[NPia Corporation, Chairman’s Office.]
“Nice!!”
The President of NPia, the Vice President, the Director, and even the General Producer of Granade Impact: Redive clenched their fists and erupted in cheers.
“Look at this! The buff worked, and she’s wearing it again!”
The President rewound the footage displayed on the screen.
It had already been played on loop multiple times, but they couldn’t resist watching it again.
Gugugugu.
The harsh sound of helicopter blades.
On the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, flanked by rows of Marines, stood Elaine, holding her Frost Sword.
They knew.
They knew she was a Cosplay Maid.
Everyone knew she was just an S-rank Hunter cosplaying as Elaine.
And yet, the reason why everyone at NPia was so elated was that she had returned to her original form.
“Praise the Cosplayer!”
“For the Master!”
“Sniff… I believed in you… Damn it! Just thinking about how our stock plummeted on the day she appeared in that Chinese android cosplay…! Sniff…!”
If anyone questioned why people were making such a fuss over a Hunter cosplaying, they were probably someone who had been hospitalized for a month with memory loss and had just woken up.
“You guys really worked hard. Seriously, I know how tough it was.”
“Haha… Not at all, sir.”
The President patted the General Producer on the shoulder with a grin.
The PD gave a sheepish smile, but the dark circles under his eyes were impossible to hide.
“What’s the user response?”
“It’s mixed.”
“Mixed?”
“Yes. Some people are thrilled that Elaine is cosplaying again after receiving the buff, while others are complaining.”
“Those cowards wouldn’t dare say a word to her face but yap behind her back.”
The President scoffed as he skimmed through the UTube comment section.
“If it weren’t for the Cosplay Maid, there wouldn’t have been free summon resources, no Elaine buff, and no balance adjustments for old characters.”
Old character adjustments.
In most mobile subculture games, once a character is released, their stats are rarely patched or modified.
Even when they are, it’s usually only if a character is too weak at launch and isn’t generating revenue.
They don’t go back and buff characters that have been out for ages.
And certainly not like this—
Not by adding some exclusive “collector’s item” type of special gear.
Not by merely tweaking base stats to increase damage multipliers.
Not by releasing a “new and improved” version of the character and calling that a buff.
No, this time, they had fundamentally altered the game’s system itself.
“Now, thanks to the Cosplay Maid, we actually have to press QWER skills? What’s next, adding D and F too? Might as well go all the way.”
“Sir, this is a mobile game.”
“There are mobile games with four skill buttons. Hell, some have six. Even that rift game went mobile, so why not?”
“That’s… a little different… Haah.”
The more excited the President got, the more the Vice President and the PD had to force a smile.
“Listen, guys. Sales are up. Bonuses are going up. I’m not just making empty promises—just hold on a little longer, okay?”
“We’re already in crunch mode every day…”
“We haven’t had a weekend off in forever…”
“You’re making 2 million won a day, and you’re still whining?”
At the President’s sharp tone, the Vice President and the PD exchanged glances.
They had already received far more than that in bonuses, but perhaps because too much money had been flowing into their accounts in such a short period—
“Can we take a day off instead of getting 2 million won…?”
“Yeah. The employees are exhausted.”
“Hah…”
The President scratched his head. He couldn’t exactly force people to work themselves to death.
No matter how much money they made, if they collapsed from overwork before they could even spend it, what was the point?
“Alright. Then let’s space out the skill additions. Elaine was a special case, so let’s start patching the standard and 1.0 characters gradually.”
“That’s still a lot of work… But yeah, at least it’s better than patching every character up to version 1.X all at once.”
“Also, if we rerun the characters getting new skills, it’ll help boost revenue a bit—”
“No, no.”
The President waved his hand dismissively.
“Give them away.”
“…Excuse me?”
“From version 1.0 to 1.7, give out an R-skill for free each time a character gets one.”
“Sir… what kind of insane company does that…?”
“And then, tweak the mechanics of the new characters so they synergize with those buffs.”
“…”
The General PD grimaced at the President’s reckless ideas. But in the end, he was just another employee.
“Hah…”
“I know you guys are working yourselves to death, but this is the only way I can help. Financial therapy.”
“…How much therapy are we talking about?”
“How much…”
The President of Npia raised a single finger as he watched a video of the S-rank Tower floating above Dokdo.
“There’s no better advertisement than the Cosplay Maid clearing Dokdo and appearing in the perfect, flawless form of Elaine. If that happens, every employee gets a 100 million won bonus.”
“…Are you insane, sir?”
“Yeah, I’m insane.”
The President of NPia wiped his nose and answered nonchalantly.
“If Cosplayer conquers Dokdo, it’ll send a clear message to the world that ‘Dokdo is Korean territory.’ That’s worth it, don’t you think? It’s not like the company is short on cash.”
“…”
“Make the announcement. About Dokdo… well, include Jeju Island too. We sincerely wish our S-rank Hunters the best of luck in their Tower conquests.”
