In the digital ether of a highly encrypted, untraceable sub-space network, a secret holographic meeting was taking place.
Seated around a massive, virtual table were the elite CEOs of the galaxy's largest AAA game publishers. There was only one special occasion where these cutthroat, deeply paranoid corporate rivals would willingly hold a joint meeting with each other.
It was when there was a feast to be had.
A comfortable, predatory smugness filled the virtual room. According to their collective intelligence reports, Round Table Studio was currently in a state of absolute, flailing panic. The indie studio's PR manager had been desperately contacting every single mid-tier and low-tier VR engine house in the Core Rims, practically begging for a software lease. And thanks to the unified pressure from the AAA publishers, every single engine house had violently shut their doors in RTS's face.
The trap had been flawlessly sprung. The publishers knew RTS was trying to transition from "primitive" 2D games into the highly lucrative 3D action market. By cutting off the VR engines, the only accepted industry standard for running 3D games, they believed they had successfully trapped RTS in the "indie pixel" ghetto.
Now, the only thing left to decide was exactly how the pie called Round Table Studio was going to be sliced and divided among them. The executives spoke as if RTS did not even have a voice in the matter.
Zoye Raves, the CEO of Heliotronic Arts, steepled his fingers together. Seeing the initial bidding war going nowhere, he decided to cut to the chase.
"Ladies and gents," Zoye announced, his voice projecting a smooth, commanding authority. "Let us be civil, and let us talk numbers."
Several of the weaker AAA publishers were visibly taken aback. Hearing the CEO of HA explicitly demand to talk numbers meant that the biggest wigs in the industry, like HA, Stellarstars, and Button Legacy, had their eyes locked firmly on acquiring RTS.
In truth, some of the smaller CEOs were a bit hesitant to aggressively buy out the indie studio. They had been in this industry for a very long time. Occasionally, a passionate indie studio would have a massive, unpredictable breakthrough just like RTS did. But historically, the moment a large publisher acquired them, the indie studio would suddenly turn into a complete dud.
Of course, these executives entirely lacked the self-awareness to realize that it was their own greedy investors and suffocating corporate mandates that made those passionate developers become numb and produce terrible games. They simply worried that RTS might be a one-hit wonder.
But the apex publishers like HA and Stellarstars saw the board differently. Round Table Studio possessed a ridiculously solid IP. Pokémon alone could easily function as a literal money-printing machine for the next five decades.
This engine embargo was simply their first coordinated poke. They were squeezing RTS's operational oxygen until Arthur was forced to either sell his IPs directly or go public. And the very second he did, they would tear him apart.
Zoye Raves opened his mouth to pitch the initial buyout split.
Before Zoye could say another word, the CEO of Stellarstars suddenly leaned forward in his virtual seat.
"What is this?" the Stellarstars executive muttered.
His holographic avatar flickered slightly as he violently tabbed out of the secure meeting interface. A second later, he looked back at the virtual table, his digital face completely pale.
"Gents," the CEO of Stellarstars said, his voice laced with a sudden, heavy dread. "We all should see this right now."
He swiped his hand across his console. The center of the virtual obsidian table dissolved, replaced by a massive, high-definition video projection pulled directly from Round Table Studio's official Stellarcast platform.
It was a Gameplay Trailer for Assassin's Creed.
The video showcased Ezio effortlessly scaling a towering cathedral, seamlessly transitioning into brutal, fluid combat, and then diving flawlessly into a hay bale to evade a massive squad of heavily armored guards. The graphics were staggering, the physics were immaculate, and the rendering was operating at a buttery-smooth frame rate.
But it wasn't the graphics that made the CEOs' blood run cold. It was the UI.
"Wait," Zoye Raves whispered, his eyes wide as he stared at the gameplay footage. "There is no VR immersion tag on this feed. The camera tracking... it's a fixed third-person perspective."
"It's a flat-screen game," the CEO of Button Legacy breathed in sheer disbelief. "They built a hyper-realistic, AAA-quality 3D world, and they didn't even use a VR engine."
