NOVEL NEXT Chapter 250: Suffering
[Ding!]
[Surprise Mission: I think I'm Better Than You! It's Not Bragging, It's Not Pride, It's Confidence!]
[You have made several statements that some may call braggadocious, but you claim are backed by confidence in yourself and your skill. It's time for you to put your money where your mouth is and prove that you're not just a pretty face who sings well, you're an all-rounder who can back up your bold claims.]
[1. Successfully create a performance that will make DJ TV admit that his feedback toward your team was wrong.]
[2. Modify Lil Pumpy's song in such a way that most people will admit that your version is better than the original.]
[Reward: 24-hour Time Dilation Candle (Oud scent.)(immediately dispensed) & 1 time use of skill Hype Man (C)(immediately dispensed) & 2 Charm Stat Points]
[Failure: Loss of 10 stat points]
[Will you accept the surprise mission?]
Ari briefly considered the surprise mission, wondering what the skills and candle did, and as if NOVA read his thoughts, two windows popped up.
[24-hour Time Dilation Candle]
[Use: Inside a closed room, light the candle and let the scent fill the room.]
[Performance: One hour for the rest of the world is equivalent to 3 hours for those in the room where the candle is burning. The candle burns for a total of 24 hours, giving you 72 extra hours of time. Use it wisely.]
[*Please note that all objects, including people in the room, are affected by the faster passage of time, so all bodily functions such as hunger, thirst, etc, will proceed as usual and be utilized with caution.
**Once the door or window in the room is opened, the candle flame will die, and the effects cease.]
Oh?
Wasn't this a good item?
He could not only have more time to speed up the completion of some of his repeat missions, but theoretically, he could also secretly triple the practice time for everybody once he cleared up the details with NOVA.
Good. Great. Amazing.
This system was useful for once.
Pretending to swat something, Ari batted that screen away and read the other one.
[Skill: Hype Man (C)]
[Effect: When the audience hears the sound of your voice for at least a minute, it raises their level of excitement by a percentage that scales off the average score of your vocal and visual stats.]
Note: [F: 1%, E: 5% D: 10%, C: 15%, B: 20%, A: 25%]
[Activation: To activate the skill, Start by yelling, "Are you ready to see the best performance of your life!"]
Hmm…
This one…
While the skill was decent, it was a bit awkward to use.
Well…
All the rewards couldn't be good.
Either way, his answer was easy.
"I accept."
[Understood.]
"What was that?" Vishal gave him a strange look.
"Nothing. I'm just excited for the future. Heh." Ari gave him an innocent smile, and the Indian boy flinched, rubbing his arms before looking away.
Wondering what was going on with him, but knowing it wasn't the time to talk, Ari took a seat.
With a mind that was busy organizing things that he would have to do, Ari paid moderate attention to the rest of the team's performance, noticing that William kept shooting glances at Levi, who was sitting beside him.
The rest of the performances went well, with other teams getting light criticism over their lyrics and part distribution, and soon enough, they were released.
Carlos and Jamie, who were paired together on the ballad song, actually brought a tear to the producer's eyes, and Ari found himself jealous that he hadn't been on a team with them.
As soon as Ari's team got back to their practice room, Minjun began whining toward him.
"I can't believe you kicked me in front of everyone."
As the Korean boy glared at him, Ari laughed right in his face.
"And I'll do it again. Want to point fingers and show the discord on our team in front of the judges? It seems that you haven't been burned enough by spicy editing yet, or is it because you assume that I'll be the one edited badly because that's what usually happens?"
Even though he agreed that maybe he hadn't thought things through, Minjun didn't answer and changed the subject, "Whatever. I can't believe you said all that to the producer and the other judges. Now they're going to be biased against us!"
"Ever since they gave us that song as is, they were already biased. Unless you want to perform to that unique beat that even the expert rappers didn't want? If so, be my guest."
Minjun immediately avoided meeting his eyes and grumbled instead.
"Well, you've already promised to make something better, so it's too late anyway."
"Exactly. Now that Levi's back, let's go back to the original idea that we agreed on. Oi, kiwi head."
Gasp.
Levi: ಠ_ಠ
The room occupants looked between the two of them, expecting Levi to blow up, but surprisingly, he stayed calm.
"I don't know why you keep calling me that."
"I'll show you why later. It's funny, I promise. Anyway, listen to this."
Ari grabbed the tablet and played what he had been working on for Levi to hear, and began explaining what he needed Levi to do.
The different beats were separated by a repeated hook, which was a brief introductory segment for each person before transitioning into their own verse.
Levi nodded along, his eyes closed, as he liked the changes he heard.
"We need you to do an announcer-like intro and to rap like an MC throughout, to give it that kind of flair. We all attempted it, but I think you would be best at it given your experience. Is that okay with you?"
"Yeah, but there's a bigger issue. You all need to throw your verses away and redo them." Levi replied with a cold expression.
Although they were a bit afraid, the people in the room sat up straight and began to protest despite.
"No way!"
"I finally finished memorizing my verse, I'm not doing that!"
"What's the reason?"
At the aggressive refusal, Levi looked at them as if they were stupid.
"Don't tell me you're all going to sit here and take the insults we just received? Not just from the judges, but from the other team, who're bragging that they're on top and are better than us? That's pathetic."
"Well…"
"Kind of."
"So you're fine with getting insulted and untalented? Cause I'm not. Redo your verses and diss them back."
"But-"
"Won't we get in trouble?"
"Who cares if we do?"
"Uh..that's kind of a lot, right?"
"I don't want to come off as aggressive."
Since he agreed with Levi's words and this was the next issue on his to-do list, Ari began trying to convince them.
