5-3. Interaction
A game is 'play through interaction,' so there are elements that must be implemented even at the cost of realism.
Take making loot drops sparkle, for instance.
In real life, the idea of a weapon dropped by an enemy literally glowing would be bizarre. But in a game it was a necessary element: that glow catches the player's eye and ultimately prompts them to 'pick it up,' completing the 'interaction' between player and object.
The ultimate purpose being fun.
Despite having been dragged into a game out of nowhere, captured, and subjected to ordeals like getting his head chopped off, Suhyeok had to be honest with himself.
He was itching to interact with the sparkling things in the distance.
'What dropped?'
Under normal circumstances, this was loot the player would've earned by helping the Viscount's party fend off the pursuit squad.
The player's first combat reward, in other words—which, looked at differently, could be called a gift from the game designers to their players.
Because that was how you hooked prospective customers still testing the waters with 'Is this fun? Should I take it seriously?' An investment in the future, you could say.
No way they'd been stingy with it.
My wife was...... no, Juha was more generous than she looked.
- "No need to pinch pennies. Over some digital scraps, of all things. Besides—they'll probably need it, right?"
On top of that, she'd said there was no reason to be stingy. What mattered was the fun and experience the player would have.
But now that the game had become reality—what then?
These weren't digital scraps. They were real, physical goods.
Supplies he needed to survive, a lifeline, and given that Juha was the one who'd placed them there, they almost felt like a gift she'd sent him.
Here, take this and hang in there.
Hurry up and escape this godforsaken place.
......At least we'd parted on decent terms. Suhyeok was swallowing down a wave of melancholy as he approached. He was starting to imagine what might have dropped—when his jaw nearly hit the ground.
"Wow! What a windfall!"
"There's even a horse still alive! Whoa, whoa—that's it, good boy."
Out of nowhere, a group burst from the woods on the right and started gleefully helping themselves to 'his gift.' A curse flew from Suhyeok's lips of its own accord.
"Those...... those bastards?"
Judging by their shabby clothes, they weren't anyone important. Looked like bandits at best—and they'd spotted Suhyeok too, shouting at him.
"Who the hell's that? What's he staring at?"
"Dunno. Some passerby? Hey! You wanna come over here too? Don't be scared, just come here for a sec."
"Ooh! A bow! Hey, I found a bow. Think I should take a shot?"
"Bram, you can't even shoot a bow."
An arrow came flying next. The aim was so bad it missed by a mile, but still. Watching them cackle amongst themselves, Suhyeok thought.
It looks dangerous. What should I do? Give up?
He shook his head almost immediately.
He didn't want to abandon his loot, and as someone dragged into the game, there wasn't even a reason to avoid this situation.
A {quest event}.
Whether it had occurred naturally as the game became reality or was an event Juha had designed, Suhyeok decided to accept it.
Something along the lines of: {Eliminate the bandits and reclaim your reward!}
'But how?'
There was a problem, though. A problem that wouldn't have existed if Suhyeok had started as the game's protagonist.
He had no weapon. All he had was an ink bottle, paper, and a quill pen—and there were seven of them.
The fight was a non-starter.
If he were the game's protagonist, maybe, but,
'Tch. What should I do? If it were one or two, I'd at least try to take them on. Should I have stuck with the Viscount after all?'
He was starting to think he'd made the wrong choice from the beginning when something on the mountain trail's surface caught his eye—a FLASH—! of reflected sunlight.
"Huh?"
He picked it up. A gemstone.
Blue, similar to the one Viscount Alang had used, and on closer inspection, something was rippling inside it.
Smaller, though. The one the Viscount had shattered was nearly the size of a baseball; this was walnut-sized.
'But what is this thing, exactly?'
- "Because that scroll didn't just save my life. Besides, you used my mana stone."
Viscount Alang had called it a 'mana stone.'
Mana Stone. A term common in games, roughly understood as 'a stone containing some kind of magical energy.'