The realization hit the room like a physical shockwave. The embargo had been completely useless. They thought they had cut off RTS's oxygen by blocking the VR software, but they had been shooting at a phantom. Arthur had completely bypassed the modern industry standard, opting to build a staggering 3D on traditional, non-VR platforms.
Then, the gameplay faded to black. A sleek title card appeared, followed by a line of text that completely shattered the publishers' reality.
[OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE.]
The digital boardroom descended into absolute, suffocating silence.
Zoye Raves let out a hard, rattling sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as the holographic trailer faded from the center of the table.
"We were completely blind-sided by the juicy meat they dangled in front of us," Zoye muttered, his voice echoing in the digital void. "We spent the last month orchestrating a massive, system-wide embargo on VR engines, entirely convinced we had them cornered."
One could hardly blame them for the massive oversight. In the modern galactic gaming industry, flat-screen games were universally relegated to a very specific, low-budget demographic. They were strictly stylized or low-effort puzzle titles.
The sheer idea that a developer would pour millions of hours into creating a hyper-realistic, graphically demanding AAA masterpiece specifically for traditional screens was completely absurd. The first cinematic trailer had entirely fooled the corporate executives into believing it was a high-end VR release.
"Nobody can blame us for the assumption," the CEO of Button Legacy defended, leaning over his virtual desk. "A flat-screen game with dynamic lighting, motion-captured combat, and zero rendering loads? It defies every current market trend. But the fact remains... it exists. And if it launches in four months, it will cannibalize our entire Q3 market share."
Zoye lowered his hand, his expression hardening. These were not foolish men. They were the apex predators of the entertainment sector, and they had maintained their monopolies for decades by being utterly ruthless.
"Let us move past the mistake," Zoye commanded smoothly. "We need a new strategy. We need to push Round Table Studio into a localized scandal that physically halts their release date."
The CEO of Stellarstars immediately raised a hand. "We coordinate another media blitz. We astroturf the Avalon Forums and the major review sites. We pay "medical experts" to claim that playing a high-fidelity 3D game on a flat screen causes severe photo-epileptic seizures or dangerous optic-nerve strain. We scare the public away."
"Ineffective," someone shot the idea down instantly. "We already attempted a media manipulation campaign when they launched their monster-taming game. Arthur Pendragon expertly turned it into a viral martyrdom campaign. The gaming public already heavily distrusts the major media outlets like VGN. Launching another smear campaign will only feed into his 'underdog' narrative."
"Then what about aggressive talent poaching?" the CEO of Button Legacy suggested, tapping his chin. "We know they have a tiny development team. We find out who his lead programmer is, and we throw ten million credits at him. We brain-drain the studio right before their final optimization phase. Without their lead coder, the game falls apart."
"A decent thought, however, the timeline is completely against us," Zoye replied, his analytical mind completely tearing the strategy apart. "By the time our corporate espionage teams locate his lead programmer and successfully navigate a bribe, the game will have already gone gold. Furthermore, Arthur's employees appear to be fiercely loyal zealots. We can't risk a failed bribe leaking to the public."
Zoye leaned forward, placing his digital hands flat on the obsidian table. A dark, predatory glint appeared in his eyes.
"We can't attack the man," Zoye stated coldly. "We attack the code."
The other CEOs looked at him, silently waiting for the pitch.
"Think about it from a purely technical standpoint," Zoye explained, his voice dripping with corporate malice. "How did a tiny, independent studio achieve this impossible level of graphical fidelity and zero-load rendering without licensing a AAA physics engine? It is statistically impossible. Therefore, we will push the narrative that they must have stolen it."
The CEO of Stellarstars frowned. "But they didn't. Any basic code audit by an Accord cyber-judge will clearly prove they wrote the proprietary engine from scratch."
"It absolutely does not matter if it is true," Zoye smiled, a chilling expression of pure corporate warfare. "We file a joint intellectual property lawsuit. We will publicly accuse Round Table Studio of infringing on our patented dynamic-render and collision-mesh algorithms." It's a classic SLAPP tactic, a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
Realization dawned on the faces of the other executives.
"We bury them," Zoye continued softly. "We bury that little indie studio in thousands of pages of legal discovery. We tie up Arthur and his department heads in intergalactic court for years. And most importantly... we file a preliminary injunction with the Accord."
