Chapter 130 : Chapter 130
Chapter 130
A halo was placed on Reinhardt.
It wasn’t because of the spirit of light.
If one were to ask if Truma had intervened, it didn’t seem to be the case either.
“What’s the cause?”
Han Yura asked into the empty air.
Her gaze was fixed on the monitor.
Reinhardt’s comment was, ‘A halo suddenly appeared on my back.’
This was impossible.
No, it wasn't impossible, but it was set up so that such an event would not occur.
Reinhardt had to become the Knight of Light, but that was strictly a phenomenon that occurred through linked combat with the spirit of light.
“President, you’re there, right? I’m coming in for a moment.”
Han Yura immediately went to find President Min Hyung-joon.
She saw a chair that was tilted all the way back. Min Hyung-joon was resting his feet on the desk with his eyes closed.
“Guh, guhhh….”
A groaning sound escaped from Min Hyung-joon’s mouth.
When she went closer to look, he was even sweating profusely.
“President! Wake up! How can you be sleeping when there’s so much work to do!”
“Ugh, ughhh!”
CRASH!
Min Hyung-joon’s eyes flew open and he flailed his arms and legs. It was only natural that the chair, which had been barely balanced, fell backward.
“Ouch….”
Min Hyung-joon got up, holding his lower back.
He set the fallen chair upright, then looked at Han Yura and smiled sheepishly.
“You caught me?”
“What do you mean, caught? It’s not the first or second time.”
“I just can’t fight off the sleepiness. It was like this before, but it seems to be getting worse lately.”
“Isn’t it a food coma?”
“That kind of misunderstanding is disappointing. I was working without even eating.”
“Well, I get it. It’s not like I haven’t seen this before.”
President Min Hyung-joon had been like that since the early days when he started the company.
He would say that an unbearable sleepiness would wash over him at some point and would lie down and sleep anywhere.
It was not at a level he could endure with willpower.
It was so bad that he had even done so right before an important contract.
“Did you have a dream?”
And after sleeping soundly like that, President Min Hyung-joon would lay out the game’s story as if it were flowing water.
Han Yura liked most of the stories.
To the question of how he had thought of such things, Min Hyung-joon would smile sheepishly and say, ‘I saw it in a dream.’
“It’s not good. Lately, they’ve all been nightmares.”
“Since when?”
“You were sweating a lot too.”
“It was absolutely terrible.”
“What kind of nightmare was it, specifically?”
“That look in your eyes right now, it’s very developer-like. I can see the will to take out even this kind of source material and make it into a game.”
“I will make it. Just not right now. I’m asking because I thought it might be a clue.”
“For that, you haven’t even brought up your main point yet. You must have come here because there’s something?”
“Oops.”
Min Hyung-joon smirked as if to say, ‘See?’
Han Yura admitted her mistake and brought up her reason for being there.
“A halo has appeared on Reinhardt.”
“A halo? The spirit of light, no, has Bitdori already awakened? It’s not ‘already,’ is it? It missed its awakening timing by a long shot, I believe?”
“It’s not because of Bitdori.”
“Then?”
“It just appeared.”
Min Hyung-joon narrowed his brow and asked again.
“Is it because of Truma?”
“No, it wasn’t that either.”
Han Yura added an explanation.
What Reinhardt had said to Truma. And how Truma had reacted to it.
“It’s not a situation where a halo would be granted. It couldn’t be in the first place, right?”
“Even if it were, only Miya Luxpenber should be able to see it. Because it’s a light that other NPCs cannot perceive.”
“So, we don’t know the cause of the halo. We’ll have to pile speculation on top of speculation again.”
“Agrio-s has withdrawn, and Truma has also withdrawn. Reinhardt is caught in the middle.
Then a halo appeared out of the blue.”
“What was the reaction from the Paganoa Knights?”
“There’s not much of a reaction to speak of. The commander hasn’t even made his official appearance yet, has he?”
The Paganoa Knights.
In the original work, they were a place where human weapons who fought demons gathered, but in the expansion pack, they held a slightly different position.
“It’s a point in time where they would be obsessed with maintaining balance.”
They protect the balance.
Here, protecting the balance meant engaging in a tug-of-war between gods and demons.
It meant not taking one side, but moving between them like a bat to ensure both sides remained in a tense standoff.
“Problems that arise in the human world are solved by human power. Because that’s the top priority goal ingrained in Commander Taylor’s mind.”
“Then the demons go too far, and he decides it would be better to just get rid of the demons.”
“If it flows like that, it becomes the same story as the original work. I put in branching points here and there so the ending could change.”
“It wouldn’t be strange for Taylor to be sensitive, would it?”
“Who knows. He might think the balance has been broken and become hostile to Reinhardt….”
“He could also leave him be. If he judges that he needs the power to stand against the demons.”
The two built a tower of speculation.
They laid out the facts they each knew and searched their memories.
In case there was something they had missed.
Or in case they could find a new clue this way.
But the conclusion this time also came down to one thing.
“In fact, everything is uncertain. There isn’t a single element we can be sure of.”
“Even though it’s a game we made.”
“Because that place is not a game.”
“There are no rules to speak of. Everyone is doing as they please.”
“Isn’t the world we live in like that too?”
“Living life is originally a bit overwhelming. But there’s no more reliable advisor than experience, right? Let’s organize our speculations and turn them into high-probability speculations.”
In any case, they had to help Reinhardt.
That was one of the few things they could do here.
