[2.52] And How Does That Make You Feel? (Part 2/3)

The initial test for Evoke was threefold, as in, Angelica tested it over a span of three days. It wasn’t her intent to release that much Merlina’s Boutique in rapid fire succession, and explained it to her viewers as a special celebration for the series’s full-color transition. As it turned out, the only way to see the results of the Skill was for it to be put out to the public. At first, when she was drawing the next chapter, she received no experience using the Skill whatsoever.

It had definitely triggered, though. When she finished the chapter, mentally marking the work as complete, she was asked an unspoken mental question. How did she want the art to make others feel? As promised by the Skill, at first her options were pretty basic, only letting input one of the most basic emotions. So of course, she went with joy. Maybe if it was a purposefully depressing chapter, she’d go with something like sadness, but she didn’t draw those often. Besides, she’d want an emotion more complex than just raw sadness for that regardless, which she wasn’t yet capable of evoking.

Her best guess was that the Skill wouldn’t gain experience until someone else viewed it and had the emotion thrust upon them. Angelica, herself, felt pretty great upon reading through it, but that could have just been a result of her own artistic pride of a job well done. And the only other eyes she could show it to were Cherub, which she did in fact try to do. Getting him to pay attention as she scrolled through the few pages was a bit of a chore, and it was hard to say that anything definitively happened.

If she got experience, it wasn’t enough to make a solid percentage. Maybe non-sapient creatures were immune to the effects of Evoke. Or because their minds weren’t as developed, it impacted them less and didn’t provide much Skill improvement. Cherub was a bit more energetic afterward, though, and he ended up giving his owner many licks. But it could have just been a random derpy mood since he was an orange cat after all.

When the chapter went live the next day—or the same day? It was hard to tell since she hadn’t properly slept, the many ideas in her head not letting her get more than a new nodding naps. But she didn’t even know that the time for the scheduled release had come, because she was too busy working on the next chapter. Only a bunch of repeated messages pulled her out of her artsy trance.

[Evoke Lv.2]

[Evoke Lv.3]

…

[Evoke Lv.6]

[Creativity hugely increased]

[Fabrication, Oppression Attunement hugely increased]

They didn’t actually come all at once, but were mostly over the course of an hour as her core reader base tuned in to read the chapter. The initial bunch had actually stopped at Lv.4, but it trickled up to Lv.6 over the following hours. When Angelica reached all but the finishing touches on her current chapter, sometime in the late evening, she finally took a break, wanting to see the results of the first experiment before she moved forward with the next phase.

She hadn’t actually read the comments of the first full-color chapter yet, too distracted by what came next to even reap the rewards of her hard work. There were a few more than usual, mostly praising the color and how much literal and figurative vibrancy it brought to the story. Someone even asked if she’d gotten an assistant to help with the process, because it felt too good to be done so quickly by just one person.

Angelica ruminated on that for a while, thinking what would be the best way to respond. Part of her wanted to lean into the idea, so that none of her readers might think that she was using some sort of AI to do the coloring for her. But she foresaw potential issues if anyone ever tried to verify who that assistant was. And in a way, it was being made by a machine, just that machine was her own mind and abilities producing it in the blink of an eye. So instead of Artificial Intelligence, it was Angelica Intelligence.

For the response, she kept it pretty vague, just mentioning that she had more time to dedicate to art now, which was honestly a lie. While currently in a temporary lull, she had way more commitments now than when she was solely doing art for over a year. She’d improved enough as an artist to make fewer mistakes that would hinder her progress to begin with, and her time had just been optimized by her Skills.

For instance, she was now using Editable Reprint quite a lot. It worked wonders for remaking the same settings and characters but from different angles or adding subtle changes to make each instance unique, allowing her to mentally tweak them, reimagining them and making the adjustments instantly. That alone was cutting down the time each panel took by more than half on average. Of course, she would still do as many new drawings as she could, but there was no point not using her powers to her advantage when the result would be the same. And visualizing everything from those different perspectives was actually serving to improve her overall ability in the long run.

That was actually something she’d noticed since becoming a Demon. Her Creativity stat didn’t inherently make her a better artist as it increased. It didn’t magically impart talent she didn’t have. Rather, it boosted everything else to let her develop it on her own. As the Worth grew, she found herself more focused when doing something creative, and her imagination felt less limited. Her mind truly was a canvas where she could make anything she wanted, and now thanks to everything that had happened, it was easier than ever to get it out into the world and share with everyone else. She still enjoyed the process of drawing by hand, but all the mental magic she was performing was just as fun now that she’d gotten used to it.

As for the next chapter, the one that Evoked joy, the number of comments on it was more than quadruple the previous chapter, and triple her first chapter which had the most comments historically. Almost every single one of her readers was accounted for, and she even saw names she’d never heard of before. Through a bit of light stalking of their activity, it would seem a good few who were previously anonymous users had made accounts just so that they could make their voice heard.

