Rumors

Huo An packed his bag and said goodbye to his father.

Besides performing on the streets with the Wranglers Troupe, he had also been attending Magic Shadow acting classes at the Mixed Beast Troupe twice a week.

Performing on the streets was exhausting, but it put his mind at ease. Back when he was in the theater, he had either had to deal with nobles who spoke in endless circles or professional critics who could pick flaws in every last detail.

Those critics were nothing more than gang thugs in formalwear. If a troupe failed to pay them their "protection money" on time, they would attack without restraint, all while using lofty excuses. Today, it was discrimination against actors; tomorrow, it was disrespect for some race's traditions...

Bullshit! It was all bullshit!

At least making a living on the streets depended entirely on skill. If you performed badly, no one watched. If you performed well, the money came rolling in.

That said, it really was not an easy living. During the first few weeks, aside from idle children, almost no one came to support them.

That was when he realized just how ridiculous the script he had written was—a food deliveryman living in a river-view apartment.

But things had improved lately. They had gradually figured out the kind of performances ordinary people enjoyed.

On top of that, to familiarize themselves with Magic Shadow filming, several young members of the troupe had enrolled in acting classes taught by actors from Holy Mountain Journey.

Not only could they learn new methods of acting in class, but they could also get their hands on equipment unique to Magic Shadow filming sets.

Everything else was fine, but the thing called a camera was downright eerie. He could not tell whether it was a person or a machine, and getting close to it gave him a chilling feeling.

Wranglers Theater was not far from where the classes were held, so they arrived early.

But they were not the earliest.

The first to arrive were always several heavily made-up young noblewomen. They had an abundance of free time and plenty of drive.

They called themselves Marlin's "mom fans." Every time they came to class, they brought Marlin all sorts of gifts. Raul rejected them every time, but they would leave the gifts behind anyway, forcing Raul to distribute them to children nearby.

Obviously, they had not come for class. Their main task during lessons was to flirt shamelessly with Raul. Mr. Raul had made it clear that he would remain faithful to Marlin's mother, which only made them like him even more.

But they could not exactly bar them from coming in. No matter where Mr. Raul moved the classroom, they would buy the place and become the landlords.

So Huo An felt that these young ladies might not actually be Marlin's mom fans. They really did want to become Marlin's mother.

While writing comedy bits, Huo An had not forgotten his dream of writing Magic Shadow scripts. He just kept writing and revising, revising and writing, never quite finding the right feel.

About half an hour later, the students gradually arrived, and Raul prepared to begin class.

Today's lesson was about drawing material from everyday situations and using physical performance to create powerful comedic effects.

This was Huo An's family's specialty, though they had grown rusty after moving into the theater and had only recently picked it back up.

For the demonstration, Raul and the troupe's shapeshifter performed a simple scene. A director was looking for an extra to act out a noodle-eating scene. The actor auditioning happened to be starving and swallowed the noodles whole during the first few takes. The director told him to slow down, but later, when he could not eat anymore, the director urged him to speed up.

It was a fascinating reversal of roles. How had they come up with such an amusing little script?

Had it been written by the behind-the-scenes owner of Drogo Group, the man everyone had been talking about lately? He had heard Holy Mountain Journey was his work too.

The classroom performance was spectacular. From the moment they entered, they said only a few lines, yet the setting had been explained with perfect clarity.

Their movements were actually exaggerated and unrealistic, yet they somehow felt completely real.

There were not even any noodles in that bucket!

But when Mr. Raul finally collapsed into a chair, clutching his stomach, unable to speak because of his hiccups and gesturing desperately with his hands, anyone would have thought he was genuinely stuffed beyond endurance.

That perfectly measured exaggeration must have been the "sense of scale" Mr. Raul often talked about in class.

It really was difficult to master.

The scenes performed in class were filmed and recorded onto magic crystals, but the price of a magic crystal was directly proportional to how much content it could record.

The magic crystals used for Holy Mountain Journey cost a fortune. Even ones that could hold just over ten minutes were not cheap, so they could not record much and could only pass them around among the students.

The performance ended, and the two took their bows.

The classroom erupted into several minutes of applause and breathless laughter.

If there was one flaw they had to point out, it was that Mr. Raul was simply too handsome. Sometimes, they got distracted by his face and lost focus on his performance.

All right, he understood those noble ladies a little now. If he were a woman, he would be just as crazy.

"Demon who preys on children!" A sudden shout rang out from outside, shattering the harmonious atmosphere in the classroom.

Then, amid the noblewomen's screams, a masked man charged in and threw a cloth bundle. It struck Raul on the head, splattering murky dark yellow liquid over his hair and down his cheeks. A suffocatingly pungent stench filled the room.

Rotten eggs. Huo An had been pelted with them before too, after making a rather offensive joke while telling jokes. He had deserved it, and it had taught him a lesson: a joke was only funny when the other person thought it was appropriate.

The masked man was about to flee when a wall-like body blocked his path.

"Battleaxe thinks you cannot leave!" He was an orc warrior who looked like trouble.

"It seems Ms. Aisha was right to send you as protection," Raul said, struggling to wipe the slime off his face. "Thank you very much for your help."

"No need for thanks. This is what Battleaxe should do. Big Sis Aisha said those troupes would definitely retaliate."

Great. He called Aisha Big Sis. Raul remembered that girl was only nineteen.

"Could you have stopped that bag of rotten eggs?"

"Of course, but the boss told us to obey the law. Only once harm has occurred is it self-defense, so when he threw it, I did not know whether I should act."

It was truly strange to hear an orc carrying a two-meter battleaxe talk about obeying the law.

Raul walked over to the person who had thrown the eggs and pulled down his mask. He was just a half-grown boy.

Although Raul looked refined and scholarly, he had traveled everywhere to perform. Intimidating a young punk was easy enough.

"So, tell me. Which troupe hired you? I suggest you tell the truth. Otherwise, it is hard to say what this orc friend beside me might do."

"N-no one hired me. I am upholding justice! You demon who harms children, she is so young, and you actually had the nerve to lay hands on her!"

The boy's legs were shaking, but his words remained stubbornly defiant. Raul did not know what rumor he had believed, but he rather admired such single-minded young fools, though they did indeed cause trouble easily.

"Wow, you actually prey on children? Marlin, hurry and go with Battleaxe. I will take you to find Big Sis Aisha. It is not safe here."

"No, brother." Raul felt that his bodyguard was a little too straightforward. "We cannot just believe everything he says."

Just then, the leader of the Mixed Beast Troupe rushed over in a panic.

"This is bad, Raul! The Garrison Corps is here to arrest you! They say you violated a six-year-old girl. Run!"

As expected of someone who had spent years traveling the circuit, Raul immediately made a judgment. He did not run. Instead, he knelt, clasped his hands over his head, and assumed a posture of surrender, while instructing the orc in front of him, who had already taken down his battleaxe.

"Do not fight back. Go find Aisha."