Chapter 253

After finishing the call with Do-Jin, Oh Young-Sik turned toward the team and spoke up. “Alright, everyone handling Do-Jin’s channel, drop whatever the hell you are doing and start with the raw footage.”

The atmosphere inside the content team split instantly. The people stuck on tight deadlines for other projects couldn’t join this one, and their disappointment showed all over their faces. Meanwhile, the staff assigned exclusively to Do-Jin’s channel, along with those whose schedules were finally light enough to participate, suddenly looked alive again. Their dead, overworked eyes lit up like someone had flipped a switch.

They usually churned out endless idol short forms, web variety clips, and dance covers like factory drones. Then Do-Jin showed up and turned them, even if just for a moment, into filmmakers who felt like they belonged on a Hollywood set.

To them, Do-Jin was practically a drug.

“Team Leader, are we sticking to the original plan for this video?”

“We are cutting the combat footage first, then we will follow up with the full version.”

“Ah, I mean, if that is what Do-Jin wants, we can’t really argue... I mean, it feels like a waste. You prepped so much for this one, Team Leader. Dropping the highlight fights right away kind of hurts.”

Several others wore the same disappointed expression.

“Hah... What can we do? The creator’s call comes first. That is company policy, remember.”

Oh Young-Sik waved his hand dismissively, trying to shake the mood loose.

“Anyway, start by checking the raw footage. Let us map out the timeline for all the combat scenes we can pull.”

Oh Young-Sik dropped into his seat and immediately started reviewing the raw footage. Ever since he met Do-Jin, this had become the moment that made his heart race the most.

A video with a runtime stretching into dozens of hours began to play. Watching something this long from start to finish was impossible, so he cranked the playback speed up to three times and started skipping forward, scanning for anything important.

Wait... What the hell is this background? Are they in space? It looks like space, but there are no stars or anything... just pitch-black emptiness.

Without realizing it, he found himself getting pulled deeper and deeper into the footage. When Do-Jin discovered a fragment of a shattered world and got dragged into it, Oh Young-Sik actually caught himself breathing more quietly, like he might break something if he made a sound.

“Damn.”

Every few seconds, something slipped out of him: a sharp inhale, a low whistle, then a half-laugh filled with disbelief.

You have got to be kidding me...

When the scenes after Do-Jin met Sion started rolling, irritation crept up his spine. He finally slammed the timeline to a stop and burst out loud, frustration boiling over. It was the kind of anger that came from feeling robbed.

“Are you fucking serious?!”

The other team members, who had been fast-forwarding through the footage at similar speed, reacted the same way.

“Team Lead—”

“Cancel it. Fucking cancel it!”

The staff member trying to call him was drowned out by Oh Young-Sik’s shout.

“You want me to cut this down to just the combat scenes? Does that even make any damn sense?”

He threw the question into the air like it might answer back.

“Uh... you literally said earlier that our company puts the creator’s opinion first.”

“Come on. There is a limit to that. This is not it.”

Several team members nodded hard, completely on the same page. In that moment, the entire content team moved as one.

“We rush out a video because the fans are losing their shit from curiosity? Yeah, sure, that sounds nice. The intention is good. But just because the intention is good doesn’t mean the result is right. From the fans’ perspective, this is basically getting sucker-punched.”

“Exactly. If we rip out all the highlights from raw footage like this and dump them early, that is straight-up spoilers.”

“Honestly... I never thought Do-Jin was this cruel.”

“But we already agreed to do it his way, did we not? What are you going to do, Team Leader?”

All eyes turned toward Oh Young-Sik.

You made the promise, so you carry the responsibility.

That was the unspoken message burning in their looks. Thrown onto the battlefield in an instant, Oh Young-Sik stared back with the grim resolve of a general about to charge into war.

“We said we would upload combat footage, so we are uploading combat footage. However, we make it so frustrating people lose their damn minds. We pick only the most teasing moments and cut it down to under one minute.”

The team practically cheered with their faces. Dumping everything and ruining the story felt like a tragedy. On the other hand, teasing people with just enough to drive them insane would be very satisfying.

“We start right now. Everyone on this project, make one teaser cut each and send it to me. The best one goes straight onto the channel.”

“Seriously?”

“What are the criteria?”

“You need to tell us how you are judging this.”

The team buzzed with wicked excitement.

Oh Young-Sik grinned before answering, “The one that pisses people off the most.”

***

Do-Jin woke up with a groan and immediately tried to fall back asleep. However, his throat was way too dry to ignore. Maybe he had slept too long. He rolled onto his side and after tumbling across the soft bed a couple of times, his hand finally bumped into the table.

He checked the time on his phone and it was three in the morning. How long had he been out? He had no clue. He had crashed without even checking the clock. He could probably figure it out by checking when he last spoke to Team Leader Oh Young-Sik, but his half-asleep brain refused to work that hard.

“Ugh... Water...”

Right now, all he wanted was a drink. He twisted open the bottle on the bedside table and took a long gulp. The cold water hit his throat and snapped him back to reality a little. 𝙛𝓇ⅇ

“Damn... I must have slept forever.”

One sip already cleared his head, which meant he had probably been dead to the world for hours. His body still felt wrecked, but that was the kind of exhaustion youth alone couldn’t fix. He had seriously pushed himself too far.

My sleep schedule is completely fucked now. Who the hell wakes up at three in the morning like this?

