Chapter 56
Chapter 56
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 56
Chapter Title: Hell of War
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Can murder ever be justified?
Is “a necessary killing” a valid proposition?
It was a question I harbored throughout my time in that hell.
Moreover, it was the hell that evoked the most primal sense of unease out of all the ones I had experienced.
It was a matter of timing.
Right before I followed the journey of the butterfly and the girl.
Because of that, I had felt a sense of dissonance when I saw the butterfly and the girl.
-Aaaaaargh!
A crimson sky like a blazing fire, a gray sun, and beneath it, a red meadow and ridges of countless corpses.
There, many people died, were born again, and died once more.
They were people of different races, genders, ages, and attire.
But the cause of their deaths was all the same.
*Shunk—!*
Homicide.
It was a place where one could only die at the hands of another, only to be reborn and enact revenge.
In other words, it was a battlefield.
Guns, swords, bows, blunt weapons—everyone clutched a weapon in their hand, and to fulfill its purpose as a tool, they offered the fresh blood of others as a sacrifice at every moment.
Someone once said.
That a person who experiences a battlefield once is tormented by that fear for the rest of their life.
That they shudder at the horror of the battlefield until the moment they close their eyes for the last time.
It was true.
Even I, who stood there blankly as a mere translucent ghost, would sometimes recall that scene and shudder. How could those who experienced it directly not do the same?
At first, I thought.
‘Is this rational?’
Having only experienced hells whose mechanics defied human laws, this one, which made sinners pay for the crime of murder, seemed at a glance to be somewhat rational.
After all, wasn't murder considered one of the oldest sins, even in human law?
But that thought didn't last long.
Hell was still hell, after all.
I realized this the moment I saw the trees, not the forest.
To be precise, it was the moment I saw not the battlefield on the red meadow, but the individuals who comprised it.
-Chaaaaarge!!!
A white man in a military uniform brushed past me.
It was hard to tell, stained as it was with blood and dirt, but as I recall, his uniform was a shabby one, the kind worn during the World Wars of the early 20th century.
I won't bother describing his glistening eyes or the voice that screamed until his throat was raw.
But what captured my attention at that moment was not the man himself, but the uniform he wore.
‘Medals.’
On the soldier's uniform, a number of medals, too many to count at a glance, jangled, their luster faded.
The medals were a testament to the path he had walked in life, a symbol of the great deeds he had accomplished as a guardian of his people.
To make an uncharacteristically sentimental observation, the fading of those medals felt to me like a stark symbol of this hell.
Because it was as if hell itself was saying:
My justice cannot be justice for others.
It too is merely a symbol built on the blood of others.
At that point, a question formed in my mind.
Can murder not be justified?
No, can the actions of patriots who threw themselves into the fray to protect their group be dismissed with the word 'murder'?
The question deepened in earnest the moment I began observing others besides that man.
-Retreat!
The one shouting at the top of his lungs was a knight in chain mail.
Over his armor was a white cloth emblazoned with a cross.
He seemed to be a holy knight. A sword that believed in and followed the name of God.
-Kill!
The one swinging an axe was a barbarian.
He wore an animal hide like a cape, his disheveled hair flying as he rampaged across the battlefield.
The bone-and-tooth necklace around his neck was larger and more ornate than those of the other barbarians nearby.
He must have been a leader.
-Hold them back!
The men holding up round shields and spears reminded me of the Spartans from the movies.
The man in their midst, his scarred face scowling, took off his red cape. It was used to cover the body of a freshly fallen soldier.
The man seemed to be the commander of these soldiers.
I asked myself again.
‘A sin?’
Could I call them sinners?
Weren't they all heroes who had taken up arms simply to protect something?
The things they sought to protect were different, but wasn't their essence the same?
I wasn't the only one who felt that doubt.
On the contrary, the participants themselves, not the observer, felt it most deeply.
I saw such a scene.
During a moment of respite between the raging battles, they entered their barracks and all looked up at the sky.
Then, they parted their lips.
-Hey, you.
The soldier with the medals.
-You there.
The barbarian who fought with all his might.
-Oh, heavens.
