[2.53] And How Does That Make You Feel? (Part 3/3)

[Evoke Lv.10]

[Creativity heftily increased]

[Fabrication, Oppression Attunement heftily increased]

[Fabrication Attunement has improved from Touched to Embraced]

That was the Skill haul from the second round of testing. As for the more tangible haul of her readership, the results were impressive to say the least. Gelic’s follower count on the site had increased five-fold overnight. Her overall views were nine times higher than the previous day. It wasn’t solely from the word of mouth that her chapter had caused. Such explosive growth had gotten her onto the site’s “Trending” section which honestly accounted for a little more than half of her new metrics when she looked at the analytics, tapping into the site’s already existing readerbase that had never really found its way to her small story.

Sadly, it wasn’t all good. While there was a decent number of people now binging the comic, some clearly having gotten as little sleep as she had, there was a lot of drop off in the early chapters. That was to be expected. Her story was pretty off-meta for the site, not following the usual formulas and more actiony nature. Honestly, it probably wasn’t the best place to be posting to begin with, but she had never really found any better alternatives. Most other similar sites specialized in either romance, or uhh, spicy romance, which her series was neither. So she had ultimately opted to take her chances with this one since there was a wider readerbase and a decent number of small stories like hers that didn’t quite fit the niche.

The other likely biggest reason for the drop off was the quality. She couldn’t call the early chapters of Merlina’s Boutique bad by any stretch of the imagination, even when taking herself out of the equation as the creator. But it was… inconsistent. Back then, she’d been finding her style, both in drawing and writing. So the first dozen or so chapters were kind of all over the place in tone and visuals. At some point, she found her footing and it all improved greatly from there, but the beginning was definitely missing similar levels of polish.

Part of her had always wanted to go back and redo them, or even delete them, but that felt wrong. It was still part of the story, both her and Merlina’s journey to get to where it was now. Now that she had Evoke, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to go and add the feelings of either curiosity or intrigue, assuming she could, just to help guide the readers over that hump.

If she understood the Skill correctly, she’d be able to add them to the chapters without a redraw. That said, it could also work well with an improved version, but as of now, that was time she didn’t have. And she definitely didn’t want to tamper with anything until she fully had the tests done, with the third of which being the riskiest. She was actually dissuaded a bit at first from even attempting it, hit with a complex stew of emotions

All the attention had brought more than just anonymous views that left her behind. Along with a bunch of new positive comments about people looking forward to the story, her first few chapters were now awash with negative ones; critiques about the art, plot, characters, from minor nitpicks to major thrashings. It was all stuff she knew already, having been her own worst critic since the beginning. But that didn’t stop it from hurting when hearing from others.

Some had even gone so far as to leave rude, insulting reviews, a couple even posing the question of why she even posted such a "snoozefest of a story” to the website. Thankfully, most of them had already been marked as deleted by the site's moderators, probably reported by some of her readers. But that didn’t stop her comic’s rating from being tanked. It was still “good” but far lower than it had been just the day before. Now it was more in line with the other popular series on the sites. She’d always had a higher rating than most, but that was due to the lack of eyes, and her community only being those who really loved the simple and cozy story.

Parsing through it all ultimately left her with a hollow feeling. Her comic finally being noticed and the notoriety of Gelic the artist spiking of course had her excited. But just the idea that people could be so hateful of something that they weren’t forced to read, especially something they were receiving for free, was so genuinely staggering and eye opening. Fortunately, likely thanks to her fatigue, most of it washed over her.

If she had been in a worse headspace, or having an intense bout of depression, it would have likely crippled her for a good while. Thankfully, she already had a few dedicated fans who genuinely loved the story, or she’d be doubting everything. Had these been the first comments or reviews she’d received, honestly, knowing her past self, she wasn’t sure that she would have continued beyond it. They could have very well killed her dream before it started, making Angelica resign herself to a miserable life of work she hated with her creativity tarnished, never daring to share the spark again. It was a bit ludicrous how some people didn’t realize just how harmful their words could be.

