Chapter 10: Numb Release

"Hey Olivia, wait a minute, I want to ask you something," I called out, making her turn to me in confusion.

"Hi." she said. 

"Oli…" she said.

"What?" I asked confused.

"You can just call me Oli. That's what my friends call me…" she mumbled while looking away a little.1

Smiling, I nodded and asked, "So, Oli, I was thinking about posting that song from yesterday on a MeTube channel I made. Is there a problem?"

"A MeTube channel? What channel?" Hearing that I was going to post the song, instead of being sad, just as I imagined, she got excited.

Taking out my cell phone, I opened the newly created channel and showed it to her.

"I decided to make a channel to post the songs I'm going to make in the future. For now the only song I've made is Numb, but I intend to write others when I get inspiration," I explained.

"Woah!" Hearing my idea and seeing the channel logo ready, Oli was getting more and more excited. I wonder what she was imagining.1

"Of course, you can post it! Send me the link when you finish; I want to hear it again."

"Alright." I nodded and went back to my room, ready to begin my plans.

-------- Olivia's Commentary --------

Sitting on the couch excitedly, Olivia was looking at her cell phone while dragging her finger from top to bottom as if she was refreshing a page.

"When Noah told me he was going to make a MeTube channel, at first I was just surprised, but when I remembered how well he sang, that surprise turned into shock." the girl replied to the camera with a smile.

"Why shock? Because of how well he sang! I know it's very possible that he can make his channel go viral. Have you ever wondered what it's like to be the sister of a famous MeTuber? Maybe he even knows my favorite makeup MeTuber and will introduce me to her in the future!" she answered excitedly as she began to imagine what it would be like in the future when Noah was famous.

-------- Commentary End --------5

Arriving in my room, the first of my plans was to find a Krav Maga tutorial video. Each day that passed at school I felt like that group of idiots was getting closer and closer to doing something shit to me, and with how busy I was during the week, I hadn't had any free time to learn a fighting skill.

Finding a tutorial on MeTube was easy, so the next few hours I spent imitating and practicing how the instructor taught in the videos.

[Requirement for Krav Maga Mastery Lv1:2

Effect: Develops an improved understanding of Krav Maga, accelerating learning by 1% and promoting more efficient body adaptation by 1%. Additionally, improves technique retention and practical application during practice or combat. Gain a tangible advantage by absorbing the fundamental principles of Krav Maga.]

…

[Krav Maga Mastery Lv2]

…

[Krav Maga Mastery Lv3]

…

[Krav Maga Mastery Lv4]

…

[Krav Maga Mastery Lv5]

At this point I was completely exhausted. I had trained for 3 hours straight and if it weren't for my title, I think I would have stopped 40 minutes ago. But feeling the knowledge in my mind, I was very satisfied.

If before I was someone who just depended on a metal bar to feel safe while walking, now I knew much better how to use that metal bar to my advantage and a much better way to deal with other people.

I was still far from the level where I could fearlessly defend myself in a 1 on 3 fight, but in a 1 on 1 fight if I was against someone with no knowledge of trained fighting, I was absolutely sure of winning. With a metal bar and two unarmed people, my chance of winning was also very high.

Now however, based on how much I had sweated training, I had to take another shower. If I had known it would be so tiring to train in this, I would have given up my morning walk and just trained Krav Maga without stopping.

Looking at the scale, I had lost another 500g in this training, which brought me to 139.8 kg! Even though I had been training for so long, it was understandable that I had only burned 500g, as normally in my training at night, the weight that shows on the scale is not only from the burning of my training, but also from the burning of everything else the body has done during the day.

These 500g are just 3 hours of training + the 3 hours I would have burned naturally in that time.

With a renewed mood after taking a shower, I turned on my computer and finally started my "advertising campaign". I didn't do it earlier because it was still very early in the morning and at that time there wouldn't be anyone online to increase the chance of my video getting more views, but now was the right time.

The first thing I did was post the video for the song Numb, and the only things I added to the video was to have the lyrics of the song appear on the screen with the logo of my artistic name in the background. I preferred to put the cover I made in this background too, but in the story I made, this cover will be made in a few hours by Jacob, a future fan, so I had to settle for the BV logo.

Just as I imagined, when I posted the video there was only 1 View, which was probably mine, so I ignored that and decided to prepare my Tweep to tag JacobTheWerewolf and the other profiles with thousands of followers. What I didn't know was that this 1 View wasn't mine, but rather that of an anxious girl in another room in the house.

------------

Olivia, who had been refreshing the Black Velvet channel page every few seconds, was excited when she saw the song finally appearing. Putting on her headphones, she was excited to finally be able to listen to this song again and was surprised that the quality of the song which was posted was better than when she had heard it yesterday! However, considering she only heard the music through the door, it would be difficult to make the music worse than how she heard it, but Olivia didn't even think about that and was left enjoying the music.

Considering an idea she had for a little, she decided to open InstaBram and posted a link to the song with the caption "My favorite song is out" in her stories.

With how popular she was at school, her followers had already surpassed a thousand, and all of these people were very engaged, so as soon as she posted the song in her stories, at least 30 people were curious enough immediately to know what song it was and clicked to listen. When they saw that the song only had 1 View, they thought it would probably suck, but out of curiosity they still played the song and listened.

To their amazement, the music was incredible! Of course, some people just felt that the song was OK since they had wholesome families and couldn't relate to the story being sung in the lyrics, but those who had family issues, as soon as they heard the song for the first time, they had to replay it again and again because everything the singer said in the song resonated with them!

Seeing that the singer's channel was new, some of these people decided to subscribe and waited to see what the channel owner's next publication would be, since with such a good first song, they thought that the second song couldn't be so bad.

