The next day, deep inside the heavily soundproofed test chambers of the Design department, Bem Lendu was suspended in mid-air.
He was currently strapped into a standard VR omni-directional rigging apparatus, the kind currently available on the commercial market, though heavily modified by the RTS engineering team.
What Bem was doing right now wasn't testing the physical hardware of the Animus. He was specifically testing the brand new proprietary software engine they had successfully derived and reverse-engineered from the Animus's localized rendering code.
Currently, he is playing a pre-alpha build of Sky: Children of the Light.
From the dramatic, swooping movements of the mechanical rig strapped to his body, it was clear he was right in the middle of a massive, high-altitude glide.
"Woooo! Oh, oh, here it comes!" Bem cheered, his deep voice echoing in the chamber as he leaned his body weight heavily to the left.
The mechanical rig instantly whirred to life, tilting sharply upwards and simulating the sudden, aerodynamic lift of catching a thermal updraft.
His design team was huddled behind a reinforced glass partition, intently monitoring the fluctuating telemetry of the new engine. So far, the results were absolutely staggering. The RTS-derived engine was operating at least 15% faster, significantly smoother, and required a fraction of the processing power compared to the current top-of-the-line VR engines monopolizing the market.
And the terrifying part was, they all knew this was merely the tip of the iceberg. There was still so much more deeply complex physics code to be derived from the Animus 1.0 architecture.
On the monitors, Bem's small, cloaked avatar dove out of the clouds and began to aggressively skate across the sprawling dunes of the Isle of Dawn.
Inside the rig, Bem grunted slightly as the haptic feedback kicked in. The VR sensors perfectly simulated the heavy, granular drag of shifting sand directly onto his specialized motion-capture shoes, forcing him to physically exert more effort to maintain his momentum.
With a final, graceful jump, Bem brought his character to a stop.
He reached up and unclasped his VR headset, letting out a long, heavy exhale as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Haaa... that was actually a pretty good exercise."
One of his senior designers pressed the intercom button. "How does the wind-shear feedback feel, Boss?"
Bem reached down and quickly unrigged himself from the heavy, restrictive apparatus, stepping down onto the solid floor. "It feels phenomenal," Bem praised, popping his neck. "There is zero input lag between my center of gravity shifting and the avatar dipping. I can confidently say this engine is fully capable of supporting the entire Sky ecosystem."
He unzipped the specialized haptic suit, throwing it over a nearby chair. "What are the hard metrics saying right now?"
"We are tracking an overall 1 to 2% improvement in rendering efficiency from yesterday's version," the lead programmer reported, analyzing the data streams. "The culling software is functioning flawlessly."
Bem nodded thoughtfully, crossing his arms. "That's enough. The returns are diminishing for this specific game's requirements. We can officially lock this engine build as version 1.0. We will push this exact version for the global release of Sky."
The design team exchanged a surprised look.
"Wait," one of the junior designers spoke up. "Are we not going to release Sky at the exact same time as Caliburn?"
'Caliburn' was the name they had chosen for the VR hardware they were currently building based on the Animus blueprints.
Bem shook his head firmly. "No. The Caliburn hardware is going to require significantly more time in the oven to ensure user safety. Besides, we cannot afford to show all of our cards to the big AAA companies at the exact same time. Not to mention, we are still negotiating the real estate for our physical assembly factories for the headset. That will be next year, at best."
But as Bem looked at the glowing screens, a profound sense of relief washed over him. They had successfully built their own engine. That was one massive, existential threat completely removed from the board.
Bem grabbed his datapad and walked straight down the hall to the central Junction room, where Arthur was currently reviewing financial ledgers.
"The engine is ready," Bem announced simply, dropping into a chair.
Arthur looked up, his golden eyes briefly lighting up. "Are you absolutely sure?"
Bem nodded firmly. "I'm positive this time."
"No more massive architectural updates or sudden physics changes?" Arthur double-checked, knowing how much of a perfectionist his Head of Design could be.
"None," Bem replied confidently. "It's locked."
"Alright," Arthur smiled, leaning back in his chair. "Excellent work, Bem."
Arthur immediately pulled up his CEO interface, preparing to send an encrypted message.
"Wait," Bem interrupted, leaning forward. "What is the name?"
Arthur blinked, pausing his typing. "Huh?"
"Every major VR engine on the market has a title," Bem explained, a slight, proud smirk forming on his face. "Surreal, United, Starstream... What is ours going to be called?"
Arthur stared at his Head of Design for a moment. Then, a slow smile spread across his face, perfectly aligning with the studio's overarching theme.
"Clarent," Arthur stated clearly. "The engine will officially be registered as Clarent 1.0."
(A/N: The Sword of Peace, Arthur's ceremonial blade of knighthood.)
