It turned out that Lee So-yeon's "Hollywood Assistant Experience Pass" was only valid for one day.
The next morning.
When Cassius tiptoed out the door, her room was shut tight, the sound of steady breathing coming from inside.
Clearly, the previous day's "Zombie Siege" job hunt and the hours of fake smiling on the Walk of Fame had drained her battery completely.
Cassius felt a strange sense of relief.
Taking a rookie on a one-day tour of the starting zone was fine. But if he had to team up every day for these low-yield grind sessions, his meager experience points wouldn't be enough to split.
For the next few weeks, Cassius entered "Hollywood Grunt" beast mode.
When he didn't have a sweet gig like the James Wan shoot, he turned into a permanent NPC on the corner of Santa Monica.
Thanks to his gradually accumulating [Gravitas] and a performance style that was no longer jittery, he occasionally caught a foreman's eye.
He started snagging "premium background" roles—ones with simple interactions or slightly more face time.
His daily pay crawled up painfully to anywhere between forty and sixty bucks.
He played a hurried doctor's assistant in a hospital hallway.
A diner sipping red wine in an upscale restaurant.
A student frowning at a computer in a university library.
In between, Han pestered him until he caved, and he got the full "Stereotype Deluxe Package."
In some teen campus flick, he wore thick black glasses and an ill-fitting plaid shirt, playing an Asian nerd typing code frantically at a party, completely oblivious to the fun around him.
"Better than playing a corpse," he told himself, absorbing the [Emotion Attribute: Numbness +1] that dropped from the character.
For a whole month, he was a busy worker bee, buzzing through every set in LA, legitimate or sketchy.
His only goal: hoard attributes.
[Emotion Attribute: Nervousness +1] (From a young actor doing his first kissing scene)
[Emotion Attribute: Joy +1] (From a background character who won the lottery)
[Emotion Attribute: Grief +1] (From an old lady at a funeral scene who cried with heartbreaking sincerity)
[Physicality Attribute: Exhaustion +2] (From a key grip who had been working for 18 hours straight—Cassius needed this one bad!)
[Dialogue Attribute: Complaining +1] (From a gaffer bitching about the quality of the boxed lunch)
[Presence Attribute: Sleaziness +1] (From a character actor playing a peeping tom—Cassius had mixed feelings picking that one up)
[Rhythm Attribute: Timing +1] (From a focus puller who hit his marks with surgical precision)
...
The attribute orbs were a mixed bag. Useful, useless—he took them all.
The numbers on his panel, especially under [Emotion], were jumping up at unprecedented speed.
He also started to figure out the rules.
Generally, Grey orbs were basic +1 stats. Green were +2. Blue were +3.
Most crew members and average extras dropped Grey.
Experienced supporting actors or highly skilled technicians dropped Green.
Only actors on the level of Patrick Wilson, or exceptional stunt performers, dropped rare Blue attributes.
As for anything higher? Cassius hadn't seen it yet.
Late at night, Cassius dragged his broken body back to the apartment.
Lee So-yeon was sitting cross-legged on the living room rug, frowning at her laptop, seemingly wrestling with homework from USC.
Over the past month, she had taken a beating from both Los Angeles and her coursework.
She had shed a lot of her initial naivety, learning to bury herself in books and analyze films like a maniac when there was no work.
"You're back? Leftover pizza in the kitchen. Heat it up yourself."
She didn't even look up, her tone as familiar as an old roommate.
Cassius grunted a reply. He didn't rush to the discount pizza that looked like cardboard.
Habitually, he pulled up his attribute panel to check the day's harvest.
[Acting Attribute Panel]
Dialogue: Lv0 (18/100)
Physicality: Lv0 (35/100)
Expression: Lv0 (22/100)
Gaze/Eyes: Lv0 (19/100)
Emotion: Lv0 (100/100)
Rhythm: Lv0 (15/100)
Presence: Lv0 (25/100)
...
Emotion is full!
Cassius's heart hammered, instantly banishing his sleepiness.
It felt like finally grinding enough XP in an RPG to unlock the next skill tree.
The Emotion progress bar filled up instantly!
Boom!
In a split second, he felt like his brain had been tossed into an emotional blender.
All the joy, anger, sorrow, nervousness, numbness, and ecstasy he had absorbed over the past month...
Countless fragments of emotion surged into his mind like a tidal wave—colliding, fusing, refining.
A sudden clarity washed over him.
If the previous [Emotion] attribute just allowed him to crudely mimic feelings...
Now, he felt like he understood the essence of emotion.
He could perceive the subtle differences and layers between feelings with much finer granularity. He could call upon them with precision.
He could even vaguely sense how to trigger subtle physiological reactions to generate emotion from the inside out, rather than just pulling faces.
Quantity had led to quality!
He had taken the critical step from "looking the part" to "being the part."
Cassius stood there, eyes closed, savoring the sensation.
Before, when he needed to summon an emotion for a scene, he had to desperately recall a memory or rely on external stimuli.
Now, it felt like he had an emotional color palette built into his body.
He could dip his brush into any color he wanted, adjusting the saturation and brightness at will.
"Hey, you okay?"
Lee So-yeon's voice pulled him back to reality.
"You're standing there looking constipated. Is the pizza that bad?"
Cassius opened his eyes and exhaled a long breath. He felt like a new person.
He walked to the kitchen, picked up a slice of cold pizza, and took a bite. It really did taste like cardboard.
But he was in a good mood, so he let it slide.
"I'm good," he mumbled through the pizza. "Just had a breakthrough about acting."
Lee So-yeon gave him a suspicious look but didn't ask further, returning to her battle with her homework.
The next day, Cassius landed an unexpected gig.
A TV commercial for a local burger chain.
The role was simple: a young guy in a park eating a burger and showing extreme satisfaction and happiness.
The requirement was one word: Real.
He had to make the audience drool through the screen.
These kinds of commercials look easy, but they demand a high level of purity and infectiousness in emotional expression.
Many professional actors tend to overact, making it look fake.
The shoot was in a corner of Griffith Park.
The director was an ad maniac who demanded perfection. He had already NG'd (No Good) seven or eight actors.
Either their smiles were too "corporate," or their satisfaction didn't feel like it came from the gut.
"I want pure, animalistic, dopamine-spiking joy! Do you understand?!"
"Not 'I just got my paycheck' happy!"
"I want 'This burger is so damn good' happy!"
The director roared through his megaphone like a culinary tyrant.
It was Cassius's turn.
He held the burger, which was gleaming under the lights and looked genuinely tempting.
But who knew how long it had been sitting there.
It was stone cold.
And to make it glisten, they had brushed it with oil.