The holy knight who cried out the name of God.
-You terrible being.
The Spartan who had recovered the soldier's body.
With faces twisted in misery, burying a tremor in a long sigh, they stared at the sky with doubt and despair, pouring out a lost hatred.
They honed it into a single sentence and spat it out,
-Why did I have to fall into hell?
It was a question that held the thirst of a man who might choke and die at any moment.
Of course, no answer came.
As with any hell, a lack of communication was a common trait of this incomprehensible land.
Murder is certainly a sin.
However, when questioning its purpose, there was an ambiguity in calling their actions a sin.
Surely, things like a soldier's duty, a believer's faith, a leader's responsibility, and a commander's conviction must have had a profound influence leading to the outcome of killing. How could it be so simply dismissed as murder?
Hell had unraveled that complexity in a simple and horrifying way.
It was murder, no matter what.
In the end, all they could do was return to the battlefield and continue the endless war.
Around then, the difference in perspective between the observer and the participants became starkly clear.
Though I despaired, I held a question for those who headed out to the battlefield.
‘Why do they fight?’
Can't they just end the war?
There were no external pressures like guards, nor were there any stakes to be won or lost. So why did they keep repeating the war?
I don't remember how long I watched that war.
This place called hell was designed to make one lose all sense of time's passage, after all.
I only realized the reason later.
It was when I came to understand the structure of this hell.
After what felt like a very long time, around when their bodies began to crumble.
-Ah…!
The soldier with the medals collapsed, letting out a breath steeped in grief.
His fading eyes still looked to the sky with a bitter expression.
The only clear thing about him, stained as he was with blood and dirt, was his tears.
But even that clarity was soon sullied by blood.
-Why, why…!
His escaping breath still held the question.
It was then.
*Gurgle—*
The blood flowing from the soldier's body solidified like jelly and began to squirm.
It immediately swallowed the soldier's body and began to compress it, as if melting and digesting it.
The red jelly became an oval-shaped cocoon.
When it melted away, a single gun with a bright red barrel lay in its place.
No one explained what that gun was.
No one paid it any mind, nor gave it a single glance.
I stood where the gun lay and stared at it for a long time.
I would only find out what it was later.
-Aaaaaah!!!
During the war, a soldier lost his weapon.
His eyes glistening, he scanned his surroundings, then found the gun that had once been the soldier and grabbed it.
That was the moment.
*Shwwwiiik!*
Red tendrils shot out from the barrel of the gun and pierced the soldier.
Like parasites burrowing into a body, the tendrils consumed the soldier, and his body twitched and squirmed as it changed shape.
Finally, something was completed.
-Ugh….
A 20th-century uniform, medals too numerous to count, short blond hair, and a wrinkled white face.
The soldier had transformed into the soldier from before.
He trembled for a moment, then gripped the gun connected to his body and shouted with eyes that had lost all reason.
-Chaaaaarge!!!
Without asking why, just forward.
As if that was all he was meant to do, without a sliver of doubt.
The others were the same.
They all died, became weapons, and were resurrected by being held in another's hands, losing their will and spilling blood.
At some point, they would regain their senses, resent the heavens, and die again to become another weapon.
The scene was like a personification of the very essence of an army.
I watched it from afar.
Taking a broad, bird's-eye view, I captured the image of people screaming and harming each other on the red meadow under the red sky, and then painted an abstract picture over the scene.
In doing so, I saw something floating in the air.
It was madness.
A hell so thickly entangled that one could not see the beginning or the end of its skein.
A hell for those who, harboring the same eternal question, continue the war as mere tools.
The moment I understood this bird's-eye view, someone carved a name into my mind.
-Aaaaaargh!
This was the Hell of War.
…Yes, all the assumptions I had made while drifting through that place were wrong.
The sin that hell questioned was not murder, but war.
* * *
To put it bluntly, it was disgusting.
It was a repulsive, unsettling structure.
The Hell of War provoked a deeper visceral rejection than any other hell I had seen, leaving a nauseating feeling lingering somewhere inside me.
What I recall next are their subsequent actions.
