WMFW 09 - Reading Sessions

Unfortunately, Raphael received much less Mana than he had imagined.

Just counting quickly, Raphael noticed that there were just over 60 people gathered around William as he told the story, and gradually a few people arrived and clustered around to listen too.

This alone should theoretically mean that Raphael would receive at least 60% of his Mana, right? But no.

When the story ended, Raphael had only received 21% of his total Mana...

‘Maybe my Mana gain isn't in percentages, but in a fixed amount?’ Raphael guessed, looking at how people reacted and noticing a few more patterns that might explain the smaller gain he received.

Firstly, among the just over 60 people who heard the story, 25 were children from the orphanage who had heard this story before, 20 were ordinary children who had never heard it, and the rest were curious adults.

From the children's expressions, they were all very excited about the story, but as 25 of them had already heard the story yesterday, perhaps only the 20 ordinary children yielded Mana for him.

Among the adults, although there were almost 20 people, only 7 showed that they were moved or impacted by the story, and perhaps some others were moved but didn't show it in front of the others.

‘Considering that I've gained around 21% of my current Mana, and that before the grimoire I had 100 units of Mana, that this morning I had 142 units of Mana, the growth now is a real gain of 30 units of Mana, in other words, the yield of moving 30 people who have never heard this story before... that really makes sense...’ Raphael thought with satisfaction.

All the more so because he felt he was very close to the total amount needed to make two books a day!

With that he would be able to earn even more Mana on a daily basis, as well as deal with the financial problems he was facing!

But ignoring that thought for the moment, Raphael went back to focusing on the reaction of the people around him and was very pleased with how everyone was reacting.

The choice of this story was a really good one to start his career as an author in this world.

The children were excited by the story and the adventure that the siblings experienced in the book, while the adults, who also found the story amusing, were enchanted by the artwork in the book, looking at it with great appreciation.

While the art of nobles went to the abstract side that commoners found difficult to understand, a book like this fit perfectly with the style of art that they could understand and appreciate!

“Did you see how beautiful the images in that book were?” A woman commented to her friend next to her.

“Yes... the drawing of the family hugging at the end was so touching!” The friend replied with a dreamy smile.

“But did you notice how much Hansel looks like that noble boy next to the storyteller?” The first woman commented as if she were telling a piece of gossip.

Hearing her friend's comment, the second woman looked at Raphael and was shocked at how similar he was to Hansel and his father in the story!

Despite their doubts, the women didn't have the courage to approach the young nobleman and just stared at him from a distance, but fortunately for them, one of the children from the orphanage overheard their question and butted in, answering in a low voice.

As if telling a secret, the child whispered to the women. “That nobleman is Lord Baron Raphael Von... Raphael Von... I've forgotten the rest, but he's the one who wrote and designed that book!”

Hearing that the author of the book was that noble and refined young man, the women were even more shocked. “Did he write about his childhood experience with his sister?”

And with that, without Raphael realizing it, the book of [Hansel and Gretel] that was supposed to be just a random fairy tale, was misinterpreted by these people as a book where he recounted a magical experience he had as a child, when he was just a commoner before becoming a nobleman.

If a real nobleman heard this rumor, it would soon be proven to be a lie, since the entire noble circle knew the Von Kaelen family and knew that they had never been commoners, but for these people who knew nothing about the noble circle, this was a big piece of gossip that they ‘discovered’ by chance!

In a small town like Valenford, with a population of only 1,200 people and not a lot of interesting things going on, this gossip began to spread quickly, but Raphael would only find out about it much later.

At this point, Raphael was just observing people's reaction to the book before deciding to leave, but before he left, he left William an order.

“Find someone with good oratory skills to hold a reading session among the town's population every day until the store opens, we'll use this to spread the word even more about the book for when the store opens.”

William was worried that this might affect book sales, but Raphael reassured the old man, telling him not to worry.

'If people paid to go to the cinema to watch the movie, then bought DVDs of those movies when they got home to re-watch whenever they wanted, even though there were a wide variety of forms of entertainment available, why wouldn't anyone in this world want to do the same? We just have to treat reading sessions like a movie theater and physical books like the DVDs of this world. Raphael thought with a laugh.

On returning home, he was satisfied with the results of today's test.

He still wasn't sure if each person only yielded one unit of Mana in their lifetime, or if the yield was only per work, or if they could yield several times per work, but with a cooldown time between each time.

This was something he would have to find out over time for the last theory, as well as for the first and second when he released the second book.

And that was already something he was thinking about.

Now that he had no worries about launching something urgently to make money, Raphael decided to spend the next few days planning what would be the best book for him to write to attract people's attention, as well as to get the best possible powers.

And so the days passed.

-

The next day, with the first public reading session gathering only around 140 people, Raphael received an additional 51 MP to his Mana total, increasing his total Mana to 223 MP!

This meant that Raphael was able to make 2 copies of [Hansel and Gretel] a day, bringing his total number of copies to 5.

The next day, with the success of the public reading session that was the first day, more people came to hear the story this time, with almost everyone who came the day before coming again that day.

The audience grew from 140 people to 400 in just one day, completely filling the small town square.

That day Raphael received an incredible 107 MP, increasing his total to 330 MP!

This meant that Raphael was able to produce 3 books a day, increasing the number of finished copies to 8.

Unfortunately, the amount of Mana he received that day wasn't that high, so Raphael decided to go to the public reading session on the third day, which would be the last session before his store opened.

On that day, almost the whole town wanted to attend this reading session, but because of the lack of space, the poor acoustics and the distance everyone was from the speaker, only those who managed to arrive early and sit close to the storyteller were able to really enjoy the reading session.

On the third day, Raphael only got 70 MPs, even though it was the day with the largest audience, but as almost everyone's experience was terrible, the story didn't manage to move as many people as it did the day before.

But although this didn't help Raphael's Mana increase in proportion to the number of people who took part, it still helped Raphael raise his Mana to 400 MP, bringing him up to the level of half the basic talent for a child to be able to learn magic.

A talent that wouldn't attract anyone's attention because of his age, but which would still help Raphael make even more books every day, increasing the total number of finished copies to 12.

Not to mention that even though he hadn't earned that much MP that last day, now the whole town knew about the book the Baron had written, and not being able to hear the narrator or see the drawings in person served to arouse their curiosity even more, so that the next day, Raphael's store was packed with curious people and excited children.

Looking at the mere 15 books on the stand and the hundreds of people outside the store, Raphael was excited to see what it would be like when the store opened.

To ensure everyone's safety, even Raphael's personal guards were working inside and outside the store.

Fortunately, with the presence of a nobleman here, people controlled themselves very well and there was no commotion outside before the opening.

'I hope everything goes well. Raphael thought excitedly.