17 - New Mission!

When I got home, my mom hadn't arrived with Olivia yet, as they were still going to go to Ethan's school to pick him up, so I quickly went to the computer in my room and used Phishing Principal Adams' email to Jackson's email.

Unlike his father, Jackson would probably take a while to respond, while I just minimized the tab and went to check on my MeTube video.

[56.523 views 1.813 Subscribers]

Looking at these numbers, a huge smile was on my face, as I only had just over 23 thousand views left to reach the 4 thousand hours I would need to monetize my channel!

From what I knew, the RPM I would receive per thousand views would be around $0.70, but despite being a low value, it would still be a good amount of extra money to receive.

Thinking about money, I had another idea.

Opening my cell phone I realized that this world actually had an application called Spokify, which as you can imagine, is a music streaming app, but as it was focused on music, the amount this app paid was much more than what MeTube paid .

From my research, every 1000 views on this app paid around $4, which was almost 6 times more than MeTube, but unlike MeTube, on Spokify I could only post the song once, maybe twice, singing with a different style.

On MeTube, I could post the acoustic version of the song, I could post a music video, I could post a collab, and of course, I could also take advantage of the channel's visibility to post vlogs and other things when the channel was bigger, thus generating much more potential revenue.

Not to mention that MeTube was much better for promoting my music and making my name grow, while Spokify was better for those who already had a name and people looked for it there.

At the moment, my music will probably get few views there, but over time, keeping my profile there updated can bring me a surprise in extra revenue from people who used to look for my songs there to put on their playlists.

When I finished setting up my Spokify profile and posted the acoustic version of Numb, my mom arrived with Olivia and Ethan.

As expected, the first thing she did when she got home was come to my room and ask me.

"What happened, Noah? Why did you leave alone?" She asked worried and suspicious.

Luckily from the way she was asking, she didn't know I had skipped class.

That school was really shit, they didn't even notify parents when a student didn't show up to school?

At least I can use this to my advantage.

"It's okay, Mom. I felt a little bad in the last class and asked to leave early. Since I've always been a good student, they let me go." I lied.

Still suspicious, my mother looked me up and down and asked. "What were you feeling bad about? Why didn't you call me to come pick you up?"

"I was feeling a little claustrophobic at school, I needed some fresh air, so I walked back and took the time to think about the next song I was going to write." I said.

As soon as I told her about the song, she became visibly downcast, making me feel really bad.

"Ah… ok…" She replied sadly as she turned and left the room.

If it was Noah from my old world, I probably wouldn't care at all, but with Noah's memories from that world and feelings for her, I was feeling like shit for saying this and making her feel bad again for this reason, so I didn't control myself and explained.

"This new song isn't about you mom, don't worry. When the song is ready, can I show you?" I asked.

Hearing my request and the explanation that she would not be the subject of the next song, she became more excited, but she was still a little sad. "Of course, when you finish call me and I want to be the first to hear."

Seeing her leaving the room still a little shaken made me feel bad.

Fortunately, shortly after she left, Ethan arrived in the room with his small backpack asking me to help him with his homework.

His joy cheered me up and seeing my Skill Teach level rising gave me a small dose of dopamine to lift me up.

[Teach Lv 15 -> Lv 16
Effect: When teaching others, as long as you know what you are teaching, they are 16% more likely to understand what you are explaining.]

With this Buff, Ethan's improvement was as clear as day. Contents that he had a lot of difficulty learning in the past were now much simpler for him!

Which for everyone was good news, as Ethan was finally reaching the level of knowledge he should have for a child his age.

When I finished helping him with his homework, I decided to take advantage of this feeling I was feeling and practice the song In The End a little more.

Really, feeling this while I practiced was doing wonders for the speed of improvement I was experiencing.

[Sing Lv 22 -> Lv 23
Effect: +23% efficiency when training Sing, +23% chance that whoever hears your voice while you sing will like what they hear.]

[Guitar Lv 26 -> Lv 27
When you play the guitar you learn 27% faster and you have a 27% greater chance of other people enjoying hearing you play.]

