It Blows Up, Properly
The guardians of the trees. The elves.
Blessed with unearthly beauty and lifespans spanning centuries, masters of spirit arts and magic, they stood as one of the High Races of the Wirod Dimension. They prided themselves on being a race of restraint — a people who tempered their emotions through long meditation and discipline.
"Soul Net? Those short-lived races have gone and built another ridiculous toy."
"Do not let yourselves be beguiled by such vulgar entertainment."
And so they remained one of the races with the lowest Soul Net adoption rate in the entire dimension.
When War Era 2 began to take off, the orcs and dwarves converted into Soul Net users in an absolutely explosive wave — but the elves, aloof and lofty as ever, kept refusing the network outright. There were, admittedly, elves playing War Era 2 passionately, mostly Wood Elves. But compared to the orc and dwarf player bases, their numbers were small enough to be called negligible.
Their leaders — the High Elves and the Elders — and their upper class still dismissed it as nothing more than the crude, laughable culture of the short-lived races.
Yes. The short-lived races'...
"Nirwatha! That's it! He's — he's winning! He's winning right now!"
"Those filthy dwarves thought they'd burn down his workers early? But he weathered it!"
"Look at this, Elder! He's winning! Cargam of the elven people is winning!"
The short-lived races' vulgar...
"Quarterfinals? He's in the quarterfinals already?"
"Every other elven player has been eliminated! Cargam alone is advancing to the semifinals!"
"He must win! For the Mother Tree's sake, he must win!"
"We cannot lose to those filthy green-skinned brutes and those squat little bearded dwarves! Never!"
For something dismissed as the vulgar pastime of short-lived races, the event tournament now unfolding was turning out to be an absolutely thrilling spectacle.
The elves were a long-lived race — most of them still remembered the Tooth War of a hundred years ago. They lived at peace with their old enemies, but deep in their hearts, seething emotions and memories of that惨 defeat still smoldered. And for them, watching Cargam climb the bracket while battering members of other races into the dirt was almost unbearably exhilarating.
Besides, War Era 2 was simply fun in its own right. Massive wars of attrition. Strikes against an undefended main base. Bluffs and deception. The countless tactical applications of hero units.
From the Round of 16 all the way to the semifinals, not a single match repeated the same pattern — every game delivered fresh, astonishing plays, churning out one thrilling spectacle after another.
And then, at last—
"He won the semifinal!"
"Cargam is in the finals! He's made the finals!"
"Every last orc has been knocked out, Elder!"
"Of course they were! How could the elven people ever be weak!"
The moment Cargam and a single dwarven player punched their tickets to the grand finals, the elven kingdom of Pyuaroda simply detonated.
"Someone teach me how to connect to this Soul Net."
"I want to buy that game — War Era 2, was it called?"
"Mana... Fruit? What's that? How does one purchase it?"
"We must go to this place called the Black Magic Tower? Then I shall go. Lay down a teleportation circle for me."
It was the moment every long-lived citizen of the elven kingdom of Pyuaroda transformed, to a soul, into a Soul Net user.
The reaction was nothing short of frenzied.
I had known for a long time that the scars of the Tooth War — the great war of a century past — still shaped the Wirod Dimension. But I never imagined that combining those scars with War Era 2 would produce this kind of response.
One million concurrent viewers?
That was merely the opening act.
The truly insane, expectation-shattering viewer numbers began pouring in from day two of the five-day event tournament.
"Hold on. Three million?"
"Three million! Three million concurrent viewers, Elsie! Cargam's matches in particular are pulling in utterly absurd numbers! The Third Elder's jaw is about to fall off from grinning so hard — the ad rates are climbing in real time!"
Three million on day two. But from day three onward, the figures jumped to an entirely different order of magnitude.
Word of mouth spread like wildfire. The galleries across Soul Net were dominated almost entirely by War Era chatter. On Soul World, Soul Pages filled with verification posts from people who'd come to spectate in person racked up hundreds of thousands of views and seething envy, and the rumor that elves, orcs, and dwarves alike were all watching the matches fanned the flames of interest even higher.
Then came day three — the quarterfinals — and the concurrent viewer count finally smashed past five million.
The semifinal.
With every other elven player eliminated, Cargam alone remained, fighting for a finals ticket against the last orc survivor. After nearly fifty minutes of massive, grinding attrition warfare, he seized victory with a base-rush tactic built around his hero units—
"TEN MILLION! Ten million concurrent viewers! TEN MILLION!"
"UOOOOOOH! UOOOOOOH!"
"AAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH!"
And thus I bore witness to an exceedingly rare spectacle: the Elders of the Black Magic Tower and the Tower Master himself, transformed into howling monkeys.
The ad rates?
"Considering the breaks between tournament matches, we can only fit thirty seconds of advertising time—"
"Irrelevant! One hundred thousand gold coins! I'll buy that thirty-second slot for one hundred thousand!"
"We'll pay one hundred ten! One hundred ten thousand!"
"Get out of my way, you fools! One hundred fifty thousand gold! I will pay one hundred fifty thousand!"
The bidding had quite literally punched through the ceiling into outright lunacy.
Amid this absurd, record-shattering boom, Soul Net churned out a staggering wave of new users while wielding influence and reach that no single event tournament should ever have generated — riding ever upward on a crest of triumph.
