Kraken Streaming Service
A billion views was only the beginning.
The arrangement clung to your ears, the Valerheim royal army's charge was impossibly cool, and on top of that came a pounding, aggressively fast rhythm built not on harps or flutes but on Valerheim's traditional instruments — a sound so rich it practically slapped you across the face.
Word of mouth spread like wildfire. The song shot straight to the top of the Portal Page's real-time search rankings and began flaunting its existence like a madman, and before long, everyone in the Wirod Dimension knew it by heart. And the creator of this first mega-hit born since Soul Net came into existence found himself sitting on a pile of money.
“This is the payout from view revenue?”
“Yes. We factored in repeat plays as well. And Mr. Teddle? We'll be paying you copyright royalties on your music as well.”
“Copyright royalties?”
“We're designing a system where anyone who wants to use a composed piece on another Net page, or in a play, a video, or anything of the sort, has to pay royalties to play it. That's the only way more singers will eagerly upload their work to Kraken. We've also set up a separate Net page called Kraken Music, where you can save music.”
“And what might that be?”
“It's a site where you pay a fixed fee and can play music directly on the Net page. Subscribe to Kraken Music and you can enjoy crisp, high-fidelity music to your heart's content. Every stream counted on that platform will funnel additional payouts straight to you, Mr. Teddle.”
“Hahaha. Mr. Elsy, you really have... you really have conceived a remarkable number of original systems, haven't you?”
“You're the precedent, Mr. Teddle. Unless we show the world that success on Kraken is possible, no other singer will throw themselves into this scene with any passion. It's my intention to make every singer and every song in the Wirod Dimension something people can hear and see through Kraken. That said, there's one small favor I'd like to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“The fact that this system exists. The way success can be achieved through Kraken Music. Please organize all of that and post it on your Soul Page so everyone can see it. If you'd rather write it up somewhere like a Gallery instead of your Soul Page, that's fine too. Just make sure it reaches as many people as possible.”
“Of course. I'll do exactly that. You're practically my benefactor — how could I possibly refuse?”
“Benefactor?”
“My father-in-law. His Majesty the King. I have never seen him so pleased.”
Charge of the Wolves was setting the entire Dimension ablaze. And the greatest windfall from the song's mega-hit fell not on any other place, but on the Kingdom of Valerheim itself.
In the blink of an eye, Valerheim shed its old image — a tedious, barren war kingdom in the frozen north, full of nothing but snow and monsters — and picked up a new one: the kingdom of true men, a land that set the blood of every man boiling. Without lifting a finger, the nation's prestige was skyrocketing beyond all reason, all because it had managed to snag one exceptional prince consort.
Frankly speaking, the marriage of Teddle and Gunhild looked like the romance of the age from the outside, but within Valerheim's borders there had surely been no small number of cold, sidelong glances aimed at Teddle. Some unknown shepherd of a musician, from who knew where, seducing the king's daughter. In a kingdom where strength and combat power spoke for everything, Teddle had almost certainly been treated as a useless sack of barley — tolerated, but utterly ambiguous in standing.
Then one song turned him, overnight, into the kingdom's greatest treasure. Reactions like the King's were only to be expected.
“I laid the stage, Mr. Teddle, but you're the one who soared above it. If anything, I should be thanking you.”
“I will absolutely handle the promotion. Just as you said — my Soul Page, the Galleries, everywhere I can reach, I'll do my utmost to lay out the story of my success. Thank you once more, Mr. Elsy.”
Teddle bowed his head to me again and again in gratitude. And not long after, true to his word, he wrote up his success story in meticulous detail and posted it on his Soul Page, which already saw tens of millions of visitors a day.
As if that were all. He posted the same write-up on the Bard Gallery for everyone to see. And the change brought about by that single success story was nothing short of staggering.
Bards. Minstrels. The bards who used to accompany adventurer parties through dungeons, lending their songs to the slaughter of monsters. Every last one of them threw themselves at Kraken and began uploading their music.
Somewhere to listen. And thanks to the success of Charge of the Wolves — music and video fused into one — something beyond merely pleasant audio: videos that were spectacular to watch. The format of the music video itself began spreading, little by little, across the Dimension, and with sights and sounds to offer in equal measure, Kraken started capturing the people of the Wirod Dimension with an absurd, unstoppable expansion. Thus Kraken rode the momentum, claiming an absurd position for itself as the Dimension's definitive video platform.
But naturally, I still wasn't satisfied.
Video wasn't just about the pleasure of watching what someone else had uploaded. Live streaming was plenty entertaining in its own right. And fortunately — just as Kraken had, just as Kraken Music had — the live streaming service I'd newly added to Kraken...
“You see that, you bastards?! Did you SEE me gut those monsters?!”
...had launched with Lady Iomene, and...
“Now, the incantation here... was cast correctly. However? The magic circle's structure was slightly off, wasn't it? This is an extremely common mistake — you confused your runes. And then... BOOM! Yes. That's how accidents happen. You reported this as an incantation error, but this was a failure caused by drawing the magic circle incorrectly.”
...had launched with the live broadcast of Archmage Coldrock — and between the two of them, they were pulling in audiences of impossible size from day one.
