Chapter 71: How to reach the stars in the sky

There’s no such thing as a bug-free program in the world.

If such a program exists, it’s one of two things.

It’s a simple program that just outputs ‘Hello World’.

Or, the bugs haven’t been found yet.

Especially since the VR TRPG is a surprisingly large project.

It’s loaded with experimental technologies that haven’t been properly verified yet.

Naturally, problems were bound to pop up everywhere.

“Why is it doing this again?”

Just now, Jina had entered the text [The dragon breathed fire].

Then the roof of its mouth flipped, and instead of shooting forward, the fire effect wrapped around the dragon’s body.

“What’s this now?”

Jina let out a hollow laugh and pulled up the program logs.

As expected, red error messages lined the console window.

[object reference conflict…]

Looking roughly, it seemed resource conflicts due to duplicate object creation caused the problem.

She had entered an action command targeting the dragon already implemented in the world, but the AI had generated another new dragon.

“Data overlap is one thing, but…”

Of course, that wasn’t the only problem.

Now she saw there was also an issue with the auto-rigging system.

The polygons weren’t properly attached to the skeleton.

Even if the dragon hadn’t been duplicated, the problem of wings or limbs twisting would likely still have occurred.

Jina hummed, “Hmmmm-“, then recorded the bugged screen and sent it to Rosy.

Of course, she didn’t forget to copy and send the entire error message log.

Exactly 1 minute later.

A DM arrived from Rosy.

[Rosy: Ah……]

[Rosy: Waaaamninari ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ (gibberish crying)]

Jina turned on her smartphone and checked the time.

AM 3:38.

Too early even for waking up early.

A perfect time for a person to go crazy.

Jina slowly closed and opened her heavy eyes, then sent a reply to Rosy.

[It seems necessary to clearly distinguish between chat commands that create objects and those that assign animation to objects.]

[Rosy: I was going to develop it first and take credit before Jina found it…!]

[Rosy: Hah… life…]

[Rosy: (Emoji of a cat sighing with a Chupa Chups in its mouth)]

[Rosy: (Emoji of a graduate student chick screaming “I’m doomed” while looking at a smartphone)]

As expected, Rosy seemed aware of the problem too.

[Then should I assign a unique ID separately on my end each time an object is newly created?]

[That should be sufficient as a delimiter.]

[Rosy: That alone might not be enough…]

[Rosy: I’ll try parsing the voice separately on my end too, classifying a few keywords to distinguish!]

[By the way, Rosy, when are you planning to sleep?]

[Rosy: Hmm~ When Jina sleeps? Hehe~]

[You mean you’re not sleeping?]

[Rosy: ???????]

[Rosy: Are you crazy??? Are you saying we should die together right now???]

[Rosy: Jina! This is difficult!! Am I going to turn black?!]

[Rosy: (Emoji of a cat tearing its ears)]

Seeing her comrade-in-arms on the verge of death, Jina tilted her head sideways as if puzzled.

‘Hasn’t it only been a few dozen hours since we started working?’

‘Humans can surprisingly endure without sleep for quite a long time, can’t they?’

‘Besides, these days they even sell energy drinks in bundles perfectly matched to the formula ratio. Can’t we just pop some drugs(?) and work?’

Jina let out a low sigh and sent the best stimulant to reignite Rosy’s motivation.

[(File transfer: YooDahee_Startled_In_Front_Of_Dragon.mp4)]

[Rosy: What’s this??]

[Rosy: …Wow, Dahee is hot.]

[Rosy: Jina-nim, amazing. This is really crazy.]

[Rosy: Hah… KingGodGeneralJina-nim isn’t sleeping either, how can someone like me who hasn’t even made anything properly close my eyes…]

[Rosy: …Okay. Jina-nim, let’s see this through to the end, whether one of us dies or this game gets completed!!]

Confirming that Rosy had regained her motivation, Jina smirked and closed the messenger window.

Then, after taking a sip of cold coffee, she opened the code editing tool and overhauled the auto-rigging code from the base up.

“At this rate, maybe it would have been better if I just made it from scratch instead of using the model.”

Meanwhile, Rosy also seemed to be touching the server-side code in real-time, as revision histories kept popping up in the shared document.

“Oh… looks like she’s properly motivated?”

Jina looked at Rosy’s ID in the commit log and smirked.

“At this rate, she should last quite a while.”

Sorry to Rosy, but Jina planned to sit in front of the computer for several more days.

