Soul World's Slow Start and a Shepherd's New Friend

Soul World.

“I've brought her back.”

The blue-haired Hero.

The Thread of Calamity.

She'd solved in a single stroke something even the Guild Master had called hopeless. Truly, I thought, the woman earned the name Hero.

“Thank you so very much, Lady Hero! If you require compensation of any kind—”

“Soul World, or whatever it's called. You said you could customize nicknames and such, right? Just pay me generously in that. And from what I hear, you've been doing... ch...atting? Something like that, real-time conversations with the S-Rank adventurers among your crowd who are doing well for themselves?”

“Yes, that's correct.”

“Then I'm a little hurt. Why not with me?”

“Haha... I never imagined it would be of use to someone like you, Lady Hero. Of course, should you ever require it, I would set aside my rudeness and reach out.”

“Good. That's enough. Let's meet now and then. And you! The one who reeks of ink or whatever it is—keep writing! I'll come visit myself from time to time!”

At the Hero's words, our black-haired author—by then an absolute wreck of a human being—burst into sobs and thanked her over and over and over again.

The Hero gave a small chuckle, accepted the gratitude, opened a portal with casual ease, and vanished.

A portal...

Unless you were someone on the level of the Tower Master, I had never once seen a person fire one of those off with their own personal mana like that.

Monsters, apparently, came in monster flavor.

Anyway.

“Author? I know the reply took quite a while, but that's no trouble at all. Shall we proceed with your Net Novel contract?”

“Yes! Absolutely! Without question! That was my intention from the start!”

“Haha! An excellent decision! Please serialize with us for a long, long time. Net Novel is in dire need of a hit right now, you see. Have you settled on a plot?”

“Yes. Once Part One ends, I plan to turn the protagonist into a woman in Part Two.”

Hold on. Do you happen to use Novelpia?

Why is a development straight out of the web novel platforms I devoured in my past life suddenly popping up here?

“Well... as long as the views keep rolling in, I have no complaints. Looking forward to working with you, Author.”

The black-haired author wept and wept and seized my hand again and again.

Well.

Getting results like this in exchange for handing over a handful of Soul World's virtual currency? Practically free.

Free.

Think I'm bullshitting?

I wasn't.

With the Black Magic Tower's warm sponsorship and fat payout behind her, our black-haired author could devote herself entirely to her writing—and the result was that a mega-hit boasting millions of views ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came bursting onto the scene all over again.

I never once stopped smiling whenever I checked Soul Net's daily visitor numbers.

Exorcism Record.

The Dragon's Contractor.

Pebbles of the Years.

And Scent of Ink.

Let's go.

And it didn't stop there.

Where the money flows, talent gathers—or so they say.

One new breakout hit after another came charging up the charts, and Net Novel took off as if it had grown wings.

The authors were delighted to receive generous ad revenue payouts, while the Black Magic Tower and I were delighted by the ever-growing user count—and the advertising income that rose in lockstep with it.

And so Soul Net scored another magnificent leap forward thanks to Net Novel.

“Two million daily visitors! We've broken two million! Hooray! Hooray!”

“Wahaha! Hail Elsy Bwenner! Hooray, I say!”

The Black Magic Tower was in full festival mode, and while the festival was rolling, I finished preparing the launch of a brand-new service I'd spent the past year bleeding to build.

Soul World.

And Soul Talk, our dedicated chat service.

Rubbing my hands together, I uploaded the new features to the dimension.

A whole year of testing, safety checks, and brutal security audits. It had been genuinely exhausting.

But at last, it was done.

I put up the ads on Soul Net immediately.

With the ads live, I fidgeted anxiously, watching the response.

Now, the wise path would have been to let things drift along at their own pace—but when it came to playing with shiny new toys, I was already hopelessly addicted to the jingling of Valrod gold coins.

If this hits big, it'll blow Net Novel out of the water!

So there I was, rubbing my hands like a fly, waiting and waiting with mounting impatience for the user numbers to climb.

One month after the launch of Soul World and Soul Talk.

The response was quietly sinking into an apathy that didn't even reach one over three over three over a half of what Net Novel's launch had drawn.

I tore at my hair.

No, what the hell, why?!

What I'd built wasn't some simple fantasy community.

I had essentially introduced the Wirod Dimension to its very first fusion of community and internet functions!

And going by the trajectory of the internet's development in my past life, the explosive growth of mini-homepage-style personal cyber spaces and chat services was an extremely natural next step.

Surely...

Surely that was how it should go.

So why wasn't it taking off?

Why???

The festival mood died down.

After hitting the two-million mark, Soul Net's user count began wobbling unsteadily up and down, and the ad rates naturally plateaued.

Were the good times gone for good?

Did the internet just not mesh with other worlds?

Days passed with me holed up in the lab, drowning in every miserable, sulky thought imaginable.

And right up until I sat there thumping my head against the lab table, sniffling in despair, I had no idea that I'd forgotten yet another absolute law of the internet.