The Wirod Dimension. In this world, where mana didn't merely run rich but overflowed outright, magic was as natural and unremarkable as breathing — a part of daily life itself.
Need to cross a great distance? Use a teleportation circle. Too poor to ride the teleporters? Then enchant your carriage or your horse with high-speed galloping magic and race along. A famine year? Cast a rain-summoning spell, or pray to the Spirit King of Water or the gods, and the famine dissolves into a bountiful harvest.
A world where even a five-year-old child casts household magic. It certainly wore the face of an uncivilized medieval age, yet every field that magic had touched had advanced to a degree that would make science fiction blush. In such a Dimension, magical failure and mistakes were a daily occurrence — and, at the same time, a tragedy.
“Greetings! Hehehe. This is the first time I've done anything of this sort, so I find myself a touch nervous. The young man Elsy Bwenner of the Black Magic Tower made a special request of me, and so I am attempting this broadcast. Some of you may know my face, and some of you may not, but I am a man called Coldrock, Archmage of the Dusk Tower.”
In that sense, Coldrock's broadcast was nothing less than a long-awaited rain for the drought-stricken people of the Wirod Dimension. Archmage — a title granted exclusively to those who possess Three Golden Rings. And among Archmages, Coldrock was the eldest and the most deeply respected of them all.
“The goal of my broadcast is simple: to analyze the causes of magical mistakes and failures, and to provide feedback on them. So that no one is hurt. That is my purpose. If you know of a spell that has failed or gone awry, please report it to the board on my Kraken channel. I will review it and offer my feedback.”
It was a broadcast that began with calm, quiet remarks. But the content within was impossibly informative — and, at the same time...
insanely sensational.
It wasn't that Coldrock himself was sensational. It was that the submitted footage of magical failures was, truly, an unbroken parade of the absurd.
“Hold on. What is this? A vacuum-formation spell. A slime-summoning spell. And... mixed with a reciprocating-motion spell? That failed! AAAAH! The entire room is shaking and drenched in slime and... what even is this. You must not do this. When combining spells of different fields, you must pay careful attention to the connecting runes at the junction points. You did none of that.”
The failure footage itself was insanely fascinating. People laughed at the ridiculous mistakes, and fell into grim, chastened silence at the clips that ended in horrific accidents. But the sensationalism didn't stop there.
“My goodness, whoever submitted this... what exactly were you trying to accomplish by combining these spells... a... solitary act of self-pleasure?... Let us stop there. I think it best not to say any more.”
Every viewer watching Coldrock's broadcast was left gaping in horror.
All across the Wirod Dimension, people were being shocked, and shocked again, by this banquet of high-concentration lunatics. And so Coldrock's magic-feedback broadcast leapt, in the blink of an eye, to hundreds of thousands of live viewers, carving out a brand-new chapter in the history of Kraken Streaming.
And the one answering the challenge was no pushover either.
“Abyss Dungeon, Floor 32! That's today's target, you bastards! Ah — thanks for the 300 Mana Fruits, whatever your name is!”
The Abyss Dungeon. Sitting at the very center of the Wirod Dimension, a pit of chaos and darkness where primordial horrors had taken up residence — transparently, indisputably, the most dangerous place in the world. The records of monsters and warped, inhuman entities pouring out of the dungeon and dealing catastrophic damage to the Wirod Dimension were beyond counting. It was precisely why "adventurer" — the profession of periodically descending into the dungeon to clear out its monsters — had become one of the most common occupations in the entire Dimension.
And dungeon conquests were infamous for their death tolls. Succeed, and you could claim items flowing in from other Dimensions or the legacies of legendary adventurers dead for centuries, seizing wealth and glory beyond imagination — but it was also a place where several thousand adventurers died every single year.
And through that place, alone, at a ludicrous display of raw power, charged...
“Floor 32 is where the shadow monsters properly start showing up, so pay attention! Learn from what I'm doing so none of you die down there! [Lady Iomene, why do you always wear such loose, revealing clothing?] Because it turns into rags the moment I start fighting anyway — you telling me YOU'D waste money on nice clothes for that?!”
Nobody on earth wanted to miss the dungeon-exploration stream of the smokin'-hot female hero with the killer body and the outrageously revealing outfit. And what's more, Iomene's broadcasts had a clear public-service purpose as well.
“Back before I became a Hero, I ran with a lot of adventurer bastards. My first party, I think. We were conquering the Abyss Dungeon when they hit a trap and got wiped out. I was a complete nobody back then, so I couldn't save any of them. So watch what I do, and don't die, you adventurer bastards. Got it?”
She was coarse, violent, and dressed scandalously — but the purpose of her broadcast was, unmistakably, a noble one.
And so people began flooding into Kraken's live streaming section at a frightening pace.
But all of this was still only the beginning. If Coldrock and Iomene had shown the world what an individual broadcast could be, then the true, proper detonation point of the Kraken Streaming service arrived with...
“The pro team of Rondaim, Kingdom of the Dwarves, faces off against the pro team of Puaroda, Kingdom of the Elves! A best-of-five for a spot in the finals! Who will emerge victorious from this match?!”
...the moment the War Era 2 broadcasts began streaming live on Kraken.