But it definitely wasn’t all doom and gloom. After she got past the waves of negativity, the comments left after that were genuine, heartfelt, and contained multitudes of the same message of thanks for posting each chapter. Then when she caught back up to the most recent colored chapters, it spiked even more.

Apparently, a lot of those who spread the story through word of mouth told their friends to start with the new arc, which honestly wasn’t a bad idea. In a way, it was a rebirth for the series, a great jumping on point, and it inspired her to both notate it as such in the series’s table of contents and make a special note about it in the description. Then if people wanted to go back and read the earlier stuff, they’d have a better expectation of where it’d end up.

Almost all the new comments from that point on were quite positive, and if there was negativity, even on the chapter before Evoke hit, many other commenters came to her defense. It really instilled a feeling of fandom she hadn’t quite felt yet, showing her the community she could build with her art. And when she got to the newest chapter, there were some of the most heartwarming comments yet. Two of which really resonated with her.

“I showed this to my mom and now she’s been texting me about it nonstop,” and, “My boyfriend told me to read this, and I binged it all in one sitting. Now it’s going to be his problem, because this is going to be my whole personality for the next month.”

Damn, reading through all the messages like that completely cleared away the dark cloud that had been forming. It inspired her to continue with the test, but she was still hesitant about it. In a way, it felt like taking advantage of all these new people who had come to love her story and the faithful lifetime readers alike, but it would give her a good indication of the potential of her new power, and would hopefully be done in a reasonable way.

Thanks to the new levels, she could push into that empathic joy even more and add another layer of complexity: generosity. So anyone who read the upcoming chapter would feel a great sense of joy that they wanted to share, while also being put into a generous mindset if her understanding was correct. Annoyingly, she couldn’t seem to direct that generosity toward anything direct, specifically her or her comic.

But that was fine. Maybe even if it didn’t go to her, it could be used to make someone else’s day better. Still, she did a small tactic to skew the odds in her favor. In the note after that chapter, she put out a brief message building off her previous comment about dedicating more time to art, stating that she was attempting to make it fulltime as an artist with a hope to be published someday.

To make it sound like a more believable endeavor, she also briefly mentioned other work she was doing like book covers and commissions, also noting that they could reach out to her profile if they wanted something done. In a way, it was sharing her own joy and the progress she’d made as an artist, so hopefully it would resonate. And it all ended with what felt the most manipulative, mentioning that if anyone was feeling generous, that any potential donations of money they may have to spare would be very much appreciated and would go straight to helping her achieve her dreams.

This wasn’t an uncommon practice. Many of the other comics on the site had spiels like that every single chapter. It was something Angelica had only done twice so far, feeling iffy about it both times. She didn’t want to be a bother about it, since the donate button was already always there. And sadly, it had bore no fruit thus far, but maybe boosted by Demon magic, she’d finally get her first donation.

Which she did. She damn sure did. Within a few minutes of the chapter going live—just enough time for someone to enjoy the work, get to the end, and read the message—she got a ping on her phone that she’d never heard before, notifying her of the donation. It wasn’t much, a few bucks, but it felt amazing. And then she got another, and another. Ping after ping, her phone blew up like she was the popular girl for once in her life.

Over the course of an hour, Angelica received over a hundred donations. They varied in amount, some as little as $3, with a spare few hitting up to $100. The majority came with a personal message, since the empathic joy still wanted them to share their feelings and excitement. Her ego was inflated to the extreme, since so many spoke about how they were happy to support her, and that it was a fantastic dream. That what they could give may not be much, but they were excited to see what her artistic career held, and wanted to support her in that endeavor.

Her heart was overflowing with their compassion as she read message after message. She knew it wasn’t fully legitimate, but it was still coming from their own kindness and enjoyment of her work. Since it wasn’t anything too severe, there didn’t seem to be any harm. At least until she got to a specific donation of $10. “Don’t get paid until tomorrow, so I may have to skip dinner tonight, but happy to support you, and thanks for your amazing story!”

That… just how the heck was she supposed to feel about that? She should feel good, right, since they were going to such lengths out of appreciation for her work? But no, they shouldn’t be doing that. It felt wrong to spurn their generosity, except the generosity wasn’t real. Maybe it was, yet she’d never know, because of what she’d done, the spell she’d cast to mess with their hearts and minds. She couldn’t help but feel like she had unintentionally stolen from them.

