Okay, let’s stay calm.
Control your expression.
This is also part of acting training.
“Huh? No, no. Absolutely not. Sorry for making you wait. But just a moment, I think I need to practice a bit more. Can you wait just a bit? Let’s quickly film the audition video and then rest.”
“Okay.”
Jiwon looked at me with a worried expression until the end, then went outside the makeshift studio.
But, he’s also active as a channel manager, so is it okay for his face to be shown?
This question came to me belatedly, but that wasn’t the important thing right now.
I stared at Loki.
“From now on, we’ll decide which parts to film and practice those parts a bit more.”
I had already decided which parts to film before using the skill, but it felt like quite a bit of time had passed, so I went over it again.
[Player Kim Jae-ha’s final score for the <Tin Robot Bakery> virtual experience evaluation is 43 points.]
Suddenly, the message that popped up before the skill ended came to mind.
I got the answer right, but the final score is 43 points.
What did I miss…?
If I had received a higher score, would my thoughts and attitude about revisiting the number have changed?
‘I… don’t know anything right now.’
Anyway, what’s urgent now is filming the video.
After finishing the preparations, I called Jiwon.
While calling Jiwon, I asked if it was okay for him to be filmed by Loki, and he replied that he didn’t mind.
He’s supposed to be a proxy of a god.
That god is not just any god, but belongs to a place called the Archetype Realm, but the proxy himself is apparently not famous enough to be recognized just by being briefly in a video.
After making Loki transparent, I stood in front of the camera that Jiwon was holding.
After tidying up my clothes one last time, I signaled and filming began.
I recited the simple self-introduction I had prepared.
“What I have prepared is the number ‘A Night’s Dream’ from the musical <Tin Robot’s Bakery>.”
Jiwon, who received my request, played the accompaniment.
Since < Tin Robot Bakery> has been on stage steadily for a long time, I could quickly find the accompaniment for the famous number through a search.
A familiar prelude flowed out.
How long has it been since I sang in front of someone?
The reason I briefly changed my path to become an idol was half out of curiosity and half out of greed for quick success.
As I was entering puberty, I felt suffocated by the situation where I couldn’t shake off the image of Dalkong no matter what I did and just went back and forth between mediocre child actor roles.
At that time, YM, which was quite well-known as a prestigious idol agency, offered me an idol trainee position, and I changed my path against my mother’s opposition.
‘Afterward, we will definitely guarantee Jae-ha’s acting activities. We judged that Jae-ha has enough star quality as an idol, and we think it will be a good experience and foundation for Jae-ha’s future activities in the entertainment industry.’
‘Above all, you can let the public know about Kim Jae-ha, not Dalkong.’
To me, who had been unable to escape Dalkong’s shadow, that offer felt like the only breakthrough.
Trainee life was physically and mentally tough and difficult, but it was manageable.
Unlike acting, where I just repeated what I always did and seemed to be going around in the same place without improving at all, I could see little by little that my singing and dancing were improving, and others could see it too.
-Jaeha, you have a really good balance. If you keep going like this, you’ll be a hexagonal member?
At first, I didn’t really like singing and dancing, so I started idol trainee life to avoid hearing that I was taking the place of someone more desperate, so I gritted my teeth and focused on practice.
But as time passed, I gradually became sincere.
I felt good when I received compliments, and I wanted to do better.
‘Dancing and singing. Personally, I liked singing a little more.’
A voice that suits any song and is above all pleasant to listen to, that’s what they said.
But even that praise was fleeting.
After debuting as a project group consisting of three existing idol group members from YM and me, who was a trainee.
-Whiny’s characteristic: His voice has no unique characteristics. It’s plain itself.
After listening to it, I don’t even remember it, and this song sounds like that song, and that song sounds like this song.
But his parts are so many that fans are pissed off.
-Jae-ha, it’s not enough to have good pitch and rhythm and just be pleasant to listen to. That’s why you have a lot of parts, but there are no killing parts.