When I was scheduling my Tweep, I was surprised by the notifications that arrived.

"User 'quiler'" just subscribed to your channel!"

"User 'shadowlord0475'" just subscribed to your channel!"

"User…"

'Did the algorithm recommend my video?' It was the first thing I thought.

Opening the video, I saw that it already had 46 views! That may seem like a very low amount, but considering that I hadn't even started promoting the music, it was already 4.6% of my mission completed! So to contribute even more to the growth of my music, I immediately Tweeped my Black Velvet account and marked all the profiles similar to Jacob's.

[Hi guys, I released my first song and it would be great to hear your opinion! This is the link: xxxxxx]

A few seconds after I posted the Tweep, some curious fans of the people I tagged saw that I had tagged these people trying to promote a song and soon came to mock me.

[This is shameful dude! Stop! Even if the song is good, I doubt anyone will pay attention to it the way you are doing this…]

[Do you want my artist to see your shitty music? Stop dreaming, when you have more followers than him I can think about giving your music a chance.]5

[Stop marking…]

Among the comments like this were some who were honestly trying to help me, recommending that I stop promoting my music like this, while others just wanted to insult me ​​to make themselves feel better.3

I just ignored them both. Despite agreeing with the first type of person, I logged into my Jacob account, which currently had approximately 3,400 followers, which for an account that was only a week old was an astronomical number. I then waited for 4 minutes.

Four minutes after my post as Black Velvet was made, I posted it on my Jacob account.

[Although I don't really like the way you promoted your song @BlackVelvet, I can understand how someone who is just starting out on the internet feels lost without knowing how to promote their own art.3

I still heard the song, and bro, what song is that? This is fire!

I'm now one of your subscribers and look forward to more music!

Ps. I liked the song so much that I decided I'm going to make some complimentary art for its cover. If you like it, you can use it for free.]

[WTF, did you hear his music and like it Jacob?!]

[Just because his music is good he's going to get free art?!]

[I'm in line for my art and I'm only going to receive it in 1 week, and this dude got free art and won't even need to queue? I have to see if this song is that good.]

[…]

Even though Jacob only had 3k followers, the amount of engagement he received was very high to the point that any art posted by the account would usually get between 5k and 10k likes, so that was the main source of publicity I was counting on for my song to reach 1k views in the first 24 hours.

Finally, the last thing I did was set an alarm on my cell phone to go off in 4 hours, which was the time I would pretend Jacob took to draw the art for the song, and in the meantime I would do other things.

My time during the week was quite busy because I had to spend 7 hours at school every day, but on the weekends I had those 7 hours free, so I would make good use of it.

One skill that I knew would be extremely useful to me would be computer programming.2

To be honest, I had tried to learn it in my past life, but since I probably had no talent in it, the speed at which I learned was excruciatingly slow. I had tried for a week, dedicating myself as much as possible and I hadn't managed to understand anything, so after a while I had just given up. 

But I knew that in the future a Skill like this would be one of the most useful for me, both for practicality and for the money I could potentially get with it, not to mention the security I could potentially guarantee for myself and the people I care about. So, I decided to start learning programming, and to my disappointment, my talent at it in this life wasn't all that high either.1

It took me an hour of studying to finally unlock the skill.

[Programming Prowess Lv1:

Effect: Deepens understanding in programming, accelerating learning by 1% and facilitating more effective adaptation to new languages ​​and concepts by 1%. Additionally, it improves algorithm retention and practical application during software development. Gain a tangible advantage by absorbing essential programming fundamentals and honing your practical skills.]

When I unlocked this Skill, it was as if the programming concepts I had been having so much difficulty with were finally becoming slightly simpler for me, probably because the advantage in absorbing the essential fundamentals of programming and the speed at which I learned things had increased a little.

To raise the Skill to Lv 2 it only took me 50 minutes. For Lv 3 it only took me 48 minutes, and considering how the speed at which I learned was increasing, I was very excited.4

I had spent a week studying this in my previous life to no avail, and now, what little I had learned was only a miniscule fraction as much as this Skill currently at Lv 3. I think it was because of my poor understanding that the Skill started so slowly at Lv 1, but I didn't mind that much. As long as my learning speed remained high, I was very satisfied.

In another 47 minutes, the Skill managed to reach Lv 4, giving me enough experience to follow in the footsteps of most accomplished programmers and be able to make my first calculator alone without consulting anything on the internet. If I studied a little more, maybe I could make a simple game, but that would have to be put aside for now, as now was the time for me to post the image that Jacob made for Black Velvet.

Looking at my Tweep as Black Velvet, I was surprised to see that Jacob wasn't the only person I had tagged who responded to me. In fact, 2 other people I tagged also responded quite excitedly about my song. Before reading through these people's comments, however, I made Jacob's post with the art I drew, which was a marionette doll that was being controlled by chains, but a padlock holding those chains had opened, causing the doll to fall and it finally began to loosen, coming out of the dark and into the light where it was more colorful. The art really looked beautiful, to the point that it would probably attract a lot of attention from anyone who saw it on MeTube.

My biggest concern when making the art was the choice of colors. My focus was on using the contrast of two opposing colors using watercolor to attract even more attention from the public who would see this Thumbnail on the MeTube page.

After posting this image, I went to see the comments of the other influencers I tagged.

[Damn, this song… I have to admit, it made a small tear run down my eyes…] One of the people I tagged responded, making that person's followers curious to listen to my song.

Out of curiosity, I saw that my song on MeTube already had 401 views, which was much more than I imagined it would have at that moment.1

Confused, I looked in the comments to see if anyone said how they had found the page.

////NunuNote/////

Every 1k Power Stones = 1 Extra Chapter :)

discord.gg/NunuXD

I really need your support for this competition!!