Click. Click.
The sound of a mouse wheel scrolling broke the silence.
The screen was packed with text.
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun was meticulously reading [Reinhardt]’s post, gritting his teeth.
[No, I was originally just planning to hide, you know? I was thinking of just dumping everything on others and holing up in some countryside, just breathing.]
[But there’s no limit to the number of party members, right? I can put both Fermil and Evangeline in the party and take them along, or I could even take the entire Paganoa Knights, right??]
[But if I do that, I think I can survive too.]
[When I was dragged here, I thought for sure I was dead. Especially since I became some psycho who can’t even control his anger properly.]
[But if this is the case,]
[I think I can live. Me too. If I just survive and clear it to the end, if I just catch the Archdemon or whatever, something will happen.]
[They might send me back to reality, or maybe… anyway, as long as there are no demons, this place isn’t such a bad place to live.]
[Reinhardt]’s post was filled with joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure.
Looking at the content alone, it was enough to make one wonder if he had really been dragged into the game.
Click.
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun scrolled the mouse wheel. He moved the screen down to check the comments.
ㄴAnonymous1: No, this guy is reallyㅋㅋ
ㄴAnonymous2: ㅋㅋHey, at this point, isn’t it something like Ripley's syndrome?
ㄴAnonymous3: Frㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴAnonymous4: It’s clearly nonsense but it’s persuasiveㅋㅋ
ㄴAnonymous3: A lie becomes a different story if you put your soul into it, rightㅋㅋ
The response was enthusiastic.
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun wasn’t the only one who had read the sincerity in the post.
Many users were pouring out positive reactions, saying, ‘This guy is the real deal.’
And also.
The users' interest was not only in [Reinhardt]’s personal situation.
ㄴAnonymous10: But was there a warlock on the allied side in the early part of the game?
Did the lore change?
ㄴAnonymous11: It seems to be going in a completely different direction from the original work
ㄴAnonymous13: I really don’t know what’s going on. Anyway, is the expansion pack really a past timeline?
The three great demons had taken notice of [Reinhardt].
That news was delivered by a warlock named ‘Jenkins’.
It was enough of a hook to heat up the community.
At a time when other self-proclaimed reincarnators were only pursuing personal growth, it was the only topic of conversation that stimulated the fundamental curiosity of gamers.
That was why Team Leader Choi Ho-jun felt like he was going to lose his mind.
Thud.
He slammed the mouse down roughly, glared at the ceiling, and shouted.
“Why! Did Jenkins! Appear already!”
His eyes were wide open, and he gritted his teeth.
A vein stood out on his neck.
His tightly clenched fist was trembling on its own.
“It’s not time for him to appear yet! Jenkins is a character who appears after Part 1 ends! I was definitely told that!”
“The, the development team also said they don’t know why the event occurred so early……”
“Why don’t they know! It’s the world they created!”
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun glared at his team member with crazed eyes.
Of course, he wasn’t angry at the team member. He had simply failed to hold onto the thread of reason in the face of an absurd situation.
And the team member who faced that emotion directly replied with a sense of injustice and despair.
“……Should I ask again?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“It’s obvious they’ll say it’s a bug. Or, someone in the development team shoved in an Easter egg on their own whim. You know, like a hidden mission.”
“Personally? Without getting approval from above?”
“Or the Head of Development was involved.”
Among the developers of Soul Calibur, there were eccentrics mixed in here and there.
They were talents rarely seen in Korea.
Not in the sense that their programming skills were overwhelming, but eccentrics in the sense that they came up with unique ideas and put them into practice.
‘If it’s that person, it’s possible.’
Han Yura, the General Head of Development at Skylines.
A monster among monsters who had crammed every process of development, from the game’s initial stages to the present, into her head.
Her words and actions were peculiar, and so was her appearance.
Always with disheveled hair and dark circles, a hollow gaze, and on top of that, wearing something resembling a doctor’s gown, she looked like a half-mad scientist.
“The information I received from the development team was definitely that Jenkins’s appearance is in Part 2. They said he’s a character who appears long after Part 1 ends. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“Good. I’ve finally caught the culprit. That person is more than capable of doing something like that.”
His tone lacked any respect for his superior.
However, Team Leader Choi Ho-jun’s anger had already subsided.
Rather, he felt refreshed, as if he had finally faced the answer to an unsolvable problem.
“I’m going to go and settle this.”
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun’s steps were confident.
Like a triumphant general, he stormed into the development office, cut through the crowd of developers typing away at their keyboards, exhausted, and stood squarely in front of Head Developer Han Yura, who was intently staring at her monitor.
“Head Developer Han Yura.”
Choi Ho-jun opened his mouth with an expression that said, ‘If you have something to say, say it.’
However, the reaction that came back was different from his expectation.
“Team Leader Choi, you saw it too, right? Is this okay?”
***
In the development process of Soul Calibur, Han Yura was truly an indispensable existence.
She laid the game's framework, added the flesh, and bestowed upon it an identity that would be its differentiator and personality.
It was an unrealistic amount of work.
The result implemented on the screen was at an overwhelming level compared to the time and money invested.
‘There was even an article that evaluated Han Yura as the key to Soul Calibur's success.’
