PFBE

Chapter 01

“So… you’re saying that we need to cancel the project? Did I hear that correctly?”

32-year-old Kang Jihoon. A man who had devoted his life entirely to game planning and development since graduating from a four-year university. Unable to fully control his emotions, he raised his voice sharply.

“Team Leader Kang, I think there’s a slight misunderstanding. To be precise, we’re not completely canceling the project—we’re postponing it indefinitely.”

43-year-old Park Daeseok. A middle-aged man who oversees the planning and development division of one of South Korea’s well-known game companies, FantasySoft, let out a deep sigh, his face etched with fatigue, as he tried to calm Kang Jihoon.

Daeseok was older now, often compromising with reality to protect his family. But he, too, had once walked the lonely path of a game developer, burning with passion and working long nights in his late 20s to early 30s. So, he could understand Jihoon’s frustration, even if he couldn’t fully change the situation.

“When the department declares an indefinite delay, the project basically falls apart. You know that better than anyone, don’t you, sir?”

Kang Jihoon poured out his emotions without filter. Harsh words almost slipped from his mouth in frustration, but fortunately, he didn’t cross the line he had set for himself.

He felt a surge of emotional turmoil, almost drowning in unfairness. But he knew that projecting these feelings in front of Park Daeseok would change nothing.

Once the department made the final decision, even someone at Jihoon’s level or Daeseok’s couldn’t realistically hope to turn things around. Raising his voice now would only worsen their mutual frustration.

“Team Leader Kang. You know what to do, right? Follow procedure. If you’re lucky, there might be a chance to revisit it later.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but if the company’s policies don’t change, I don’t think this project will ever be revived.”
“People’s circumstances can change, Kang. I also need to submit paperwork… Make sure it’s all wrapped up within three days.”

There wasn’t much time left. The AAA-grade RPG project, into which Jihoon had poured years of effort and his very soul, was effectively a lost cause. Yet, sadly, he had no time to dwell on despair.

“I understand.”

Kang Jihoon was a practical and rational man. Even if swept up in strong emotions, once he recognized that acting on them would be meaningless, he immediately calmed himself. Often, people found this unnervingly cold.

This time was no different. Knowing that maintaining an emotional state wouldn’t help, he cooled his feelings and accepted the situation.

“I’ll go to the office and handle it immediately.”

Jihoon headed to his office without hesitation. Pleading emotionally now would be a waste of time—such is the adult world.

Entering his darkened office, Kang Jihoon sat rigidly at his desk and turned on his work computer. He immediately checked the data he had been handling with excitement just yesterday.

“Ha…”

A sigh, heavy with mixed emotions, escaped him. Every corner of the fantasy world inside the monitor bore his mark, from planning to coding. Jihoon had earned recognition through endless overtime after joining the company, and finally being entrusted with a large-scale RPG project had been immensely satisfying.

All of Jihoon’s life since joining the company was embedded in this game. But now, the moment had come to let it go.

“Such a waste.”

He muttered helplessly. Considering that he had left traces of himself in nearly every aspect of the game, it would be a lie to say he wasn’t feeling some regret.

“I really wanted to play through to the ending myself… what a shame.”

The small wish to experience the main story ending of a game he had created had now become an impossible dream.

“Ha…”

He let out a deep sigh and merged some codes he had created on a separate server into the existing data. There were no conflicts—it was designed not to interfere with the current data, carefully tested dozens of times through simulations.

Some might say he had spent too much time on this during his busy schedule. But this was no mere hobby.

This data had been temporarily set aside to balance a DLC in the testing phase, and he had ensured that it could later be supplemented and updated periodically—a kind of ark. Yet…

“What is this?”

During his final check, Jihoon found a piece of code he hadn’t seen before. Curiously, it caused no conflicts.

“This doesn’t make sense…”

He muttered, bewildered. To some, it might just seem like a data set, but to Jihoon, this data was a small world into which his developer career had been poured. He knew almost everything about it, down to its smallest details, since he had been deeply involved in every creative aspect.

“There’s no way I’d have a code I don’t know about…”

He reached to check the database when a sudden drowsiness overwhelmed him, as if he had taken a strong sleeping pill. Rubbing his eyes and gulping down the leftover iced Americano had little effect. Eventually, he collapsed face-first onto the keyboard, as if unconscious.

“Ugh…”

A man groaned, wrinkling his brow from a sharp headache as he tried to sit up. He immediately noticed that his body felt different.

Although he couldn’t explain exactly why, something was off, and last night’s memories were hazy. He quickly examined his hands.

“These aren’t my hands…”

His hands were different. Calmly, he surveyed his surroundings.

The room wasn’t the familiar compact apartment he knew. Instead, it was a spacious, opulently furnished medieval-fantasy style bedroom.

“What is happening…?”

Waking up in a strange place with no memory of the previous day made him feel as if he were haunted, but he remained calm.

“Where’s a mirror?”

To assess the situation properly, he needed a mirror. He found a small hand mirror on the nightstand beside the bed and held it up.

“Phew!”

He took a deep breath, then looked into the mirror. The face staring back wasn’t his usual Korean face, but a stranger—a blonde youth with blue eyes. And right before him, a “system message” typical of a game floated in his vision.

“Welcome, stranger. You have entered the world of Legend of the Imperial Heroes.”
“The character you have possessed is ‘Kain Felberg’.”

“Ah…”

He was understandably shocked.

The face in the mirror belonged to a character from the game he had been developing, not his own. The system message confirmed it: he had been transported into the game world.

“Wait… this is like a possession in a game?”

Jihoon, now inhabiting the body of Kain Felberg, reflected on the fragmentary memories he had of the character. Kain Felberg was the youngest, reckless prince of the Felberg Empire in the game’s world, Bendel Continent. Although he was a troublemaker who had been exiled, he was not a major villain, and if all went according to the story, he would survive until the game’s ending.

“Then I don’t have much to worry about.”

The Felberg Empire had always prioritized the safety of its royal family, which originated from ancient celestial lineages.

“Lying low in a corner shouldn’t be too hard.”

Soon, chaos would spread across the continent, but if he followed the story, the protagonist would resolve it, and the exiled prince’s small corner would remain untouched. His only task was to stay quiet until then.

However, just as he made this decision, new messages appeared in front of him—messages even the main developer had not seen.

[Secret DLC ‘The Hidden Cabal of the Unknown Power Brokers’ has been applied.]
[Secret DLC ‘Prelude to the Great Catastrophe’ has been applied.]
[Secret DLC ‘March of the Dead’ has been applied.]
[Secret DLC ‘Requiem of Annihilation’ has been applied.]

“…!”