“Uh, sir.”
The Director quietly raised a hand.
“But Cosplayer is challenging it solo. Won’t that make Dokdo take longer?”
“…”
* * *
Is it a special ability? Or a large-scale extermination move?
The existing skills were already powerful, but the newly added skill was overwhelmingly strong, befitting the term special ability.
[Kiiiiiieeeek!!]
The sound of beasts dying echoed painfully in my ears.
In the desolate waters near Dokdo, where whales should have been, enormous earthworms were surging instead.
For every one Elaine cut down, three more came rushing at her, drawn by the shrieks.
Slash!
Elaine’s attack split the earthworms in a single stroke.
I could have controlled her to cut them down myself, but she insisted on relying on her own strength.
[Elaine: Please, find it. The path to the boss.]
Elaine wanted it.
She wanted to uncover the method to clear this S-rank dungeon in Dokdo.
‘I have to find it.’
There were videos of previous Hunters attempting to conquer Dokdo.
They weren’t something I could personally obtain, but among the gifts from President Luigi when I announced my intention to challenge the S-rank Tower of Dokdo, there was one such video.
A video filled with Japanese text.
An unofficial, never-to-be-official “Japanese Dokdo Conquest Video” that Luigi had.
Even Drei hadn’t managed to obtain this data.
When I wondered how the U.S. got it, I learned that, true to their love of analog, they had stored it on an old CD-ROM player disconnected from the internet, and the intelligence agency had made a copy.
Even without that footage, Drei had managed to gather information from a Japanese Hunter’s personal journal.
But the intelligence-gathered video from the U.S. was brutally detailed.
– It’s been a week of nothing but earthworms! What the hell are we supposed to do?!
– No way, no way. If we keep pushing this, we’re all going to die.
Japan’s raid party had given up.
A raid consisting of three S-ranks and nineteen A-ranks had secretly infiltrated Dokdo at night using a submarine, launching an assault on the Tower—
But they left empty-handed.
– There’s no path to the boss room! It’s nowhere to be found!
No matter how far they walked, how much they searched, all they encountered were earthworms bursting from the ground.
They killed hundreds, even thousands of monsters, only to be rewarded with exhaustion and frustration.
In the end, the illegal Japanese raid team abandoned the conquest.
Korea was no different.
Even an S-rank Tanker—who later died in the Mungyeong raid—had attempted to clear it, so there were some records left on the Korean side as well.
[Elaine: If it’s you, Master, I know you’ll find it—the path to the boss room.]
Elaine reassured me as she continued to mow down the monsters.
There were no experience points gained per kill, only constant mana depletion, but she tirelessly ran through the battlefield, trying to show me everything she could.
Yet, all I could see was a vast, empty wasteland.
‘The previous challengers tried everything they could.’
Both the Korean and Japanese raid teams had experimented with different strategies.
The illegal Japanese raiders, in particular, were desperate to be the first to clear Dokdo, so they could claim, “We conquered it, so it’s ours.”
They had tried every possible method.
Killing 6,666 earthworms.
Digging underground.
Flying as high as possible into the sky.
[Elaine, do you see anything?]
[Elaine: I still see only earthworms.]
[Then…]
For now—
[Try stepping on an earthworm and jumping as high as you can. Then, position yourself as if you were about to slash downward.]
[Elaine: Understood. Executing your command.]
Elaine followed my orders.
Instead of cutting down the earthworm, she leapt high into the sky.
And then, she gripped her sword while looking down at the ground.
Srrrk.
I controlled Elaine.
Since I was manipulating her in midair, her body stiffened slightly, and the earthworms below began to flinch in confusion.
The gap between the game and reality.
I hadn’t done it on purpose, but in this world that had transformed into a game, I saw it.
A wide bar appearing on the screen.
The boss’s health bar.
“…”
Was it a blind spot?
Or was it something only I could perceive because I was seeing this battlefield as a game?
‘Game or reality, there are things the human eye simply cannot see.’
Unless you were looking down from a great height—
Unless you were gazing from above like a god—
There were things that remained invisible.
[Elaine.]
I gave Elaine an order without hesitation.
[Keep fighting the earthworms while making the ground appear like a ‘wall’. In the meantime, I’ll focus all my attacks on the boss.]
Releasing my control, Elaine began to descend.
She quickly adjusted her stance, stepping on the head of an emerging earthworm to run along the ground, keeping her body parallel to it.
And the moment she positioned herself as if standing on the earth in midair—
Click.
I unleashed a full combo through Elaine.
Her sword did not cut the ground.
Her sword energy merely slashed downward.
But there was one thing only I could see.
The boss’s health bar had started to deplete.
“…As expected.”
I had considered the possibility—
Or rather, this had never happened before.
“We were looking for the boss room while standing right inside it.”
A wasteland overflowing with earthworms—
That itself was the boss.