Not in the flow of time, but in terms of cycles—a change occurred after I'd seen them experience death over a hundred times.
It was the four people I had been watching closely.
When the cycle of consuming another's body to be reborn and then going to war reached a certain turning point, the Spartan was the first to change.
-Hmm….
Suddenly, despite being reborn, he did not join the war.
He stared at the spear in his own hand, then looked at the sky, the ground, and the people.
I don't know what he was thinking.
But the Spartan, who had been watching the scene with a twisted face, no longer participated in the war and began to run toward a distant place.
Over a long period, he had begun to move toward an answer.
Afterward, the holy knight, the soldier, and finally the barbarian leader showed the same behavior.
Leaving the battlefield behind, they met in front of a giant temple.
In a strange space I hadn't even known existed.
The story began from there.
The game I will make, *Hellic 3*.
‘A pilgrimage, or a journey, of those seeking answers.’
It will be driven by that theme.
Now I've organized the setting, characters, and narrative.
Next, it's time to process this into a game.
I pulled out the notes I had written down right after my regression.
Then, on a blank document, I slowly refined it into the form of a design document.
‘The genre is action-adventure.’
Same as *Hellic 2*.
However, this time, I'll significantly increase the emphasis on action.
Because there's nothing better for targeting a mass audience than satisfying, fast-paced action.
Next, the systems.
‘Maintain the series' core principle.’
Therefore, the proposition of growth solely through items will not change.
‘The keyword is 'demonic swords'.’
The egos of sinners engraved not in flesh but in weapons will be the playable characters.
*Hellic 3* will feature four weapons collectively known as demonic swords—a gun, a sword, an axe, and a spear—each functioning as a character.
The forms and stats of the demonic swords can be refined later.
Does it end there?
Absolutely not.
‘This is a AAA title. There's no reason to stick to the same level of systems as when we were indie. We have the time, manpower, and capital now.’
It's time for deepening the mechanics.
Let's think.
Until now, item builds have been the sole engine for growth.
I need to add another element that aids growth without undermining that core principle.
In other words, expanding the range of growth choices in the form of items.
‘There is one way.’
A method possible only because of the Hell of War.
‘…Flesh.’
Their true forms are the demonic swords.
Having experienced hell for so long and become assimilated with it, to them, a physical body is nothing more than a replaceable battery.
What if I leverage that from a game design perspective?
‘I'll place lootable corpses throughout the map, and each corpse... that is, each piece of 'hardware' you acquire, will grant traits that aid your build.’
The concept of increasing the range of growth choices by linking the looting of 'hardware'—the bodies—with the builds of the 'software'—the demonic swords—emerged.
Then, next, how to express this.
‘I have to be careful.’
This installment has four protagonists.
But if I express that by splitting them into separate playable characters, the game will become too cluttered.
In other words, it would lack intuitiveness.
Since the story progression will be the same regardless of which character is used, is there any point in separating the playable characters?
In that regard, I considered a 'J-RPG'-style character swap, but that also raises concerns about focus.
After much thought, I came to a conclusion.
‘What if I put all four characters into one body?’
This, too, was a deepening of the 'demonic sword' setting.
One corpse, holding all four weapons.
A system where the character transforms into the corresponding person depending on which weapon is held.
For example, you could say it's like the stance-switching druid from a certain AOS game that's about to become a huge hit.
The path was clear.
As I said, my goal is not to recreate hell, but to reconstruct it as a game.
Even if they actually traveled together using different bodies, there's no need to slavishly adhere to that detail.
As for how to express multiple souls mixed in one body in-game… right, how about during conversations between characters, a mouth suddenly appears somewhere on the body to speak, or an arm suddenly moves on its own and slaps the face?
As a meme-able element, like, ‘Calm down, my other self.’
The keywords were set.
‘Demonic swords, transformation, action.’
The core elements of the game, summarized in three words.
At that moment, I couldn't help but think.
‘This.’
It's got all the elements a guy can't resist.
One undeniable fact.
Inside every man's heart lives a Black War Tyrannomon.
*Clack, clack, clack!*
The cheerful sound of typing echoed through the office.