My Dream

🍎 Announcing Auditions

Several Days Later...

The cafeteria was full of noise as friends reconnected and shared the stories of their breaks. Students from Scarabia found themselves swarmed with curious students wondering what happened over the break.

Gwen also found herself swarmed, but Ace and Deuce were doing a great job of keeping everyone away.

"Ffna~ I'm starving!" Grim said as everyone went to find a table. "The day feels so much longer when we have PE in the morning, y'know."

"Dude, you get super hungry whether or not we've got PE." Ace pointed out. Something caught his eye, and he turned to look at it. "Hm?"

A large crowd had gathered around a wall.

"What's up?" Deuce wondered. "Seems everyone is interested in something on the wall."

"Let's go see." Gwen led the group to the wall.

They made their way to the front, looking at the poster that had gotten everyone's attention.

"It says... National Magic School Joint Culture Festival: Vocal & Dance Championship." Deuce read. "On-Stage Performer Audition? Ooh, it's about the culture festival."

"It's on the every year so I usually ended up watching, but I didn't know they were selected through audition." Ace said.

Gwen was remembering her conversation with Vil and Rook, and how they had wanted her to audition.

"Come all with pride in their song and dance!" Ace read off. "This is your chance to make your pro debut! Take your spot at the top of all high school students! If your team is chosen as a finalist on the day of the event... you will earn the prize of five million madol to be equally divided amongst yourselves."

There was two seconds of silence as that last bit of information sunk in.

"FIVE MILLION MADOL EQUALLY SPLIT!?" The group shouted in unison.

"That is correct." The voice of Headmaster Crowley confirmed. "Isn't it splendid?"

"GAHH! YOU SCARED ME!" The braincell trio shouted.

"Dad?" Gwen asked as they turned to look at him. "What are you doing here?"

Crowley held up a lunchbox. "I was hoping we could have lunch together Hatchling!"

"Headmaster, think you could stop just popping out of nowhere?" Ace sighed, trying to calm down his racing heart.

"Oh my, apologies." Crowley said. "It's not my intention to scare you. The reason we can provide a prize like that for the Vocal & Dance Champion is... because we received an enormous number of sponsors for this event."

"This must be a really popular festival then!" Gwen realized.

"VDC is on a much greater scope than a normal musical contest." Crowley confirmed. "Finalists in this event are likely to receive a variety of debut offers from entertainment and music labels. It wouldn't be a stretch to say you could become buddies with an overnight sensation."

"Golly!" Gwen gasped. "Maybe I should audition after all..."

"You can ignore your ties to the school and dedicate yourself to chasing after your future through this music battle." Crowley continued. "You have to offer a worthwhile reward to get the elites to show up."

"That makes sense." Ace nodded. "For the sponsees this is a chance for them to find a real money maker, so... five million madol is pocket change for them."

"With that much money I could buy a whole mountain of the 300 madol high quality tuna cans!" Grim realized.

"Wait, wait, wait." Deuce cut in. "It says here that the prize is split equally between the team members. So a four person team would mean everyone gets... five million divided by four is... one... one million three..."