RWBY: Remnant's Blond Bard

Chapter 6

His rising internet fame as a femboy haunted Jaune through the night. That was not a metaphor for deep thought or mental anguish. The way it haunted him was quite literal, and usually when he least expected it.

Through performing for an audience, you have gained +1 Charisma.

"Erk!" Jaune flinched once more, right on the verge of falling asleep before the message hit and snapped him back into wakefulness. "Again? Seriously? How many people are watching that video? It's just a girl playing the guitar. Come on!"

Nora's genius plan had gone off perfectly. Too damn perfectly. He'd gained something like ten points of Charisma, which was downright ridiculous, and it kept on coming. While he'd been spending days trying to find the perfect exploit and coming close with his busking, Nora had cracked the system, and without even realising there was a system.

And all it had taken was a little bit of dignity.

Not only his, but the dignity of those poor fools online writing out such lovely comments to a girl that didn't exist. Jaune rolled over and pressed his face into the pillows, stifling a scream. He stopped at the last second, remembering that Coral was in the hotel room next door and that she would eventually murder him if he kept waking her up.

Rolling back over, he reached for his scroll and navigated to RemTube where his new account lay. Nora had gotten it monetised fairly quickly, and even if he'd missed the first wave of viewers there should be some money coming in. He needed 20,000 lien to finish the quest. He'd be lucky if he had a few hundred—

"Two and a half thousand!?"

A fist banged on the wall furiously.

"S—Sorry!"

That didn't stop him looking back down to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. Nope. The current revenue was at an estimated 2,545 lien, and the video was now at over 250,000 views. He also had around 4,000 subscribers off the back of one video.

"It's no wonder I got so much Charisma for this," he said, careful to be quieter so Coral wouldn't kill him. "I've technically performed for a quarter of a million people. I thought it was being too generous, but it probably is nerfing the gains. It just doesn't matter when the number is this high!"

He'd busked for maybe twenty people at a time back home and gained several points in Charisma. If the math followed, then for performing for ten thousand times that number should have given him a hundred points at least. It hadn't, which meant the system was aware of the exploit and had given him a malus for not personally and publicly performing for people.

It just didn't matter because 250,000 people was a lot of performances even at a lower rate.

That came with two startling realisations: the first was that his Semblance was in some way aware and adapting to what was going on. That, or it was brought into the world knowing every possible route he could take. The second realisation was that he was doomed.

Because after seeing how much he could make from these videos – both monetarily and in terms of his stats – he was never going to be able to stop. It was just too much. He'd have his money to travel in a little over a week, and he'd be farming Charisma like it was going out of fashion. How could he possibly put this aside and go back to working his butt off for one or two points when he could gain that many in his sleep while a video of him racked up views online?

He just couldn't.

Nora had ruined him for life.

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"I prefer to think of it as having opened your eyes to a whole new world," said Nora, the next afternoon, when he'd given excuses to his parents to go to Sanctum. His parents were caught between delight he'd made some friends and horror (mostly on his father's side) that those friends were training to be huntsmen.