"A cease and desist," the CEO of Button Legacy whispered, a cruel smile finally breaking across his face. "A court-ordered mandate to halt all distribution and marketing of all their games until the legal dispute is fully settled."
"Exactly," Zoye confirmed. "Indie studios do not have the massive financial war chests required to survive a multi-year legal battle against three AAA publishers. We will bleed their legal funds entirely dry. We will delay their game indefinitely. And when they are finally bankrupt and desperate to release their masterpiece..."
"...They will be forced to settle out of court," the Stellarstars CEO finished, laughing darkly. "And the price of that settlement will be selling us their IPs for pennies on the credit."
It was a flawless, brutally realistic strategy. It was exactly how massive corporate conglomerates stomped innovative startups into the dirt. They didn't need to make better games; they simply weaponized the legal system.
The digital boardroom murmured in complete, unanimous agreement.
…
Meanwhile, back at the Round Table Studio HQ, the last development for Assassin's Creed had finally paused for a mandatory lunch break.
Inside the sunlit Junction room, the five department heads were gathered around Arthur's personal workstation, peering curiously at the floating holographic screens. Arthur had been using his downtime to slowly piece together the storyboards and rough animatics for his new animation project.
"You already have voice lines for this?" Bem Lendu asked, his deep voice filled with surprise as a beautifully animated scene played out with full, synchronized audio.
Arthur nodded, taking a sip of his brewka. "I talked to Dalle's friend over at the voice acting agency. After explaining the emotional tone I wanted, I managed to get all the preliminary lines I needed recorded."
The team watched the magical, hand-drawn aesthetic of the animation with deep curiosity. They had absolute faith in Arthur's storytelling. From the charming farm life of Stardew, to the tragic, mythological family drama of Hades, to the wondrous journey of Pokémon, his narratives always possessed a profoundly unique charm that resonated with the soul.
Logan Kim leaned against the table, spinning his digital stylus. "Hey, Arty. Can I ask you a weird question about your Solar abilities?"
"Sure," Arthur said, turning in his chair. "Shoot."
"Well, I have read on the net that high-tier Solars possess ridiculously strong physical stamina," Logan said, his eyes gleaming with hyper-fixated curiosity. "Does that mean you can just sit down and write code without ever needing to sleep or rest?"
Arthur paused, a highly amused expression crossing his face. Internally, he knew he was nothing close to a real Solar. However, considering he was actively undergoing brutal physical conditioning from literal Greek Gods, his stamina had indeed breached superhuman levels.
"While my physical body doesn't tire easily, my mind absolutely does," Arthur answered smoothly. "Cognitive fatigue is a very real thing, Logan. My brain still needs a much-needed rest every once in a while. That's exactly why I constantly insist on you guys taking breaks and enjoying your lives outside of work."
Logan slumped his shoulders. "Damn."
Arthur chuckled. "Why? Do you seriously want to be a Solar just so you can code for seventy-two hours straight?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Logan admitted without a single ounce of shame.
The entire team broke into easy laughter. It was incredibly on-brand for Logan to view god-like, superhuman combat abilities strictly as a way to get more time to tinker with rendering algorithms.
"Uh uh, me next!" Lin Liseli chimed in, raising her hand eagerly. "I want to ask you something too."
"Alright," Arthur smiled. "What is it?"
"What exactly is going on with your eyes?" the Art Director asked, leaning closer to inspect his face.
"My eyes?" Arthur repeated. He pointed to his right eye, which was currently a striking, vibrant red. "I told you guys already, didn't I? The heterochromia is just a side effect of my Solar resonance progressing."
"No, no, not the red eye," Liseli clarified, waving her hand. She narrowed her sharp, highly trained artist's eyes. "The others might not realize it, but sometimes, depending on the lighting in the room, you get this weird... golden twinge right around the edges of your pupils. Is that a part of your power too?"
Arthur froze for a microsecond. The golden twinge was a direct, physical manifestation when he used Boons and had it equipped. He quickly scrambled for a plausible excuse.