It wasn't an easy feat.
It was truly rare for a single developer to take the sole protagonist spot in an article.
But if the subject was Han Yura, it wasn't surprising.
What she had developed was a game, but its actual composition was no different from a single world.
Games that followed the RPG framework basically all had a similar structure.
You raise your level.
By raising your level, you strengthen your stats, enhance your skills, and through that, you hunt stronger enemies.
Strong enemies drop valuable rewards.
Among those rewards, there would be currency like gold coins needed to progress in the game, and valuable equipment also existed.
Of course, all those elements existed in Soul Calibur as well.
Level, equipment, skills, quests, and things that could be called essential elements of a game.
But that wasn't the core.
“The point I emphasized most in development was the characters. Things like personality or speech patterns, or maybe their background. Characters that exist simply to give quests, or characters that are hostile to the user for no reason, don’t exist.”
“I know. I know that, but……”
“Humans are multi-faceted. A person who was a kind father to someone could also be a selfish and vile boss to someone else.”
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun sighed internally.
Because once Han Yura’s switch was flipped, she wouldn’t shut her mouth until she had finished saying what she wanted to say.
“Head Developer, now is not the time for that……”
“I wanted to put that human multi-facetedness into the game. If you ask if it was easy, honestly, it wasn't. It was terribly difficult. Giving personality to every character that appears in the game is actually an impossible task, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But this place is a single world. It’s not real, but it has to at least pretend to be a single world. Because it’s a product we sell to users for seventy-seven thousand won.”
The seventy-thousand-won range wasn't that expensive for an A-list package game.
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun thought so, but he obediently nodded his head.
“That’s right. Because it’s a product we sell for money.”
“Right. So I thought about it , and after much thought, I found a way. First was analysis. I subdivided the many elements that make up a single human and made a list……”
“……Head Developer.”
“The elements are random, well, not completely random. I set the ratio. Most people in the world are ‘common-sensical,’ right? To capture that feeling……”
“Head Developer! I told you this isn't the time for this!”
Eventually, the end of his patience arrived.
At first, he had intended to listen patiently, but he was overcome with a sense of crisis that if this continued, he might have to listen to a lengthy explanation for hours.
Han Yura’s expression briefly went blank.
She opened her eyes wide as if surprised, then asked with a slightly dazed expression.
“Where was I?”
“Jenkins, Jenkins. What happened with that? Wasn’t he a character supposed to appear in Part 2? You said you made it so he wouldn’t appear until then, regardless of which character one started with.”
“Ah, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“It’s a bug.”
“Whaat?”
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun couldn’t help but ask back.
This was an expression that shouldn’t have come from Han Yura’s mouth.
A bug.
Something unexpected.
“You’re saying it’s a bug? Something that wasn’t intended?”
“It… wasn’t intended. But, actually, the expression ‘bug’ might be wrong. It’s just that I set the probability of it happening to be extremely low.”
“Then it’s not a bug, is it?”
“It’s a probability close to 0. It’s practically impossible. Let me put it this way.”
This time, Team Leader Choi Ho-jun also listened attentively to the explanation.
He was at a point where he couldn’t endure it without hearing the explanation.
“I set such conditions. To put it simply, it’s like an affinity system. So, to trigger a bug-like event like this one, one must form a firm relationship with several characters.”
“Those characters being……”
“Several figures, including Miya Luxpenber. Actually, just securing Miya isn’t enough; you have to recruit a few more people to draw out the judgment that it’s okay to introduce Jenkins.”
“You have to raise the affinity of several NPCs to the maximum level.”
“It’s not my favorite expression, but yes.”
“But he did that? Reinhardt? You’re saying it was originally set up so that such a thing would be next to impossible?”
“For now, yes. In Part 1.”
She paused there for a moment, then Head Developer Han Yura continued.
“But I set it up to be possible in Part 2. I intentionally placed events. So that by solving the events, they could build trust with the main characters.”
“So raising affinity was important. In Part 2, you made it so that just by following the given flow, the necessary conditions could be met. But, are you saying that Reinhardt met those certain conditions in the process of just playing through Part 1?”
“Exactly. That’s why I said it was a bug, but also that it wasn’t a bug. Because I made it so that the event would occur as long as the conditions were met.”
Is she being serious right now?
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun reflexively thought so.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what she was saying.
He understood the meaning of the explanation itself, but it was just difficult to accept it with common sense.
“You mean you intentionally designed an environment where a bug could occur?”
“It’s not a bug……”
“Wait a moment. Then that’s not something that can be done just by knowing the method, is it? Because it’s an event that occurs only when you meet virtually impossible conditions?”
Han Yura nodded her head.
“It’s something that would be impossible even for me.”
“Something even you can’t do, Head Developer? Then it would be the same for the other staff in the development team.”
“I can say with certainty. No one could do it.”
“Then who on earth is that Reinhardt? Wasn’t it you, Head Developer?”
“Me? Of course not! I was in charge of development, but I only made the rules. I don’t know how to break the rules.”
To implement a single world and set the laws of that world.
Han Yura’s role ended there.
Even she did not know a way to break a law once it had been established.
‘No, this is…….’
Team Leader Choi Ho-jun realized that the plan had gone awry.
And completely at that.