Aeon Nether & Idol Effigy

Chapter 49- Present Reality

Now Felixe was someone who was not only handsome, but seemed to be born with a unique brand of handsome that was only made for him. If I was going to elaborate on it, it is just that he embodied too many characteristics in one person. An intelligent artistic, musical prodigy who had money and brains to do whatever he wanted in life. That's the only way to describe him.

It was clear from the comments of the contestants that had changed this time around to denounce him of his 'evil' looks or personality.

On the one hand, these people don't know him and from my encounters with him, I doubt that he'll let anyone know him well enough to say whole heartedly that he had an evil personality. It's like school all over again with the I like them and hate them mentality that leads to bullying or being a disgusting person that qualifies to be called human.

On the other hand, saying that his brand of handsome is evil is basically a huge compliment. Everyone loves villains nowadays. It's that bad boy I wanna fantasise about or that mafia boss that makes you feel protected from all the big bads of the world.

All in all, the comments this time largely consisted of complements or blatant tries to knock Felixe down by the judges. If there was ever a time people could coin the phrase toxic cancelling snowflakes it would constitute the other judges to some extent. Not everything is an insult that people intend to degrade people with. Some people are idiots like me who don't have any malice in them except for the desire for the apocalypse to hurry up and cleanse everyone's existence away. Just read the context, the one that was rude and kinda a female dog was clearly Trina.

Was I worried about Felixe? Pfft, No! He's completely healed by my medicinal herb skills and healing him with my healing ability. I've also seen and read the previous timeline. Let's just say Felixe's fans can't be overcome, especially when the majority of them are S-tier fans who can use their brains.

Trina took another full ten minutes to get in the mood to sing the song that she got someone else on the show to compose and write the lyrics. An original song didn't have to be crafted by her afterall, but it did have to be a product made by a contestant. There were many abilities guarding this show's rules and one explicitly states you must have the contestants permission to use their song. It was different from my original world or even the wider world outside of Effigy. It was a very strange thing to have your rights in creativity being protected so securely, making me wonder if there was a reason that the ability to protect things like this is only applied to creativity in this world.

It's not like I died in such a horrible and unfortunate way, only to be given a passage into a world that's designed to relieve stress. I mean... A van took me out. A piece of the van that came through the glass on the moving train that only or firstly killed me, on said public transport. Public transport being a train. A moving train.

Expectations often play out like this though. You die. But wait! You wake up! You're reborn in another world that you read about in a novel. You're not the protagonist, but some key cannon fodder that the protagonist aims to thoroughly step on. But wait! You've just replaced the cannon fodder. The people around you can't see your form for two years. You're made to remember the life of the person you replaced. And so on...

It is a rather sucky thing. Think about it. I enjoy these types of reincarnation, transmigration, reversal of fate, and etc stories. I'm sure others do for various reasons. But would you willingly go into a novel? If yes, would you truly not think of it as an impulsive action at some point, regardless of whether the end result is good or not. It's impulsive or something other than suicidal yet similar. You end one life and move onto another.

Yet, what are you going to do? Try to become the protagonist, change the villain's route or change the fate of the cannon fodder? The key word is try. Look at me. I've already forgotten most of Trina's novel view point and haven't reflected or written up what little I could remember. This world also clearly doesn't have clear female, male leads, cannon fodders or villains. I read a novel and Trina was said novels protagonist, a female lead in the work, but that was only from her perspective. Now, the idea of her being a female lead is sorely lacking in many areas.

Would I have been able to work it all out? Maybe if I ran and tried to find some clever way to hide my writings. But it's not feasible. My strength is the fact that I didn't die in or until birth to today. I'm not clever, but I doubt most people would be able to live through what I have without slipping further down various mental illness spectrums.

Trina's not different.

Well, she's not as pain resistant as me. She's a sadist who's good at using people. I don't know about her cleverness, but her intellect is higher than most people. At least that's what I thought.

But she's severely lacking too.

"Ahhhhhh ooohhhh ek oooohhh", the sounds of Trina trying to sing and dance were lacking. Not the worst, but within the worst hundred contestants. Yeah, her acting for her introduction gave her plenty of excuses and the original song she had received gave her enough for 'overcoming' the worst of the worst that were still on the show.

I'd have said that I was only better than her, because she only came into this world at the age of thirteen or fourteen, if not for the fact that everyone practised skills needed in these shows throughout their lives. However, even if she'd transmigrated later, she inherited everything of the person who's body she'd overtaken. She was good at acting too to a certain extent, as can be seen from Emma's life.

Isn't it just something she learned from her old life? Perhaps it was something she had carried over from her past life, but I couldn't deny that she was intelligent and talented in more than just a few ways that would make most people jealous. Maybe that's one of the reasons people hated reading from her perspective in that novel. A hard to do thing in a world that was still deeply invested in their love for villain's, but something she succeeded to do.

I had a headache just thinking about it. Afterall, in a logical sense her intelligence and talent should have counted as redeeming qualities. Right? But it just made her worse. Her intelligence showed off her arrogance and ignorance. Her talents were all used in what can be considered to be a bad way. An example being that she'd often used her talent to one up certain people and ruin their lives. This was something she often did in working environments. Since she was the boss's daughter or a member of the board's daughter, people all around her had to be kind to her even if they didn't believe her. The work environment was as toxic as her marriage where she built up a harem and saw herself as a queen.

Yes, in every sense of the phrase female protagonist, she seemed to embody the unrealistic stereotypes and play with the people too well.

...

Watching the timidly excessive girl with dishwater eyes on stage, Gaab was swiping through the comments, whilst nodding his head in agreement every so often.

Eventually, his fingers danced along the keyboard of the laptop he was watching the show on. The words asking other people online to pay attention to Trina's scheming ways were met with some aggression by some people. Gaab didn't mind. He knew many had heard and seen the person Aeon had replaced. He also knew that Emma had to have committed suicide in more ways than one to have her existence wiped. One key way to do so would have been to have this world against her existence in order to agree to wiping her existence out.

Gaab raised a corner of his mouth unknowingly. His eyes still narrowed on the split screen where he watched Aeon Nether constantly on one side of the screen and the official live broadcast on the other half of the screen.

He regretted how he couldn't do much until Trina allowed him to fully unleash himself if she ever touched his idol.