Chapter 69 - #69: Nice... Gigachad Ivan

Chapter 69: Chapter #69: Nice... Gigachad Ivan

[

Aidanas: Watching this trailer is actively draining my Sanity meter.

Revan4Ever: Who taught the sadist to make something like this?! Are we sure this isn’t a horror movie?!

jsHall: The Lovecraftian vibes are insane. The line between humans and monsters is completely blurred.

KyubiUzu: Bro I am actually terrified right now. Is this really not a horror game?

]

After watching the premiere, the players were left with a profound, creeping sense of dread. But as the sheer shock wore off, the visceral imagery refused to leave their minds.

The blood.

The hunt.

The horrific beasts.

Sitting at his desk, Silver was panting heavily, his heart hammering against his ribs.

He couldn’t even begin to describe the suffocating pressure he felt while watching the cinematic.

The atmosphere of the dead Victorian city was overwhelmingly oppressive.

It wasn’t until the final sequence—the Hunter ruthlessly cleaving through the beasts, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake—that Silver finally felt a sharp, exhaling sense of relief.

[

IamUgoH: The sadist’s leap in production value is unbelievable! The impact is insane!

snoopdog: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Logan67: The environmental detail is actually terrifyingly realistic.

PraisetheF0oL: That bloodbath at the end had its own violent aesthetic to it. Pure cinema.

]

The community’s reception of the trailer was a chaotic mix of awe and terror.

The art direction boasted an incredibly refined, gothic standard of beauty, but the reality of the gameplay was purely built on blood and slaughter.

It was the kind of horror that settled deep into your bones—the kind where, long after you turned off the video, the memory of certain twisted details still sent shivers down your spine.

In his previous life on Earth, Bloodborne had released relatively early in its console generation.

While it was widely hailed as a masterpiece, as the years passed and graphics engines evolved, its visual fidelity had aged, hampered by aliasing issues and somewhat muddy textures.

But this time, Ethan had the budget, the engine, and the foresight to completely eradicate those past regrets.

He had meticulously overhauled the visual rendering, pushing the game’s graphics to the absolute bleeding edge of the industry.

In the trailer, every single clump of matted, blood-soaked fur on the beasts was distinct.

The glistening, exposed muscle fibers of the flayed hound were terrifyingly pristine.

Thousands of miles away, Ivan had already boarded his direct flight back to the Xbox HQ.

He leaned back in his first-class seat and closed his eyes.

For some reason, despite the impending corporate trial waiting for him, his heart was resting in an unprecedented state of tranquility.

He knew exactly what was waiting for him at headquarters. The board was furious, and his rivals were practically salivating, waiting to read his professional obituary.

Glancing at his watch, he knew the promotional video had been live for over an hour now.

Cruising at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, he had no internet access.

He had absolutely no way of knowing how the global market was reacting, nor could he see the engagement metrics.

Yet, he felt completely at ease.

Right before boarding, he had taken a quick phone call from Carter.

The Steam representative admitted that he was facing intense political pressure from his own upper management.

A while ago, Carter had briefly considered filing a departmental transfer, though he eventually canceled it.

But now that Sprout Studio was rapidly becoming one of the most lucrative and influential indie developers on the planet, other senior executives at Xbox and Steam were aggressively circling, plotting to poach the Sprout account out from under him.

"We are beginning our final descent. The local ground temperature is 25 degrees Celsius, 77 degrees Fahrenheit..."

The smooth voice of the flight attendant echoing through the cabin pulled Ivan from his thoughts. They had arrived.

He opened his eyes and pushed up the window blind. Looking down through the clouds, the sprawling, familiar skyline of the tech hub stretched out below him.

The absolute second he stepped off the plane and his phone reconnected to the cellular network, a tidal wave of notifications exploded across his lock screen.

It was a literal waterfall of emails, texts, and executive alerts. He merely glanced at the names of the senders, a faint, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

A sleek, black corporate car was already idling outside the arrivals terminal, ready to ferry him directly to Xbox Global Headquarters.

From the moment Ivan had stepped onto the plane, his rivals had meticulously orchestrated the timeline of his downfall.

Dedicated staff had been tracking his flight path down to the minute.

Assuming there were no delays, the disciplinary board meeting was scheduled to begin the exact moment he walked into the building.

They weren’t going to let him waste a single minute of corporate time.