Almost all of them were how amazing the chapter was, how it brightened their day or got them out of a slump. They were exactly what she was hoping for. Part of her still felt a tinge of guilt knowing that there was some subtle level of manipulation, but since they’d read this far, her series was definitely something they enjoyed already. This was just boosting what was already there, and the world could always use more joy. Maybe it was a bit strong since it had affected all of them to such a degree, so hopefully she could tweak the output as the Skill levelled.

But the results were pretty innocent so far, even going outside of her expectations. Now that people were so happy and wanting to comment, it started a few back and forth conversations that normally didn’t happen very often. They were talking about how long they’d been reading, past favorite moments, and even recommending other series that were similar to Merlina’s Boutique that they wanted to share. Gosh, this level of engagement was practically a dream come true, and it filled her with her own overzealous bubbling joy, so it all came full-circle.

Since it had also been the chapter where the one-eyed bat had been introduced, it had basically been dubbed the new mascot character of the series. There were some, hopefully, lighthearted threats about stopping reading if anything bad ever happened to him. A few were demanding plushies of him that they could buy. She’d have to thank Gawk someday for the inspiration for the character.

Now she knew the direction to take the next chapter. It was about Merlina and the bat sharing food, stories, and ultimately deciding to go on the adventure together. So she wanted to lean into that and see if she could spark a desire to share the joy they felt from reading the comic. Word of mouth was the most powerful marketing tool, so if she could get a few of them to recommend it to their friends, maybe it could be a seed to grow her viewership.

And fortunately, Evoke worked with her on it. Probably thanks to some level milestone, she could now somewhat alter the emotion. It was still the generic pool to pick from, so of course she went with joy again. This time, she was able to add a modifier. While the Skill didn’t exactly give her a definitive list to pick from, she was able to apply empathy, making it empathic joy. Meaning that if her theory and brief internet dive into psychology were correct, it should evoke a desire in her readers to share the joy they were feeling.

At the end of the new chapter, she added a somewhat routine message, one she didn’t mention too often, not wanting to feel like she was being too demanding or bothering her readers. It basically just asked that if they were enjoying the series, that perhaps they could share it with someone who they thought might like it too. That definitely wasn’t a huge ask, though it could be seen as such for someone antisocial like her who wouldn’t even have anyone to share it with, so hopefully this wouldn’t be too troublesome for them.

The results would have to wait, though, since it was still most of a day until the chapter was posted. So after a break for food and some cat snuggles, Angelica begrudgingly accepted that she needed more sleep. Still, she was having trouble again, so she resorted to another Order. This time it was to go unconscious for a full sleep cycle, and to wake as soon as it was over. Ideally, this would give her the most rest possible in a short amount of time. And just to be safe, she put a two hour maximum limit on it, just in case anything went awry, along with all the previous Order’s emergency caveats.

It worked well, annoyingly well. The sleep had been instant and dreamless, like she blinked to the future. Her mind had been running on all cylinders for too long that even her subconscious must have needed a break. She felt a lot better too, so much fog and fatigue lifted. And since she had woken at the exact moment the sleep cycle ended, she did so without being groggy, ready to get back to work.

Still, her body betrayed her. Now that it had a taste of rest, it demanded more. Every second she stayed lying in bed, the more ground those demands gained, and eventually she caved, repeating the Order for another round of sleep. But that was all it was getting for now, despite more protests. The second cycle did have a few dreams, and she felt decently more rested, so she couldn’t say it wasn’t warranted. Yet it still felt like she’d wasted so much time.

Her next chapter would be the most complex of the other colored chapters so far. Mostly because it had a bit of action, and that was something Angelica had always struggled with. She excelled in cozy settings, conversations, and expressions, but combat was an entirely different beast. It was always far more difficult for her to both imagine and convey compared to everything else. Well… it used to be.

To her surprise, when she went to draw Merlina and the bat running away from a big monster, she could actually picture it quite vividly. Not as picture perfect as the rest of her panels, but her mind did a decent job setting the scene. That too was likely due to her Creativity increases. Though an added factor was also her life experiences. She hadn’t really drawn an action scene like this since she became a Demon, and now she had plenty to pull from. Instead of Merlina and the bat, she could picture her and Gawk dealing with one of the Spawns in the maze, and used that as the basis.

Even with her mind helping her out, the chapter took way longer than any of the three before it, well past the empathic joy chapter’s posting until deep into the following morning. She was exhausted by the end of it, barely keeping her eyes open, which definitely wasn’t helping, but she didn’t want to sleep again until the full Evoke trial was completed, too curious about what would happen, especially after the second round of testing was done.