Then again, the moment he grabbed his phone, his thumb opened MeTube automatically, like it belonged to the hand of an iPad kid. Looking at his channel, he immediately noticed the new upload.

Damn, they worked fast. Though why the hell are the views already this... He froze mid-thought. The runtime looks weird. Why’s the video only fifty-eight seconds long? Did they upload the wrong file or something?

He tapped it, confused.

The screen filled with the first-person view of him stepping into the Void. Then the camera cut to a distant third-person angle. It kept pulling farther and farther away until the version of him inside the frame shrank into a tiny dot and vanished completely.

A low, heavy track played underneath. It sounded like the kind of soundtrack one would hear in a space movie, slow and cinematic. Right when the music dropped to its lowest note, the screen slammed into a new shot.

A field piled high with the corpses of beasts Sion had wiped out appeared, followed by rapid one-second cuts of his own combat scenes flashing by. Then the perspective flipped again, revealing that vast world trapped beneath glass at his feet, the moment he first encountered the shattered fragments stretching endlessly below.

Did they mess up my request or something?

Regardless of what he thought, the video kept cutting from scene to scene so fast it almost suffocated him.

A tired-looking Do-Jin stared straight ahead, eyes heavy, face drawn. Explosions of light flashed across the screen, but there was no explanation of what was actually happening in front of him.

“Found you.”

The moment his line dropped, the perspective shifted into a frantic sprinting viewpoint. Sion appeared with her chest pierced through.

“Sion Grace!”

His shout echoed as he rushed forward and pulled her into his arms. The sound of their bodies colliding rang out, and the music that had been building beneath everything cut off abruptly.

The surrounding lights, Magic Circles, fragments, and glowing circuits slowly dimmed one by one until the screen sank into complete darkness. All that remained was the rough sound of Do-Jin’s breathing. Five seconds passed like that. Then, a tired sigh slipped through the darkness.

“Cut the bullshit. If I was gonna quit over something like this, I would have never started this fight.”

The video ended right there.

“Uh... what the hell is this?”

This wasn’t what he had asked for. Fans were already losing their shit, begging to know what happened, so he just wanted the raw combat scenes out there as soon as possible.

This is straight-up holding a knife to people’s throats and telling them to stay curious.

The way they stitched together the scenes, dialogue, and context felt like something straight out of those brutal audition shows notorious for editing idol trainees into drama machines.

“Honestly, if this wasn’t about me, I’d also be losing it out of curiosity.”

If this had been a movie trailer, it would have been strong enough to make people buy tickets on the spot just from the teaser alone.

He still wondered why the upload looked like the complete opposite of what he requested, but at this point he couldn’t even be mad. The video was under a minute long, yet it was obvious someone had poured their soul into it. Every cut screamed that it existed purely to make viewers desperate for answers. It felt like the editor was somewhere behind the screen, grinning like a lunatic.

“I am kind of scared to look at the comments.”

He said that out loud, yet his finger was already tapping the comment section. At this point, even Do-Jin was dying to see how people were reacting.

└ .....?

└ Wtf... are you serious? You didn’t even write the release date for the full video. What the hell is that?

└ I realized something today. Do-Jin is a fucking demon. Try to argue and I will still be right.

└ Do-Jin... you really are something else... You are cruel. Absolutely ruthless. If you upload shit like this... we literally can’t breathe anymore...

└ What the fuck is wrong with you?

└ No, but seriously, what the hell is going on? Why are you fighting in space? Are rifts connected to space now?

└ Damn... I am losing my mind from curiosity, and yeah, I am pissed, but at the same time I am honestly grateful. I am already excited, and just waiting for this is going to make me happy for a while.

└ This is seriously the best gift ever. You left saying we should protect the world, and now you show us what happened like this. Thinking that we indirectly helped and contributed to what was going on there makes my heart race.

└ The narrative is insane, holy shit. Normally I would be screaming for the full video right now, but this time I want to wait because I am too damn hyped.

└ I will hold it in and wait patiently. Please turn this into the greatest finale this game has ever seen.

└ This is some devil-level shit. This is some devil-level shit. This is some devil-level shit.

└ I can’t escape that last scene. It is a cheesy line, but why the hell does it hit so hard? 𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ

└ That’s the atmosphere, story, and visuals carrying everything.

└ Don’t forget the voice either.

Huh... Okay.

He thought the comments would be filled with impatient people screaming and cursing. Instead, most of the reactions were surprisingly positive, full of excitement and anticipation.

“I kind of feel like there could’ve been something more.”

The reaction from his fans was good, so he should have been satisfied, yet something felt slightly lacking. It didn’t take long for Do-Jin to realize why.

Deep down, he had expected to see people absolutely suffering after watching that teaser. He had wanted to ease their curiosity quickly at first, but somewhere along the way, his inner demon had started hoping they would squirm instead.

Aside from a few outliers, people seemed genuinely happy, which was a relief. As for the ones claiming they couldn’t breathe, he’d let the emergency room deal with them.

Do-Jin set his phone down and leaned back. His team would handle things on their own. Though, before anything else, he should probably ask them to tweak a few parts when they made the full version.

Later, a longer video shaped by Do-Jin’s own requests went up on the channel. It ran for three hours and ten minutes, longer than most movies out there. Even so, not a single viewer found it boring.

His channel shattered its own record once again, pushing past a growth curve that had never dipped and extending a golden era that had never once faded.