But what to do about it…? Angelica toiled with that question probably for longer than she should have. She knew the right thing to do, and yet, she hesitated. This was proof, wasn’t it, that her art had value, that if she continued down this path, that she could genuinely make a real living off of this without having to resort to Summoner dealings? Besides a select few who might need it more than her, the amounts were small overall, but compounded to what would be life changing for her.

Except… it was still wrong, and she knew that. With the lessons she’d just learned, part of her knew that if she kept down this path as it was, that would ultimately lead her to the Sin of Greed. So for now, at least until she had better control over Evoke and could change it to something along the lines of “generosity, but only if they genuinely enjoy the work and have the money to spare at no hindrance to them,” would she even think of trying it again.

The first step was to refund the person who needed the money more than she did. It came with a lengthy message thanking them for their support, but requesting that they prioritize themself. Along with a candid message that she’d be happy to accept it again in the future if they ever properly had the income to spare. After that came a quick skim of the remaining donations, looking for similar situations, of which she found three more and also refunded them.

She somewhat wanted to refund everyone, but there was no easy way to do so besides going line by line. And honestly, it felt like that could lead to a bigger scandal if everyone suddenly got their money back and discussed it amongst each other. That said, if once the effects of Evoke wore off and any were regretting their decision, she’d refund them without question. The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint any new fans she’d gotten, especially the ones who were drawn to her story properly without any sort of manipulation.

The next conundrum was what to do about the chapter. Obviously, she couldn’t leave it as is, so she bothered the DGS about some specifics, which it somewhat complied with answering, usually only after she tried a tactic herself. The first problem was that she couldn’t just disable the power. Apparently, once Evoke was used, it couldn’t be removed outright, and could only be replaced by another emotion.

That was the second problem, because apparently the Skill in its Active form was egregiously expensive to use. It would have been 714 MP to overwrite the full chapter. That somewhat made sense because it was technically a compilation of a lot of art pieces, rather than a single work, but damn. She could swing it, but after a few harsh lessons, preferred to keep a good amount of MP in reserve. Only Demons with huge mana pools would regularly use a Skill like that. Since she’d likely only ever use it on her own creations, it was free normally.

Because it could be overwritten, that also begged the question about whether any Demon with the Skill could cast Evoke on any piece of art whenever they wanted. Thankfully, the answer to that was no. If the original creator used the Skill, it couldn’t be replaced by anyone but themselves, and if someone used it on their work, they’d be free to override it at their leisure. But if the art wasn’t claimed, then it was, in fact, free game. Meaning, if she wanted, Angelica could go to a bunch of museums and make people feel some crazy things, though that would drain her MP really fast.

Fortunately, having had some foresight about such a potential conundrum, she had made a save of the work when it was almost completed. Meaning all she had to do was boot up that file again and add the final touches to trigger the Skill once more. It was a mistake to do it with Reprint, though, apparently, since that just added the exact same emotion via Evoke once more. And trying again with the edit function also came with a big MP cost. So after another redo, done manually, she tweaked the result entirely.

Initially, she thought to leave it blank and not indwell anything at all. The idea of sealing Evoke away entirely, writing it off as another dangerous Oppression Skill didn’t slip her mind either. But ultimately, she chose to still embrace it. While it had the potential to be devastating, it was still a useful tool, one she had the responsibility to learn and train.

She was being reasonable about it now, but what about future Angelica? Would a more Demonic version of her, steeped in Sin and Malice make the same choices to be reserved? All she could say is the odds of misuses were far greater if she lacked the ability to do otherwise. It felt like there had to be a happy medium, where she could still use it to her advantage to grow her art career while giving her readers the best experience possible, without the mass manipulation.

Hindsight regretted jumping on this Skill, especially since it was tethered to Oppression, but at the same time, it didn’t feel wrong for an art Demon to have. Besides her own dreams, there was a lot more she could do with it—rally her friends, spread fear against her enemies, bring hope when all else seemed lost. In a way, it was the most powerful Skill she’d gotten to date. She just had to master it.

