Might of Players

---Logan's POV---

My second video was quickly produced.

As expected, the video data skyrocketed.

Take that, algorithm! Who's the small-time content creator now? I grinned at my screen, scrolling through the metrics. Wait, these numbers can't be right... they're actually good?

I understood why—although veteran players claimed that virtual reality games were fake, deep down, they still hold some expectations for them. The fans of Netherworld Revolution that emerged from this expectation were as sticky as a mouse glue trap.

I could practically hear their thoughts: "Virtual reality games haven't even been developed yet, and I'm already pissed. Now you're trying to use this as a gimmick to make money?"

Looking at the estimated revenue in the backend, my eyes practically disappeared from smiling. With a wave of my hand, I decided to reward myself with an extra large canned food at lunch today!

"Living the high life!" I chuckled, patting my stomach. Okay, don't get ahead of yourself. Two viral videos don't make you PewDiePie.

After celebrating the good news, worry crept back in. I no longer had any material to make a third Netherworld Revolution video.

Initially, all the information about it was just a 10-minute concept video. After I gained a slight early advantage, my competitors swarmed in, nitpicking and criticizing every possible detail like vultures, leaving nothing but scraps.

But giving up like this? I couldn't accept it.

Maybe I can make a video about how many times the CEO blinks. That's content, right? I muttered to myself as I reopened the Netherworld Revolution concept video.

Although I had already dissected this 10-minute video frame by frame, what if? What if I found some new material?

"Come on, give me something," I whispered, leaning closer to the screen. "A glitch in the background? A suspicious shadow? Anything?"

After watching, as expected—nothing.

But I didn't get discouraged and instead opened the comments section. At the very least, learning some creative ways to swear could make my content more engaging for viewers.

However, when I sorted the comments by time, I noticed a complete shift in the discussion. Everyone was now bashing another game called Chronicles of Aeltia instead.

"Chronicles of what now?" I blinked, scrolling faster. The players' criticisms of Chronicles of Aeltia had completely overshadowed Netherworld Revolution!

My eyelids twitched.

I had seen firsthand just how deep the players' hatred for Netherworld Revolution was these past few days. People were so harsh that even a mild comment was accused of trying to whitewash it.

How on Earth did Chronicles of Aeltia manage to steal the spotlight, even turning the tide of opinion within Netherworld Revolution's comment section?

Frowning, I sniffed out potential content. As a gaming blogger, I couldn't afford to miss any shift in public sentiment. I immediately changed focus, scouring the comment section to trace the source of this new game.

Comments flew by:

[How can every Tom, Dick, and Harry jump on the virtual reality hype train?]

[Skyrain might be trash, but at least they're a major company. With enough funding, maybe they can pull it off. But where did this trash game come from?]

[Advertising directly in Netherworld Revolution's comment section? Shameless!]

[Even the name is intentionally similar to Netherworld Revolution. The original game isn't even out yet, but the knockoff is here first?]

[@CommenterAbove you need new glasses bro. One's about hell, the other's about some fantasy world with a weird name. What's next, you gonna say World of Warcraft copied Clash of Clans because they both have "of" in the name?]

Finally, I pieced together the origin of Chronicles of Aeltia.

Around midnight, many guest accounts had suddenly flooded all Netherworld Revolution-related comment sections. They shamelessly promoted a virtual reality game called Chronicles of Aeltia, claiming it was 100% realistic and about to begin beta testing.

The flood of comments was relentless.

The phrasing was diverse, with messages popping up almost every second. No platform that allowed guest logins was spared. It was like a battle for survival.

The comments were inflammatory, and if players replied, the guest accounts even engaged in arguments.

[Hehe, Chronicles of Aeltia will start beta testing soon. Who's really riding the hype train here? ( ˘ ³˘)♥]

[Tsk tsk tsk, Netherworld Revolution doesn't let us advertise here. Afraid they can't compete? (◠‿◕)]

[Oh~ who's the real knockoff here? Don't you know which game's beta comes first? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

This is straight out of Marketing Dark Arts 101, I thought, watching the chaos unfold. Guest accounts, midnight spam, engagement baiting—someone was playing a dangerous game.

While the passive-aggressive tone wasn't new, the smug emojis and baiting language were enough to enrage players. Originally united in bashing Netherworld Revolution, players turned against Chronicles of Aeltia after being taunted.

The comments poured in faster than the platforms could moderate.

Report one comment? Ten more appeared!

Eventually, the reporting system broke down entirely.

I watched as frustrated players raged at the platforms' weak guest account system. In an era where real-name verification was common, long-term users were automatically logged in. Even for guest accounts, one phone could only create one account.

Everyone was asking: where on Earth did all these black-market accounts come from?

This hooligan tactic had forcibly shifted player hatred from Netherworld Revolution to Chronicles of Aeltia.

From what I could gather, Skyrain, aware of the issue, only dared to release their concept video to attract investors. It would take at least 7-8 years to actually produce a successful virtual reality game. Yet Chronicles of Aeltia claimed their game was ready for testing? Did they think people were idiots?

