The Birth of the Jjalbang

Soccer? Didn't exist. Sports? Nothing of the sort. Friendly matches between races, cooperative athletics — such things had never existed, and never could exist.

For one thing, the physical specs and body types of each race were so wildly different that holding any fair competition was simply impossible. And with the lingering grudges of the Tooth War still simmering between them, the idea of friendly cross-species games was dead on arrival.

And then, out of nowhere, esports dropped into this world.

A war fought over games — games so patently, demonstrably fair that no one could complain — with the pride of entire races hanging in the balance. There was no way a show like this could fail.

Live streaming of the official leagues. Curated highlight reels of legendary matches, and full-game uploads of every classic contest ever played. With that entire system and infrastructure in place, Kraken Streaming officially went live — and promptly exploded all over again.

"Tavern's packed to the rafters today, eh? What's going on?"

"It's match day, you dunce."

"Ooooh! Is it now? Who's playing who?"

"Over in the Puaroda league, it's Team Verdant Leaf versus Team Sturdy Bough."

"Why are all their team names plants, anyway? What about the humans?"

"The Valrod Empire's teams are all facing each other this time."

Whenever the strong teams happened to be matched against each other, that day the taverns would burst at the seams. Tavern keepers went so far as to procure self-regenerating magic tools and artifacts loaded with high-capacity illusion projection spells, floating massive screens in the middle of their establishments.

But the true value of this Age of War 2 streaming service lay somewhere else entirely.

"Isn't today the day Cargam plays?"

"It is! Then obviously we're watching."

The elves, too.

"Today is the day Team Flying Boulder crushes Team Iron Pickaxe!"

"Flying Boulder forever!"

The dwarves, too.

"Tch. I'm not going hunting today."

"Today's the day our Team Iron Tusk plays."

The orcs, every last one of them, were pouring into Kraken Streaming as well — and that was the biggest deal of all.

If it had been humans alone, who could say. But the moment dwarves, elves, and orcs came flooding in alongside them, Kraken's user count inflated to numbers that defied all reason.

And once they were in, not a single one of them stopped at merely watching match footage.

"Tch? A golden-tip dump on making your Wolf Rider run faster?"

"Thirty-two effective techniques for handling magical metals, huh... Now that's got my attention."

"How I Contracted with a Supreme Spirit? That's a properly baited title. Might as well give it a look."

An endless ocean of videos, stuffed to bursting with information, curiosity, and entertainment. And so the three races — starting with Age of War 2 — plunged headlong into the sea of the internet and began to thrash about in its depths.

The elves. The orcs. The dwarves. It became an everyday sight to find every last one of them with a Soul Net window open, snickering to themselves.

Advertising revenue skyrocketed once again.

The Black Magic Tower was now, within the Empire — no. Beyond the Valrod Empire, the single highest-earning magic tower among every tower in existence across the entire dimension.

Advertising revenue. And net usage fees — overlooked until now, buried under Kraken's shadow — flowing in from the throngs of entrepreneurs who had launched Soul Page businesses with all manner of offerings. And Mana Fruit income on top of it all.

Soul Net was a social network, a game platform, a gallery, a video service, and the launching pad of an entire IT industry all at once — a monstrous magical dimension that had grown to a position of utterly absurd prominence.

But needless to say, I had absolutely no intention of sitting still and behaving myself here, either.

"So you're saying we should upload films made with stage plays and illusion magic?"

"Plays and film footage these days are all shot and shown by executioner troupes, circus companies, or little provincial theaters at best. The accessibility is terrible. They're not even comfortable to watch."

"So we put those recordings up? On Kraken?"

"More precisely, we sell them. For the theaters and circus troupes, far more people will end up paying for their work, so it's a win for them. And for us, the catalog of things to watch grows all the richer. Win-win."

"Not a bad idea at all. Fine. Let's try it."

There needed to be more videos. More things to watch, more things to enjoy. With that thought, I linked Kraken to a new upload pipeline and began gathering and posting the famous plays and films of the Wirod Dimension.

And right up until that moment, I had not the faintest idea what uploading plays and films would actually unleash.

