Chapter Forty-Three: Rewards!

In the middle of the night, Chu Yu woke up feeling dizzy.

He checked the time. It was around four in the morning.

Thirsty, Chu Yu got up to get a drink of water. Of course, he also noticed that the door to the other room in his home was shut.

Zhao Qinyin and Su Ruo were probably resting in there.

There was no need to mention Su Ruo. She had definitely been knocked out by Zhao Qinyin not long after Chu Yu.

As for Zhao Qinyin, although he had never seen her get drunk despite her going out for drinks, she would definitely smell of alcohol afterward. She wouldn't come home until the smell had worn off.

He got up and opened the window. The cool breeze seemed to clear his head a little.

Just then, Chu Yu remembered the system's notification from when he'd learned that his work had reached the top.

One B-Class Lucky Draw Chance...

If he remembered correctly, that was exactly what the system had said.

He focused his mind and entered the System Space.

As always, all sorts of anime and manga works were scattered throughout the space. Only the unlocked The Garden of Words and Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal were available to browse.

But this time, Chu Yu also noticed a Silver Key floating in the very center of the System Space.

Chu Yu walked over and touched the Silver Key with the hand he'd simulated in the System Space.

In an instant, information about the key and instructions for using it flooded into his mind...

"So that's how it works."

After a long while, Chu Yu let go of the key.

"So that's what a B-Class Lucky Draw Chance means..."

Using this chance would randomly draw one manga from among the B-Class Works in the System Space.

In other words, it was still a lucky draw, but the pool of possible works was limited.

The system had already classified the various manga works stored in the System Space according to their quality, influence in the Earth Plane, and popularity.

For example, about eighty percent of the works Chu Yu could see at a glance in the System Space were E-Class Works—works that had received average reviews and were unpopular in the Earth Plane.

Works with some popularity, but whose quality and reach were nothing special, had been classified by the system as D-Class Works.

Above those were works with distinctive plots and decent quality. They might not be household names in the Manga Industry, but they still had a certain degree of influence. The system classified them as C-Class Works.

As for B-Class Works, simply put, they were excellent works that enjoyed enormous popularity in the Earth Plane.

Above them were A-Class and S-Class Works.

Those two grades could only be described as classic works and classics among classics.

For example, the full Rurouni Kenshin series was rated as an A-Class Work by the system, while The Prince of Tennis, which was also popular in the Earth Plane, was rated only B-Class.

In terms of popularity, the two works could be said to be on the same level. But in terms of the impression they left on readers, their quality, and how classic they were, Rurouni Kenshin was clearly far ahead.

By the second installment of The Prince of Tennis, it had become "murder tennis." It was so over-the-top that it was practically ridiculous.

Likewise, for various reasons, Slam Dunk had been rated an S-Class Work, while Kuroko's Basketball could only be called a top-tier B-Class Work.

After all, the former featured basketball in a relatively normal setting, while the latter had turned basketball into an art form. Based on the abilities shown by its main and supporting characters, even five Jordans playing together would probably get crushed by those high schoolers in the Earth Plane.

Meanwhile, The Garden of Words was only a C-Class Work according to the system's ratings. Of course, that didn't mean it was bad. The system had simply considered its popularity, reach, and quality as a whole before assigning that rating.

After learning how the system rated its works, Chu Yu also understood that the World Points needed to exchange for each work were based on those ratings.

"No wonder!" After learning all this information the system had never told him before, Chu Yu finally understood a question that had puzzled him for a long time.

It was a question of balancing income and expenses.

Leaving aside all the junk works among the countless works in the System Space, take a work like The Garden of Words, for example.

Exchanging for The Garden of Words cost two million World Points, but from the start of its serialization to its ending about a month ago, the work had only provided Chu Yu with nearly two hundred thousand World Points in total.

In terms of the Dragon Country Currency he'd earned, Chu Yu had made tens of thousands from the work. But in terms of World Points, he'd taken a huge loss.

At that rate of earning World Points, Chu Yu could only hope to break even if his work ran in a top magazine on one of the Modu Seven Greats platforms. That meant exchanging a work for one million World Points, then earning one million World Points back after serialization.

So Chu Yu had been thinking for a long time about how to plan his future career.

After all, if he stayed on a platform like Ink Fish, and a work that cost ten million World Points earned him only one million after serialization, while one that cost one million earned him only a hundred thousand, then once he'd serialized a few works, Chu Yu would have to say goodbye to his career as a manga artist unless he started making original works himself.

But the appearance of this B-Class Lucky Draw Chance had finally opened his eyes. He realized that he'd been thinking about things the wrong way.

It turned out that, besides exchanging for a specific work with World Points or spending all his current World Points to randomly draw a work, there was a third way to obtain manga works.

If Chu Yu completed various manga-artist achievements in this world, the system would reward him with a lucky draw chance for a manga work corresponding to the achievement's grade.

Chu Yu also noticed something else. When his work had reached the top on Ink Shadow, he hadn't received any such reward, but when it reached the top on Man Ying, he had.

The difference between Man Ying and Ink Shadow was that one was Ink Fish's top magazine, while the other was a second-rate magazine.

Reaching the top on Ink Shadow didn't mean anything. But reaching the top on Man Ying meant reaching the top at the Manga Company.

Reaching the top... First place across the whole company.

Chu Yu was beginning to understand what the system meant.

If the platform wasn't good enough and serializing manga couldn't even keep his World Points income and expenses balanced, then he should work hard to improve his manga's performance. As long as he reached the top and made a name for himself, the system wouldn't shortchange him.

And if reaching the top on Ink Fish came with a reward—a B-Class Lucky Draw Chance—then what if Chu Yu went to Feng Yu or Dragon Fang and reached the top there?

What if Chu Yu came first in the Dragon Star Award judging, where he was still competing for a nomination?

Or what if he went to Modu to develop his career someday and reached the top on a manga platform on the level of the Modu Seven Greats?

Would the system reward him then, too?

And those works in Death, Fire, Sea, Dragon Hunter, Steel Advance, and JoJo, whose World Point exchange costs were astronomical—so high that Chu Yu had once felt he could draw manga for his entire life without ever affording them...

Was there a chance he could draw them and see for himself what made them so good, and why they sold for so much?

(The classifications of these works are based on the author's personal tastes and reflect only the author's own opinions, so please don't flame me. After all, people can agree to disagree! If my views on a work's merits differ from yours, just pretend I'm a fart. The author sometimes does have rather unusual tastes. Take Director Chen's The Promise, for instance: the whole internet calls it a terrible movie, but I actually think it's really good. I've watched it seven or eight times over the years...)