People Who Hate Games
The Wirod Dimension had quite literally been turned upside down.
Some people might have scoffed, saying it was ridiculous that the release of a single game could cause this much of a stir.
[I'm seriously losing my mind. My mind is melting.]
-I've lost track of how many times I've played this already.
[Isn't it obvious? Every single mage in our tower has stopped doing research because they're all too busy playing this.]
-And the Tower Master who's supposed to stop us is playing it too, so the tower is basically in a state of total paralysis.
This was not the kind of impact you could dismiss as "just one simple game being released."
It was, quite simply, overwhelming fun.
On top of that, the purchase process couldn't have been simpler.
Anyone who paid 50 Mana Fruits — a currency already familiar to the vast majority — could start playing immediately.
People who heard the rumors and tried it out on a whim dove headfirst into obsession, and the people around them, watching that obsession unfold, grew even more eager to play.
An endless positive feedback loop, and Doom's Hell Slayer — better known as Hell Slayer — was careening down the sales charts, racking up numbers that defied all reason.
"Th-the sales figures are how much?!"
"One hundred thousand copies in one week."
"One hundred thousand!......"
Carmack and Alfonso stared blankly at the news in disbelief, then promptly threw their arms around each other and started celebrating like a pair of convulsing maniacs.
A hundred thousand copies in a single week.
They were now filthy rich.
This was what the infectious spread of Soul Net and its ecosystem had made possible.
And then, of course—
"Concurrent users are climbing! Wahahaha!"
"The galleries and communities are blowing up! And people are lining up to buy the game after reading all the community reactions!"
"The branch towers are reporting staffing shortages because of Mana Fruit sales, Tower Master!"
"Hire more! Create a dedicated Mana Fruit sales department! Let's just! Make money! Time to reap the rewards of grinding like dogs for three months to expand the Soul Net dimension!"
The greatest beneficiary of this entire situation was none other than the Black Magic Tower.
Mana Fruits were quite literally selling like crazy.
Better still, once newcomers bought Mana Fruits for the game, the vast majority didn't stop at just playing.
"Doom's Hell Slayer, or whatever it's called. People say it's really fun? I want to try it — where can I play?"
"Buy Mana Fruits at the Black Magic Tower and you're good to go."
"Mana Fruits? What are those?"
"A kind of virtual currency you can use in Soul World. You can buy games with them too."
"What's Soul World?"
"Think of it as a place where you can open your own personal Soul Net page. It's fun. Want to try it?"
Someone buys Mana Fruits for the game, hears they can also be used in Soul World, signs up for Soul World—
"Oh my god, this post is hilarious. How can a human being be this stupid?"
"Adventurer Gallery kids are always pulling dumb shit like that. But thanks to their dumb shit, they sometimes pull off insane discoveries and adventures too."
"Adventurer Gallery? What's a gallery?"
"It's a community on Soul Net. All kinds of people gather for all kinds of reasons and post stuff... that kind of place. Want to check it out? There's tons of monster information and whatnot."
They start hanging out on Soul World, spot a funny meme or post on a friend's Soul Page, wonder where it came from, and end up joining a gallery.
One single game — Doom's Hell Slayer — was pulling a monstrous influx of new users into the entire Soul Net ecosystem.
And communities and games were a match made in heaven.
The creation of the Doom's Hell Slayer gallery was the natural course of events, and the wealth of information and strategy guides posted there helped players sink even deeper into the game.
It was the kind of success that would go down in history.
Predictions were already emerging that they might sell over a million copies at this rate.
Far from slowing down, sales kept climbing as if the first week's 100,000 copies were a joke, and they ultimately succeeded in selling one million copies in a single month.
As if that were all.
"You can play online multiplayer, right?"
"Yes, you can."
"Good. Then let's sell skins usable in multiplayer. Like the Soul Page skin effects — you throw money at it and your character gets to wear much flashier, cooler outfits and weapons. Let's go with that structure."
"We'll get right on it!"
Under Elsie Bwenner's direction, Alfonso and Carmack began selling multiplayer-exclusive skins, and those sales triggered yet another explosive surge in Mana Fruit purchases.
You're the only one rocking a blinding, one-of-a-kind skin in the most popular game in the entire Wirod Dimension?
This was no longer about game skins. This was about a man's pride.
"Mana Fruits! One gold coin of the Balrod Empire!"
"I'll buy some too! Make it ten gold coins of the Balrod Empire!"
While some customers bought casually, whales started appearing who insisted on owning every single skin.
And thus, the Black Magic Tower finally reaped the rewards of the three months of all-nighters it had invested in dimensional stability and infrastructure expansion.
An absolutely obscene amount of money and people began pouring into Soul Net.
Better still, the people flooding in didn't stop at playing games — they branched out into other activities, driving user growth even higher. That was the real story.
Galleries.
Personal Soul Page activity on Soul World.
Games.
And riding the wave, Net Novel's user base grew as well.
"It's a success, Elsie! A success! Wahahahaha!"
