If You Can't Beat Them, Buy Them
Acquisition. Problem solved.
My original plan had been to develop the video platform myself.
I had plenty of money stashed away, after all, and I'd already pulled over twenty million concurrent viewers on a single live broadcast. With that kind of experience and know-how, I figured I could build a technically flawless video platform without breaking a sweat.
"Can't we push the broadcast quality a little higher? I'd really like better resolution."
"This way the picture looks great, but the buffering.......... There has to be a fix for the buffering, right?"
"Damn it, this still isn't it! Uploading needs to be easy. And we need view history tracking when people watch videos!"
"We've got the algorithm problem to solve, too. Hm.........."
And then my perfectionism got the better of me.
I wasn't some obsessive pottery artisan, but as I kept polishing and refining feature after feature, the days slipped past at an alarming rate.
Still, I wasn't in any hurry.
Video and live streaming were, after all, the next act of Soul Net's runaway success story.
I already knew exactly which products were going to blow up, and I was a man with more than enough money and time to spare.
I hired a whole new batch of illusion mages and threw myself, alongside the Black Magic Tower's senior mages, into the twin crusades of improving video quality and crushing buffering delays.
"We've found a way to compress magical illusion data. With this, uploading and streaming videos down becomes dramatically faster."
"I massively expanded several of the video-dedicated dimensional access channels. At this capacity, the service could handle every single person in the dimension watching videos and streams at the same time."
And then, at the exact moment our video platform and streaming technology were soaring toward the summit—
Kraken, a brand-new platform technically leagues behind ours, detonated across the net. Absurdly, Ridiculously. Exploded.
For the Black Magic Tower and me, who had been pouring everything into development, the news landed like a lightning bolt from a clear sky.
"Kraken?"
"Uploads take forever, viewing takes forever, the net page design is straight out of a barn, and the maximum playable resolution is......... garbage."
"Compared to the platform we're building, it doesn't beat us on a single point, does it?"
"Exactly. It's pathetic. And yet it blew up, Elsie. Word of mouth spread like wildfire and it's climbing like there's no tomorrow."
"That's ridi.......... All right, let's take a look first!"
I had released the net page creation magic for free, but I'd assumed a genuinely successful video platform was still years away.
After all, magically implementing video playback was no trivial feat.
No matter how clever someone was, I figured it would be impossible to pre-develop high-quality uploading and downloading, lag-free HD playback, and streaming technology ahead of the curve.
But Soul Net had once again blown past my expectations.
Kraken was, honestly, an absolute mess.
Buffering was a daily ritual, forcing viewers to watch at drastically reduced picture quality, and uploading took forever. Even just connecting to watch a video dragged. In every sense of the word, it was an unfinished net page.
And the internet didn't care one bit.
Buffering be damned, resolution be damned—Kraken had gone viral anyway, and it showed no sign of slowing its explosive growth.
Even if we built a higher-performance, sharper-looking platform from scratch at this point.........
"It feels like people have already settled into Kraken for good, sir."
"I genuinely don't get it. Why on that low-resolution mess of a platform?"
"It's simple, sir. Because it's easy. A signup flow that links straight to your Soul World account, and once you're registered, you can upload any video you want with zero restrictions. The developer even has his own video-capture magic integrated directly into the net page itself."
"So no one has to cast video-capture magic individually?"
"None whatsoever. You just open the net page, hit the big honking 'Upload Video' button, and the capture magic spins up and runs all on its own."
"Now that's a genuinely good idea."
Surpassing Kraken had suddenly become an uphill battle.
We'd taken one clean hit to the jaw.
But I had absolutely no intention of sitting on the floor whining about losing the race to claim the video platform market.
Kraken.
They were drawing in crowds by the millions, but the way I saw it, those guys were about to have a very bad time.
With their user base ballooning, they'd inevitably start thinking about monetizing—and to do that, they'd need higher picture quality than any copycat platform cloning their system, less buffering, and a long chain of technical improvements.
The problem was, if any of that were easy, I never would have sunk this much time into video platform development in the first place.
And as it happened, this problem had one solution that would make both Kraken's developer Karim and me very happy.
"Tower Master."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Kraken. Let's acquire it."
Money.
A truly enormous pile of money had always delivered the right answer.
"You wish to acquire Kraken?"
"Precisely. I'd like to buy it out at one hundred percent ownership."
"And what figure did you have in mind for the acquisition?"
Karim and the other Kraken developers stared at me with barely contained anticipation written across their faces.
I glanced sideways at the Tower Master.
The Tower Master's face was unreadable.
But then he shrugged and waved a hand, as if to say, do as you please.
He trusted me completely.
Then again, considering the fortunes I'd dragged through the Tower's doors lately, that reaction wasn't exactly surprising.
Still, even with the Tower Master's blessing, my hands couldn't stop trembling.
The figure I was about to name was serious money, even by the Tower's standards.
But I had judged the investment well worth it, and the Black Magic Tower respected my judgment to the fullest.
I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"One hundred percent of Kraken's equity. We will pay 160,000 imperial gold coins for the full acquisition of Kraken."
It was the moment the jaws of Karim and every developer in the room hit the floor.
"S-sixteen thousand—no, 160,000 gold coins?!"
"Yes."
Karim and the developers exchanged glances for a moment, then burst out laughing.
Apparently there was no need to deliberate, or even to think it over for long.
"We accept the acquisition contract."
"I agree as well."
"We'll sell you all of our shares too."
Not a single objection surfaced.
The equity acquisition closed faster than a crab could blink at a crosswind, and the developers were shaking hands with one another, grinning ear to ear and utterly failing to hide their delight.