"I don't think the verses need to be completely scrapped. They just need a little more oomph. Lil Pumpy mentioned battle rap as inspiration when creating the song, and that's what we're trying to simulate, so let's throw some shots to make it a bit more realistic, especially if we're pretending to go against each other. X-ponent says that rap is often used to convey emotions and story, and personally, I feel some type of way after they looked down on us like that. Don't you? We don't have to be too harsh, but we can definitely praise ourselves and add a line or two about others. The other team did it too if you listened."
"I guess…"
"I don't know about that..."
Seeing that the opinion was mixed, Ari decided not to press the issue.
"Just consider it, and only do it if you feel comfortable. I know I'll change my verse; I'm assuming Levi will, too. Since we're on opposite teams, it might be enough. Speaking of which…." Ari stared at Levi's buzz cut before laughing. "How do you feel about dying your hair blue?"
"No."
"So what I heard was a yes, which is excellent since you're already blonde. I'll tell production to get temporary hair dye. For now, let's take a 30-minute break and come back and start practicing."
Ari completely disregarded Levi's opinion and moved to give everyone a short break as he set the room up before their suffering began.
Unfortunately, one of his previous roommates seemed to have sensed his intentions as Vishal stared at him suspiciously.
"…practicing for how long?" Vishal asked a little fearfully.
"Let's say 1-2 hours? No more than 3 hours. Nothing too hard. We'll just mark things out for now and really get into it tomorrow." Ari promised with a smile.
Of course, the hours he was listing were before the candle time dilation was factored in.
He would grind them for at least 9 hours.
"Really?" Vishal looked completely skeptical.
"Really."
"You're not going to keep us here until midnight and wake everybody at 4 am?"
"No. I've changed."
"Really? Are you planning on taking the clock out of the room so we lose track of time and lock the door while continually lying that practice would end in 3o minutes?"
He absolutely was, but naturally, Ari had to deny it.
[Wow. He's caught onto your tactics.]
"Of course not! What do you take me for? We'll start practice at a reasonable time of 5 am, and after the 4-5 hours of practice today, everyone is free to go."
Wait?
Why had the practice jumped from 1-2 hours to 4-5 hours?
And why was practice suddenly moved from 8 am to 5 am?
No matter how much Vishal wanted to believe the words, the goosebumps on his arms refused to go away.
He even felt a cold sweat running down his back as his previous trauma began coming back.
Unfortunately for him, it seemed none of the others had experienced this side of Ari, as they thought that he was joking.
"Let's just go take our break, I'm hungry. We'll be back in 30 minutes." Minjun cut in, already walking out the door.
"Have fun. Don't make me come find you."
"Yeah, yeah."
As they all began to leave, Ari turned to Levi, who he was finding out really aligned with his thoughts and actions.
"Levi, wait. Give me your verse, and then instead I'll add a beat switch and then… That way, we can really stick it to DJ TV. What do you think?" as Ari whispered his idea, the wolfish smile appeared on Levi's face once more.
"Let's do it."
"Sweet."
As the room cleared out, Ari went back to his room and pretended to dig in his suitcase and pull out a large candle that had mysteriously appeared.
Lugging it back to the practice room, he went back and forth from the cafeteria area. Borrowing a lighter, getting bottles of water, extra snacks, and towels to stock the room so nobody would have to leave.
And after briefly testing out the candle to see it's effect on electronic and analog clocks, he left the clock so his teammates could feel comforted while waiting for everyone to come in after their quick break.
As they trudged in, Ari welcomed them with a bright smile, locking the door and lighting the candle which emitted a woodsy, smoky yet slightly sweet scent that smelled expensive and relaxed the body.
"Welcome to practice. Shall we get started?"
As the music began playing, Ari smiled brightly at his teammates, who didn't know that their torture was just beginning.
*******
A rumor began circulating among the contestants that a certain practice room was cursed.
The rumor stated that no matter how much time you spent in that practice room, it was like basically no time had passed outside of the room.
The members of the team assigned to that practice room would emerge covered in sweat, complaining of tiredness, hunger, and other ailments, only to realize that they had been at it for only an hour or two.
Their sleep schedules became completely messed up, causing them to fall out of sync with contestants who weren't even on their team.
All they could do was practice or hang out with each other, and yet, no matter the time they went, one person seemed to always be in the practice room, welcoming them into another round of suffering that he called practice.
Ari, or the practice demon, as he was now called, stepped out of the practice room to go find something to eat.
His sense of time was completely skewed, and he barely knew what day it was, much less what time it was.
The only indication he had that time was passing was when he got hungry.
He trudged to the cafeteria and reluctantly brought out his wallet to buy something from the vending machine since it wasn't quite mealtime.
"You all right, mate? You're eating more than ever, so how are you losing weight?" Benjamin asked worriedly as he walked over.
He didn't think it was possible, but Ari had gotten even leaner than before.
"It's because I'm suffering," Ari replied in a scarily hoarse voice.
"You sound terrible."
"Thank you. Ahem!"
Ari's voice had no choice but to be hoarse because he was currently grinding all of his repeat missions to dump the stat points into his rap stat.
Rapping, singing, dancing, and occasionally exercising.
After suffering through practice with his team, sometimes with the candle and sometimes without, he then spent his own time practicing with the time dilation candle, trying to rack up stat points and boost his rap stat before repeating it again when his teammates came back.
The unfortunate side effect of all the practice was that his body couldn't add weight due to his current schedule, but when he looked at the list of repeat missions that were so close to being completed, Ari knew he couldn't stop now.
Weight could be added later, but he couldn't afford to lose 10 stat points, so the grind must continue.
"Well, it's good you came out. I wanted to ask if you wanted to watch this week's episode together with the others, but I'm guessing no?"
"No. Thank you, though."
Waving at Benjamin, who had a worried expression on his face, Ari went back to his solo practice while the others went to watch the new episode.