“First, if you think about it, that’s right. The Paganoa Knights and… ah, correction.
High-ranking officials, including Commander Taylor of Paganoa, will still be focused on maintaining ‘balance’.”
“I think so too. Because a war hasn’t broken out.”
“The three Popes, the Imperial Palace, the Magic Tower, the Academy, and those places would be the same, right?”
“If there had been a clash of opinions, it would have become much noisier.”
“Good.”
TAP.
Min Hyung-joon lightly tapped the desk with the tip of the pen he had been twirling.
“Humans are still engaged in a tug-of-war between demons and gods.”
“But Agrio-s and Truma have made a bet on Reinhardt.”
“If that fact were known, it would have already become a headache. Fortunately, we should assume the human faction doesn’t know yet… Wait a minute.”
“Why?”
“Does Reinhardt know this?”
“Know what?”
“The fact that they have a different goal from the original work.”
Han Yura blinked her eyes a few times.
“Wouldn’t he know?”
“How?”
“Well, obviously, because it’s obvious?”
“How long was his playtime?”
“It wasn’t that long. Wouldn’t he have read a guide? We kept dropping hints through Taylor’s lines. Like, we were thinking wrong, or we didn’t have to take one side.”
“Was there ever a guide like that posted?”
“There are people who only analyze the story. In any game.”
“Soul Calibur had a thick user base like that. I know that too.”
The conversation stopped for a moment.
Han Yura, blinking her eyes again, said.
“I’ll have to let him know.”
“That would be good. And add our speculations. Is there any other information we should add?”
“That would be….”
“Think carefully. We might have missed something. Something that is obvious to us, and obvious to users who have played the game extensively, but not obvious to someone like Reinhardt who has only played moderately.”
It was a sharp point.
But just because a problem was identified didn’t mean the solution was easy.
“The Truma Order side, hmm, the Pope’s personality?”
“Not something like that. No, that would be helpful… would it?”
“I think it would.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to know. And?”
“The Demon Cult’s, where do the warlocks go when they die?”
“Everyone knows that. If they’ve seen the ending.”
“That’s true.”
The two fell into the curse of knowledge.
They could no longer tell what was common knowledge.
It was because they had poured too much time into developing the game.
It might be different for other employees, but for the two of them, the game Soul Calibur was something they had practically poured their entire lives into.
Information was jumbled in their heads.
If only the story’s flow hadn’t changed. If things had just flowed as the two had designed, it wouldn’t be as bewildering as it was now.
“This won’t do. Let’s go with rote learning. Just cram it all in.”
“What if the information is wrong? It might have changed from what we thought. Like a personality changing.”
“Oops.”
“I’ll add a precondition. The planning intention was this. We don’t know what it’s like now.”
“An excellent alternative.”
A conclusion was reached to some extent.
Min Hyung-joon and Han Yura compiled and classified the information. They set their own criteria for what to tell and what not to tell.
After doing that for a long while.
“The world was being destroyed.”
Min Hyung-joon said.
It was the content of the nightmare he had just had.
To be precise, it was a nightmare he had been having continuously lately.
“A bad ending?”
“Yeah.”
“Even dreams like that are helpful. From an internal game perspective.”
“That’s right. Not all endings can be happy.”
“What was it about?”
“I was a resident of that neighborhood. Everywhere was on fire, monsters were roaming every alley, and I was busy running away. I was so scared that I buried myself in a pile of trash, covered my head, and trembled.”
“Did you live?”
“I was on the verge of death. A monster opened its maw right in front of my nose. That’s when you woke me up, Section Chief Han.”
Han Yura raised her gaze to the ceiling and then lowered it, as if something was strange.
“But how did you know the world was being destroyed?”
“Fallen corpses were scattered everywhere.”
“Corpses?”
“They were all faces I knew. The heroes we put in to save the world were all lying there powerlessly.”
“Then it was indeed ruined. But why were you there, President? Were you one of them?”
“I don’t know that far. It was a dream.”
That’s how dreams are.
Even in moments where one would have had countless questions in reality, one doesn’t think it’s strange and melts into the situation.
“You used to have nightmares like that before, right?”
“Those dreams became the bad endings.”
“But before, it was on and off, wasn’t it? There were times you had pleasant dreams too.”
“That’s right.”
Pleasant dreams became happy endings, and nightmares became bad endings.
In the past, Min Hyung-joon had balanced dreams.
But not recently. The days of having particularly terrible nightmares were repeating.
BEEP-
Just then, Han Yura checked her phone. It was the sound of a comment notification from the community.
As Min Hyung-joon watched with a tense expression, she said.
“He says he’s returning to Serigel now. Everything is mostly wrapped up, and he even promised to supply the Paganoa Knights with equipment from Elmore on a priority basis….”
“A wise decision. He’ll be able to grab hold of the atmosphere at once.”
“Because he’s someone who played the game.”
This was why the two of them had such a headache.
Most of the members of the Paganoa Knights are pure.
It was common knowledge for anyone who had played the original work. But it was a part they couldn't be sure of, to what extent Reinhardt knew that common knowledge.
“The halo is still there, Bitdori and Truma are the same, and he says Evangeline and Fermil will remain and continue their mission?”
“That’s also good news.”
“It must mean the commander didn’t feel a particular sense of crisis, right?”
“I think so.”
“And… huh?”
Han Yura tilted her head with a strange expression.
“He said Miya asked that question. If he hadn’t been having nightmares frequently lately.”