-It just sounds like a kid learned some vocal skills somewhere and is copying them. He puts in vibrato and uses techniques to stand out, but I’m so embarrassed for him, lol.
Countless words denying it piled up on top of a word of praise that had given me a new goal and dream.
From some point on, I couldn’t sing in front of other people.
After deciding to quit being an idol and leaving YM Entertainment, I stopped humming songs even when I was alone.
‘Useless thoughts.’
It’s all in the past anyway.
The prelude is about to end.
After taking a moment to catch my breath, I stared straight ahead with a blank face and opened my mouth.
Cozy, warm, and savory.
I can’t taste it, but I know.
I can’t feel the warmth, but… I know.
I was just trying to sing calmly, but without realizing it, I cut off the syllables between the sounds.
But not so awkwardly that it sounds too strange.
Can I do it too?
Me, a tin robot.
As if imitating someone else, I awkwardly lowered my eyebrows and moved creakingly, half-sitting down.
There is a small, hard bread in front of me.
A worthless bread given to a discarded tin robot by a little child.
The tin robot dreams of making such bread himself.
Even if it’s shabby, it can give someone a little warmth.
-Mister! Your bread is really delicious!
Suddenly, Cindy came to mind.
A strange, hiccuping laugh came out of my mouth.
Maybe it’s possible.
Because, because.
I already know.
I awkwardly moved both hands and folded them over my chest.
I slowly closed my eyes.
Even if I fail, it’s okay.
Even if it remains just a night’s dream-
I opened my eyes again and smiled, moving only my lips.
I’ll never give up- Ah-
The MR slowly fades away.
After a moment, I erased the awkward smile from before and stood up from my seat with the most affable face possible.
“That’s all. Thank you. Please take care of me!”
I subtly moved out of Jiwon’s camera angle and made a gesture of cutting with scissors.Â
After hearing a short button-pressing sound, Jiwon took his face away from the camera.
I scurried over to his side to monitor.
I was about to talk to him as usual, but I remembered that Loki was filming and quickly changed my tone.
“Was it okay? Didn’t I go over the time limit?”
“Yeah. I cut it off just right.”
Jiwon glanced at the camera once, then smiled.
“You did well.”
“…What?”
He’s praising me like this here?
I felt like I couldn’t control my expression for a moment.
I covered my face with one hand and coughed for no reason.
‘That must be acting, right? He’s acting like a close cousin who lives together and willingly helps film the audition submission video, right? Because Loki is still filming?’
I calmed my surprised heart and matched his tone.
“Thanks… brother. I think I filmed it cleanly thanks to you.”
“Don’t mention it. Let’s do well this time.”
‘Is that up to me?’
“Haha. Yeah. We should.”
But for now, I finished the conversation with a smile.
After naturally sending Jiwon out, I gave a closing remark to Loki, who revealed himself.
[Special Mission Complete!]
As if waiting, a message window popped up.
When I opened the inventory, something appeared in the frontmost slot.
[Black Roe Deer Musk x5]
[Musk extracted from a black roe deer. It has a calming effect in itself, but cannot be taken alone.]
This is… like an ingredient for something.
‘I don’t know why they gave it to me.’
My gaze went to the 1,000 coins written at the very bottom of the inventory.
‘I somehow earned coins……’
“Special Shop.”
The problem is, there’s nothing I can buy.
[Mental Strength Recovery Potion (Max) | 50,000 Coins]
[Mental Strength Recovery Potion (Medium) | 30,000 Coins]
[Woohwang Cheongsimhwan | 50,000 Coins]
Even if I scan through the special shop list, nothing changes.
[Lyre of Orpheus (Replica) | 1,500,000 Coins]
[Shakespeare’s Pen (Replica) | 1,000,000 Coins]
I also saw items with names that I had heard a few times in my life.
[Shakespeare’s Pen (Replica) | Legendary Grade. A replica of the mythical relic ‘Shakespeare’s Pen’. Can realize the novel written by the user in reality. Usable 3 times]
‘This has a similar ability to my skill.’
