The Set

Late at night, in the dead silence, came the sound of wheels rolling over cobblestones.

Four griffins pulled a carriage at full speed down Cornflower Street.

Driving it was a bald man with reddish-brown skin. His head kept drooping as he dozed off.

Fog filled the air, and even the griffins could not see the road clearly.

Suddenly, a dark red object appeared ahead. The griffins could not avoid it and crashed straight into it.

"Thud!"

The carriage rolled over the thing, its wheels slamming heavily onto the ground. It had no suspension system worth mentioning. The violent jolt woke the driver, who hurriedly pulled on the reins.

He first looked around nervously. Only after seeing that there was no one else on the street did he relax. He picked up the oil lamp in the carriage and went to see what they had hit.

Gripping a stick just in case, he cautiously shuffled toward the scene. Raising the lamp, he saw a red drake. He poked it with the stick, but there was no response.

He quickly returned to the carriage and drove away.

The street fell silent again.

The fog grew thicker and thicker.

Suddenly, the drake lying on the ground began to convulse. The spasms grew increasingly violent until it rose to its feet in a twisted posture.

Its eyes were deathly white, veins bulged across its body, and it bared its fangs.

"Cut!" Aisha shouted through a megaphone.

The illumination spells on set lit up. Flynn dispelled the fog around the set and the illusion covering Drogo.

The brown-skinned bald man was, of course, Soren. Leading his griffins, he jogged back all the way.

He said excitedly, "Director, how was it? I think my performance still has some shortcomings. I had some new insights while coming back just now. How about we shoot it again..."

In the distance, Toto, the production assistant, quietly asked Yuno, "Isn't he a legendary mage? How did you trick him into filming this?"

"We didn't trick him." Yuno answered while directing the undead cameras. "We just told him he could crash into Drogo, and then he came over. He was incredibly enthusiastic. He even brought his own carriage. I heard those griffins were gifts from the royal family, and he usually could not bear to use them as mounts."

Toto was speechless. Ever since being recruited by Drogo, the world of the powerful had repeatedly shattered her understanding.

She had thought all these powerful figures were stern and aloof. Yet an ancient dragon and a legendary mage had worn away more than half of her reverence for the strong.

That legendary illusionist she had never seen before was not quite normal either.

He carried a little notebook everywhere. Whenever he had free time, he drew in it. She could not understand anything he drew—either a mess of tangled lines or random splatters of ink flicked onto the page.

Sure enough, the world was one giant amateur operation.

In the end, they filmed this scene one more time.

It was not to satisfy Soren's desire to crash into a dragon. Drogo simply was not satisfied with his own performance.

He had not expected acting to be this difficult.

The original plan had been to casually run over some ordinary animal, just enough to tell the audience that there was a plot crisis ready to explode at any moment.

There were no animal protection organizations here. If an animal died on set, it died. It would even make a nice extra meal for the crew.

Yet Drogo insisted on getting himself killed off in the story, saying it was an Easter egg paying tribute to a director he really liked.

After discussing it, everyone ultimately placed him here.

This was also the last scene that needed to be filmed in Twin Towers City. Next, everyone would head to this world's first film studio—Vertical Shop.

The other actors had already arrived on the island a week earlier for basic training. They learned to use the various tools needed during filming and got used to being around a bunch of undead connected to cameras.

Drogo had brought the entire Mixed Beast Troupe along. Aside from the main cast, everyone else worked as extras and handled various odd jobs.

The students from the academy's spell dodgeball club also did odd jobs. Their scenes could have been completed in a single day, but they all chose to stay on the island and work. They did not even need wages, as long as they received internship certificates.

"Holy Mountain Journey, Crystal 7, Scene 35, Shot 12, Take 6, action."

As Toto snapped the clapperboard shut, the entire crew sprang into action.

This scene was the first part of the male lead, a half-orc dodgeball player, learning that his relatives were trapped by zombies in the restroom of a train carriage and going to rescue them.

It was extremely difficult to film. A single scene involved dozens of actors. Unlike the zombie horde merely chasing people, they had to fight the protagonist's group. Their blocking had to be precise, and the shots had to convey a sense of movement.

The half-orc took the lead, rising and launching a flying kick at the first zombie in front of him.

"Stop."

The shoot was halted after only the first move.

"The fighting movements look too fake."

Drogo was getting irritated. This was already the sixth time they had shot the same take.

Unlike the simpler dialogue scenes, every restart of this scene required quite a bit of preparation.

Still, it was understandable that the half-orc was holding back. The zombie actors were actual patients, after all. No one wanted them getting hurt during filming.

What could they do?

Perhaps they could only change the choreography, making all the movements smaller and easier to control.

But that would severely weaken the tension and make it look even more staged.

There was a remedy: add a great deal of rapid cutting to compensate for the lack of force in the movements. Hollywood often did this when filming action scenes for actors with poor fundamentals. It looked impressive at first glance, but did not hold up under close scrutiny.

It would have been nice to have an action director from the Jackie Chan Stunt Team or Donnie Yen Stunt Team.

While he hesitated, the actor responsible for getting kicked down approached Aisha. His voice was pleading as he said, "Just let that half-orc gentleman use his full strength. I can take it. It'll be fine."

His expression made it clear that he believed he was holding up the shoot. He felt guilty about it and was afraid of losing this job.

People with low self-esteem always tended to blame themselves for mistakes and apologize when there was no need to.

"Actually, you could ask Soren. One of his students would work too." Flynn saw Drogo's predicament. "Your plans never seem to start from magic. If you're worried about the actors getting hurt, couldn't you just put protective spells on them?"

"Uh..."

Drogo thought about it. That did seem to make sense. He could only blame his own severe lack of magical knowledge.

Even when he was a hatchling, he had learned breath attacks more slowly than other dragons. He had even tried storing flammable liquid in his stomach pouch and holding a flint in his mouth to achieve chemical fire-breathing.

Why Drogo could only breathe fire twice had once been an unsolved mystery among the hatchlings.

Of course, he still had to talk tough in front of Flynn.

"I actually thought of that ages ago. I was just testing you."

Two hours later, one of Soren's students, badly in need of credits, arrived at Vertical Shop.

After casting a layer of transparent shield over every actor with close-up shots of getting hit, the effect was immediate.

The shields completely covered the body. Even physical deformation caused by impacts remained visible, but no damage was inflicted.

Visually, every blow landed with solid force. This was an expressive power that even Earth's mature film industry could not achieve.

It was thoroughly unscientific, yet utterly magical. Drogo suspected that everyone in this world actually had hidden health bars over their heads. As long as the shield did not break, attacks registered without reducing health.

At the same time, the student brought another excellent thing: Sound Recording Magic. Its recording quality utterly crushed every on-location audio device on Earth.

Apparently, as demand for eavesdropping rose during wartime, sound recording spells had undergone frantic iterations. Now they were being used to film magic movies—military technology repurposed for civilian use in another world.

With defensive magic assisting them, efficiency greatly improved. In less than a month, filming entered its final stages.