[1.12] Contractually Obligated Motivation (Part 3)

Angelica changed things up a bit the next morning. Besides getting up earlier in an attempt to try to fix her sleep schedule, she started with art this time. Mostly, she wanted to get the rough sketch of her big commission done so that she could send it off for feedback while working on other things. With that completed, “Angelica, clean your bathroom.”

She subjected herself to the errand for the day, going into a bit more detail, such as trying to make it as close as to how it looked when she moved in as possible with a sustainable amount of effort. If it needed heavy chemicals she didn’t have or an amount of elbow grease she couldn’t reasonably muster, she wasn’t going to kill herself over it. The cleaning took an annoying amount of time, but she couldn’t argue with the results.

Then, after a snack, it was time to burn off the calories she just consumed with more fitness. She wasn’t going to just be running today, planning to incorporate additional exercises into her routine. Angelica attempted to add a simple regimen of ten pushups, situps, and squats, just for a nice start. But even after ordering herself to do them, her pushup count didn’t go past three.

Damn, have I really gotten this weak? She struggled, both physically and internally due to the Contract influence as she desperately tried to raise herself for her fourth pushup. Ultimately, she had to cancel the Contract and redo it for the remaining reps, instead changing it to, “Do as many as you feasibly can, up to a maximum of ten.”

After that sweating endeavor, she put on her shoes and headed back outside for another run. Angelica stuck to the same path as the previous day, for the most part since, it was a nice one, and she was also fiddling with her Order a bit, seeing if telling herself to follow the same path would veer her body automatically, which it did, even adjusting for new obstacles that weren’t there the previous day. In the nice neighborhood, she was once again hit with that same eerie feeling right outside the fence of a particular manor. She’d gone unnamed this time, allowing herself to stop and look around.

Angelica swore she saw familiar text, like the words in the magical book, written in the air in front of the big fancy house. But they were slightly obscured by the foliage. Tongues was providing no help in translating it, which it should regardless of language—something she’d confirmed by listening to shows from other nations, changing the sounds of the words in her ears. But like with the book, the translations were only partial, meaning she was stuck with subtitles for now. So either she didn’t know the word, or maybe because it was obscured, she couldn’t translate it without seeing the whole thing.

Maybe another Summoner lived there? Was the strangeness she was feeling some sort of Summoner magic? Or… Demon magic? While she’d only had her incident a few days ago, she’d seen absolutely nothing indicating there were other demons around. Nor had she encountered another one of those Malignant things. Maybe they only came out at night?

Well, whatever. Angelica had absolutely no intention of getting involved with Demons, Summoners, Malignants, any of that nonsense. She’d gotten her benefit from it, and she was putting it to good use. That’s all that mattered. As long as it didn’t interfere with this new life of hers, she had no real drive to dig any further.

The runner finished her route, both satisfied and irked. She’d made better time than the previous day, having more energy left over, but at the same time, her Vigor hadn’t yet improved. So she decided to push herself a bit further, doing a lap of a few extra blocks until the notification popped before heading home after another quick trip to the store. Angelica popped into one quickly, not wanting to linger long due to the reason she was purchasing anything: she still stunk.

Right after the run, she lifted her shirt and took a whiff, and damn it was wretched. How did she still smell like trash?! And not just trash, but hot, sweaty trash that had been baking in the sun and fermenting for a few days. So she went straight for the beauty products and grapped some expensive soap, a loofah, new deodorant just in case something was wrong with hers, and some perfume, for good measure. It was way more than she cared to spend, but since she’d made a good amount yesterday, it was justifiable. Then when she got home, she made sure to clean everything thoroughly yet again.

While she was showering, she got another message:

[Transfiguration Lv.4]

[Beguilement increased]

That did raise a curious question. What exactly was being transfigured? She gave her body another once over, and everything looked exactly as it always did. Maybe it was what caused her blister to disappear? Perhaps it was masking other injuries? Her skin did look unusually smooth in that sense; no random bruises, no blemishes of any kind.

It briefly made her worry that she was continuing to disguise an injury and that was the source of the smell, but in that case, wouldn’t she feel a rash, or find pus, or something? She felt fine, and since Transfiguration was assumedly doing something good, she chose not to mess with it. Not that she even activated it to begin with, so she wouldn’t know the commands.

Clean again, and smelling… adequate, Angelica went back and checked her messages. There was no response yet about the big commission, so she went ahead and did the other new one in her queue, the only one. With that done, she decided to try the freelancing website, grimacing at both the requests and rates, but she sucked it up and gave one a shot. It was to draw a sandwich with specific ingredients and purple bread. Why? She had no idea. But this wasn’t a site where one generally asked questions. Maybe some restaurant was having a spooky promotion, or something.

It didn’t take her long, and getting paid right away was nice, so she continued taking those requests for a while. After doing nearly a dozen, her commissioner got back to her. Surprisingly, there wasn’t that much to be changed in the overall design. The Contract she’d done to try to match the prompt they’d given her had produced a great initial result, far better than if she’d just tried to freely conceive it all from scratch.

But with the details ironed out, now she could actually get more creative, add her own artistic touch and style. That could be seen as going against the request’s wishes, but they had requested her, after all, so she would give them her art. Angelica at least had integrity to that degree. While she could produce something passable with a mindless order, it would eat at her. And she was rewarded for her effort.

[Creativity increased]

Then, as she really delved into the work, she was hit with Inspiration: specifically the skill. It activated automatically, the kind that lasted much longer than if she triggered it manually. Over the course of the next few minutes, it was like her hand magically glided across the tablet, producing a masterpiece before her eyes. It was sad when it ended, but even if not demonically enhanced, the lingering imagination pushed her through to the end of the piece, or at least all the work she could do for now. It wasn’t until she snapped out of that trance that her mind played the waiting message.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

[Inspiration Lv.2]

[Creativity increased]

[Fabrication Attunement increased]

My work is not a fabrication! She mentally protested. Even if the motivation was forced, I made that all on my own. How dare?! It probably didn’t dare. Based on the other Attunements she’d heard so far, it was likely just some kind of classification in the Demon Growth System for artsy related skills. But why did they have to pick a word that could sting so much if it was a real accusation? Also weird that it hadn’t unlocked before, not until she got Reprint. Maybe now that she had it, the voice in her head decided to classify it as such?

[Summoner Rank: Initiate Lv.6]

At least that served as proof of her efforts. It was definitely the most complicated Contract she’d finished in a while, pushing her over the edge. She set up a timed message to send the work to the commissioner the next day, not wanting to weird them out by presenting it so quickly. After petting Cherub for a while, who had been rubbing against her chair incessantly while trying to finish the piece, she headed to bed.

The next several days passed much the same as the previous two. In the mornings, she would do a bit of cleaning, and then some exercise. For her shabby bit of muscle training, she stuck with doing as much as she could until her body physically couldn’t anymore. They at least showed some progress, increasing the number of reps by one every day or two. And on the fourth day since starting her journey of improvement, she got a Might increase.