What’s the point of being tempted?
I can’t buy it.
For reference, the basic skill is 100,000 coins.
Among them, what I’m aiming for is this.
[Memory Eraser | 150,000 Coins. You can delete the desired memory. If you delete all traumatic memories, mental debuffs are removed.]
There were quite a few skills that remove physical debuffs, such as Angel’s Prayer, but this was the only one that removed mental debuffs.
Currently, my debuff is marked with a question mark, so I couldn’t know exactly, but it was definitely a mental debuff.
I felt a bit of unavoidable aversion to the fact that it deletes memories.
‘It’s better to erase those kinds of memories anyway.’
The unknown debuff recorded as a question mark in the status window kept bothering me.
If only that was removed, my stats would go up.
‘Ah, stat points.’
I had some that were given when I leveled up.
I was about to bring up the status window when suddenly my vision spun.
“…Huh?”
I only blinked once, but my body was half-sitting down.Â
The strength drained from my lower body, and I ended up collapsing completely.
“Whoa.”
I can’t put strength into my body.
When I wiped my forehead with one hand, cold sweat came out.
At that moment, a sentence written in the skill’s detailed description of the skill came to mind.
[Required Mental Strength: Very High]
That’s right.
I used a skill.
[! You do not have enough mental strength to continue thinking. Forced sleep is induced for recovery.]
As if waiting, a warning message popped up.
‘No, then what’s the difference between this and having a usage penalty…!’
Before I could feel the injustice, I fainted.
***
The god, ‘Cultivator of Golden Apples’, was feeling familiar boredom.
Sitting with her chin resting on her hand and surfing the web, she put the golden apples she harvested today on the store and flopped onto the bed.
‘Ah, isn’t there anything fun?’
For a god who lives for countless eons, there was nothing as terrible as the feeling of boredom.
Looking up at the high ceiling and only
blinking, one forgotten word came to her mind.
‘The Revival Project!’
The gods who call themselves named gods apparently created a strange project this time and proposed it to the Archetype Realm gods, and that name was the Revival Project.
Did they make it by imitating the form of a survival audition that is popular in a place called Earth in the Phenomenal Realm dimension?
I heard that IdeaTV is launching it exclusively.
‘IdeaTV or whatever, at first I thought it was something, but.’
I knew that IdeaTV was also taken from the civilization of the Phenomenal Realm dimension Earth.
Dimensional Earth.
In fact, it would be an unfamiliar name to most Transcendental Realm gods.
Even if they knew, they wouldn’t remember it for good reason.
The god, ‘Cultivator of Golden Apples’, also belonged to the latter.
‘Earth? Isn’t that the first Phenomenal Realm where there is no mana or anything?’
Earth was the first world among countless Phenomenal Realm dimensions where no transcendental power existed.
Therefore, some of the gods even thought of the existence of dimensional Earth itself as an ominous prophecy.
Saying that it was evidence that the power of the Archetype Realm gods, who are in charge of the birth of the world, was weakening.
The god, ‘Cultivator of Golden Apples’, wasn’t to that extent.
But when she first encountered IdeaTV, she felt a bit resentful because it was taken from the methods of humans on dimensional Earth.
But once she encountered IdeaTV, she couldn’t put it down.
Fun and new videos were uploaded every day, and she could listen to songs if she wanted to listen to songs.
Now, she had to turn on IdeaTV videos on one side even while cultivating golden apples to concentrate on her work.
The god, ‘Cultivator of Golden Apples’, who quickly accessed IdeaTV, entered the Revival Project tab.
I wondered if there would be nothing, but there were already participants who had uploaded videos.
While quickly scanning through the titles, one video caught her eye.
[Skill Flex from the Start?! The First Resurrector Skill User Appears!]
“Oh…?”
She clicked on the video without thinking.
***
I also filmed a self-PR video, so now all that’s left is the failed contract renewal.
While waiting for contact from my current agency, I focused on leveling up by doing subquests.