With both Skills leveling up, I was learning to play the song masterfully even faster, possibly by tomorrow I would be able to record and post this song.

[Ding! New Mission!]

[Mission: Your first song was a success, now, make a second song that will captivate the audience of the first song even more, to the point that they become your true fans.
Goal: Get 5,000 loyal fans before releasing the third song.]

[Reward: ???]

[To accept?]

Of course I would accept! Even without knowing what the reward would be, even if it was just 1 extra point in a statistic, what harm would it do to try to get more fans and make my second song captivate the public? Haha.

I'm glad I decided to do the song In The End, since with this song the chance of me captivating these fans is very high... now there's only one question left... how do I know who my fan really is?

After accepting the mission, when I opened the mission screen in System again, I could see my completion rate.

[Current loyal fans: 91/5,000]

Damn, I'm only at 2% of that and I don't even know how I got those numbers...

Maybe I can try to develop my virtual personality more? Make myself more accessible and make people see me as a person rather than just a voice that sings a song?

I think this might be a good idea.

Ideally, I would just show myself in the videos, but with my current appearance, not only will that not help, it will probably hinder the mission, as people tend to like things that are aesthetically pleasing more, and as much as I If I'm not aesthetically unpleasing anymore, since my Charisma is already at 8, wouldn't it be good if I just broke the public's expectation of me, so I can keep myself in the dark until my appearance really looks good.

To keep myself in the dark, but still manage to have a persona worthy of admiration from the public, the first thing that came to my mind was the band Gojirraz, from my old world, who used cartoon characters to sing their songs in Music Videos and This was something so unique that it became a symbolism for them.

For me, I didn't intend to do something as caricatured as they did, since among them there was even a character who was a zombie.

Sitting down at the PC and opening the drawing program, I started putting my ideas on "paper".

One thing I really missed in this world was my bleached hair, so I decided to make my character have bleached hair on top, with a black base, and the hairstyle would be the same as my current hair, but in a more cartoonish way.

The character's eyes would be blue like mine, and to give it a more Rock tone, I gave him some tattoos.

For the art style, I obviously didn't use the Furry style, although this is currently the style I'm most used to doing.

The style I used was a mix of anime with a more cartoon style like the Gojirraz from my old world, which made it look like my character was between 13 and 17 years old.

This was a striking visual identity, but it was still relatable, especially with the outfit I made, which was as if he was wearing a generic black band outfit, something that I believed would be similar to what the target audience of my images would look like. songs would normally use.

I know not everyone is like this, but blame me for generalizing.

With the character ready, now I just needed to do some animations, and the idea I had could be very good.

I did BV, the nickname I gave him, holding an old guitar while practicing in a room similar to mine, but in a cartoon version.

To come up with my idea, I had to pick up the guitar and record myself playing the chorus of this song, so I could synchronize the character's animation with the actual movement I was making, and damn, it turned out better than I imagined!

[Digital Illustration Lv 30 -> Lv 31]

Heck, my Digital Illustration Skill even leveled up! After reaching level 30, the difficulty of leveling up increased significantly.

Making the animation was longer and more complicated than I imagined, so I had to take a lunch break before finishing it.

As I was heading downstairs for lunch I ran into Olivia on the stairs, who stopped and stared at me.

"Everything is fine with you?" She asked worriedly.

"I'm better, did you see the image?" I asked.

"Yes… I was furious, but I didn't know what to do… when I looked for you you were nowhere to be found…" She said as she lowered her shoulders in frustration.

"I'm sorry, I could have talked to you before I left." I said as I placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Okay… did you manage to find out who did that?" She asked as she looked at me expectantly.

"Yes, we probably won't see him or his father anymore from today." I said smiling proudly.

"His father? Who was it?" She asked interested.

"Did you see Director Adams' FaceShoot?" I asked with a laugh.

"No? Does that have anything to do with it?" She asked as she took out her cell phone and quickly searched for his FaceShoot page.

"He's the father of the idiot who made that image, I think after what happened with his FaceShoot, neither of them will show up at school tomorrow." I responded, laughing as I walked down the stairs and left Olivia staring at her cell phone screen in shock.