Angelica had already checked on her webcomic that morning, pleased with the amount of engagement she’d gotten from her double-release. And with her three banked chapters, she had the next week of releases covered. That meant she could focus on making some money, to further vindicate her choice of becoming a full-time creator and avoiding real work like a plague.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t willing to put effort in. It was more the nature of working for a company that Angelica definitely didn’t want to return to; the fake friendly smiles, the pretending to be busy to shirk all duties, the way her colleagues would absolutely backstab each other, herself included, just for even a shot at a promotion. It was disgusting, more demonic than anything she’d experienced thus far, and that was just a life she didn’t want to live ever again.
So being a freelancer certainly fit her more. A few commission requests had piled up. And thanks to her new ability to force motivation upon herself, her output could be sped up greatly. She also imagined it would make it possible to remove her own artistic preferences from the equation, able to give the requestors something closer to what they wanted, rather than constantly being tempted to switch things a bit to suit her tastes.
That was a bit of feedback she’d gotten regularly, and had lost her some repeat customers—adding or changing things to make them look objectively better, but they weren’t how her commissioners imagined them, so they usually weren’t thrilled. At the very least, she could keep her signature style, her soul of the art, so that would be enough. Unfortunately, her intake of requests wasn’t enough to sustain her entirely.
Living was expensive, as was proven by the good deal of money she’d just spent on food and to even do laundry. Her savings was down to just over $100. A subject she’d been adamantly avoiding was performing the cost analysis on just how much money it would actually take for her lifestyle to be feasible. She had been caught up in both the denial and depression of her situation, but she wouldn’t ignore it any longer.
Angelica didn’t know why she’d been fatefully hit with a book a few nights ago, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity given to her. She would use these new powers to secure the life she wanted and to prove her dreams weren’t unreasonable. And to spite Ms. Gate, but mostly her mother. Over the last few days, she’d accepted a bit more that her landlord’s demands weren’t unreasonable, and she’d supplanted some lingering feelings towards her main authority figure. But still, she wanted to spite her nonetheless! Maybe there was a bit of a demonic side to her, after all.
Fortunately, thanks to her actuarial background, such budgeting was trivial work for her, barely taking a few minutes once she put in the effort. Accounting for her rent—on a normal month when she wasn’t being double-billed—all necessary expenses for both herself and Cherub, phone bill, and just a teensy bit extra in case of emergency, she could survive soundly on $1,500 a month. But if she wanted to have any sort of real joys in life, $2,000 would be more reasonable.
However, to reach the point she’d consider thriving and comfortable, not needing to worry about money, able to take breaks when and if she needed, Angelica would want to hit $3,000 a month. To break it down, that would be $100 a day, which frankly sounded manageable.
One of the commissions waiting in her queue was for a bigger piece of art, a book cover, that the requestor offered $300 for. It would probably take her at least a day minimum, maybe two, possibly three if they requested a lot of changes, so that sounded about right. She was genuinely looking forward to it because it had a dragon where she could really let her mind run wild with the design, and also a car for some reason.
The rest were all the usual smaller stuff, ranging from $20 to $75, but she could do multiple of them in a day. If she could just do consistent commissions everyday, that would be ideal, and still give her reprieves to work on her comic—truly the life of an artist she currently wanted. But she’d need to get more famous first, both for more commissions and to charge more overall.
So she would need to find ways to supplement her income until that could become stable. For sticking to the artsy side of things, there was another avenue. There were art request sites where people would pay middling amounts of money for basic pictures, essentially commissions with less soul. Usually it was for things like icons, rough character designs, maybe even some typography.
These were all skills well within Angelica’s wheelhouse, but she’d avoided this route so far. The artist could do them even faster than commissions, and there was the expectation that the requestors got what they paid for, so it would be quick work that wasn’t anything too special. She liked to put more effort into her art, but money was money, and it was a direct way her skills could pay the bills. The money also had to be paid to her upfront, so she didn’t have to worry about being shafted. As long as she maintained a good relationship with the site, it would be steady, and she could be a bit picky about what she took.
And assuming that she ran out of those that she was interested in taking, there were other ways she could work from home without speaking to anyone. Transcribing services were something she’d looked into before, even passing their licensing test. But when she’d actually tried out the work, she found it quickly tedious. But with her new abilities, that didn’t matter. Contractually obligated motivation was a powerful thing.
So the well-motivated unemployed woman prepared to get to work, coming up with a plan to best optimize her time. Before diving into it, she went ahead and got some food, knowing she likely wouldn’t stop again for some time. Angelica pre-rewarded herself with a piece of the only-very-slightly stale pie she’d bought for all the hard work she was about to do, and for the cleaning she’d already done. While enjoying it, an intrusive thought entered her mind.
