but Woo-hyeong knew better.
‘Why would they be so kind when making players feel regretful for not finishing is to their advantage?’
There was no way the marketing-savvy Rewind would do that.
Woo-hyeong sensed he had to play with no time to waste.
His concentration sharpened in that instant.
Exactly four minutes and fourteen seconds later.
Having collected the third and final clue, Woo-hyeong entered the boss room. Only then did he realize how these profiling clues applied to the boss.
[Tracking clues.]
An alert popped up as the boss monster materialized.
The entrance was unconventional.
It began with the screen freezing for a moment and turning black and white.
‘A mug shot?’
The kind of photo a criminal takes, holding a prisoner number in front of a white background.
A backdrop reminiscent of that appeared behind the frozen boss monster.
Immediately, the clues began to fill the empty space in the background.
[First clue: The bloody dagger confirms ???’s method of crime.]
With the sound of a fountain pen scratching across paper, the boss monster’s name at the bottom of the screen changed from [???] to [Fountain of Red Blood].
But that wasn’t all.
‘The health bar is…?’
*Clink!*
With a sharp sound, a crack appeared on the long, white health bar.
It didn’t end there.
[Second clue…]
*Clink!*
The crack deepened.
The moment the third and final clue was confirmed…
*CRACK!*
The health bar shattered.
The once-white health bar turned a vivid red.
It wasn't just the color; the very texture of the health bar seemed to change.
It was as if a stone had turned into a soft, squishy liquid.
Right after, the screen returned to normal.
It wasn’t a major boss, as there was no proper cinematic.
Its appearance—a roughly three-meter-tall frame with veins bulging all over its body—also made it clear this wasn't an important boss.
In any case, that wasn’t what mattered.
‘How will the execution scene play out?’
The moment he saw the boss, that was the first thing Woo-hyeong anticipated.
His anticipation was even greater because he had saved up all his Revolving Stacks for this moment.
And so, the battle officially began.
Without hesitation, Woo-hyeong rushed forward and clicked the execution button.
*Kiiiiing!*
A sound effect played as the game transitioned into the execution phase.
A special animation, far beyond Woo-hyeong’s expectations, played out.
It was the moment the execution—a culmination of action school director Kim Bae-seok’s blood, sweat, tears, and herniated disc—saw the light of day for the first time.
* * *
The promised twenty-five minutes were up.
To put it simply, Woo-hyeong had failed to defeat the boss monster.
Rushing in without figuring out its patterns due to the time pressure had been his downfall.
The time was too tight for two attempts.
However, there was no shadow on Woo-hyeong’s face.
He just sat there in a daze, fiddling with the controller as he savored the lingering feeling.
A faint smile played on his lips.
‘Ah…’
It was good.
It was so good.
From the boss’s entrance to the start of the battle and the grand finale of the execution, there wasn’t a single thing to dislike. It was good beyond words.
The catharsis of the six-shot execution—the ‘high,’ to put it crudely—would, Woo-hyeong was certain, be this game’s alpha and omega.
The pleasure would surely be maximized when playing on a PlayStation console rather than a PC, experiencing the controller’s features.
The resistance of the trigger button, the sound of the cylinder sliding by his ear, and the overwhelming cinematic that unfolded after pulling it off in succession.
Moreover, the execution wasn’t just a flashy action sequence.
‘It’s a martial art.’
It was a form of martial art that combined restrained, weighty stances, expressed in a stylish and efficient manner, with firearms.
Woo-hyeong, who had no expertise in martial arts, was certain of this purely because of how well the style translated to popular media.
After all, didn’t the now-famous gun-fu from *John Wick* have a similar context?
He could tell.
This ‘mainstream action’ was at the core of the casual soulslike experience that *Hellic 4* was pursuing.
‘Of course, that’s not all.’
The profiling element itself served as a clever device that not only strengthened the protagonist’s identity but also allowed for dynamic difficulty adjustment by the player.
Woo-hyeong understood this as well, despite the lack of any explicit explanation.
The animation of the white health bar shattering and turning red made it all possible.
Just how much Rewind’s planning department had been ground down to create such an expression would probably remain an eternal secret of history.