And then, at long last, came the moment of the grand final itself.
"We've expanded the plaza's grandstands to twenty thousand seats with large-scale magic!"
"Sold out?"
"Completely sold out! The capital guard is cracking down on scalpers as we speak!"
"Current live viewership?"
"The entire dimension is watching! The entire dimension! Everyone who remembers the Tooth War is watching!"
"It hasn't even started and we're already past two million live viewers, Tower Master!"
The whole of the Wirod Dimension was boiling over.
Those who remembered the Tooth War. Those who'd fallen under the spell of Cargam's play. Those who'd tuned in on a whim after hearing the rumors and stumbled headlong into Soul Net and War Era 2, discovering it far more entertaining than expected. And of course, the orc, dwarf, and elven audiences on top of it all.
The dwarven and elven nations in particular, I heard, were in such a fervor that you could fairly say their entire countries had stopped to watch the finals.
Soul Net was my creation. War Era 2 was the game the Black Magic Tower had personally invested in to keep alive. But this reaction — this frenzy — was clearly not something I had manufactured. The internet was behaving the way an internet does.
I rubbed my hands together and gazed at the Soul Net. Well then. Just how far would this grand final soar?
Amid everyone's anticipation and fervor—
"The finals will be decided in a best-of-five! So! Who will become our very first champion? The grand final begins NOW!"
With live commentary from the five developers of the Blizzard Guild, the grand final began.
The dwarven player, Barboim, was a cunning competitor with magnificent mechanical skill. His specialty was overwhelming wars of attrition — he wielded the dwarven race's signature powerful siege engines to hurl overwhelming ranged firepower with devastating effect.
Cargam got utterly crushed by that overwhelming long-range artillery in the first and second sets, unable to accomplish anything at all, and dropped two sets in a row.
And at that point, the concurrent viewer count across the Wirod Dimension climbed past eleven million.
The live broadcast chat had been overrun by dwarves throwing themselves a festival. The elves, by contrast, watched in anxious, tense silence.
Then came the moment when a third straight loss — and defeat — seemed all but sealed.
"Ah! What's that! Elven scouts! It's the scouts!"
"Elves are extraordinarily specialized in ranged skirmishers built on spirit arts! His early-game harassment using those scouts is relentless — and it just keeps coming!"
From set three onward, Cargam changed his strategy. Because the moment the enemy's massive siege engines hit the field, defeat was all but guaranteed, Cargam switched to brutally relentless early harassment — strangling his opponent's economy so that Barboim could never mass-produce a large army in the first place.
Set three: Cargam's victory.
Then set four. Barboim weathered the early harassment and finally succeeded in producing his massive war machines, slamming into Cargam with overwhelming force yet again. Cargam's defeat seemed all but certain—
"While buying time with those early harassments, Cargam has stockpiled a mountain of resources!"
"Elven production speed is slow, but with resources on that scale, it more than makes up the difference!"
"That's an army rivaling Barboim's in size! And he has multiple elven hero units on the field!"
"They're clashing at the center of the map! Cargam — he's winning! He's winning the fight!"
Cargam proved that the elven race could never be out-massed, and pulled off an absurd, impossible comeback victory.
Two sets apiece. One set to decide it all.
The viewer count finally surged past fifteen million, and the Wirod Soul Net was on the verge of overload — the Elders of the Tower, myself included, and our senior mages had to scramble into emergency maintenance just to keep the dimension's network stable.
Set five was the very textbook of a slugfest.
Cargam's insane early harassment. Barboim's counter-harassment shutting it down. Each player dealt the other one lethal blow after another, and both parried them with artistry while their economies kept expanding. A ferocious war over every last scrap of resources. Dirty base-trades striking at undefended mains. And then, in answer, traps that annihilated the invading armies and rolled straight into devastating counterattacks.
For forty straight minutes, the two players traded blows like madmen — fighting, and fighting, and fighting again.
Concurrent viewers climbed by a million every ten minutes, topping twenty million as the match wound down. And at last—
"The massive mid-map engagement! He's winning it! Cargam! He's winning! Barboim's army is collapsing!"
Loss, loss, victory, victory, victory.
With an impossible reverse sweep, the elven player Cargam claimed the championship.
And then—
Soul Net had detonated.
"Elder! Did you see! He won! WE won!"
"Those squat-bearded little oafs! Laughing at us the way they did! Serves them right! Serves them right!"
"How long has it been since I felt this good?! You beard-sporting lot! That's a proper smackdown you just took!"
The elven kingdom of Pyuaroda, and—
"DAMN IT ALL! AAAAAGH! We lost to those pointy-eared bastards!"
"Barboim, you were perfect! Those filthy pointy-eared cheats and their early harassment! AAAARGH!"
"This is a matter of pride now! A matter of PRIDE! If they ever hold another tournament, we win the next one!"
The dwarven kingdom of Rondaim, and—
"Chik-chik. Well. Whoever won, it was entertaining!"
"Finest spectacle I've seen in ages! Chik-chik!"
"Still, I'd like a taste of victory myself. If that tournament is ever held again, spread the word: I shall grant a hundred sheep and ten wolves to whichever green-skinned kinsman of ours takes the crown. Chik-chik!"
"May the warriors of the plains claim victory one day! Chik-chiiik!"
The orc realm of Korwell went up in flames right along with them.