"Well, technically, everyone thought that about Skyrain too..." I mused, scrolling through more comments.

Players were swearing they would never follow such a trashy, opportunistic game.

"At least wait until the original is out before making knockoffs!" one commenter raged.

Yeah, because that's how the game industry works, I snorted.

I also learned that Skyrain had noticed the flood of bots.

While clearing abnormal comments, they warned larger gaming bloggers not to make videos about Chronicles of Aeltia. They refused to give the game any attention—even negative publicity.

Skyrain, well-versed in this black-hat marketing strategy, understood Chronicles of Aeltia all too well.

After reading everything, I was stunned. Which wealthy heir with billions to spare was bored enough to hire such a massive army of bots? Guest accounts were far less cost-effective than regular accounts.

A guest account could only post one comment a day unless someone replied to it.

How many phones did they have at their disposal?

After my initial shock, I immediately checked my own video's comment section, worried it might have been invaded by Chronicles of Aeltia bots.

But...

Nothing.

The comments were still complaints about Netherworld Revolution and Skyrain. Not a single mention of Chronicles of Aeltia. I hadn't even received a warning message from Skyrain.

I sat there, speechless.

Can't get bot-spammed if you're too irrelevant to notice. Is this what winning feels like?

Being irrelevant had its advantages. Even trashy web games didn't bother leeching off my videos. Skyrain didn't even spare me a glance. Neither side cared about me.

Disappointed, I closed my account.

If Skyrain's warning bigger creators... maybe there's an opportunity here?

---

A while later, my curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the browser again. I had no resistance when it came to virtual reality gaming news.

"It's just research," I muttered. "Professional research."

Sure, like how watching cat videos is 'market research'.

The sheer scale of bots causing Skyrain so much trouble meant that whoever was behind this wasn't short on money. Maybe they really had researched something about virtual reality gaming?

I told myself I was only checking to see how far this trashy game had gone in its masquerade. I absolutely didn't believe they had developed a virtual reality game.

Someone was spending serious money on this. There had to be a reason...

Anyway, neither side cared about me. What harm was there in watching?

"Just one peek. What could really go wrong? It's just an overhyped game. I won't actually pre-register it. I'm just here for the drama." I muttered to myself, nervously rubbing my hands as the webpage began to load…

Definitely not. Maybe. Probably not...

But the official website server of Chronicles of Aeltia was absolutely terrible.

What is this, dial-up internet?

I waited a whole three minutes before the loading circle finally completed and moved to a new page. It was a webpage with black text on a white background—so rudimentary that it couldn't be any more rudimentary.

"..."

Come on, guys. If you're trying to scam money, at least put some effort into it!

Is this website from 1996? I scrolled through the bare-bones layout, my professional pride wounded just looking at it.

Where's your funding and ambition for hiring bot reviewers?

I had suspected the company might be a trash-tier operation, but I didn't expect it to be this trashy.

Even my first WordPress site looked better than this. And that was saying something.

The official game site was so poorly made, it didn't even measure up to a computer science student's final project. No background images, no fancy fonts, and the formatting was so crude it was hard to look at.

No CSS, basic HTML... Did they hire a time traveler from the 90s to build this?

There was only the game's name, a brief introduction, and a beta test registration button.

Where were the promotional images?

Where was the trailer?

With a blank expression, I closed the webpage.

I must've been out of my mind to click in.

The little bit of anticipation I had before clicking, just like the three minutes I wasted, was clearly all for nothing.

---Viktor's POV---

From my hiding place beneath the bloodstained altar piled with monster corpses, I could hear violent gusts tearing much of the remains to shreds above.

The corpses were starting to smell worse than my last attempt at cooking... At least the magic barriers were holding steady.

Seven hundred years of paranoia finally paying off.

Bang! Bang!

Clang, clang…

Heavy thuds resonated through the earth, and I sensed a figure appear beside the blood altar at some unknown point in time.

Either a paladin or someone with terrible taste in fashion.

Through my magical awareness, I could tell it was a man clad in silver-white armor, resembling a knight. His brown hair and blue eyes were visible beneath his helm, and his features were rugged and firm, making him look to be in his early thirties.

In his hands, he wielded a rusty hoe—completely mismatched with his shining armor.

This man was either a paladin or someone with terrible taste in fashion.

I watched through my magical senses as he swung the hoe down, striking the stone altar over and over.

His movements were quick and forceful. Every place the hoe hit turned to pieces, crumbling like tofu. In just a brief moment, he had shattered the altar and begun digging into the soil underneath, right above my hiding place.

Well, there goes my carefully crafted hiding spot. Again.

The glowing orb was the first to notice the abnormality above ground. I had ordered it to keep quiet, and it had been sulking in my inner sanctum like a mushroom.

But seeing the man getting closer and closer to my position, the orb couldn't stay silent anymore.

It jumped next to my mental image in my inner sanctum and shouted anxiously. "There's a paladin right above us! We need to—"

"I'm in the middle of coding," I cut in. "Unless the world is ending..."