For the chapter, she changed the base emotion to that of surprise. Since it was more actiony than usual and ended on a cliffhanger, that lended itself well to the readers enjoying the shakeup while wondering what would happen next. As for the modifier, she made it self-reflective appreciation. She wanted the readers to feel her appreciation for reading, while also instilling a spark of self-value, so they would consider themselves before her.

Once the tweaked chapter was uploaded, her phone went quiet… for a while. To her own surprise, there still came a few more donations. Angelica hadn’t deleted the message at the end of the chapter, even after a bit of internal debate. All of it still rang true, just without the magic behind it, so she chose to leave it as it was. But apparently, that was enough. Maybe some still had lingering generosity from earlier and just hadn’t committed yet, or just by numbers and her being genuine, some chose to jump on the action regardless. Now she didn’t know for certain, and that stung even more.

Going forward, she’d continue to experiment, both with old chapters and new, but not all at once. For now, she’d attempt to make the emotions Evoked a bit less self-serving, focusing more on making what should be the best parts of each chapter more profound, hitting the highs harder, while still adding some levels of emotion to the lows, in her attempts to gain better control of the Skill’s output. Since her comic had now been grabbed by the site’s algorithms, and should be relatively self-sustaining in its growth, she didn’t want to commit too much more manipulation in that regard, for a while at least.

[Evoke Lv.13]

[Creativity notably increased]

[Fabrication, Oppression Attunement notably increased]

[Oppression Attunement has improved from Aware to Touched]

After everything, that was the end result for now. She’d done as much damage control as she could think to do. Maybe there was more, but Angelica was long past the point of exhaustion. The nonstop art, followed by this whole conundrum to deal with, it was honestly amazing that she was still functional. To the point that the DGS saw fit to grace her with something new, that felt like she should have gotten it long ago, on her very first day as a Demon.

[Passive Skill: Fatigue Resistance Lv.1 | Reduce the lethargy that comes from experiencing Fatigue. NOTE: This is not a replacement for sleep! Fatigue will continue to build without proper rest, this Skill just reduces those effects, including but not limited to: Health and MP recovery reduction, physical and mental slowdown, and unstable emotions. However, higher Fatigue Resistance will reduce the amount of sleep needed to remedy Fatigue. Amount reduced and recovery boost scales with Skill Level, Vigor, and Suffering Attunement]

Quite interesting that it had that special note. There must have been a lot of Demons who tried to circumvent sleep altogether after obtaining it or raising it at a high level. And it was good to know that her exhaustion also did weaken her Health and MP recovery. She’d been somewhat suspicious prior, especially since they’d always jumped up significantly after a good rest, so it was nice to have it confirmed.

Interestingly, she was not prompted to add the new Skill to Plague Resistance. Fatigue was certainly something that plagued her, but she supposed it fell under a different category. Everything else was an affliction caused by an outside force, while Fatigue was the result of time and her own actions. Hunger likely fell under that as well, though that was a Status Condition that could be applied through Starvation

[Vigor increased]

[Egoism Attunement unlocked | Egoism is the understanding that you are your own greatest strength, weapon, and tool. It is the path to becoming your best self. The more you strive to improve yourself in body, mind, and soul, the more the Attunement will grow]

Honestly, Angelica found herself pretty unsurprised by the Attunement. It must have been the original category for Ambidextral Mastery before it was plucked and shoved into Pride. Maybe possessing it had been what led to her finally obtaining Egoism Attunement and Fatigue Resistance, having made it easier somehow.

And if not, then Ambidextral Mastery was still the culprit. Because art wasn’t really the reason why she was so damn tired. While not something she’d really done for a while now, her body was used to long art sprawls—sequential days without sleep or any real breaks. When she got into that creative flow, it always felt wrong to break it, even to the point of utter exhaustion. So really, that shouldn’t have been enough to unlock Fatigue Resistance, especially not compared to the hell she went through on trash day when first learning about Orders and the mistakes she’d made.

No, she was tired because thanks to the Skill she’d actually gotten from her Sin of Pride, for the past three days, she had been training nonstop.

Spoiler

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