The era had arrived — the great Soul Net era. An artificial dimensional magic that had once done nothing more than host text and images had, almost before anyone noticed, woven itself tightly into the daily lives of everyone in the dimension.

Games. The video industry spearheaded by Kraken. Even streamers — a whole new profession of people living off donations while broadcasting to the world. Because the pace of change had been so fast and so steep, the public attention pouring into these fields was rising just as suddenly and just as steeply.

And quite naturally, illusion magic rose to become the hottest topic in the entire dimension.

With illusion magic alone, you could become a video creator. A game developer. Or, well, anything, really.

People were active in the galleries with composites of their own making, earning laughs from everyone, raking in upvotes and view counts, and sometimes even climbing onto the Soul Best page.

In any case — after Soul Net rose to fame, illusion magic shot up to become a wildly popular school of magic, and the people who wanted to learn it multiplied just as fast. Web pages dedicated to supporting composites and edits built on illusion magic began springing up like bamboo shoots after the rain.

And what, after all, was Soul Net's greatest advantage?

Wasn't it the fact that, unlike before, information had become absurdly easy and fast to access?

Smaller than the Valrod Empire but famous for producing prodigious numbers of exceptional mages, the Kingdom of Murca had its mages uploading high-quality lecture videos to Kraken by the dozens.

If you wanted to learn — if you had the will to put in the effort — illusion magic had become a school of magic that anyone could now pick up with ease.

And the moment learning illusion magic became the trend for everyone and their grandmother —

A gallery born with the sole purpose of churning out funny images and videos to suck up upvotes and views was, frankly, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the natural next step.

And the Synthetic Magic Gallery began asserting its presence across Soul Net from day one, spitting out an absolutely unreasonable volume of firepower.

It all started with a single image — genuinely funny, and genuinely nothing special.

A photograph, posted by a wyvern tamer, of a baby wyvern clinging to a stalk of bamboo in some absurd pose, grinning ear to ear. The pose, and the inexplicably hilarious composition, made it the hottest topic in the Synthetic Magic Gallery overnight.

Everyone, without exception, went all-in on compositing this baby wyvern. On Wajugi. And composite images began pouring out like a flood.

And it was funny. God, it was funny.

And so Soul Net — or to be precise, the galleries within it — entered the great age of composite images.

And then —

Exploiting the fact that posts with images attached were hard to delete, people began sticking Wajugi images onto their posts as anti-deletion insurance — and at some point, without anyone quite deciding it, something shifted.

More and more people started calling the composited images themselves jjalbang — or just jjal for short — and before long it had settled into the vocabulary as naturally as if it had always been there.

And just like that, the Synthetic Magic Gallery — a minor board where only those in the know had ever wandered — evolved into the single most famous gallery on all of Soul Net.

They were ruthless — eyes blazing, bloodshot with obsession, hunting desperately for the legendary composite jjal that would inherit Wajugi's throne.

And that fevered scramble for composite source material began at almost exactly the same moment that Elsie Bwenner proudly launched his plays and films on Kraken.

And then —

"You must remain calm, Your Excellency. If you excite yourself, the bleeding will start again — and if that happens, even holy magic may not save you."

"I— I haven't the time to lie here like this! Magical communication! Let me use magical communication, I beg you!"

"This is the intensive care ward. Magical communication is out of the question. It's harmful to the body in your state, so rest. Rest properly."

"They— they won't even let me send a message? No, wait. More importantly — what did you just say to me? That I— that I have been sentenced to castration? That Tyrant King Gilmore cut off my— my manhood... is that what you're telling me?"

"N— no! Castration! Castration of all things! I... I have been... CASTRATED!"

"What in the world is this nonsense?!"

"AAAAARGH, CASTRATED, HE SAYS! KYAHAHAHAHA—!..."

The most famous play in all the Wirod Dimension. The stage recording of Fall of Tyrant King Gilmore had been uploaded to Kraken — and the Synthetic Magic Gallery had, at long last, laid hands on the very jjalbang source material they had been so desperately searching for.