It Absolutely Killed
"Things turned out this way, so you ought to give the money back, don't you think?"
"No… I clearly gave you two hundred fifty million won…"
The line went dead.
Hwang Seong-sik had hung up the moment he realized the call was being recorded. Jo Seong-gi had handed over money that could never be proven, and there was not a scrap of evidence. Which meant there was no way to get it back.
And that two hundred million… what kind of money had that been.
Jo Seong-gi clenched his teeth. He would get it back no matter what it took. If it came down to it, he'd call in gangsters and make the man cough it up.
A call. Noh Gyeong-se.
That shameless bastard. How does he even have the face.
"Yes, this is Jo Seong-gi."
"Haaaah…"
So that's the play. Reverse the blame and come out swinging.
Director Hwang Seong-sik had said it plainly: Noh Gyeong-se had snitched to the company about Hwang taking the money. Noh had been the one who proposed they each put in two hundred million, then claimed he was short and only put in fifty million. Looking at it now, the whole thing had been planned from the start.
"Look here, President Noh. You're an elder, so I'll let it slide this once. I just got off the phone with Director Hwang."
"Director Hwang said President Noh Gyeong-se snitched to the company."
"You only put in fifty million, President Noh. I put in two hundred million. Two hundred million."
"He's not that smart. He doesn't have that kind of power, either. Who in the world gets a director fired just because some rank-and-file employee snitches?"
"You said he was a heavyweight. You vouched for him, President Noh."
Wasn't it Noh Gyeong-se who had recommended the man as a giant who would change the future of Bando Jewelry and SG Global? And it had been Noh Gyeong-se who suggested they pay bribes to lock down the gold-mining rights.
"So — ah, yes, I'm sorry — and you think that's the end of it? You're the one who ruined this, President Noh. Give me my two hundred million back. Or I really won't let this go."
"Imagine whatever you like."
What they had done was so transparent it was almost insulting, but with people like this, common sense meant nothing. Snitch to the company that Director Hwang took money, then pin the whole disaster on the man who had been sitting still? And he had the gall to use the phrase "pot calling the kettle black" about himself?
"Hah…"
Unbelievable. This kind of twisted tactic actually worked?
"This old geezer…"
Because of his relationship with his father — because they had once been in-laws — he had put up with it. But this went beyond dirty tricks. Now the man was trying to dump the whole thing on him.
If this was how he wanted to play it, Jo Seong-gi was not going to sit still.
He ground his teeth until they creaked.
A message from Director Oh Gong-tae.
He was at a different company now. Why the sudden summons?
Yoon Jong-seok was thirty-four and a team leader, and the person who made him most uncomfortable was Oh Gong-tae, who had been a department head at twenty-eight. Six years younger, but with ten years of experience — and a former pillar of Kiseong IT. You could not treat him carelessly. You could not even argue with him. Oh Gong-tae spoke by relentlessly drilling into every weak point, and how were you supposed to pick a fight with someone who talked without emotion, purely in the professional domain, with no personal agenda at all?
He sent the text carefully.
Running Dog? Why was Director Oh Gong-tae bringing that up? It was only the other day that Yoon had finished the Running Dog prototype and sent it to the investor. He would find out what was going on when he saw for himself.
Yoon Jong-seok pressed the doorbell at the 24th-floor lab, and the door opened. Stepping inside, he found nearly ten employees working at a clip.
"Ah! Team Leader Yoon, over here."
Director Oh Gong-tae raised a hand high from another doorway. Passing through yet another security door and going in, a whole new world unfolded — complex equipment that looked like a spaceship cockpit, enormous display panels covering every wall, and three virtual-reality simulators sitting in a row.
"What is this place…?"
"It's JW Dive In's research lab. Before we talk — about Running Dog."
"Why is Director Oh Gong-tae talking about Running Dog?"
Yoon Jong-seok said it with his eyes narrowed.
"I knew you'd be like this. The company that invested three hundred million won in Running Dog. That company is owned by Dive In."
"What? That's ridiculous… We received a separate investment…"
"I don't know the details myself, so it's hard to answer. Just try this on first."
He held out an HMD — equipment like ski goggles that let you experience virtual reality.
"Why are you giving this to me…"
"Just do as you're told for now. Trying it once will make it easier to talk about than explaining it a hundred times."
Team Leader Yoon shot Oh Gong-tae a suspicious glance, then pulled the HMD over his head.
Pitch-black darkness. Nothing to see.
Alright. Starting now.
He hadn't even put in earphones, but Oh Gong-tae's voice came through anyway.
The world in front of his eyes lit up as bright as midday. Then the objects ahead began rushing toward him. Obstacles. Large coin-shaped tokens hanging in the air.
"Th-this is…"
It looked familiar somehow. A castle in the distance. Obstacle zones of forest and rock. A lava field in the middle, magma flowing around stepping-stones. Even a stretch where meteorites fell from the sky.
The speed kept climbing. No special controls — it moved in whatever direction he tilted his head. The running accelerated into an all-out sprint: sideways, upside down, then leaping into the air and changing direction while flying. This was not flying in an airplane. He was running through empty air the way a martial-arts master treads the void.
He dodged meteorites, dodged fireballs and arrows from monsters, and with the points collected from coins he could purchase a dog-bone boomerang. If he just knew how to throw it, he would do much better.
Voice recognition works. Target with your eyes and say "Fire!"