"Oh, well..." Arthur rubbed the back of his neck, improvising wildly. "Sometimes, after I use my resonance to view the other worlds, the ambient energy leaves a bit of visual residue in my eyes. That is all it is."
The team collectively nodded. To them, the mystical, undefined nature of Solar abilities made the excuse make perfect sense.
Kasavin pushed his glasses up his nose, his pragmatic mind already shifting gears. "Speaking of your connection to these other worlds, Arty. Do you think you can pull actual people out of them?"
Arthur blinked. "People?"
"Yes," Kasavin said seriously. "For instance, could you materialize a few of those Abstergo corporate employees from the Assassin's Creed universe? If we brought them into our studio, we could have them explain the exact inner workings of the Animus and the Helix technology directly to our engineering team."
Arthur stared at his Production Head. It was a terrifyingly efficient corporate strategy. "Unfortunately, I can't do that, Kas. There is a very strict limit on what kind of things my resonance can physically bring into this reality."
"A shame, really," Liseli sighed, imagining the shortcuts.
"It is fine," Bem said, patting Logan on the shoulder. "I actually can't wait to replicate the otherworldly tech ourselves from the ground up anyway." Logan grinned and nodded in fierce agreement.
Just then, the glass doors to the Junction room hissed open. Raja Farzir walked in, and offered a polite smile.
"Pardon the interruption," the PR Manager announced. "I just received an urgent, highly groveling email from the executives over at VGN. They are officially reaching out to request a comprehensive interview with the developers behind Round Table Studio."
The room went quiet. VGN was the exact same massive media conglomerate that had tried to smear them just a few months prior. Now that RTS had broken the internet once again with the Assassin's Creed trailer, the network was clearly desperate to ride their coattails.
The entire team immediately turned their heads to look at Arthur.
Arthur held his hands up in surrender. "You guys can go ahead and do it. I will pass."
Liseli crossed her arms, a stubborn spark in her eyes. "We'll do the interview, Arthur. But only on the strict condition that we all do it without revealing our faces or true identities."
"I'll second that," Kasavin agreed smoothly. "A mysterious developer interview adds a profound layer of mystique to the studio."
The other department heads quickly chimed in with their agreement.
Arthur looked around the table, a warm feeling blossoming in his chest. He could see exactly what they were doing. They wanted to show their deep appreciation to the gaming community, but they absolutely refused to leave him out of the spotlight. By demanding they all hide their identities, they were ensuring Arthur could safely participate without compromising his carefully protected anonymity.
Arthur smiled warmly, shaking his head. "Fine. You guys are entirely too good at peer pressuring me."
The team laughed easily, the Junction room filling with a bright, hopeful energy as they began brainstorming ideas for their mysterious television debut.
It was a picture-perfect moment of peace. Unbeknownst to the happy developers, a massive, coordinated corporate conspiracy was already brewing violently underneath them. The fuse had been lit, and the worst the galactic industry had to offer was coming straight for them.
…
Several days passed. The development cycle at Round Table Studio had officially entered its absolute most cautious, agonizingly time-consuming phase: the Beta compilation.
The air inside the headquarters was completely nerve-wracking. The studio had finally hit a "feature freeze." No new mechanics, no new art assets, and no new story missions were allowed to be added to the build.
Instead, the entire team was ruthlessly dedicated to a massive, studio-wide bug triage. They were finally ready to show off all their hard work in a stable Beta build for a select few internal testers, but they had no way of knowing what kind of reception the gameplay would actually get.
Inside the central development floor, the technical nitty-gritty of game dev was in full swing.
At the Art station, Lin Liseli and her animators were painstakingly going through collision data frame-by-frame. They were desperately trying to fix a persistent clipping issue where the physics of Ezio's heavy cloth cape kept violently phasing through the wooden hull of the Venetian gondolas.
Over at the Design wing, Bem Lendu was meticulously tweaking the invisible 'nav-meshes' layered over the city's architecture. He had to perfectly adjust the grab-box tolerances on the cathedral rooftops; if the pixel-radius was even slightly too wide, the parkour momentum would accidentally launch the player backward off a four-story building instead of letting them smoothly vault over a chimney.