She pointed her spoon toward the pie and muttered, “Stab.”
[Stab activated. 5 MP consumed]
The utensil flung forward, dragging her hand with it, perfectly piercing into the dessert and banging into the plate on the other side. Fortunately, she hadn’t cracked it, one of her few good and clean pieces of dishware she had left. But it did confirm that her MP recovered over time. How much and how fast? She had no idea. But at the very least, it wasn’t gone for good.
Satiated in both hunger and curiosity, she accepted the more pricey commission but didn’t begin on it right away, focusing on the others first. Part of why she had repeat customers for the cheaper ones, besides the great price, was her fast turnaround. So they could throw cash at their whims. Plus, if she returned the big piece too quickly, it could be suspicious how she made it so fast.
The Summoner plowed through Contracts, giving herself Order after Order. She was doing a new one for each commission, basically just saying, “Complete this art to the requestors specifications while meeting your own standards.” It also allowed for a bit of testing with the Orders, whittling it down to, “Complete the commission per usual,” which produced the same results. Perhaps ensuring there was an understanding between the Summoner and Demon negated the need to spell everything out so specifically.
None of these minor drawings caused her Summoner Rank to level again, though. However, she did get something interesting. It was while she was making a set of character faces, basically the same head each time, just with different expressions. To make them still feel unique, she redid the entire thing from scratch instead of just reusing the base and then adding the features. Apparently the Demon Growth System had its own opinions on such extra effort being a waste of time.
[Active skill: Reprint Lv.1 unlocked]
[Competence increased]
[Fabrication Attunement unlocked]
This triggered a lot of thoughts. Firstly, fabrication? How dare you call any art I make a fabrication! She got a little annoyed at the voice in her head. And second, why had it increased Competence instead of Creativity? Surely anything art-related should be creative right? But it was Reprint, which she had to assume was used for reproduction, so there’d be no actual original thought there.
Angelica decided to try it out, having that flexibility since her current contract wasn’t a named one. “Reprint.”
[Reprint activated. 1 MP consumed]
Similarly to a Named Order, her hand began moving on its own, drawing the face she’d just completed again from scratch, but with blazing speed. It was a perfect reproduction. Well, almost perfect. Since it was all only one color, it basically blended everything together with no features, but the shape was pretty much spot on, only one smidge out of place. Her instincts told her that this wasn’t the limit, though. Maybe with higher levels its capabilities would increase?
She tested it a few more times, well, maybe a couple dozen more times, interested in watching the process. Next, she tried it out with other pieces she’d done during the day, finding that she could activate it with any of them that she thought of. However, she couldn’t use it to recreate a piece of art she had hanging in her room. It had to be something she’d done herself. And finally:
[Reprint Lv.2]
[Competence increased]
[Fabrication Attunement increased]
Angelica immediately went back to the first face, and once again, it was recreated perfectly. Yet this time, the colors matched. Somehow, the colors matched?! But that shouldn’t be possible. She hadn’t adjusted the settings on her tablet at all during the Reprint, staying with one color the entire time, but the reproduction somehow manifested the others. This was certainly the closest she’d come to actual, real magic with her new abilities, defying the logic of what she thought was possible.
But also… to what end? What was the point and purpose of this Skill? In the olden times, it would have been amazing. She could have been an art-printing god. But now, in the days of digital art, was there really much use? She could just copy and paste anything she needed another version of. Maybe if she ever got famous enough to do signings at a convention herself, she could use it to make speedy recreations of her characters on the spot and wow her fans. Now that was something to add to her fanciful dream, but it was the best idea for it she had.
As one more test before getting back to work, Angelica also tried recreating the digital art she’d done on paper, but her hand didn’t move at all. So she drew something new on the paper, and that let her activate Reprint properly, but then it wouldn’t let her use it with the tablet. Maybe another level bonus would allow the changing of mediums? That sounded plausible. But she had dwelled long enough, and locked away the pretty-much-useless skill for now.
By the end of the day, the artist was proud of what she’d accomplished. She’d completely cleared out her commission queue except for the remaining big project, earning her a grand total of $265, assuming everyone paid up properly. This was well above her goal, and it bought her a day off in the future if she wanted one. If only every day could be like it.
Cherub wasn’t pestering her incessantly because she’d even allowed herself to both feed and play with him, while getting more food for herself. She felt good; almost like an athlete’s high, but for personal growth. This was such the right step to improving her situation, and tomorrow, she’d push herself even more!