He was sprinting at lightning speed. Fire-breathing beasts. Goblins loosing arrows. Orcs swinging axes. Dodging them in a blur, he shouted.
FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!
whoooosh — tick-tick-tick-tick — THWACK — SHWAAAA!
The instant Yoon Jong-seok spoke, the flying dog-bone boomerang smashed through the beasts and villains and came whipping back.
You don't need to shout that loud. If you put on the haptic gloves you can control it with the gloves too… but let's stick with voice mode for now.
It was astonishing. A sense of speed you could never experience on a television or a monitor. And the bone boomerang, thrown while barely scraping past obstacles, delivered a satisfying, meaty impact.
"Th-this is…"
Stunned, Yoon Jong-seok pulled the HMD off.
"You're doing great — why'd you quit? You were about to clear the stage."
Oh Gong-tae was grinning like he was having the time of his life.
"Wh-what is this?"
"Aigoo… he should just say it himself. Why dump this on me…"
He muttered something that had nothing to do with the question.
"We customized Running Dog into a virtual-reality game through our Dive In."
"What?"
"We upgraded a 2D game into a virtual-reality game."
At Oh Gong-tae's words, Yoon Jong-seok's pupils trembled.
"So you stole our idea. While we were working ourselves to the bone developing it, you were making this?"
He had misunderstood it as idea theft. Oh Gong-tae clicked his tongue as if the whole thing were pathetic.
"Is it even possible to make a virtual-reality game like this in a week? That's absurd. When did you copy it? Do you have any idea how much blood, sweat, and tears we poured into making this?"
"That's not it. A little while ago you sent the prototype source to the investor to show this is how you'd complete it, right?"
"We did… Then… good lord…"
Had it been a week? No — a little more than a week, actually. In that time they had turned a 2D game into a virtual-reality game like this? That was impossible. To pull this quality you would need fifty people working for at least three months. And that would be if they were going extremely fast.
"Don't misunderstand, just listen. The investor who put money into Running Dog said wouldn't it be more fun as a virtual-reality game, and gave it to us to test. And he wants Team Leader Yoon to experience it firsthand. He wants to know your judgment."
That was what Jung Jinwoo had said. Since games were in Dive In's business domain anyway, it had been a good opportunity to test, so Oh Gong-tae had agreed — but thinking about it now, Jinwoo had clearly dumped the annoying part on him.
"Dive In is that kind of company? You converted 2D into a 3D virtual-reality game?"
"The characters and objects are all the same, so you should recognize it. Ah — and there's a function where you can choose whether the viewpoint is from the character's eyes or from behind the character."
This was absurd. This kind of technology existed? Even if it were developed, it should normally launch in five years — no, ten years, twenty years from now.
"So to summarize… this is the Running Dog game I made. And you customized it based on that."
"Yeah, that's right. It's a game where the sense of speed is the point, but the investor said doing it as 2D on a monitor screen felt kind of dull… so we tested it. Now that you've tried it yourself, how does it feel, Team Leader Yoon?"
How had it felt?
He had been so shocked, the stimulation so intense, he hadn't even had a chance to organize his feelings. The electrifying sense of speed. The meaty impact. The bizarre yet beautiful backgrounds. In a word, it had been a fantastical experience.
What word did you even use for this.
"I-it was a killer experience. You can't even compare it to playing on a monitor."
"Right? Puhahaha… that's what I'm saying."
Oh Gong-tae, six years younger, was mixing informal and formal speech, and it did not bother Yoon at all. If anything, he was happy — as if Oh Gong-tae had acknowledged his game.
"Director!"
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell me this… applies to every game? You're saying if you bring in any game at all, it can instantly be played as a 3D virtual game like this?"
"It applies… but not to ultra-high-quality MMORPGs. Those eat up too much data. We could do it if we wanted, but games with a moderate graphics level work better."
Those were words that could make a man faint.
This went beyond saying they had transformed a 2D game. It was practically like making an entirely new one — and one hundreds of times more wondrous and magnificent at that. If this technology were applied to the gaming field…
Just thinking about it made his chest swell and his heart pound.
"Director… you said Running Dog was the first time this technology was applied to games."
"Yeah, that's right…"
This was going to be a massive hit. Running Dog wasn't even the issue. This was an innovation that could change the world and rewrite the history of the gaming industry.
The era of games where you just endlessly ground for good items was over. People talked about "servicing an experience," but there had never been a game with the immersion that virtual reality could actually provide. A game that had gone through this Dive In customization, though, let you explore hell. Let you live the vivid experience of cutting your way out of a blood-soaked battlefield swarming with demonic beasts.
"Th-the investor… how can I meet the investor?"
"Team Leader Yoon! You want to meet him?"
When he's meeting him every day?
"I want to try Dive In's game business division. I want to ask him to let me do it."
"Alright then… I'll pass that along. Anyway, so the Running Dog converted to virtual reality was pretty good?"
"No!"
Yoon Jong-seok drew a firm line.
"It wasn't just pretty good — it was incredible. Ultra, ultimate, legendary, special… exciting… fantastic… it absolutely killed."
What kind of exclamations were those, all in English. That was all he could spit out after dumping every word he knew? And at an elementary-school-kid's level, no less.
Well. When men got excited, they all turned into children.
Oh Gong-tae smirked as he looked at the thoroughly worked-up Yoon Jong-seok.