Season 4: Chapter 49. The Glitch Demon (1)
Games were linear in the past. No matter which option the player chose, the targets and how to deal with them were already predetermined. Gamers didn’t need to be skilled or creative. They simply needed to decipher the creator’s intent, which was no longer true in modern games.
Players now had choices. A former ally could become an enemy, and an enemy could turn into an ally depending on those choices. At the very least, players could decide how to approach enemies or which path to take. Freedom of choice had become an essential feature in nearly every game.
With the advancement of AI processing systems, various options became even easier to implement. Small to mid-sized developers could now build games with decent degrees of freedom. Of course, not every gamer welcomed this with open arms.
[How many games have flopped trying to chase that freedom gimmick?]
[Nowadays, every game claims to be open-world, but it's more like broken-world.]
[Honestly, just stick to a tight linear story if you can’t pull off proper freedom.]
Freedom of choice was a complicated concept. Even with AI assistance, implementing it properly was no easy feat. After all, capturing the countless variables and decisions of real life into virtual reality was essentially impossible. Games had to portray freedom selectively. This was where a studio’s competence truly showed.
Sometimes, vague attempts at freedom ruined a game’s quality. Other times, carefully curated choices made the game feel more realistic. Unfortunately, it was usually the former for smaller studios.
Ghostwo Busters was a game from a mid-sized Korean studio. With their limited budget, it wasn’t exactly a game where one could praise its groundbreaking freedom. However, this element surprisingly stood out.
[Isn’t Ghostwo Busters an indie game? Its freedom is insane, lol]
[Thought it was just a basic exorcism game, but the freedom? God-tier.]
[Ghostwo Busters freedom moment, lmao]
Maybe it was thanks to the two streamers showcasing the game. Word spread among players about the game’s freedom more than anything else. Sure, opinions on freedom depended on one’s perspective. Even so, this level of praise was unusual. At least, CEO Jung thought that way.
‘A high degree of freedom, huh...’
He knew exactly how much freedom his game offered. Ghostwo Busters wasn’t a game that deserved such praise. Of course, the reason behind all this was those two. Bubblebum and Almond were breaking the game in ways that no one expected. They pioneered freedom that didn’t exist like cowboys in the Wild West.
‘Dammit. This isn’t a good thing.’
From a game designer’s point of view, this wasn’t something to be happy about. Worse yet, many of those compliments about freedom were probably sarcasm. It only meant one thing when a game that didn’t emphasize freedom was being evaluated on that metric. The design was loose.
‘Still... at least they walked right into the final trap.’
Even so, it was hard to completely go against the game’s core structure. Bubblegum and Almond finally fell into a major trap prepared by the developers. They had mistakenly believed that Shin Ki-Hye was the true mastermind and killed her.
‘Things should start going back to normal now.’
CEO Jung faintly sighed in relief and turned back to his work computer. The modeling developers, previously scolded for the 20% polygon incident, had gathered in a chat room.
[CEO: I’ve reviewed your suggestions. Please complete the modeling patch by the day after tomorrow.]
[Newtype: Got it.]
[Broe: Will do.]
Seeing their responses, CEO Jung leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“Whew... Let’s hope nothing else goes wrong.”
He turned toward the monitor playing the livestream. They were still fighting inside MetaBucks. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so far.
CEO Jung rubbed his sleepy eyes.
“Huh? Did I doze off for a second?”
Thunk.
He smacked himself on the head, wondering if he was seeing things after pulling too many all-nighters. Even after hitting himself, the scene in front of him didn’t change.
‘Why am I seeing the final boss stage already?’
***
The MetaBucks turned into complete chaos after Almond beheaded Shin Ki-Hye.
[Grade-2 Priest]
The NPC employees suddenly transformed into priests and began firing demonic energy at them.
Boom!
Bang!
Bubblegum was too busy dodging to do anything else.
“Hah... huff... A-Almond! Where are you?!”
He ducked under another table, shouting as he searched for Almond.
— Only good at playing hide-and-seek with Almond, lol
— What are you doing? Please just do some DPS, come on
— Can someone tell me what our main damage dealer is doing?
The chat roasted him.
Bubblegum felt wronged. “I swear he was right here just a second ago!”
They had been back-to-back and cooperating perfectly. Then, Almond suddenly vanished.
— Their tempo was off from the beginning, lol
— Bubblegum, just play your own game!
— Serious question: Can Bubblegum even use skills?
The chat continued to mock him and ignored his pleas.
Ding.
[GumCommandments has donated 10,000 won.]
[Almond ran away from Bubblegum after hearing Gum’s Commandments, lol]
— LMAO
— Bruhh
— So true
— Nailed it
“No way!” Bubblegum snapped.
With Almond gone, it wouldn’t be strange for Bubblegum to die at any moment from any direction.
Boom!
Even now, the table that Bubblgum hid under suddenly exploded into splinters.
Ding.
[Dosha has donated 3,000 won.]