‘What? Sleep?’

‘That can be handled by closing my eyes, brainstorming ideas, and taking short tempo naps.’

---

[Build Success!]

At the message displayed in green in a corner of the screen, Jina stretched wide and leaned back against the chair.

“This should be roughly finished…”

Exhausted was the perfect expression.

She didn’t even know how long it had been since she last slept properly in her futon.

Still, for now, the sense of accomplishment outweighed the fatigue.

Just then, the smartphone she had tossed onto the futon vibrated.

Checking it, it was a message from Rosy.

The content was basically suggesting a quick final build test.

Jina, with trembling hands, typed a single okay and connected to VR Chat through the private room link Rosy sent.

The screen flickered, and a monochrome meeting room unfolded before her eyes.

It was none other than the default map provided by VR Chat.

It seemed she had completely lost her mind, even forgetting to set up the map.

An SD-style character with a familiar design stood in the middle of the map.

“Jina… hereherehereherehere…”

“Rosy, are you bugged?”

“What about Jina… did you use hacks? W-what are you… why are you perfectly fine?”

“…Maybe next time I develop an avatar, I should include a dark circle recognition function.”

The long all-nighter work had made even the world’s brightest 4D character toxic.

This is why people need sleep.

“Really… I don’t think I pulled all-nighters like this even when I was in grad school…”

“Still, thanks to that, we finished quickly.”

“That’s… true. Waaaah- Banzai… Yahoo…”

It’s hard to imagine cheers being so limp.

But even this was a reaction Rosy mustered using all her remaining strength.

“So how should we proceed with the test?”

“I don’t think I have the mental capacity to play directly… I pulled some test cases roughly with AI… Let’s check together while watching that… Hwaaaam-“

Rosy yawned widely and brought up the build play window.

A player placed haphazardly in the middle of a desolate city.

The meeting between the player and Yoo Da-hee.

The two escaping the village amidst all sorts of hardships and adversity.

Securing clues to save the world, climbing a mountain, confronting a dragon at the end.

And as that dragon roared Kwaaaa- and breathed fire, ‘You Died’.

“Oh- Looks clean? For now, there don’t seem to be any major issues in normal play.”

“…”

“The problem is we can’t predict what kind of outlandish chat users will type…”

“…Hk.”

“…Rosy-nim, are you crying?”

“Ah, no… That’s not it… I’m just so sleepy… I yawned and tears welled up a bit…”

Tearfulness dripped heavily from Rosy’s voice chat.

“Waaaah… Anyway, this… came out really well… Really, much better than I imagined… much… more…”

Finally, Rosy.

Unable to contain her dawn emotions, began to sob.

“J-Jina-niiim… I, really… Thank youuu… If it wasn’t for Jina… I, absolutely… would never have been able to make this…”

The star Rosy wanted to reach hung high in the sky.

But Rosy herself is short.

Even standing on tiptoes, even jumping up and down, even stretching her arms out fully.

The star felt impossibly far away.

If it were hanging on a mountaintop, she could at least walk and walk somehow with her short legs.

But she had no idea how to approach something in the sky.

‘Maybe reaching for the stars was impossible after all-‘ she thought.

Just when she was frustrated, and resigned.

In front of such Rosy.

Jina appeared.

Jina was much taller than Rosy.

Perhaps about the height difference of the avatars they use in VR Chat?

Jina helped the crouching Rosy stand up.

Lifted Rosy effortlessly, gave her a piggyback ride, and told her to raise her arms once more.

On her carefully outstretched hands.

Starlight was caught.

Like that, finally a handspan.

No, a whole handspan.

At the thought of having gotten just a little closer to the goal that reached the end of the sky.

Rosy’s chest felt heavy.

“Indeed… Mama is Mama, Jina-nim…”

To Rosy.

Jina was the benefactor who allowed her to move towards her dream again.

“Hmm, Rosy. You shouldn’t get this emotional and cry. Isn’t there still a long way to go?”

Jina, feeling awkward for no reason, scratched her head and spoke mischievously.

The word Mama, the words praising her.

They always feel awkward no matter when she hears them.

“Ahaha… You’re right. I don’t even know if the VR TRPG is finished or not yet…”

“The user playtest will be left to Summer-nim as discussed, right?”

Rosy rubbed her eyes and nodded.

“Of course. There’s no one who plays this game as deliciously as Summer-nim.”