As a god's divine core, it could sense the magic fluctuations coming from the person above.

The man was really a paladin.

A paladin—meaning he was with the Radiant Church. The glowing orb had just recently seen me being hunted by the Radiant Church.

There was no other reason a paladin would appear in this godforsaken place and do laborious digging.

The man above definitely knew I was hiding down here.

"I told you not to disturb me unless it's important!" I shifted my focus away from working on the game website, sounding very impatient.

"Relax. Those curses up there would turn a dragon into confetti."

"But—"

"And yes, I tested that. The dragon wasn't happy."

As for what was happening on the ground, I wasn't worried at all.

"If it were someone from the church, they'd have been blown to pieces the moment they tried to destroy the altar."

I wouldn't dare hide here unless I had precautions in place on the surface. The magical curses I'd engraved beneath the altar were so many and so deadly that even the Radiant Church wouldn't dare handle them carelessly.

Maybe the church had learned its lesson after fighting me for so long. They had searched the area over and over before but never dared to touch anything I left behind.

That gave the orb a false impression.

Sure, I might appear to be a mid-level mage right now, but that didn't mean I was defenseless.

I didn't bother explaining further and muted the orb directly with a command.

Compared to what was happening above, promoting Chronicles of Aeltia was giving me far more headaches.

The online players were right—the game was indeed trying to piggyback off the popularity of Netherworld Revolution.

But as long as it worked, who cared?

Despite players swearing they wouldn't give Chronicles of Aeltia any attention…

In reality?

"Twenty-three visitors! We're practically viral!"

Okay, maybe not viral. More like a mild cold.

Though none had signed up for the beta test yet, this was still a good sign.

By continuously channeling energy into the website, I managed to attract several guest accounts.

All I had to do was say a few classic troll lines, and justice-seeking users would show up to keep the comments alive.

What's more…

I had discovered that there was a time ratio between Earth and the continent of Aeltia.

One day on Earth was equivalent to two days on Aeltia.

This meant I had double the time to engage in online arguments with the players.

Even though I hadn't touched the internet in 682 years and was clueless about the latest slang…

With double the time and my 700-year-old mental capacity, I could still reply to every single comment and hold my own in every argument.

My promotional efficiency was excellent.

While promoting went smoothly, constructing the Chronicles of Aeltia website was an uphill battle.

Error 404... Should've paid more attention in computer class...

Before transmigrating, I hadn't even been an adult yet.

Learning programming had just been a hobby, and most of my knowledge came from tinkering with simple projects. The fundamentals were still there, buried deep in my memory, but the practical application after centuries away from it was proving challenging.

Try explaining to Stack Overflow how to debug magical HTML. That'd be an interesting thread.

Now that I was picking it back up, I faced problems everywhere. Every line of code seemed to bring new errors, and debugging was a nightmare when mixing magic with modern technology.

The intersection of arcane energy and HTML was not something any tutorial could prepare me for.

I sighed.

"If only I could buy a pre-made website…"

Unfortunately, I didn't have the money for it.

I could only keep struggling with the website while arguing with players as a distraction.

Finishing the last bit of code, I suddenly realized that with the constant magic upgrades, the website now had an image upload function.

This meant—

I could upload images of Aeltia to the internet.

My eyes lit up with excitement, though I quickly felt another headache coming on.

I'd have to add a page to showcase promotional images now.

Whatever, I'd deal with that later.

When I finally finished my tasks, the knight on the surface had almost finished digging.

At least he's thorough. Most people would've given up after the first layer of cursed stone.

Reluctantly leaving my inner sanctum, I looked up to see who it was.

Ah, right on schedule. Though he could've picked a less dramatic entrance.

My mood, which had been frazzled by all the coding, finally improved.

The muted glowing orb was full of question marks.

"A paladin... helping you?"

"What can I say? I'm charming. Even holy knights can't resist." I couldn't help but grin at its confusion.

The orb darted around in my inner sanctum, its glow flickering rapidly. "Reinforcements?" it sputtered. "From the Radiant Church?"

Before I could enjoy more of its bewilderment, the knight above, had already dug out my skeletal hand.

Wave hello! No, wait, that might be too on the nose.

He glanced at my twitching hand bone that was clearly trying to show its presence.

Expressionless, as though he hadn't seen anything unusual, he moved to a different digging point, continuing downward.

See? Professional courtesy. Unlike some orbs I could mention.

I proudly gestured toward his methodical digging in my inner sanctum. "See? Edgar is one of us."

"This doesn't make sense. He's a paladin!"

"Life rarely does make sense. Death even less so."

The orb hung motionless in my inner sanctum, clearly stunned by what it was witnessing. Even I had to admit, seeing a holy knight—a paladin of the Radiant Church no less—here to rescue an undead necromancer like me was quite the sight.

Wonder what the Church's propaganda department would make of this, I mused, watching Edgar's steady progress.

"But... but... What on Aeltia is going on?" The orb's stammering was music to my ears.