For Woo-hyeong, who only saw the final product, it was simply a moving experience.
He wanted to savor this feeling a little longer.
No, he wanted to master the game’s systems more thoroughly, which he hadn’t been able to grasp completely within the twenty-five-minute playtime.
The fact that he couldn’t was endlessly frustrating.
“Excuse me…”
A booth staff member hesitantly approached and spoke.
She was a young-looking Korean woman with a gentle expression, her hair dyed black on top and pink on the bottom.
‘Oh, the Sound Director.’
She was the second most famous person at Rewind after Yeon-ho, so he recognized her immediately.
Of course, she was the one who, with her timid yet quirky personality, had unknowingly amassed a large fanbase since *Hellic 3* and *Identity*.
Furthermore, this genius, Jo A-yun, the Sound Director, was the one who had created everything from Rewind’s signature sound to the final battle BGM of *Hellic 2*, which everyone had praised without reservation.
Feeling a sense of happy recognition, Woo-hyeong smiled brightly and stood up.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I should get up.”
“Yeees…”
“If it’s not too much trouble, would a brief interview be possible? I was so impressed by the sound effects in this demo.”
He wasn’t just being polite.
While Yeon-ho had surely done the planning, the sound of the gun reloading, sliding in his ears, and its rhythm had a way of giving even someone ignorant of music goosebumps.
He might have come to try the game, but his main job was a games journalist.
Woo-hyeong was confident that if he could get even a single page of a solo interview with her, it would be a major scoop.
“If you’re not in a hurry, could I perhaps contact you later with this business card? The fans have a great deal of interest in you, the Sound Director.”
E3 lasted for three days. If he could squeeze in an interview at some point, it would be a success.
He rated the chances of failure as low.
Given Rewind’s current stance, it was unlikely they would refuse external communication, especially since developer interviews provided great marketing value when a demo version like this was released.
A-yun blinked a few times before hesitantly accepting the business card.
“Ah, goodbye…”
With a timid, trailing voice, A-yun turned and scurried away.
Woo-hyeong took that as a sign of affirmation.
That would be the normal assumption.
‘A very satisfying haul.’
*Hellic 4* was excellent.
Just twenty-five minutes of gameplay had been enough to understand its core systems.
It wasn’t just understanding; the anticipation stemming from it was immense.
As long as they properly fleshed out this framework, the final version would surely live up to Rewind’s reputation.
‘Plus, it looks like I’ve landed an interview with the Sound Director.’
Chuckling to himself, Woo-hyeong left the *Hellic 4* booth.
Of course, Woo-hyeong’s wish would not come true.
What kind of lady was A-yun?
Her unofficial title at Rewind was ‘Psychopath.’
She was a demon who didn’t understand human emotions and who sometimes made even Yeon-ho tremble in fear.
A-yun hated troublesome things.
It was only natural that she hated things that required a lot of talking, like interviews, even more.
The reason A-yun didn’t outright refuse the request was because ‘even refusing is a bother.’
Instead of refusing, A-yun chose to pass the buck with the card she received.
“Mister…”
“Hm?”
“This… he wants an interview…!”
A-yun held out the business card to Gil-sang.
Gil-sang felt a surge of emotion.
In his heart, it felt like someone had finally recognized the passion that had driven him to wear this cosplay.
In other words, a thought like, ‘That’s right, I’m an executive in Rewind’s business department. It’s about time I got some media attention,’ crossed his mind.
Gil-sang’s heart fluttered like an octopus’s head.
And so, the strange chain of cause and effect, born from one lady’s laziness, resulted in a rather tragic and ridiculous interview.
Of course, that was from Woo-hyeong’s perspective.
“So, while wearing this cosplay, I thought to myself. I…”
“Haha…”
Woo-hyeong found himself playing the role of an impromptu therapist, listening to Gil-sang’s grievances about the mental toll of his three-legged octopus cosplay.
Every time he looked at him, the image of the octopus flailing its legs in the game came to mind, which was an added torment.
After the complaints, when Gil-sang started talking about all the effort he had put into Rewind, Woo-hyeong even had another thought.
‘…Ah, I want to go home.’
He had become the perfect office worker.