"If you'd like, we can arrange for you to stay on as Kraken's operators. It would be as employees of the Black Magic Tower, of course, but should that interest you........."
"No, thank you. We're planning to use the money from our shares to start new ventures."
"I have no intention of remaining as an operator."
"Same here."
"I'm going to use this money to become a professional investor, myself."
And so, not one of Kraken's founders wanted to stay with the platform they'd built.
Which suited me just fine.
It meant not even the smallest obstacle stood between Kraken and my plans for it.
"A pleasure doing business."
"A genuine pleasure doing business!"
After Karim and the three developers filed out of the room, the Tower Master turned to me and shook his head slowly.
"Well. I didn't oppose it because nothing you've ever pushed for has failed yet, Elsie. But do you truly believe this video platform was worth buying at that price?"
"Yes, sir. I do. Kraken's accessibility and its user pool—and layer our own video technology on top of that? Kraken is going to rise far, far bigger than it already has."
"Coming from you, it's surely not wrong. But what content do you plan to lead with? If you're banking solely on ordinary folk uploading funny home videos like they do now, you may struggle to recoup the development time and costs we've sunk in."
A fair point.
And in my view, growing Kraken into something absurdly enormous required exactly three things.
"You're quite right, Tower Master. Which is why I'm considering three directions. The first is uploading match summaries from War Era 2."
At my words, the Tower Master's eyes widened slightly.
".........Now that's not bad at all. People will watch those in droves. The other races especially, I'd wager."
"Exactly. And the second is music."
"Music?"
"Music has a far higher replay rate than any other type of video. You remember Princess Gunhild and the shepherd musician Teddle, don't you?"
"Of course."
"The reason Teddle's Soul Page blew up back then was his original compositions. We're going to bring that same magic to Kraken, our video platform."
"Music, hm......... We could partner with the Bard Gallery, or the orchestras. Or perhaps theater troupes that specialize in shows?"
"We don't need all of them. Just link up with a few major organizations and set the precedent. The rest will come flocking on their own—once they see their music's revenue and sales running entirely through Kraken, there won't be a single reason to stay out."
"Excellent idea! I'll handle the outreach to the orchestras and bards myself. So many of those wandering minstrels pass through the Black Magic Tower anyway that I've built up a fair few connections there."
"Then I'll leave that side of things to you, Tower Master."
"And the third?"
The third.
I let out a small laugh.
The real reason my video platform development had taken so painstakingly long.
"Live streaming."
Because I had never intended to build merely a platform where people could upload and watch videos.
"From now on, every War Era 2 broadcast will run through Kraken. And I'm going to make Kraken the stage for a golden age of live broadcast creators."
I intended to birth the entire profession of the streamer—content creators who earned their living broadcasting live and then posting highlight clips to Kraken afterward—on Kraken itself.
And just like with music, precedent would be everything here.
Clear, undeniable proof that you could make money through streaming, that it paid, that such a livelihood could even exist.
And as luck would have it, I knew a few people who were absolutely perfect for setting that precedent.
"Tower Master, I'll be stepping out to the Twilight Magic Tower for a bit."
One of the perks of belonging to the Black Magic Tower:
teleportation cost me not a single coin.
Coldrock, Archmage of the Twilight Magic Tower.
It would be no exaggeration to call him the most famous and most revered mage in the entire Wirod Dimension, beyond even the borders of the Balrod Empire.
"So......... you're saying you'll offer this 'streaming' service through a net page called Kraken, and you'd like me to open the inaugural broadcast?"
Which was exactly why he was perfect streamer material.
"Yes, precisely. You won't need to do anything special. I thought a lecture on magic would be wonderful."
An educational streamer.
That was the exact niche I'd come to Coldrock with in mind.
But after hearing me out, the Archmage considered for a moment, then shook his head.
"I'd rather do something along the lines of giving feedback on failed spellwork. A broadcast of that kind."
"Failed spellwork, sir?"
"Why not? That video that made Kraken famous. The apprentice mage Pipo's little mishap? I watched it too. Botched incantations, miscast spells—people are still dying or getting maimed by such mistakes all across the Wirod Dimension, even now. So we take video reports from those people, I provide feedback, and in doing so we help build a proper culture of spell use. What do you think of that sort of content?"
.........Well, well.
Coldrock.
I'd assumed he was the type who quietly buried himself in research, but the man had a surprisingly sharp read on the trends.
"I think it's a phenomenal idea! Could you begin right away? Of course, if your research is too demanding, or your schedule simply too packed, there's no need to push yourself........."
"I'm already an honorary position with nothing much to do at the Twilight Tower as it is. Do think about my age, boy. I turn 212 this year. Far too old to call myself a working mage anymore. A quiet little broadcast from my own chamber, chatting with people—that suits exactly where I am in life, I'd say."
For a man calling himself an honorary mage staring down death, he still carried the reputation of a hero-tier Archmage who could single-handedly annihilate an entire nation.
Well.
Good for me, either way.
If he'd do it, I couldn't be more grateful.
"Thank you so much, Archmage Coldrock! If you need anything, we'll provide broadcast equipment and staff immediately!"
"No need. The Twilight Tower has plenty of people willing to help an old man out. Don't trouble yourself."
And just like that, I'd secured one streamer.
But one wasn't enough.
Variety was the soul of good content, after all.
And in that spirit, there was one more person I knew—a soul who was Coldrock's polar opposite in every conceivable way.
Among the Ten Heroes, Iomene was famously an attention magnet.
One look at her Soul Page posts or the things she left on the Adventurer Gallery made that abundantly clear.
And to an attention seeker, live streaming was an temptation impossible to resist.