Chapter 20

The reason MovieSoft chose to develop this work—which the company had staked its survival on—in Korea rather than at the main office that had been creating the existing series, was because of Eve Paymo.

He was a famous game developer the company had scouted from outside when it was unable to adapt to the capsule era and was walking the path of decline.

Sitting in the position of company CCO and president of the Korean branch, he made the bold decision to come to Korea directly for development, based on the fact that Korea had the world’s highest capsule adoption rate and consumers were sensitive to trends, rather than just proceeding with localization as they had before.

There had been much talk from the start, but as work progressed, he was confident in this series’ success and was even preparing the next expansion project.

And when the success of Shadows in the City was confirmed on release day, the next project started at lightning speed.

It truly was a path paved with gold, but.

There was one problem.

The very picture he was drawing was in danger of being ruined from the start.

By a single streamer.

Kim Yoon-chan, who had been called to the president’s office early in the morning, cautiously spoke up.

“I told you I had a bad feeling about this…”

“Shut up. Hurry up and explain. Why has Weakness Detection been unlocked already!”

Eve Paymo said.

“Hahaha. That’s right. I didn’t expect to be read either.”

Kim Yoon-chan smiled brightly, and Eve Paymo became curious.

“What do you mean you were read?”

“President. We estimated that users would need at least a month to unlock Weakness Detection.”

“Honestly, it wouldn’t be strange if it took half a year instead of a month. How easy is it for someone to accidentally hit a weak point and have a weapon break, and for that to be recorded and shared with people?”

“That’s right. Even if someone took the initiative to find weak points, it would really, at least, take a minimum of a month.”

“There’s also the fact that our game has too much to do for people to spend time on Weakness Detection.”

Eve Paymo was proud of the assassination system in Shadows in the City that he had created.

“That’s also true. With so many other things to do, who would have nothing better to do than look for weak points that destroy weapons? Especially when it relies on luck.”

It was content that only hardcore players who had completed all challenges and would get thorns in their mouths if there was something they hadn’t tried in the game would aim for.

In fact, hack-and-slash and weak points were designed for them.

“Right. So why was Weakness Detection unlocked just one week after release?”

The unlocking of Weakness Detection itself wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that obtaining Weakness Detection made it possible to pierce Richard Neville’s heavy armor—one of the Rulers—and defeat him with hack-and-slash.

The reason lay in the Cosmos Fragments given for defeating Rulers with hack-and-slash.

They had hidden easter eggs for the next project here and there, and Cosmos Fragments were one of them.

A short quest related to the next project that could be progressed once all fragments were collected.

And the release of an attention-grabbing teaser video timed to when interest peaked.

It was his natural and effective promotional method for the next project.

The problem was that the possibility had opened for all Cosmos Fragments to be collected before the teaser video was ready.

“Well, the reason it was unlocked is, as I just said, because we were read.”

Eve Paymo desperately suppressed the urge to punch that calm and bright Kim Yoon-chan.

“Stop beating around the bush and explain properly.”

“Yes.”

Kim Yoon-chan sent a clip to Eve Paymo.

It was a video from during the collaboration with Alpaca.

“Hmm? That’s clean.”

“Right? This is that streamer Seo-jun recreating what someone else discovered.”

“I see. He’s quite skilled.”

“And the next video is of that streamer finding and destroying weak points.”

“What?”

Eve Paymo thought he had misheard and asked again.

“He found weak points? That streamer did?”

“Yes.”

After watching the second video of him destroying shields and swords, Eve Paymo looked at Kim Yoon-chan with wide eyes.

“No, how… does this make sense? Didn’t he just have the Weakness Detection skill due to a bug?”

It was such an absurd video that Eve Paymo, who had guaranteed there were no bugs in his game, was talking about bugs.

“No. I already checked that.”

“Then…”

“Having watched the entire collaboration video and become a fan of streamer Seo-jun, I’d say he read the pattern. Though it seems unbelievable that he could read the search routes that the AI and team members were ground up to create just from seeing two examples. But since he says that’s what happened, what can we do?”

