Irritated and somewhat amused, Felix chuckled at the sight of his cousins lying on the floor with a deadpan expression. He clapped his hands twice to bring their attention to him. Yet, the only thing that moved was their grey dead eyes, as they stared at him with a hint of blame and despise.
Felix didn't take their looks seriously and just dragged them by their legs or hands in the direction of the lounge, since they were lying on the pathway, blocking others from accessing the gates. He kept going back and forth and each time he dragged two with him.
The spectators neither laughed nor mocked them, as they understood that the girls' reaction was thoroughly justifiable after knowing the name of the movie they came out from.
They only nodded their head to pay respect for Felix's willing sacrifice and gave a look of condolence towards the fallen ladies.
….
In the resting lounge, Felix was talking to Olivia who recovered the quickest from the mental blow.
"How did you find the worst movie in the history of mankind?" He asked with a chuckle.
"You know I don't like saying bad stuff on other people's works." She frowned her eyebrows and said sternly, "No matter how horrible their creation is, in my eyes, they still put a lot of effort into making it. So don't expect me to answer you, since my only response will always be, not bad."
"As expected from your bubbly personality." He smiled gently and patted her head, "No wonder you were born with a plant element. One of the kindest and supportive elements in the universe."
Olivia pouted and slapped his hand away from her head since he started to treat her like a child again. "Stop complimenting me, I won't take your side no matter what."
She crossed her arms and humphed, "After all, you knowingly sent them off to get brain-damaged, when you could have informed them about the movie details."
"How is this my fault? I clearly told them to pick another one, but they refused." He added out loud so the girls would hear him as well, "Moreover, Sarah said she didn't care about the quality of the movie, and all of you agreed with her before." He smiled innocently, "So I simply respected your choice."
Olivia who was never good at arguing could only accept his excuse with a nod, while cursing him in her mind. 'Shameless Felix, you can just say you wanted to prank us like always.'
After seeing that she gave up on bickering, he changed the subject by informing his cousins to recover their mentality for the next hour until Sarah exit the movie.
"Uhm."
Absent-minded, they gave an inaudible tone as a response, while focusing on deleting any memory of that filth from their minds.
…
One hour later…
Sarah got kicked out of the movie as well. But, compared to others who felt their soul got devoured inside; she just skipped towards them with a happy expression.
"That movie was too good. How I wish I had prince charming saving me like that in real life." Her eyes sparkled with worship, as she folded her hands like a fangirl.
The people around her who had an auto-translation program activated in their Bracelet understood her, but couldn't process what she just said properly.
Their bodies froze, as they kept checking the gate she came out off, trying their best to believe that it was just a fantasy. However, Sarah's scolding voice made them realize that she was not joking at all.
"Why did you guys leave the movie? Felix paid for the tickets, and it is really not polite to waste his money like this."
The moment she finished speaking, the entire area descended into a deafening silence. Felix did not wait for others to break out of their daze, as he sneaked away from the area, to not associate himself with Sarah. He wanted nothing to do with the upcoming public humiliation.
"Miss I believe the one who paid won't mind trading those few coins over the safety of your friend's mental health."
"Indeed, no one is abnormal as you miss, to like that abomination."
"Stop trying to harm your friends, it is not cool."
"Leave! We don't want your kind near our children!"
The entire crowd instantly turned against her after knowing that she was part of that creepy fandom who loved to recommend those types of movies to naive people.
Yet, Sarah just looked at them with a finger pressed on her lips and titled head. Her confused expression clearly showcased that she had zero clue what the hell they were saying.
A bonus of not learning the common language.
Felix did not wait for things to get ugly and ordered in his mind for the Queen to log them out.
…..
Felix was the first to wake up. Meanwhile, the ladies still had their eyes closed shut.
Without delaying for even a second, He bolted outside of the room, barefoot and still in his pajamas. He knew that escape was a must if he wanted to avoid the upcoming headache of dealing with his cousins after this failed outing.
…
Inside the Cafeteria…
Felix was eating his lunch while thinking of the movies he was planning to invest in.
One of them was the upcoming >Human Melodies< movie, which probably was already in production for over 2 months now, and would be officially released 3 months after.
A quite long period considering that making movies in the UVR was as easy as making YouTube clips, since creating the environment and filming to finally editing could easily be handled by the AIs. This left humans with only acting and directing.
The average duration of making films was one month to a maximum of two months. So, this long period reflected just how serious the Oblivion Film Studio took this project.
Felix currently owned 24 million SC. 10 million planned for betting and 14 million was the leftover of his shopping spree.
So what he planned to do now, was to actually bet everything on the upcoming game, leaving only a couple of hundred thousand as an emergency. Then use the coins that he earned from the gamble to invest in this movie.
The only issue that was bothering him was the small period window that he had to invest in. He recalled that the game date was set on two months from now, meanwhile, the movie release was three months.
This meant he only had the last month before the movie release to invest in. At that point, the production would have already wrapped up or was about to. In other words, his investment opportunities were lowered to the bare minimum.
But he still had a way to wiggle himself in. He remembered that the movie had struggled to raise funds from investors, as its filming concept was labeled as unprofitable and niche for the market.
