The first line of the patch notes had already been written two hours ago.
[Ver. 4.1.8 Patch Notes]
■ Species Modeling Changes
Everything below it was blank.
Han Jaewon looked down at the notebook as he stuck a fresh candle into the place of the spent one. He hadn’t decided a single word about which species to change or how. There was a title, but no body. In human terms, it was like making only the cover of a proposal.
Log muttered to himself as he preened his feathers on the perch.
“……Should I be worried?”
“Hm?”
“Or should I be relieved that you’re at least hesitating halfway through?”
“What did you just say?”
“I said nothing.”
Jaewon stared at Log for a moment, then looked away. He said something. He definitely did. But if he argued, he’d lose. So he let it slide.
The core idea was simple. A species the Constellations could grow attached to. Cute, or strong, or both.
The problem was that there weren’t any suitable candidates.
‘Not goblins.’
Jaewon quietly erased them from his mind. Goblins were already too firmly established in the world as villain minion types. Right now, he could barely change their design, not their way of life.
The chances of the Constellations seeing goblins and thinking, “Oh my, I should spend divine power to raise this one,” were low. Even if they did, that would be a niche preference, not a mainstream trend. It was inefficient to mess with the world balance just to catch one or two niche whales.
Even Earth’s number-one IP designed an entire ecosystem around its designs. That was why fans could immerse themselves.
‘Kobolds are……’
They were half-beast types that had the potential to become cute from the start, so they weren’t bad, but exposure was the issue.
They were a race that lived holed up in tunnels, so they were rarely seen aboveground. For the Constellations to take an interest, they first had to be visible. There was no way they’d grow attached to a species they couldn’t even see.
Jaewon propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand.
‘Isn’t there anything suitably good?’
Strong, but not too overwhelming; cute, but not too weak-looking; and above all, something that would stand out to the Constellations—
That was when something snagged in his mind.
‘……Wyverns?’
Jaewon sat still for a moment.
Wyverns. Giant reptile types. Capable of flight. Possessing a certain degree of combat power. And most importantly, because they were considered inferior dragons, they had been thoroughly neglected in the world until now.
That sparked a reverse idea.
‘Isn’t it precisely because they’re neglected that this could work?’
Dragons already had too strong an image as “powerful and majestic beings.” Under their shadow, most wyverns had been abandoned without much presence. But if he touched up their modeling a little?
— I thought they were just inferior dragons, but these are cuter.
That position could be stronger than expected. Reactions that came when people weren’t expecting anything impressive tended to feel warmer. The lower the expectations, the easier it was to be moved.
After finding and skimming a piece of parchment containing information on wyvern ecology, Jaewon was just about to write a new line in the notebook.
“Wyverns.”
Log, who had been watching what Jaewon was doing, spoke first.
“There is information that they are currently attracting attention among human lords as military resources. Multiple lords have been confirmed to be reviewing their possible use in reconnaissance and surprise deployments.”
“……Really? So they weren’t completely neglected.”
Jaewon stopped his pencil for a moment, then moved it again.
Military resources. Lords had their eyes on wyverns.
As he thought it over, one idea brushed through his mind.
‘Feels like it’ll just end in trial and error, though?’
His conscience poked at him, saying this was probably confirmation bias because he already had his heart set on wyverns, but his mind was already coming up with logical reasons for why “the human weaponization of wyverns would fail.”
‘They can’t mount cannons on them.’
That was the first. Dwarven flame cannons had heavy recoil. They were meaningless unless firmly braced against the ground. Put one on the back of a flying wyvern, and it wouldn’t be the shell that went flying—it would be the wyvern.
The second was an even more fundamental problem.
‘Breeding them will be difficult to begin with.’
It would be better to just train one more mage who had learned flight magic.
Of course, that mage would still be rare, just less rare than a wyvern.
Jaewon let Log’s words pass by and kept writing in the notebook.
— Wyvern exterior redesign (considering favorability across all age groups)
Log said nothing. He simply pecked quietly at a grain of wheat on the perch.
After stretching, Jaewon adjusted his grip on the pencil.
■ Species Exterior Adjustment — Wyvern
First, the eyes.
— Enhance eye reflections. Make them sparkling.
Log turned his head from the perch.
“……‘Sparkling’ is not a unit that can be officially recorded as a numerical value.”
“The world will interpret it on its own.”
“That has been the cause of bugs until now.”
“Even if I decide on specific numbers, we don’t know if they’ll take. So we have to roll the dice.”
Log sighed at Jaewon’s metaphor.
“A god who rolls dice…”
“I’m not a god. The Constellations are gods.”
With the hand not holding the pen, Jaewon pointed at the framed company motto.
‘The user is king, the user is god.’
After answering like that, Jaewon half-listened and kept writing.
— Overall increase in scale saturation. Remove drab reptilian impression. Make colors vivid.
— Adjust wingtip shape. Remove angular parts, finish with curves.
— Overall silhouette prioritizes favorability over intimidation.
“Should I lower their combat power too? As long as they’re stronger than harpies, it’s fine.”
“Mr. Jaewon.”
“What?”
“Wyverns are currently classified as apex predators within the world setting. If it goes according to what you’ve written, they won’t be predators, they’ll be—”
“Wouldn’t a cute predator have appeal through contrast?”
“——.”
“For example, pandas… wait, do pandas not eat meat?”
“What exactly is a panda?”
“Pandas are animals managed by the central authorities too… Pandas… are money!”
“......”
At his muttering, Log was silent for a while.
Finally, Jaewon wrote one more line and set down the pencil.
— Slight adjustment to cry. Lower intimidating tone.