[Almond is using Dimensional Step magic~]
— Ohhh, that’s it
— That’s why he vanished, lol
— Dimensional Step skill, dang
It had to be the Dimensional Step skill. He had vanished in a flash. Bubblegum couldn’t have followed him in the first place.
“There! Over there!”
Fwoosh!
Almond reappeared right in front of a Grade-2 Priest and swung his Exorcist Sword.
Slash!
Just as quickly as he had appeared, the blade cut through the air and cleaved the priest in two.
“Whoa!”
— Whoa
— Clean
— He’s in sword-dance mode now, this is insane
— Is this really the same Almond who only did detective stuff?
— Damn, what a beast
Even Bubblegum’s viewers felt stunned by Almond’s rare show of physical prowess. They weren’t the only ones impressed. The Kim duo watching from the dev studio couldn’t help but marvel as well.
“Wait, he’s using Dimensional Step like it’s nothing?”
“There’s no aim point either...”
His use of Dimensional Step caught their attention. From a game design standpoint, this was an incredibly unfriendly skill. Traditionally, Dimensional Step referred to folding space like a map to cover distance in a single stride.
However, it functioned more like a blink move that instantly teleported the player forward. Unlike other blink skills that showed where the player would reappear, this skill had no such targeting aid.
In a top-down game, that wasn’t much of an issue. In full virtual reality, guessing one’s destination by eye was risky. Players often got stuck in walls or teleported somewhere completely wrong.
“If you mess that up, you could die instantly. Right, Mr. Kim?”
Manager Kim had hoped to see exactly that.
“Y-Yeah. It’s super risky.”
Even in the famous Harry Potter novel, teleportation was riddled with fatal mishaps. The same applied here. Blink skills had built-in guides for a reason.
“If you use it carelessly, you’ll basically explode.”
Fwoosh!
Despite being an extremely dangerous skill, Almond used it again to strike down another priest.
Slash!
Another clean cut landed, and another priest fell.
“No way!? He pulled it off again!?”
“Well... expecting Almond to mess up might be asking too much. He’s a god with blink skills.”
“But this is different!”
“Still though...”
“Forget that. Why’s he fighting so hard right now? Huh? Just go back to the damn save point!”
Manager Kim nervously punched the air in front of the monitor.
“Dammit! Hit him, will you?! Aren’t these priests supposed to be spirits!? Why the hell are they dying so easily against a shaman?!”
He began to worry that Almond would actually defeat all the enemies and blaze a solo route.
Assistant Manager Kim shook his head. That wouldn’t happen.
“They’re not dead.”
“Huh?”
“They did die, but it’s not over. Like you said, they’re spirit enemies.”
“Shhhraaa!”
Slash!
Almond had nearly finished off all the priests.
“Almond! Almond! Mom, when I grow up, I wanna be Almond!” Bubblegum cheered him on devoutly.
Rrrrrumble...
Then, something dark and ominous rose from the corpses of the fallen priests.
[Grade-1 Wraith]
The wraiths radiated an eerie aura. And they were Grade-1, no less. They floated above the ground, wielding maces and massive scythes like grim reapers. One of them swung its weapon at Almond.
Fwwwwwoooom—
It was so fast that even Bubblegum couldn’t track it with his eyes. Almond matched the attack with a counterstrike. In fact, he even tried to land a counter.
However, Almond got hit instead.
BOOOOM!
His head whipped to the side, and he flew back.
“Gah!”
— ??
— What the hell
— He got hit?!
— Whoa
Almond rolled across the wooden floor of MetaBucks.
***
This was a first since the game began. Almond had finally taken a clean hit. Maybe that was why.
“WOOOOOOOO!”
“LET’S GOOOO!”
“Hell yeah! This is what I’m talking about! Go, wraiths!”
The Kim duo cheered like they’d just won a championship.
“Finally, a hit landed! And it was a physical one, too!!”
Ever since the dev team's trap card triggered, the situation had clearly swung in the company’s favor.
“I mean, they tried to go straight for the boss? That’s divine punishment right there!” Assistant Manager Kim shouted at the screen, swept up in the excitement, even though Almond obviously couldn’t hear him.
“Right?! Going full solo warrior has its limits!” Manager Kim chimed in too.
“What, is he planning to solo an entire enemy castle or something? That’s ridiculous!”
Gulp.
Assistant Manager Kim suddenly recalled something.
‘Almond already did that.’
One of Almond’s very first feats after becoming a streamer was soloing an enemy castle. Granted, it had happened in a different game, and they had meant it as a metaphor just now. However, Assistant Manager Kim began to have a bad feeling.
‘No way...’
Would Almond push through this too?
‘No. No way.’
He couldn’t kill wraiths. They were a mismatch by design. The players had to fight them alongside Su-Yeon. And Su-Yeon hadn’t even joined them yet. Almond had jumped the gun, and now he was stuck. He couldn’t possibly defeat the wraiths alone.