He cursed them while chewing, "Fucking morons, you just wasted at least a Billion free coins." He smirked, "But don't mind me, I will just slip in and take it gladly. I will then use…"
He suddenly got interrupted by a familiar sweet voice in his mind. "Felix, I finished everything in your memories." Asna stretched, like a lazy cat, and requested with a beautiful smile, "Can you refill them with some new additions? Please focus on drama, thank you, sweety."
"In your fucking dreams. I would rather die than watch another movie or series for you."
Furious, veins throbbed on Felix's neck at her casual way of asking him, like his reminder earlier of experimenting on the stones, meant jack shit to her.
"Come on little Felix, just one please and I will stop, I promise. I just need one more for the road." She begged wretchedly with her hands clawed on the bedsheets. If anyone saw her do so with that sunken face and dark bags under her eyes, they would definitely assume that she was in withdrawal.
"Stop fucking talking like a drug addict. You are not getting anything else. It's time for you to work that lazy bum of yours." He suddenly stood up, not even finishing half of his lunch, and said, "I am going to buy the poison stone now and start the experiment to give you something to do."
Asna began to flay her arms and legs wildly in a tantrum while crying sorrowfully, "I don't want to work! Can't I just watch movies for those two months before you awaken?" She sulked with puppy eyes and said, "I promise you then, I won't mention them anymore."
Too bad, Felix couldn't see her cute expression. He simply kept walking towards his room with a hardened face.
This time he was not going to budge on his decision. After all, he gave her plenty of time to have fun and play around, while he planned everything for their future. But now it was time for her to assist him without complaining.
This was their deal in the first place, for her to assist him wholeheartedly. But so far, she did nothing but laze around. He couldn't tolerate this anymore.
'Today you will help me experiment and it's a final decision.'
Depressed at the idea of work, Asna buried her head in the pillow and screamed out loud, while kicking legs on the bedsheet.
'Stingy little bastard, I curse you to die a virgin.' She threw the most menacing curse she could think off at him after realizing that there was no way out.
'Yea, yea, whatever. Keep swearing nothing will change."
Unbothered, Felix peeked inside his room, worried that his cousins were still inside. However, after a few glances, he saw that the coast was clear.
He sighed in relief and closed the door behind him.
…
A few minutes later, he turned on his laptop and went straight for the merit shop to buy a poison stone.
Shortly after clicking on purchase, a notification popped out in the corner of his laptop's screen.
>your purchase has been successful. In 5 minutes a servant shall deliver the item to your room.<
After reading it, he turned off his laptop and put it to the side. He stood up and went to the toilet to take care of his bowls.
…
5 minutes later, a light knock resounded in the room.
Felix bolted towards the door, opened it, took the box from the servant who was about to say something, and closed the door on his face while yelling his thanks.
The servent could only scratch his cheek at this sight and leave. More deliveries were waiting for him anyway.
Meanwhile, Felix sat on his bed while holding a small black box. He crossed his fingers and opened it up gently. A grin crept on his lips as took a small green pebble that had the size of a peanut outside of the box.
Without further ado, he requested Asna to try and absorb the poisonous energy of the stone.
Asna replied with a gloomy humph but still did as he asked and started absorbing the energy while yawning with a hand covering her mouth.
The process didn't even take a part of a second before the stone shattered into small pieces.
Delighted and elated, Felix's eyes couldn't help but brighten up at this sight. "How is it, did you succeed? And if you did why don't I feel anything different? Did you absorb all the energy leaving nothing to me or what?"
Asna got annoyed by his barrage of inquires and replied with a disdainful sneer. "Stop asking stupid questions, you moron. Do you honestly think that I Asna origin of laws can't even absorb this trashy energy?" She raised her voice, "And how dare you insult me by providing me with this pathetic amount and saying that I took it all. It was not enough to even fill a single body pore!"
Felix laughed sheepishly as he realized that he acted a little bit too excited since he also knew that the energy content of a low-grade stone was quite a trash to even humans, don't even mention Asna.
"Alright, this was merely to test if we could absorb energy without a beast bloodline, and not enhance my poison affinity." He smiled and dusted his hands from the small pieces of the stone.
"Oh now that you mentioned poison affinity, I have some bad news to deliver." She covered her mouth to hide that wicked smile behind and explained, "My previous estimate on the period needed for enhancement to reach a 100% Affinity Rating was quite off by a mile since I used my own race elemental trashy resources to calculate, not your human race elemental stones."
Felix's heart sank to the depth of the abyss, as he knew that whatever was about to come was not going to please him at all.
"Now that I absorbed this shitty stone, I can claim with certainty that to reach 100% rating from 59% it will take 10 years of absorbing this low-grade energy."
"Congratulation sweety over this great news." Asna never knew that revenge could be served so fast.
Felix's eyes almost rolled back in his head as he leaned on the wall for support.
'This can't be happening. Ten years to just finish 41%? Then how long it will take to finish other promised elements that I don't even possess?!'
Asna rubbed more salt on his wounds mercilessly, "30 years or more."
Felix clutched his heart in pain as he realized he would need to only use high-quality elemental stones and treasures. Things that were either too expensive or simply couldn't be bought by his trashy reputation.
"My beautiful future has just got bleaker."
He cried out in despair with his knees on the ground while staring at the ceiling of his room. He truly began to regret even doing this experiment.
They were not lying when they said that ignorance was a bless.
