Los Angeles.
3:00 PM.
The sun was baking the asphalt until it was practically radioactive.
Cassius's cheek was pressed tight against the ground. The rough gravel was chewing up his skin, stinging like hell. He felt like an egg frying on a cast-iron skillet.
Splat.
A half-drunk cup of coffee came flying out of nowhere and landed right next to his head. The liquid—extra sugar, naturally—splashed all over his face.
Now, a sticky, sugary mess was slowly trickling into his ear.
He wanted to move, but he couldn't.
Dammit.
Ninety days since I got transported into this world, and this is the VIP treatment I get? Playing the corpse of an Asian thug who gets wasted in the first three minutes.
I had more dignity when I was a corporate drone in my past life.
The dumpster next to him was marinating in the heat, pumping out a steady stream of garbage juice fumes. Flies were buzzing in his ear like tiny chainsaws.
Not far away, the lead actor, Mark Wilson, was delivering lines so cheesy they made Cassius want to curl up and die for real.
"You think you can mess with me? You're dead meat! Dead meat!"
Cassius roasted him internally: Bro, seriously?
Your delivery is worse than the non-union extras back home who work for a box lunch and twenty bucks a day. You think screaming equals emotion? and who taught you those fight moves? A mall cop? You're flailing around like one of those inflatable tube men. You look weak, man. Low energy.
He kept his eyes shut tight, trying his best to be a professional corpse. But his brain was running the numbers:
F1 Student Visa: 91 days remaining.
If he couldn't land a speaking role—a "co-star" credit—before then, he wouldn't get his SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild) card.
No SAG card means no work visa.
No work visa means packing his bags and getting deported.
Kicked out of USC and sent straight back to play "Nameless Goon #3" or "Background Guy at the Brothel."
Just thinking about it made him suffocate.
"Cut!"
A furious roar blasted through the megaphone, shattering Cassius's mental math.
"Fck! Mark, where is the emotion? I need rage, not constipation!"
The director, Daniel—a burly white guy in a baseball cap with a scruffy beard—was tearing into the lead actor without mercy.
But a second later, the muzzle of his rage swung around without warning.
"And you, on the ground! Yeah, you, the Asian guy!"
Cassius's heart skipped a beat. He had a bad feeling about this.
He instinctively wanted to move, but corpses don't move. Not even after "cut."
"You look like a slab of frozen beef I just pulled out of the freezer! Can you give me a little fear? Maybe a little resentment? Anything?"
"Ah, forget it! We can't see your face anyway! The camera's just gonna catch the back of your head."
...
Stifled laughter rippled through the set.
The lighting crew, the grips, even the makeup girl touching up the lead actor's face—they were all smirking.
Cassius felt his cheeks burning. Not from the LA sun, but from the raw, unfiltered disrespect.
In the Hollywood food chain, Asian male actors ranked somewhere just above the rats scurrying across this street.
The classic trope: "Asian guy dies first."
The unwritten casting rule: "No Asian-looking types."
He knew it. He understood the game. But being roasted over the fire personally? That hit different.
He clenched his jaw and swallowed it. He couldn't afford to blow up now; he had bigger fish to fry.
And then... it happened.
Right where Mark Wilson had just been standing and overacting, two small glowing orbs, about the size of quail eggs, floated up from the ground. They gave off a faint, grey light.
Cassius blinked. Was he hallucinating from the heat? Or the verbal abuse?
But no, the orbs just hovered there, glowing temptingly.
[System Detects Dropped Attributes:]
[Dialogue Attribute: Accent +1]
[Physicality Attribute: Hamminess +1]
Two lines of text, looking exactly like a video game HUD, popped up right on his retina.
Holy sht!
Cassius's heart hammered against his ribs. His breath hitched.
A cheat code. The "System." The transmigrator's perk had finally arrived!
He stared at the orbs, a desperate hunger taking over. He scrambled up, walked over to the director to "apologize," and maneuvered himself right next to the glowing lights.
Whoosh!
The moment he got close, the grey orbs were sucked right into his body. He didn't even have to touch them; just being in range was enough.
Convenient.
A warm buzz, like a shot of whiskey, spread through his body. His English, which had been a bit clunky and accented, suddenly felt smoother on his tongue. His pronunciation felt more... local.
[Reading Host Status. Setting current baseline to Level 0.]
A semi-transparent menu unfurled before his eyes:
[Acting Attribute Panel]
Dialogue: Lv0 (1/100)
Physicality: Lv0 (1/100)
Expression: Lv0 (0/100)
Gaze/Eyes: Lv0 (0/100)
Rhythm: Lv0 (0/100)
Presence: Lv0 (0/100)
...
Cassius was ecstatic. The frustration and depression of the last ninety days finally had a way out.
But wait, why is everything zero? Did I learn absolutely nothing in film school?
Looking closer, he realized the System had simply calibrated his current skill level as the baseline—Zero. Any numbers he gained now were pure improvements.
Director Daniel was still yelling at him, seemingly using Cassius as a punching bag for his frustration with the lead star.
Cassius barely heard him.
His eyes looked past the director to the other side of the set.
There was an older character actor with white hair, playing a veteran detective. He had just finished a scene with a grounded, subtle performance and was sitting quietly in a chair.
And right where he had been standing...
A grey orb, denser and brighter than the previous two, was floating silently.
[System Detects Dropped Attribute: Presence Attribute — Gravitas +1]
Director Daniel's tantrum passed like a summer storm—loud and fast. Once he vented, he waved his hand. "Alright, reset! Set up for the next take."
The set came back to life, everyone acting like the awkward shouting match hadn't happened.
Cassius went back to the ground to play dead.
But his mindset had shifted completely.
That grey orb from the old detective was still floating a few yards away. It was glowing with a light only he could see.
It was calling to him like a shiny quarter on the sidewalk.
How do I grab it? Cassius wondered.
He tried to absorb it from where he lay. No reaction.
He couldn't exactly crawl over there in front of everyone. The grips would toss him off the set in two seconds.
Just then, Daniel waved his hand impatiently.
"Okay, okay, we got it. That take was passable. AD, clear the set! Next setup! Get the body out of there!"
Opportunity.
A Latino production assistant walked over and gave Cassius a polite nod to get up.
Cassius immediately "came back to life." He sprang up, dusted off dirt that wasn't there, and "accidentally" drifted toward the floating orb.
The second he brushed past it, he thought: Absorb.
Whoosh!
The orb vanished into him.
A strange sensation washed over him. It felt like being plucked from a noisy nightclub and dropped into a silent library.
The chaos of the set and the sting of the insults suddenly felt distant, muffled behind a layer of frosted glass.
Subconsciously, he straightened his posture, shedding the slouch of the low-level thug he was playing.
Oh, that's the stuff.
This felt way better than the crappy "Accent" and "Hamminess" attributes. This was the real deal.
Cassius kept a low profile and followed the PA off the main set to the holding area.
It was cluttered with equipment cases. A few background actors and day-players were sitting around on apple boxes.
Cassius's eyes turned into radar.
He started scanning.
The blonde girl playing the "Screaming Bystander" dropped an [Expression Attribute: Panic +1].
Absorb!
The stunt guy who got punched out by the hero dropped a [Physicality Attribute: Reaction +1].
Absorb!
Even the guy working the clapperboard dropped an [Emotion Attribute: Satisfaction +1] just because he slapped the slate so crisply.
...
Don't really need that one right now, Cassius thought. But hey, waste not, want not.
He took it all.
On his attribute panel, the numbers began to tick upward, slowly but surely.