Arthur hit send, firing off the direct order to Kasavin to officially begin the preliminary marketing launch phase for Sky: Children of the Light, targeting a release window in the next quarter.
With that single keystroke, Round Table Studio officially secured another completely proprietary asset in their pocket, aggressively slamming yet another door shut on the AAA publishers' desperate attempts to sabotage them.
…
Meanwhile, Arthur was engaged in a completely different kind of battle.
He was staring blankly at his primary holographic terminal, rubbing his temples as he scrolled through a depressing wall of corporate emails. He had vastly underestimated the brutal, bureaucratic publishing process required to release a movie galaxy-wide.
Spirited Away had been completely finished for a long time now. The breathtaking, hand-drawn 2D animation, the sweeping orchestral score, the voice acting. It was all sitting perfectly packaged in a high-density data drive. What he needed now was a major cinematic distributor to actually get the film into theaters.
But somehow, every single carefully curated clip and pitch he had sent out to the major Accord film houses had either been unceremoniously ghosted or outright rejected.
He was certain that none of the executives had even bothered to watch the material.
The movie scene in the galaxy was fundamentally different from the gaming industry. While the gaming sector mathematically generated several times the gross revenue of the film industry as a whole, films possessed something that games historically did not: prestige.
The sophisticated, high-art movies, the mega-flicks that turned heads across the galaxy and defined planetary culture, that was what the film industry represented in the Accord. It was a snobby, deeply entrenched echelon of high society where every single year, countless filmmakers engaged in an absolute bloodbath just to get a foot in the door.
And that was exactly how Spirited Away kept getting passed over by distributors. Arthur was confident that these companies didn't care about the rich nuance of the story or the masterful world-building. All they saw on the pitch sheet was the "2D Animation" tag, and they instantly tossed it into the digital trash, dismissing it as primitive or childish.
Arthur let out a long, exhausted sigh, leaning back in his chair.
Should he just give up on a theatrical release and negotiate directly with a streaming platform? Or, more drastically, should he weaponize his alter-ego? The Composer Percival had been relatively quiet on the public front for the last few months, sticking purely to behind-the-scenes composing for other artists. If Percival suddenly attached his name to a feature-length animated film, the distributors would be fighting each other to the death to publish it.
Just then, Ross Dalle walked past the Round Table, holding a fresh mug of caf.
The massive Zynar Sound Director paused, his compound eyes blinking down at Arthur's slouched posture. "Looking stressed already, Art," Dalle teased, a warm, multi-layered chuckle rumbling in his chest.
Arthur groaned, throwing his head back to look at the ceiling. "Ugh, don't get me started, Ross. The movie is rejected. Again. These galactic film distributors don't even want to sit down and negotiate with me."
Dalle took a sip of his caf, raising a brow. "You know, instead of dealing with the corporate snobs directly, why not just go around them? I think yesterday was the official opening for submissions to the Cyris Film Festival."
Arthur blinked, sitting up straight. "The Cyris Film Festival?"
Dalle's three-jointed arms completely froze around his mug. He stared at his CEO in genuine shock. "Wait. You seriously didn't know about it? It's literally the biggest event for indie films in the entire galaxy right now."
"Really?" Arthur asked, his curiosity instantly piqued.
"Move over," Dalle instructed, setting his mug down and stepping up to the obsidian table. His long fingers danced across the holographic interface, rapidly projecting the search results directly into the air between them.
"The Cyris Film Festival started about twenty years ago on a moon in the Mid-Rim," Dalle explained, pulling up archives of crowded, passionate theater halls. "At the time, it was just a tiny, grassroots collection of small-time filmmakers showcasing their weird indie projects to each other. But over time, the passion there compounded. It grew exponentially. Four years ago, one of their independent winners was picked up by a massive Core World studio directly from the festival floor."
Dalle swiped to a picture of a tearful alien director holding a heavy, glowing golden statuette. "That same indie film went on to win Best Picture at the Obscura."
Arthur's eyes widened significantly. In the Stellar Accord, the Obscura was the undisputed equivalent of the Oscars from his past life.
"Show me the submission rules," Arthur said immediately, leaning forward.
Dalle pulled up the official festival registry. The rules were strict, but refreshingly straightforward.
Arthur read through the glowing text.
Rule 1: The runtime must exceed 60 minutes.Spirited Away cleared that easily, clocking in at over two hours.
Rule 2: The film must have been completed within the 12 months prior to the festival. Arthur winced slightly. He had narrowly almost missed this window because of the relentless AAA lawsuits and the Assassin's Creed's Animus development, but fortunately, he had fully compiled the master copy just in time.
Rule 3: Films cannot have been shown on the net, broadcasted, or screened at any prior festival. Because the corporate distributors had completely ignored him, Spirited Away had never seen the light of day. It cleared the final hurdle flawlessly.