In the Audio booths, Ross Dalle was running complex audio occlusion algorithms. He was ensuring that the dense, chaotic ambient noise of the bustling Florentine crowds dynamically, seamlessly faded into a quiet, atmospheric wind loop the higher the player climbed up a synchronization viewpoint.
And in the server room, Logan Kim was sweating over his terminal, aggressively hunting down a microscopic memory leak in his newly coded Culling system that was causing the game to crash after exactly four hours of continuous playtime.
Standing quietly in the Junction room, Arthur looked out through the glass walls at his team.
A profound, swelling sense of pride filled his chest. For the entirety of Assassin's Creed, Arthur had intentionally stepped back from the absolute director's chair. He had mostly stuck to the trenches, doing raw coding and physics programming alongside Bem and Logan. Kasavin had taken the reins as Project Lead, and the bespectacled producer had orchestrated a masterful symphony of logistics.
Because of Kasavin's flawless scheduling, they were actually weeks ahead of schedule.
Arthur tapped his chin thoughtfully. 'Since the Beta is so remarkably stable,' he mused, 'maybe we should just drop it as an Early Access title? Let the community organically stress-test the massive open world for us?' Before Arthur could delve any deeper into the marketing logistics of an Early Access launch, the heavy glass doors to the Junction room abruptly hissed open.
Raja Farzir walked in.
To the untrained eye, the Qerrian PR Manager looked exactly like his usual, impeccably composed self. His suit was crisp, his posture was straight. But Arthur had worked with Raja long enough to know his subtle tells. Raja's sensory vanes were rigidly locked against his skull and vibrating at a terrifying frequency.
He was in a state of absolute, sheer panic.
Arthur immediately stood up from his chair, his brain instantly expecting a catastrophic server wipe. "Raja. What happened?"
Raja stopped at the edge of the Round Table. He took a slow, trembling breath, struggling to keep his professional cadence intact.
"Arthur. I bring incredibly bad news," Raja said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual smooth charm. "We have just been served with a lawsuit."
Arthur blinked, his golden eyes narrowing. The panic he initially felt completely evaporated, instantly replaced by sheer, unadulterated confusion. A lawsuit? Over what? They had literally built the proprietary engine from absolute scratch, and the IP was completely original to this universe. They hadn't stolen a single line of code or a single pixel of art.
"A lawsuit?" Arthur repeated, his brow furrowing as he looked at his PR Manager. "Who in the galaxy is suing us? And for what?"
⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙
🎮:
- Stardwey Valley: Completed.
- Hades: Completed.
- Pokémon: Completed.
- Sky: Children of the Light: 66%██████▒▒▒▒ Paused...
- Assassin Creed: 96%████████▒
🎬:
- Spirited Away: 60%██████▒▒▒▒
♬:
- Your Song – Elton John (ch.9)
- A Lovely Night – La La Land (ch.20)
- Merry Go Round of Life – Howl's Moving Castle (ch.25)
- Small Fragile Hearts – Victor Lundberg (ch. 27)
- Skyfall – Adele (ch. 29)
- No Time To Die – Billie Eilish (ch. 30)
- Yesterday – The Beatles (ch. 32)
- Lovely – Billie Eilish, Khalid (ch. 47)
- Best Part – H.E.R. feat. Daniel Caesar (ch. 67)
- Lovely Day – Bill Withers (ch. 68)
- My Song – Labi Siffre (ch. 75)
- Isn't She Lovely – Stevie Wonder (ch. 89)
- Gotta Catch 'Em All – Pokémon OST (ch. 90)
- Don't Stop Me Now – Queens (ch. 102)
- Grow As We Go – Ben Platt (ch. 102)
- Feeling Good – Michael Bublé (ch. 104)
- You'll Be In My Heart – Phil Collins (ch. 105)
- We Will Rock You – Queen (ch. 108)
- The Bones – Maren Morris feat. Hozier (ch. 110)
- Achilles, Come Down – Gang Of Youths (ch. 111)
- Wind of Change – Scorpions (ch. 113)
**A/N**
~Read 14 weeks worth of Advance Chapter on [email protected]/SmilinKujo~
~🧣KujoW
**A/N**