Usually given settings about being used as an energy source or processed into mana potions......
'I never made anything like this.'
It wasn't something implemented in KingRPG.
An element added when the game became reality, perhaps? Regardless, it was a good find.
TWANG—!
Another arrow came flying. The aim had improved since last time—this one passed a point Suhyeok could've touched if he'd stretched his arm out.
Any more dawdling would be dangerous.
No matter how far away the target, zeroing in was only a matter of time.
The bandits, aside from the one shooting arrows, were busy gathering loot. Suhyeok pulled out his quill pen and paper.
Target: seven bandits in the distance.
For this, the right choice would be,
using KingRPG.Basic;
public class DarkMagic {
public void Cast() {
Spell.Summon("Valmorgan", Tentacles, 7);
…
Spell.Summon(Valmorgan, Tentacles, 7).
He ducked behind a tree trunk to dodge the arrows and wrote his code with the paper braced against the bark.
Despite the less-than-ideal posture and the unfamiliar writing instrument in his hand, his arm laid down the code without hesitation.
Could this body belong to someone more impressive than I thought? Or is this just a baseline for a scribe?
Even his handwriting came out elegant on pure instinct, which made the writing satisfying.
The scroll was soon complete. Suhyeok stepped out to the roadside and raised both arms high.
Just as Viscount Alang had done—scroll in one hand, mana stone gripped in the other. And somehow, this pose felt rather exhilarating.
Suhyeok now understood why the Viscount had shouted, and he yelled out with the same feeling:
"Drop dead, you thieving scum!"
Ahh, this feeling of being Moses—how's a man supposed to hold back? Time for a stern word or two. And if the scroll didn't work, he'd spin around and bolt.
Simultaneously, he pressed his thumb down on the gemstone and cracked it. It was sturdier than expected, which threw him off, but when he squeezed—CRUNCH—it shattered.
And out flowed a blue glow.
The code ignited.
"AAAGH! Wh-what?!"
Dark crimson tentacles erupted from the earth. The bandits, snared by tentacles bursting from beneath their feet, thrashed helplessly.
But it was futile thrashing.
What Suhyeok had used was the high-tier dark magic <Fingers of Valmorgan>. It only visited the mortal plane for the briefest of moments, but no living creature caught by it could survive.
Just like that.
"Bram! Bram! No!!"
The bandits caught in the tentacles dissolved. It looked as if the tentacles were sucking the flesh from their bodies, and in the blink of an eye, half of each one was gone.
A moment later—SPLAT—the corpses hit the ground with a sickening sound.
The summoning was over. But Suhyeok was rattled by the unexpected result.
'Why's it so small? And why......'
By Suhyeok's estimate, the tentacles should've surged to the height of a two- or three-story apartment building.
That was the kind of spell it was. A devastating annihilation move worthy of a top-tier dark mage's prestige.
But the summoned tentacles had only reached about human height. And size aside, the number was short. Only four had been summoned, leaving three men unscathed.
"AAAAAH!! M-monster!"
"......ha, ugh......"
"Son of a bitch! You did this!"
Granted, one of them had panicked and fled, and another had collapsed in shock.
The problem was the one who'd drawn his sword and was charging straight at him.
Oh, shit. This is bad.
Having expected a total wipeout, Suhyeok scrambled behind a tree. He played hide-and-seek around the thick trunk of a towering tree, but he couldn't keep this up forever.
"This is for Bram!!"
"W-wait! Calm down, just hear me out for a second—"
"Cut the shit and die!"
Running wasn't an option. Suhyeok circled the tree and scanned his surroundings.
A weapon. I need a weapon too.
Something caught his eye at just the right moment. Not too far—if he timed it right, he just had to run.
"Got you!"
"Urk!"
Dodging left and right around the tree trunk, gambling on each direction—he'd hit the limit. He came face to face with the man and ducked to avoid the blade.
THWACK—!
Now!