A fierce, determined smile slowly returned to Arthur's face. If the high-society executives refused to open the front door for him, he would just have to kick the back door wide open.
Arthur grabbed his datapad, linked the master file of the movie directly to the festival's secure server, and confidently clicked the [Submit Film] button.
…
Weeks passed. The galactic internet was still recovering from the sheer magnitude of the Pokémon double-expansion announcement, which had officially been given a release date just a couple of months away.
But while the gaming world was entirely consumed by the hunt for shiny Generation 2 and 3 monsters, a completely different event was taking place in the upper echelons of the Accord's high society.
The preliminary screening to decide the final lineup for the prestigious Cyris Film Festival had officially begun.
Countless indie films had been submitted to the digital registry. A dedicated screening team had already ruthlessly filtered the thousands of submissions down to a final, curated list of exactly sixty films. Now, it was up to the grand committee to judge them.
Inside a plush, dimly lit private viewing theater on the Cyris orbital station, the committee members settled into their expensive leather recliners. This panel consisted of several high-standing directors, veteran producers, and legendary cinematographers. They possessed both the technical skill and the ruthless, hyper-critical eyes required to tear any film apart frame by frame.
Frémar Louboo, the esteemed director and founder of the festival, looked around the panel. Seeing that everyone was present and holding their glasses of vintage wine or caf, he gestured lazily to the hovering Compadre unit to begin the session.
The directors visibly relaxed, leaning back with arrogant, expectant smirks.
It was an unspoken tradition among the Cyris committee that the very first movie of the screening batch was always treated as a complete joke. It was a sacrificial lamb, a designated target for the directors to ruthlessly critique, laugh at, and tear apart to warm up their critical brains for the rest of the marathon.
There was always something hilariously bad that happened. Just last year, veteran director Hain Zossare had become so physically enraged by the atrocious three-point lighting of the first film that he had literally taken off his expensive leather shoe and thrown it at the Compadre unit, demanding it skip to the next submission.
It was a hilarious memory for the panel. Naturally, they couldn't wait to see what kind of amateur garbage would be projected today.
The Compadre unit floated to the front of the screen, its optical sensor flashing. "First submission. Title: Spirited Away. Submitted by creator: Arthur Pendragon. Medium: 2D Animation. Genre–"
"Alright, alright, skip the metadata," Frémar interrupted, waving his hand dismissively. "Just start the film. Let's see what this 'Arthur' thinks ancient animation can do."
The Compadre unit beeped and hovered aside. The theater lights dimmed to pitch black.
The massive screen lit up.
A beautifully isolated piano notes echoed through the high-fidelity surround sound.
Ting... ting... The screen faded from black to a completely hand-drawn, 2D visual of a vibrant pink flower bouquet. Tucked into the petals was a small card with a cute doodle of a girl. The handwritten text read: 'Good Luck, Chihiro. We'll meet again!!'
"Chihiro... Chihiro, we're almost there." A father's voice called out softly.
The camera angle shifted. The audience was instantly placed directly into the POV of Chihiro, looking down at the dying flowers in her lap from the backseat of a moving car.
A few of the veteran directors instantly stopped swirling their wine. They leaned forward, their ears catching the subtle brilliance of the opening score.
The piano notes, a simple G chord stepping up to an A, were specifically composed to mimic the rhythm of a sharp, sudden intake of breath. It was a musical motif that instantly established a profound sense of weightlessness and apathy. As the scene progressed, the score seamlessly unspooled its chord progression alongside the narrative. The opening felt exactly like looking at the world through the tired, overwhelmed eyes of a child.
It possessed a beautiful, deeply aching hint of nostalgia and sadness.
On screen, the young girl panicked, whining about her flowers dying.
Her mother, sitting in the passenger seat, didn't even turn around. "No wonder, the way you've clung to them," she replied dismissively.
To the casual viewer, it was just dialogue. But to the screenwriters in the room, it was a masterful, subtle exposition. It told them exactly how much anxiety the girl was feeling, explicitly revealing that Chihiro had been anxiously clutching the bouquet in a death grip for the entire car ride.
One of the directors, eager to start the traditional roast, let out a loud, mocking scoff. "Ah, Tell, don't show, huh? Classic amateur mistake. Hahaha."
He looked around, expecting the rest of the panel to join in his mockery.
A few of the producers chuckled. But few of the masters in the room, including Frémar Louboo and Hain Zossare remained dead silent. Their eyes were completely glued to the screen.
They weren't laughing, because they actually saw what the director was doing.
The framing was deliberate. They saw the parents' reactions. The mother was completely dismissive of her daughter's grief, casually suggesting that putting the flowers in water would perk them right up. The father was entirely detached, his eyes locked on the road ahead as he navigated the winding hills.
