Chapter 3
Chapter 3
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Genius Idol's Entertainment Conquest Method
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"Character Info."
A window popped up like a hologram.
"Oh, this is trash..."
He blurted out his overall impression before starting to look a bit more closely.
Fine, games like this have Fatigue, but why the hell does it need HP?
Every single stat was so pitiful it was hard to look at straight on, leaving him feeling utterly hopeless.
And above all, Charm at 10? Well, that explained why he looked so ugly.
After that, the system gave simple explanations for info anyone who's played even one RPG would know.
Thinking or saying keywords like Character Info, Skills, Quests, etc., would bring up a window in front of him.
Just in case, he tried stuff like Minimap, Inventory, Cash Shop—features that would be handy for a player—but no matter how he rephrased them, nothing happened. He felt utterly deflated.
So the first quest was basically just to confirm this was really inside a game.
A total trash game, at that.
"Logout! Please!"
"You trash game. Why the hell is logout denied? At least tell me why I got isekai'd into a game like this!"
He wasn't expecting a response to his crazy rant, but one came anyway.
"Terms?"
A bunch of miscellaneous explanations followed below.
He had no idea such garbage clauses even existed, but what could he do about it now?
As he tore at his innocent hair, regretting his past mistakes, a message appeared saying the tutorial was over.
"What do you mean already do...? "
This bastard's picking a fight...?
Just as he felt like he'd never get along with this system, reward settlement began.
+ Distributable Stat Points +5
It didn't even give him time to dump all the stat points into Charm—his very sense of self—before multiple windows popped up in succession.
Notifications that had been silent until the tutorial ended came flooding in.
Innumerable error windows that chilled him to the bone flooded his vision, dying it red before vanishing in an instant.
He caught a glimpse of a few normal ones in between, but didn't have time to read them. Whew, that scared him.
His now-clear vision was filled with a pristine popup.
Nope. Not pristine at all.
Reset? So that's why the stats were so low?
Hold on. Korean was one of the reset abilities?
So he couldn't understand the high schooler on the phone earlier, or read the letters, because he couldn't speak Korean?
If he couldn't read or hear, of course he couldn't speak properly either. No wonder his pronunciation felt off even to himself.
This difficulty is insane. Living in Korea without Korean? What am I supposed to do?
He didn't have the confidence to relearn the Korean alphabet from scratch at his age, so with tears in his eyes, he chose Korean.
Farewell, Charm. Farewell, handsomeness.
Suddenly, the warning sign in front of the broken fountain became readable.
Yes! He was Korean!
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his chest.
But the system's atrocities didn't end there.
<From Shut-In Gamer to Isekai Idol?!>
▶ Quest Description: Having completed the tutorial, you're about to start filming for the idol survival show Pick Your Heart 3.
Pick Your Heart gathers 100 trainees, debuting 7 via public vote and 3 via a mix of votes and expert evaluation—for a total of 10. It's a brutal, ruthless, sensational survival program.
You're participating as a personal trainee. First filming is tomorrow morning. Make your presence known in the initial evaluation. Even though you're a Lv. 2 noob with all stats at 10.
▶ Confirmed Rewards: Attention from trainees and mentors, modest EXP and cash, lodging for four days, suitcase with some clothes and essentials.
▶ Failure Penalty: On a cold winter day with nowhere to go, pathetic you freezes to death in a tragic ending. (Failure and refusal treated the same.)
[Y/N]
"?"
He rubbed his eyes and looked again.
▶ Failure Penalty: On a cold winter day with nowhere to go, pathetic you freezes to death in a tragic ending. (Failure and refusal treated the same.)
"......"
At that moment, he completely lost his reason.
What kind of idol nurturing game is this extreme?
He let out a deep sigh from the bottom of his lungs, his breath billowing out like dry ice smoke.
His hands, shoved in his pockets, felt like they were going to freeze solid and fall off.
At this rate, he'd go down in history as the first moron to die of hypothermia on day 1 of game isekai. Trembling, he pressed the accept button.
Not shaking from anger. From the cold.
Really cold. Damn it.
Finally accepting reality, he found a 24-hour unmanned cafe and decided to spend the night there.
Using the money from the tutorial quest reward, he got a hot chocolate latte from the vending machine-like coffee maker.
His pathetic situation—sitting in an uncomfortable chair clutching a single chocolate latte—couldn't be more miserable.
'Game admin, god, whatever—send me home. Fragile shut-in gamers die from too much outside air.'
And it wasn't exaggeration: whether from banging his head too hard earlier or staying out in the cold too long, his HP had dropped from 50 to 30 in a flash.
What kind of insane balance is this?
Does HP hitting 0 actually kill you in this game? Does an idol sim hand players gruesome deaths like that?
Freaked out, he allocated his level-up stat points: 2 to Stamina, 2 to Strength, 1 to Agility.
As a result, HP increased by a pinky-nail's worth.
Still a pathetic number that would game over if he bumped his head.
He reluctantly left Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charm as-is for now.
Someday he'd be handsome again. Right?
Suddenly, he felt like crying from the misery.
Shaking off the sorrow quickly, he searched his phone for the program matching the game title and name he'd planned to play.
Pick Your Heart. Or Pick Heart for short.
In reality, Pick Heart was a typical idol survival show that had already been sucked dry of juice by now.
It ranked trainees by viewer votes, eliminating the low-rankers, and debuted the survivors as a group. Brutal stuff.
This being season 3 already, viewers were surely tiring of idol audition shows.
To differentiate from the flood of other programs, there was an article about Pick Heart 3 introducing "expert evaluations" with the goal of self-producing idols.
Details weren't out yet, and it wouldn't ignore votes entirely.
'Perfect system for rigging.'
A bit more searching turned up plenty questioning the results of seasons 1 and 2, alleging vote manipulation.
For a game, it had unnecessary realism in weird places.
'I'm screwed.'
He thought of his fave, who might've debuted without rigging, and his stomach hurt.
Anyway, in this 2017 game-world Korea, no major issues had cropped up yet.
Season 1 (boys) debuted as UPon, active for a year and a half before disbanding. Season 2 (girls) as yoUs, set to disband end of this year. Both did amazingly well.
No doubt the fruit of grinding the hell out of the participants.
And he was entering as dirt-poor indie dirt.
He slurped the too-hot chocolate latte he'd been holding without drinking. Sugar might help his brain work.
Just 5? Stingy.
"F, fuck. Sorry."
He apologized immediately, but the system didn't restore his Fatigue. It even re-applied the profanity filter.
You bastard. From now on, you're Sys-Tem.
Anyway, with sweetness in him, his mind started turning.
They wouldn't just say "play any song!" on the spot. There had to be a scheduled track.
Time to check his sole possession, the phone, again.
In his files was an MP3 named "PickHeartEvalSong."
This is it, he thought, hitting play right away.
"......"
A song he'd never heard.
The melody suggested vocal-focused over dance. He liked the refreshing female singer's voice and listened to the end, when a system window popped up.
Hello, World!
[Memorize?]
[Y/N]
"Whoa."
Isekai buff? Was he finally walking the flower path to superstardom? Instead of miserably huddling in a 24-hour unmanned cafe?
If his guess was right, he'd call it "system" again.
Heart pounding, he hit Y.