Namely: nobody—ever—can predict when, where, who, in what manner, and how something will pop off and become the next big trend.

The bard Teddle hailed from the Quirltere Kingdom, a peaceful, quiet land of shepherds.

“Quirltere. Qwerlterere. Quir... damn tongue-twister. Just call it Qui Kingdom!”

And indeed, everyone in the region called the Quirltere Kingdom the Qui Kingdom.

Nobody knew why.

Everyone just did.

The Qui Kingdom.

The Qui Kingdom.

What an unimpressive name.

But shabby name aside, the natural scenery was nothing short of magnificent.

A serene, unspoiled, beautiful kingdom of nature, where one might occasionally cross paths with heroes of legend and ancient dragons—and even elves and fairy folk like pixies.

And this ultra-bucolic kingdom, whose people lived in and with nature, as much a part of it as the trees and streams themselves, was...

“Bored out of my goddamn skull. Seriously. If I lived in a proper town I'd have found myself a girl and be courting by now. But a shepherd...? What am I supposed to do, court a sheep?”

“You don't remember the village headman's son from down the road? Got caught mounting a goat and got run out.”

“That's how bored you have to be, man! That bored! No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠people to meet, no women around. Then one day you catch sight of a goat's ass and something just snaps. I understand him, honestly.”

“Spare me the bullshit and get lost. I'm composing.”

It was an unbearably boring corner of the world.

To some, that boring backwater would have been a living hell—but for Teddle, it was nothing of the sort.

Tending his sheep, and whenever a melody drifted into his head, idly jotting it down. That was his life.

And Teddle loved that life.

He sang beautifully, too.

Carrying a single harp passed down through his family, he made the rounds of the nearby villages performing, lining his pockets nicely with pocket change at every festival—until one day.

“You can make money writing songs? Eh? Actual money? Don't talk nonsense, just tend the—”

“It makes money.”

“What? How?”

“I uploaded one of my songs to Soul Net and got a contract offer from the Black Magic Tower. They want to use my songs as one of the playable tracks on Soul World.”

“They do that sort of thing? What the hell's a Soul World?”

“Want me to teach you the access incantation? I learned it a few days ago when I went to play my harp.”

“Give it here!”

The moment Teddle realized his songs could earn him money, a thought took root: maybe I could do this for a living?

After all, the Qui Kingdom was a boring place.

Whenever the sheep-tending left him with nothing to do, he'd dream up a melody, jot down a song, and upload it to Soul World.

Then all sorts of people would come and go, and whenever they visited his Soul Page, they'd often leave notes praising the music or signing his guestbook.

It was fun.

To think that with a single incantation, he could connect with someone living a distance that would take hundreds of hours on foot.

And so, through Soul World, Teddle had lately made a friend.

Soul World's personal Soul Pages let users write public posts and private ones, kept separate.

Among these, if you established a Friend—signifying your closest bond—with a specific user, that person gained the ability to read your private posts. You could set a special nickname by which to address each other, leave entries in a guestbook reserved for Friends alone, and so on.

All manner of intimate interactions became possible.

And Teddle's very first Friend—his most frequent conversation partner—was a sensitive, deeply feeling soul.

Marika.

The childhood pet name she'd once gone by.

These days, not a soul called her that.

The Monster Princess of Vallerheim.

Devourer of Darkness.

Commander of the Shadow Legion.

And the nicknames and titles her enemies had bestowed upon her—well, the printable ones included giant-battleaxe-carrying she-devil.

The First Princess of Vallerheim, the knightly kingdom standing shoulder to shoulder with the savage northern reaches where barbarians and monsters ran rampant—Gunhild Vallerheim, axe in hand, an axe even larger than her own body.

After shaking the monster blood from Slaughterer's Tooth, she answered Teddle's message.

The chat ended.

Gunhild let out a fond little chuckle, closed the chat window, and hefted Slaughterer's Tooth.

At her feet lay the several dozen wyverns she'd just brought down, axe wounds cleaved through their skulls, brains spilling freely as their bodies lay sprawled and slack.

“Your Highness.”

“Where?”

“Northwest of the barrier.”

“Let's move! Norga!”

At her bellow, a wolf so massive it could have out-stretched several carriages pulled together appeared at her side.

Gunhild swung herself into the saddle with practiced ease, charged her body to the brim with mana, and roared.

“To the God of War, the blood of monsters! RIDE!”

Thousands of her elite soldiers mounted their own wolves in turn, howling as they thundered off toward where the monsters had surfaced.

At ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their head rode Gunhild.

There was exactly one moment when the princess, roaring as she led her warriors, fell silent mid-shout.

Exactly when a Soul Talk message flew in from Teddle.

And this time, her silence stretched a little long.

In person?!

She wanted to meet him.

And at the very same time, she was terrified that the moment he saw her, he'd flee in fright.

For the first time in her life, Gunhild Vallerheim had no idea what to write back.