“All done.”
Then, after he wrote one more line, light spread once from the notebook. It was that distinctive sensation of a patch being applied to the world. Jaewon stretched, raising both arms high over his head.
Log said nothing.
When Jaewon looked to the side, Log was frozen, staring down at the last line of the notebook.
“What?”
“……Nothing.”
“You don’t even have expressions, so why are you looking at me with those eyes?”
“It is true that I have no expression. Right now, I have no expression because I am at a loss for words.”
******
This was not what he had wanted. It wasn’t that the ends of his wings had been lacking; it was that when he spread his wings once, an entire mountain should have been submerged in shadow. His scales shouldn’t have been like a lizard’s, like glass craftwork; each sharp scale should have refracted light so that those who met him couldn’t open their eyes.
Large enough to drink this spring pool dry in one gulp and still have room left, majestic, making everything that encountered him flee on instinct—
Like a dragon.
The wyvern looked down at the water’s surface again.
The him reflected in the water was not like that.
The wyvern turned his head and looked at the spring water. It wasn’t large, but it was clear. It was the water he drank whenever he came alone to the mountainside. Today too, he wet his throat with a mouthful. He lowered his head to take the next drink—
It didn’t reach.
The wyvern lowered his head a little more. Still, it didn’t reach. The water level seemed lower than usual. As if the water had just drained away.
It was strange.
The wyvern tilted his head further. In that posture, with the tip of his snout almost touching the water’s surface, he met the face reflected on the water again.
…….
Had his wish come true? Had his body suddenly grown larger, causing him to drink all the water?
With his nose nearly touching the water and his head tilted as far as it would go, he peered into the surface.
Sparkling eyes. Vivid scales. Rounded wingtips.
The eyes reflected in the water shone slickly.
……They were round.
The tips of his wings had become rounder.
The wyvern drew his gaze away from the water and checked his own wingtips directly. They were round. He looked at the water again. Round. He spread his wings. All of them were round.
……Kyu?
The wyvern tilted his head.
There was no one around. He was alone on the mountainside. There was no one to share this bewilderment with.
The wyvern looked into the water again. Vivid scales. Sparkling eyes. A silhouette without intimidation.
…………Kyu.
He felt like he should be thinking, Something has gone wrong, but for some reason, the end of every thought seemed to finish with —kyu.
He tried to think seriously.
…………Kyu.
It didn’t work.
The wyvern folded his wings and crouched beside the pool.
How was he supposed to mate now, looking this undignified? It was unfair.
Fortunately, every wyvern had changed just like him.
******
Jaewon secretly took a piece of bread.
To be precise, it wasn’t exactly secret. He had taken it right in front of Log, and Log simply hadn’t said anything. Whether that was praise or resignation was unclear.
Jaewon sat in an old chair in the corner of the cabin, tore into the bread, and took out the community crystal ball.
When he swiped across it, a screen appeared.
It took a little time for stories from all around the world to flow into the crystal ball. In the meantime, Jaewon took a bite of bread and briefly considered which tab to open first.
It hadn’t been long since the patch had been applied. He knew it was still too early for there to be a reaction.
Even so, he opened it.
Holding the bread, Jaewon tilted the crystal ball and looked down at the board, quietly waiting for the first post to appear.
“Mr. Jaewon.”
“Ow.”
Log fluttered over and called him by biting his ear.
“Let’s just see the reaction. If the reaction is bad, I’ll gladly get scolded. It’ll take a while before any reaction shows up.”
“That is not the issue.”
Jaewon lifted his gaze from the crystal ball. Log’s eyes were a little flatter than usual. They were the eyes of someone who had finished a calculation.
“With this patch, the wyverns’ combat power has greatly declined. Their dignity as well.”
“……I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah. Since I touched their appearance, the intimidation value went down with the last line. I intended that.”
Log stopped speaking for a moment.
“Are you all right with that?”
“It’s fine. Better, actually.” Jaewon took another bite of bread. “If wyverns become gentler, the difficulty of domesticating them might drop. Then the human side might try to make use of them somehow. You could worry about variables like that, but,”
He chewed the bread, swallowed it, and continued.
“Whether wyverns get involved in war content or whatever, if it happens naturally, that means content is being created without spending divine power. That’s what I was aiming for.”
“…….”
“And it doesn’t really affect the dwarven cannon war either. It’s not like they’ll stop fighting just because wyverns got cute. I don’t care how wyverns end up being used in war. As long as it’s worth watching, that’s enough.”
Log waited a beat before opening his beak.
“This is not a matter of content right now.”
“Hm?”
“It is a matter of our survival.”
Jaewon lowered the bread.
“……Why?”
Log looked at Jaewon with dry, flat eyes.
“How do you think the dragons will react?”
“Dragons already treat things like wyverns as snacks. They don’t even see them as the same species, so they won’t care about this patch—”
Jaewon stopped mid-sentence.
As snacks.
An inferior species they didn’t even care about.
That inferior species had become cute. The Constellations would start reacting. They would grow attached. Sponsorship would follow. Content would accumulate.
And once raising “cute lizard wyverns” started to take its place at the center of the world.
What came next?
Where would the patch director’s hand go?
Would he pour in divine power to create a new species called SSS-rank wyverns in response to demands for raising superior wyverns?
There was no way the dragons wouldn’t know. If he found success by making one inferior species’ design cute, then next he would start nibbling away from lower dragons—
Jaewon slowly set down the crystal ball.
“……Ah.”
That was when it happened.
Goooong—! Goooong—! Goooong—!
From somewhere beyond the crystal ball, the emergency bell of a human village began to ring out noisily.