Through an adult's lens, it was completely normal behavior. Parents moving to a new town were stressed and focused on the logistics. But the narrative was deliberately using a child's lens. It focused intimately on Chihiro's sad, pouting face, perfectly capturing the isolating, powerless reality of a kid being dragged away from her home and her friends without any say in the matter.
"My first bouquet of flowers is a farewell bouquet," Chihiro murmured on screen, her voice thick with childhood melancholy. "How sad." Frémar Louboo slowly set his wine glass down on the table beside him. The traditional roast was completely forgotten. They were only three minutes in, and the sheer, atmospheric nuance of this '2D animation' already had the entire room by the throat.
On the screen, the movie took a breath. It let the quiet, melancholic moment pass.
The animation seamlessly transitioned into a breathtaking illustration of the passing scenery. The camera gently panned up as the car turned right, heading toward a small, quiet town nestled in the rolling green hills.
Then, the title card gently faded into the center of the screen: SPIRITED AWAY.
For a moment, only the raw, incredibly realistic ambiance of the scene grounded the animation. The rustling of wind through the leaves and the hum of the car engine expanded the gorgeous illustration, making the world feel vastly larger than the edges of the screen.
The accompanying musical score was entirely alien to the standard, heavily processed tracks of the Accord. It relied heavily on suspended chords and quartal harmony, utilizing chords built entirely on fourths rather than traditional thirds. The result was a deeply mystical sound that perfectly mirrored Chihiro's apprehension.
Suddenly, the car halted.
The dad leaned forward over the steering wheel, looking at the unpaved, deeply forested road ahead. "Eh, did I take the wrong turn... I don't get it."
The mother leaned over, looking up through the passenger window toward the top of the hill. "That must be it. Look, the blue one."
It was a small house sitting high above the tree line. Their new home.
The dad leaned down to get a better look from his driver's seat. "Ah, that's it. I might've missed a turn... I bet this road is gonna get us there."
In the back seat, Chihiro looked out her window. Nestled at the base of a massive, ancient tree was a stack of small, weathered stone houses, barely the size of a squirrel.
Despite the ominous, quiet warning of the stone shrines, the dad decided to push through anyway. He shifted the gears and floored the gas.
The car violently bounced as it hit the dirt and gravel road. The animation flawlessly captured the chaotic physics of the moment. The groceries, the boxes, and Chihiro herself began to shake and rattle violently in the back seat.
Matching the sudden burst of speed, the musical score completely transformed. The gentle, melancholic piano instantly swelled into a sweeping, epic orchestration, serving as a brilliant, undeniable sign of a great adventure waiting just ahead.
And a great adventure it truly was.
In the standard operating procedure of the Cyris Film Festival, the preliminary screening of any film was supposed to be stopped halfway through to save time. And for the very first film of the batch, the joke is for it to have a maximum runtime of exactly ten minutes.
Frémar Louboo had his finger resting right over the master control console.
He never pressed the button.
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour.
Spirited Away was played from the very first frame to the end.
For two straight hours, the private viewing theater was trapped in an ironclad spell of animation and storytelling. They watched the parents turn into pigs. They watched the terrifying, gluttonous rampage of No-Face. They watched the breathtaking flight of Haku the dragon. They watched Chihiro transform from a whining, terrified child into a brave, unshakeable heroine.
Finally, the screen showed Chihiro stepping out of the dark tunnel, holding her parents' hands. She paused, looking back toward the shadows of the spirit realm one last time before turning away to start her new life.
The screen faded to black.
The massive, swelling orchestra slowly dissolved. The audience was left exactly where they had started two hours ago. The solo piano returned, playing the hesitant, floating chords of the introduction.
The final chord hung heavily in the air, slowly decaying into absolute silence.
The movie ended.
Inside the Cyris viewing room, there was complete, suffocating silence. No one moved. No one even took a sip of their expensive wine.
This was supposed to be the joke film. The amateur hour. Instead, the seasoned, hardened veterans of the galactic film industry had just been completely drained of every conceivable emotion. They had been dragged through genuine laughter, profound sadness, terrifying repulse, heart-pounding awe, and finally, deeply cathartic, happy tears.
The automated Compadre unit softly chirped, sensing the end of the data file, and slowly brought the theater lights back up to a warm glow.
The sudden light caused the directors and producers to blink several times, pulling them out of their collective trance. Several of the executives in the room discreetly wiped the wetness from their eyes.
Hain Zossare, the notoriously furious veteran director who had thrown a shoe at the screen the year prior, sat completely frozen in his leather recliner. His hands were gripping the armrests so tightly his knuckles were white.
He slowly turned his head to look at Frémar Louboo.
"What..." Hain breathed, his voice cracking with absolute, undeniable reverence. "What was that?"
**A/N**
~Read 14 weeks worth of Advance Chapter on [email protected]/SmilinKujo~
~🧣KujoW
**A/N**