I didn’t ask about you becoming his fan.

“So what do we do?”

“About what?”

“How long did we set for making our next project’s teaser video?”

“One month.”

“If we work overtime starting today to make it as fast as possible?”

“One… week?”

“Then what’s the probability that streamer will collect all the Cosmos Fragments within that time?”

“I can say this with certainty, fortunately—100%.”

That’s not fortunate, you bastard.

“Well, we don’t necessarily have to release the teaser video immediately.”

“Then the picture I imagined won’t come to life!”

Eve Paymo habitually pressed his temples while seeking a solution to the problem.

Nothing in the world goes according to plan, but this was really unexpected.

It might be trivial if you considered it trivial, but he didn’t want the next project to be twisted from the beginning.

“Oh? He just started streaming. Want to watch together?”

For a moment, Eve Paymo almost threw the document folder on his desk but restrained himself and said politely.

“Get out! And I told you not to watch streams during work hours!”

“Yes!”

“Hah…”

He shouldn’t have made Cosmos Fragments in the first place.

If only someone hadn’t said it would be good to allocate at least one easter egg to hack-and-slash related content for hack-and-slash users.

Come to think of it, the person who made that comment was also Kim Yoon-chan, wasn’t it?

Eve Paymo watched Seo-jun’s videos repeatedly in frustration.

How on earth did he do it?

And he contacted Kim Yoon-chan via company messenger to receive other videos.

Videos of neutralizing Richard Neville’s heavy armor in one go.

‘He defeat a Ruler without having Weakness Detection?’

This is a bit…

Cool.

Should he says it was a feast for the eyes?

Many more videos related to Seo-jun were uploaded afterward.

Especially when finding Drake’s location, Eve Paymo couldn’t wipe the pleased smile from his face.

Because the route Seo-jun found was exactly one of Eve Paymo’s ideas.

‘So that’s how it got revealed.’

It felt rewarding.

Players enjoying the game they had poured their souls into in their own way.

And players being surprised, saying ‘This works too?’

It was all exactly what they had hoped for while making an open world.

Eve Paymo watched it several times in admiration before slyly hitting the follow button.

* * *

“Hello everyone.”

Seo-jun waved his hand lightly as he greeted them.

-Hello hello

-Hi~

-Why is the stream title like this?

-Hello!

[1,700 viewers]

The rapidly rising chat window.

The firepower approaching 2,000 people was definitely on a different level.

He had heard that his room already had more chat relative to viewer count than most.

As the viewer count grew, the speed of chat rising became incomparably faster than before.

So.

“Now, Joseon’s Assassin, Best Defense, and White Horse Bullet User have all come in, right?”

At Seo-jun’s words, chats with sword marks displayed next to the usernames appeared.

-Yes!

-Yes. I’ll do my best.

-Just leave it to me. I, Joseon’s Assasin, owner of 25 million points, will manage thoroughly.

-Only bad usernames gathered

-How are the manager names Defense, White Horse, Assassin lol

These were people who had watched Seo-jun’s stream from the first day.

Looking at past chat records, they hadn’t caused problems despite their usernames and had consistently enjoyed watching his streams, so Seo-jun asked them to be chat managers and they gladly agreed.

For reference, Public Toilet Brick Theft King hadn’t answered yet.

“These people will cut chats that violate chat rules as managers from now on. Thank you.”

Meanwhile, Joseon’s Assassin used points to add special effects to his chat.

Is this the dignity of the wealthy?

“And since my room has chat rules now, please read them briefly.”

-Wow, I’m jealous of the managers.

-I want an armband too.

-I want to wear a sword too.

-! Rules

-! Rules

-! Rules

Chats asking to check the rules appeared.

1. Please only talk about things related to the stream.

2. If you see annoying chats, don’t fight in the chat window—send a whisper to the managers.

3. You know what you shouldn’t do, right?

Chat rules on Travel varied by streamer without standardized criteria.

Some people wrote them strictly, others just wrote ‘Please don’t be rude.’

Some wrote greetings along with wishes to have fun, to that extent.