When Ivan finally pushed open the heavy glass doors of the executive conference room, the rest of the regional vice presidents and board members were already seated around the massive mahogany table.

"Gentlemen. It’s been a while," Ivan said smoothly, pulling out his chair and sitting down with a relaxed smile. "Why the long faces? You all look a little miserable today."

"Ivan, look at the absolute mess you’ve made!" a blond executive seated across the table snapped coldly.

"I’d call it a resounding success," Ivan countered effortlessly. "Don’t you agree that this level of market penetration is a fantastic thing for the Xbox platform?"

"According to our collective vote prior to your arrival, we have determined that you need to step down from your position," another brown-haired executive interjected, nodding firmly. "Perhaps you’d be better suited for a different department. Or a different company entirely."

It was a coordinated execution.

They had already decided his fate before he even landed.

"I agree," Ivan nodded thoughtfully. "I’ve been in this role for quite some time now, and I’m starting to feel that I’m no longer a perfect fit for this specific position."

The entire room froze.

"It’s a genuine shame I won’t be here to watch our console ecosystem reach its absolute peak," Ivan sighed, shaking his head with mock regret. "But it has been a distinct pleasure working with all of you."

The executives stared at him in utter, bewildered silence.

His reaction was the exact opposite of what they had anticipated.

They had fully expected him to be furious, to slam his fists on the table, to argue his case, and ultimately storm out of the room in disgrace after being formally terminated.

Instead, he was simply agreeing.

"Before I officially take my leave, I’d like to give one final progress report," Ivan said, his voice calm and authoritative.

"I took this office with the same mandate as every executive who sat in this chair before me. Perhaps my methods haven’t always been traditional, but I am incredibly proud of the results. During my tenure, our global console hardware sales have increased by ten percent."

Ivan let the number hang in the dead silence of the boardroom.

He sighed softly, stood up, and pushed his chair in.

"I originally wanted to push those numbers even higher, but it seems I’m out of time." Shaking his head, he turned his back on the board and began to walk toward the exit.

"Wait!"

Just as his hand touched the door handle, someone at the table shouted.

"Is there something else?" Ivan paused, glancing over his shoulder with a half-smile. "Don’t worry, I’ll ensure a seamless handover of all my accounts to my successor."

"Console sales increased by ten percent? Are you out of your mind?!" one of the VP’s yelled, his face red. "We haven’t received a single internal report claiming a spike like that!"

"Ah... that," Ivan murmured, feigning realization. "Perhaps it’s simply because the spike just happened."

He remembered the quiet ride in the back of the corporate town car.

When he first landed, he hadn’t bothered to read the frantic emails from his colleagues demanding his resignation.

He had immediately opened the analytics dashboard to check the market feedback for the Bloodborne trailer.

He had looked at the raw data: the replay counts, the social media shares, the pre-order conversions... and the real-time surge in console hardware purchases.

That was why he had walked into the executioner’s den with absolute, unshakable confidence.

Even before the Bloodborne trailer dropped, total console hardware sales had already quietly climbed by three percent, driven entirely by players buying the system just to play Hollow Knight and Celeste.

A three-percent increase was a solid victory, but a few thousand units alone couldn’t shift corporate policy.

But as the cultural footprint of Nova’s games expanded, an undeniable tipping point had been reached.

When the Bloodborne trailer went live, demonstrating an unprecedented leap in graphical fidelity and hardcore gameplay, the dam finally broke.

According to the live analytics, the sheer anticipation for the exclusive title had triggered a massive wave of console purchases.

Combined with the steady momentum of Sprout Studio’s previous hits, hardware sales had skyrocketed to a flat ten percent increase.

At that exact moment in the car, Ivan knew that it didn’t matter how loudly his rivals screamed about protocol, or how much the board questioned his marketing budget.

His numbers can speak for themselves. (insert all Christian Bale American Psycho memes)

( ?° ?? ?°) ( ?° ?? ?°) ( ?° ?? ?°) ( ?° ?? ?°) ( ?° ?? ?°)

Happy Birthday to me! For everyone who answered the quiz, my birthday was on 18th! Also, the answer to both my clues is that Former US President George Washington laid the cornerstone for the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. On September 18, 1793

You can support me at patreon.com/Chaos_King and read 25! Yes, 25 advanced Chapters.