Eldrad Camion, Tower Master of the Black Magic Tower, rejoiced like a man half out of his mind, reveling in wild abandon.
But not a single elder or high mage called the Tower Master undignified.
Because they were all much the same.
The mages of the Black Magic Tower were changing.
The tower, once the very picture of sobriety — running long-range portals, dimensional transfers, and jump points like glorified service desk clerks — was now drifting toward a free-spirited atmosphere where everyone lounged around in loose, comfortable clothes.
The only ones still wearing proper mage uniforms were—
"Advertising? Hahaha! Welcome! What kind of advertisement would you like?"
The Third Elder, who had all but transformed from mage into businessman, and the mages of the advertising department.
While everyone basked in the sweetness of success, there was exactly one person keeping a level head.
The starting point of this entire saga — Elsie Bwenner.
He understood perfectly well that this wasn't the end. It was only the beginning.
[Greetings, Master Elsie Bwenner. We are a mage guild that has newly specialized in illusion magic. We were wondering whether the game our guild has developed might possibly be uploaded to Soul Net...]
"A pleasure, Master Elsie Bwenner. We played Hell Slayer and decided we wanted to make something like it ourselves, so we formed a club and developed a game of our own. We were curious if you might upload it for us. It's really fun!"
[A game developed by three apprentice mages! We would like to inquire whether it might also be uploaded to Soul Net.]
Exorcism Records had led the revival of Net Novel.
And Doom's Hell Slayer went beyond a simple scroll-style purchase model — it was announcing the dawn of the online gaming era.
Countless illusion mages across the Wirod Dimension witnessed this record-breaking success.
Even people who had never specialized in illusion magic began switching their specialties over en masse, throwing themselves into new careers as game developers.
All because of a single game, new currents and new professions were being born across the Wirod Dimension.
A 30% commission.
The Black Magic Tower took 30% of all sales.
And honestly speaking..........
It stung.
It stung like hell.
No, seriously, think about it.
The dimensional expansion? Elsie and the Black Magic Tower broke their backs on that.
The advertising? Free of charge.
Effectively, Carmack and Alfonso strolled in with a single game under their arms and walked away sweeping up 70% of the revenue. From the Black Magic Tower's perspective, no matter how successful Doom's Hell Slayer became, it was nothing to laugh about.
And yet this could never be called a failure.
Because games didn't begin and end with Doom's Hell Slayer.
Besides, I knew that we had to show developers they could take home a full 70%, and show them Carmack and Alfonso succeeding and getting rich, before other creators would jump in.
We are not game developers.
We are a platform operator.
And for a platform to draw in creators, it needed success stories — proof that you really could make it big doing this.
Pouring money into Alfonso and Carmack at a loss was for exactly this reason.
And how did that turn out?
"Tower Master, how many game submissions came in this time?"
"Thirteen."
"Who plays games best in the Black Magic Tower?"
"A few of the training mages are currently hemorrhaging blood over Doom's Hell Slayer as we speak."
"Use them as testers. Run internal evaluations, pick out the decent games, and launch them. Same terms we gave Carmack and Alfonso."
"Pwahahaha! Got it! Elsie, got it!"
"Separately, I'm planning to build a dedicated game portal on Soul Net. A game hub where all games are gathered in one place, ranked by sales, with advertising on top."
"You're telling me you want to make the game version of Net Novel?"
"Exactly that. The game version of Net Novel. Through it, all kinds of games become easy to purchase."
"Now that sounds promising! That sounds very promising indeed!"
An online game hub.
And that wasn't the end of it.
The reason I'd sweated through the dimensional expansion wasn't just to make game uploads and downloads more convenient.
A new era was coming.
No longer just text and images.
The era of video.
My mind was brimming with plans to formally roll out a new streaming platform and video upload features, when—
"Elsie Bwenner?"
"Wh-who might you be?"
"Count Le Bellingham of the Balrod Imperial Guard. A hearing has been convened by the Senate, and you, together with Eldrad Camion, Tower Master of the Black Magic Tower, are hereby ordered to appear."
"I'm sorry — on what grounds, exactly...?"
"Over the harmful effects of the games, several nobles and the Tribune of the Senate have formally submitted letters of protest to the Senate."
I realized I'd momentarily forgotten about real-world news, so absorbed had I been in adding new features, building the game hub, and developing the video platform.
Not all eyes watching the success of Doom's Hell Slayer were friendly ones.
"The eldest son of a ducal house, skipping his sword training to waste his time on this game nonsense?!"
"S-such cruel, blood-soaked depictions! Looking at this makes your brain melt! It will corrupt a person's mind and soul!"
"Is it truly right to subject young children to such imagery at random, hmm? Well? This demands regulation!"
An ancient, well-worn powder keg.
A topic that had given my past life's Earth a long bout of measles — one never fully eradicated even by the time I was reincarnated.
The debate over the harmful effects of games had now officially arrived in the Wirod Dimension.