The sword bit into the tree, and in that opening Suhyeok bolted. He sprinted to what lay on the ground and snatched it up—only to find it was a sword snapped clean in half. Son of a bitch.
Still, better than nothing. He had no time to lament. The instant he picked it up, he whirled around and blocked the descending blade.
CLANG—!
Suhyeok groaned, "Ngh!"
Even after blocking, his body staggered. It was partly the force, but more importantly, the fact that he'd never handled a weapon in his life.
Sensing that Suhyeok was a complete novice, the man's expression relaxed. He looked Suhyeok up and down.
"A spell-slinger, huh? Whatever you pulled earlier, guess you can't do it twice?"
"......"
"Here's something to take to the grave, spell-slinger. Bram—the one you killed—was a good man. A good...... childhood friend from my hometown."
The sword came crashing down again, and Suhyeok barely blocked it. Only two exchanges, but the outcome was obvious as day.
He was outclassed in both build and skill. It wouldn't be long before that man's blade tore through Suhyeok's body.
"NNNGH!"
And yet Suhyeok gritted his teeth and held on.
Out of fear of death? No.
The reason he kept fighting to the bitter end was that he'd judged there was a chance. He'd been feeling a peculiar sensation for a while now.
'The physics are off. I think I pulled off a little bunnyhop earlier.'
Bunnyhop was a term for a running technique used in first-person shooters.
In the genre where you became a gun-wielding soldier and competed against other players, people commonly mashed the space bar to hop around, because running while jumping was faster than just running.
This wasn't actually intentional—it was a bug caused by poorly written code.
For example, even if a character's maximum running speed was set at 100, switching direction while running could cause the speed to momentarily exceed 100.
Illustrated with arrows, it looked like this:
Pressing the right movement key (→) while moving forward (↑) produced a diagonal (↗), where the forward speed and lateral speed were added together.
That part was fine.
The developers knew this phenomenon could push the speed above 100, and they'd written compensating code to gradually bring it back to 100.
The problem was when the character 'jumped' while running and became airborne. The code was written so that a character's speed while airborne was maintained at whatever it was just before the jump. That was the culprit.
Players who discovered this devised an ingenious method.
First, run diagonally to push speed past the maximum (100), then jump. Landing and running would trigger the developer's compensating code to normalize the speed, so they'd jump diagonally again at the instant of landing. Jump, jump, and jump again.
The speed kept increasing until, eventually, moving at absurd velocities became possible.
Thus was born the spectacle of every player hopping around like rabbits.
In FPS games where racing to a position to hold it was critical, this became an essential technique, and a very useful and entertaining worldwide bug—the bunnyhop—was born.
The developers eventually identified the bug's cause, but left it alone.
Because the 'interaction' of hopping around was deemed more fun than just running in a straight line. After that, most decent FPS games deliberately implemented bunnyhop.
'Same goes for KingRPG.'
There wasn't a game developer alive who didn't know about bunnyhop.
The reasons why that kind of interaction felt fun were also well-documented, so Suhyeok had included bunnyhop-like elements in KingRPG as well—and just now, he'd felt it.
When he'd kicked off a tree and sprinted, something about this world's physics had operated slightly differently from reality.
And the one who'd written the physics code for this world was Suhyeok. Himself.
"Persistent little—!"
WHOOSH—!
Suhyeok backstopped to dodge the attack and corrected his stance.
Recalling the physics code he'd written for this world, he loosened his grip on the sword and took a deep breath. The moment the man, rage boiling over, closed in—
| LimSuHyeok MoveTo(15320.5, -49173.1, 18.1) |
| LimSuHyeok Stand |
| LimSuHyeok Move.Back |
| LimSuHyeok Move.Right |
| LimSuHyeok Attack.Melee |
As if hammering arrow keys on a keyboard, he shifted his weight sharply back, center of gravity to the right, and swung the sword up.
SHING—!
With that came lightning-fast speed.
Riding a bizarre burst of acceleration, Suhyeok's blade tore through the air in a savage upward strike.