Volume 11, Chapter 9: "Program Weed"
Short Summary
After 10 days of training around Todeum kingdom, the Geomchis return to Weed having succeeded in the goal that the latter provided to them by grinding up passed level 270. The remaining practitioners have dropped to 348 due to another 60 of them dying during the intense training. However, during the evaluation with master Geomchi, Weed views the results as a good thing since he was expecting more to have died off.
Meanwhile in real life, KMC Media continues to prepare for the broadcast using footage of Weed's adventure in the land of vampires, but come to realize that there's too much essential content to cut down to craft a normal episode. Director Kang informs KMC Media's Manager of Operations of the issue, which the latter suggests that Weed's raw adventure should be interesting enough to schedule as their primary regular program that will broadcast every Saturday. Kang remains worried that showing off raw footage could lead to disaster since they don't know the ending, and have already experienced what failure is like after seeing what happened to the Crimson Wings Guild during a live broadcast, but the manager reminds Kang that just the sight of seeing Weed and his companions try to overcome the large challenge of an A-Rank Quest will be a great pleasure to watch unfold even if it results in failure.
After speaking with the manager, Kang agrees to go along with it, and orders his workers to prepare a broadcast of Weed's adventure completely unedited. However, he notes that everything about Weed's adventure should remain private to not give away any information to the viewers that they're actually watching the legendary Weed, and that it will be up to the viewers to decide if what they're watching is great content or not. After many attempts to name their program, Kang decides to just simply title their program as "Weed" since doing so will have viewers interested in a mystery that will leave them wondering if the unknown person on KMC Media's broadcast truly is the Weed of legend, which his workers agree with. Once Saturday arrives, KMC Media shows off their first episode of "Weed" starting from when the party first arrived in the land of vampires, but unlike other high-rated station broadcasts, KMC Media's broadcast starts off at low ratings due to how unknown everything about the program is.
Characters
- Real Life
- Shin Hye Min (mentioned)
- Director Kang
- KMC Media Manager of Operations
- Bae Seon (KMC Media host, mentioned)
- Royal Road
Quests
- A-Rank Quest: "The Request from an Unknown Vampire" (The Geomchis have finished their level grinding to take on the Unicorns and Pegasus.)
Trivia
- The Geomchis all pass level 270 after 10 days of training. The lowest is said to be level 274 while the average level is around 279. The training resulted in the deaths of 60 practitioners, leaving just a total of 353 Geomchis now. However, Weed views this as a good achievement since he figured that between 100 to 170 Geomchis were going to end up dying.
- Master Geomchi is said to be someone that has mastered how to use chat whispers. He and Weed discuss how the training for the Geomchis exceeded their expectations.
- As the elite leaders of the Geomchis, Geomchi 2 is said to be someone who cares about the well-being of his boys, Geomchi 3 knows how to fight as someone who can read the flow of battle and makes good judgements, Geomchi 4 has strong competitive spirit and is fast and tough to catch, but the downside is his impatience that could lead to him spoiling things, Geomchi 5 lacks the roundedness of a player since he relies on just Strength.
- Master Geomchi brings up how Geomchi 18 was a surprise practitioner showing off better ability than the others. Geomchi 18 is said to have been training in the Dojang for 17 years, and is someone they can trust despite his fencing skills lacking a bit.
- Master Geomchi is said to be someone that watches over his students to gauge their caliber and personality while leading his Geomchis around Royal Road.
- A story about Weed in Continent of Magic is brought up. Thousands of people from united guilds went to war to dominate a kingdom. However, they all chose to resign themselves after Weed approached them on his horse due to how intimidating he was to them as the God of War, which resulted in their fighting spirit plummeting.
- Master Geomchi isn't surprised at all by how strong Weed has proven himself within Royal Road. This is because after Ahn Hyundo watched over Hyun's training in the Dojang, the master could tell that Hyun is someone who excels at being proactive and adaptable as someone who can identify the opponent's weakness to decrease combat difficulty.
- Master Geomchi is said to be someone that would have an easy time dealing with Royal Road, but he chooses to go the hard route by going nose to nose to take monsters down.
- Master Geomchi has become highly interested in seeing Weed's true nature knowing that the boy is already a huge celebrity that brings in people to watch his every move.
- KMC Media is seen putting together a broadcast cutting down 6 hours of Todeum content from the point that Weed started his A-Rank Quest to make a worthy episode. However, they come to accept that they can't cut much due to a lot of essential elements being deemed too important to cut out, such as the view of landscapes, and the beginner quests Weed and company took on in Seirun before they even reached Todeum city.
- Director Kang informs KMC Media's Manager of Operations of how they're overboard on content for the first broadcast of Weed's journey, which said manager replies that it's not a problem since they have the simple solution to just make it a regular program for their station. The broadcast would be once per week each Saturday.
- Director Kang remains worried about the broadcast since they still don't know how Weed's A-Rank Quest will go down, but the manager replies that not knowing how the adventure will turn out will make things more interesting since it provides more excitement, tension, and a feeling of wanting to see more.
- Director Kang comes to realize that the result of the quest didn't matter, and just seeing Weed and his companions try to overcome the challenge will make for a great pleasure to see. He also realizes that he had become timid to showing off footage of adventures that weren't completed yet after witnessing the Crimson Wings Guild fail the A-Rank Quest they took on in the Scorpion King's tomb.
- A male named Bae Seon is said to be a host for KMC Media's broadcast team. Director Kang gives the order to inform him that their broadcast isn't going to need a host since he's decided to turn Weed's adventure into a program that will be shown periodically using raw unedited footage.
- Director Kang decides that everything about Weed's adventure will be private (meaning that viewers won't know any information about Weed's quest). He explains that it will be up to the viewers to decide how they should feel about what they're seeing from Weed's footage of his adventures in Todeum.
- KMC Media's committee members think up names that they should call Weed's program, such as "An Adventure in Todeum" or "Bloody Adventure," but come to realize that they either sound too cruel, or puts Weed's adventure on the sideline. It's said that they discussed hundreds of different names, but Director Kang suggests that they should just simply go with "Weed," which everyone agrees with since it will make viewers ponder what the title means without giving away if it truly is the legendary Weed.
- Saturday arrives as KMC Media shows off the first "Weed" episode. Said episoded shows off Weed and company first arriving in the Todeum swamp river up to the B-Rank Quest where they rescued Vampire Queen Roselin from the human fanatic village. The average rating of the first episode is 0.6%, which is said to be quite low compared to other company broadcasts that average around 12.8% ratings.