Book 1: Chapter 30

Aqua When my System Phantom arrives, I find myself in an office. With both Oliver and Rhettfelt standing in said office waiting for me. Oliver steps arounds his desk before offering his hand as he says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aqua Fallen. My name is Oliver Ashfyre, as you no doubt already are aware.” After a brief pause, I go ahead and accept his hand. Shaking it for a moment while saying, “Hello.” He doesn’t look at all surprised by my lack of fanfare as our hands separate and he looks over at Rhettfelt while saying, “Mister Hydrignis and I have been speaking about the upcoming job and we both have high expectations.” But why though? Rhettfelt nods his head and says, “You have all the qualities necessary to make a splash in the acting scene. The presence, the looks, and an interesting and unique personality. As long as your acting skills aren’t terrible, even mediocre acting would be fine so long as it’s you performing.” I’m not sure if he’s complimenting me or insulting me. Talking about ‘mediocre acting’ and ‘unique personality’ like that in regards to me. I eventually decide to convince myself he’s trying to compliment me. “Here’s the script for the drama, and the exact schedule for filming will be sent to your agency,” Oliver says while handing me the script. “There’s another version in a message through the Broadcast System so that you can read it while in your physical body, and the filming will be fully adaptive to your schedule as a Pioneer regardless of what incidents come about.” I nod my head and state, “Got it. Thank you.” Meanwhile I reach out to grab the script and begin flipping through it. Only to pause and blink as I do. Huh. He wasn’t joking. This character is practically just me with a different backstory. It’s no wonder he wanted me for this role... I look up at him to find the man smirking. Clearly enjoying my reaction at reading the script. Deciding not to say anything about it, I turn back to reading the script. The drama seems to be largely centered around an orphan girl who lost her parents living on a Class III world. Before she lost her parents, her father was a fisherman, so she inherited all of his gear and has been fishing for him. Then the girl manages to luck out and earn enough to be initialized into the System, where she ends up with largely water combat centered skills. She proceeds to make a living for herself using those skills before the story starts right at a terrorist attack located near the dock where she works. And she’s pulled into the attack and eventually joins the military. The drama has a lot of action in it by the looks of the script, with some romance as well. And it has no kissing scenes or anything like that, so that’s good. Overall, the main protagonist – the role I’m playing – has a lot of similarities to me and some differences. But even with the differences, her overall character and personality and even some of her vocabulary are all similar to me. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Not the exact same but similar enough that it should actually be easy for me to act as this character without much training at all. It’s really no wonder he wanted me for the role. I raise my head to look at him again as I nod my head once, saying, “I look forward to working with you.” His grin grows even wider at that. This won’t be as hard as I thought. After that meeting, where I do a few short read throughs of parts of the script and surprisingly end up being told I’m quite good at it, I end up accepting the next one through the Business Inquiries tab of the Broadcast System menu. With that next one being a commercial shoot. One for some high tech swimming gear. And when I arrive, I find myself at some sort of beautiful outdoorsy place. With a single large hole in the middle of a large coral reef, and a lot of water filling the entire place. Including the large hole. The hole itself seems to span a couple hundred meters at the least, and it’s no doubt where I’ll be diving in the commercial. I glance behind me to find a large ship with a filming crew on it along with Rhettfelt, making me briefly wonder how he even got here so quickly. Considering that we just left the last meeting to come here. Anyway, I meet with the director of this particular commercial and say a brief greeting to the rest of the staff. Several of whom are apparently my fans. Then we get right down to business, with them showing me a room in the ship that has the gear I’ll be wearing before they leave the room to let me put it on. Apparently it can even go on over my clothes, so I don’t even have to strip down all the way. I just need to take off my armor. Which will just vanish when I do since it’s artificial phantom armor that’s being projected here from my real body. When I lay out the swimming gear, I find that it actually looks pretty cool. It’s a full body suit, but the way it’s built makes it so that it doesn’t have unnecessary emphasis on any part of it like my chest or anything that would make it straight up embarrassing to wear. Like a lot of full body suits underwater seem to have. Actually, from what I’ve seen in research, a lot of full body swimming gear are practically skintight and emphasize every last curve or muscle in the body for both men and women. To the point of being embarrassing to wear. But this one actually doesn’t. I’m kind of curious if it’ll work, since I’m pretty sure those suits are skintight for a reason. Maybe it makes up for it through technology or magic somehow? Then again, if it were skintight like those other suits, I probably wouldn’t be able to wear my hoodie and other clothes on under it. Anyways, the color of the suit is a dark blue, with a couple of lighter pale blue lines running through it. And since I don’t have any problems with its appearance, I go ahead and put it on. Then I walk back out in the suit and the commercial shoot begins. With it being a lot simpler than I expected. It pretty much comes down to them giving me direction and telling me to do different things. If they like it, they keep it. If they don’t, they give me more direction and make requests until they do like it. As for what the commercial itself is for, it’s meant to show how durable the gear is without being skintight. That’s their entire marketing strategy. A full dive suit that works just as well as regular ones without being skintight. So it’s not embarrassing at all to wear for people who are embarrassed. Specifically targeting those who are a bit more reserved and shy about that. And on top of that, there are quite a few high tech features included. Which makes it even more appealing to the viewers. I don’t really care about any of that though since I can swim and breathe freely underwater anyways. So I just do what they tell me to do while lazily swimming as usual and they apparently like it. After that we move on to the last job of the day. Which involves me wearing a swimsuit and doing a photoshoot for a magazine. One targeting women’s swimwear. The swimsuit itself leans more into an athletic and cute style. Which works for me. And even though it is a two-piece, there isn’t actually all that much skin as it has some frills that cover up more than just the suit itself. So it’s not embarrassing to wear at all. We get the pictures taken rather quickly as well, with the photographers surprisingly calling me a natural at this. Then, after discussing tomorrow’s schedule with the CEO including the music video, I finish up the morning by canceling the System Phantom and returning to Oceana again. At which point I stretch, finding myself still in my armor as I do so, before leaving my little home and heading back to where I left off yesterday. Time to explore some more.