And Seo-jun’s chat rules were concise.

Because Seo-jun preferred a free communication atmosphere.

-Summary) Use your brain

-Confirmed

-What shouldn’t we do?

“What shouldn’t you do? You roughly know. Still, unless it’s pretty severe, you probably won’t even get a warning.”

He had already finished talking with the managers.

-For real lol

-If you write that in detail, people always try to get around the rules to cause trouble, then get mad saying they followed the rules when they get banned

[‘Yes Yes’ donated 10,000 won!]

[Aren’t you hiring a broadcast settings assistant?]

If they had just chatted, he would have passed over it, but since they donated, he had no choice but to respond.

“…Thank you for the donation. I’m not hiring that kind of person.”

Having someone to help with broadcast settings would be nice, but the intention of specifically including ‘settings’ in the sentence was suspicious.

-LOL

-He’s gritting his teeth lol

-Scam incoming.

-World’s first technologically challenged streamer. But his skills are amazing.

-So what’s the stream title?

-Doing Assassin’s Dawn again today?

-Please do regular assassination too.

-Let’s go hack-and-slash!

-Show us more Weakness Detection. I want to get the skill too.

Since they hadn’t properly started yet, the chat content was all over the place.

Seo-jun built up some momentum for progression.

“Ah, the stream title? Well, about that. I noticed quite a few people had suspicions about me finding weak points. So I think it’s partly my fault for not explaining properly, so first, I’m sorry.”

-Doesn’t look sorry at all.

-Come on. At least bow your head lol

“But I’m not a hacker. I’m not a game development insider either.”

-Why are you even mentioning hacks?

-Actually uses super hacks lol (giggling)

-But would anyone seriously believe a college student is a MovieSoft developer?

-So how did you really find weak points? I’m curious

Seo-jun nodded as if agreeing while looking at the chat.

“To get to the point, the weak point rules I figured out were connecting the parts that wear out most when using that equipment with multiple trajectories to make them easy to cut.”

It was far from real-world weak points, but he thought this was the rule the developers had in mind, and this proved correct.

-??? I don’t understand even after hearing your explanation

-Are you some kind of blacksmith? How would you know that?

-How smart are you exactly

“Well, I was going to properly prove this today, but I’ve already obtained Weakness Detection at this point, and no matter what I do, people could just say I hacked the capsule.”

[‘Travel Historian’ donated 10,000 won!]

[The hacking controversy is a long tradition of our stream.]

-For real lol

-He gets suspected because his skills are so good

-Long tradition (4th day of streaming)

After thanking them for the donation.

“So I reported it.”

Seo-jun’s expression suddenly turned serious.

-?????

-Reported what?

-What report are you suddenly talking about?

“Myself.”

Seo-jun brought up the Assassin’s Dawn inquiry window he had prepared.

[Hack Report] [I think I might have used hacks without knowing it. Could you please check?]

-LOL Are you crazy?

-So this is why you “turned yourself in” lmao

-Ah lol. The game company will prove it for you!

“Now that the explanation is over, let’s enter the game right away.”

Seo-jun returned to an innocent expression as if he had never been serious and stretched.

-LMAO Is this the attitude of someone giving an apology stream?

-For real, he’s a quiet lunatic

-Broadcasting genius lol

“Now today’s stream… Let me see, a mission came in? Thank you, Assassin’s Dawn developer.”

Seo-jun skillfully manipulated the broadcast settings and accepted the mission.

Then a window appeared in the upper left of the broadcast screen.

[Clear against the Tower Master without using Weakness Detection — Mission Reward: 1,000,000 won]

It was donation money he could receive if he succeeded in the mission.

-Wow, a million won

-Whoa

-But does the Tower Master have anything to use Weakness Detection on? He has no equipment

-Talking about magic?

-Then can magic be split too? Seeing you know this, are you really a developer? Maybe?

The first mission was already an enormous amount.

He was already thinking of going to the Magic Tower anyway.

“That’s right. Are you really a developer?”

-No way that’s real

-Why is the streamer so naive lol