Mystery: Big Alarm Clock Ghroth Path

Chapter 176 New Rules (Updated every 5456, thanks to Wutian for the reward of Qidian coins)
"Ah, good morning, Mr. Jones."

Cecilia, holding a stack of documents, greeted Roger politely.

Compared to the last time they parted, Cecilia seemed much more professional. After only less than a week of work, she looked like a qualified worker.

"Good morning, Cecilia."

Roger looked at the documents in Cecilia's hand and asked curiously:

"what are these?"

"Yesterday's booking statistics for the Wind-Up Phonograph."

Roger was a little surprised when he heard Cecilia's words:
“Pre-sale has started now?”

He originally thought it would take at least one or two weeks, but he didn't expect that Dwork Art Marketing Company would be so efficient.

"Yes, but we are currently testing the waters on a small scale."

Cecilia smiled and said, "But as you expected, this new phonograph is indeed very popular...especially its cost-effectiveness, which has attracted the interest of many middle-class families."

"We recommended the product to 1000 clients through two DeWork Art Marketing partners, and 90% of them showed clear interest, with about 56% paying a deposit immediately."

That is a promotion conversion rate of over 50%...

Such a conversion rate shocked Roger secretly, as he knew very well what it meant.

This means that half of the target customers will buy your products without hesitation!

Although this has the filtering effect of the sales channels of Dwork Art Marketing Company, the current promotion target base is also very limited.

If the production capacity of portable wind-up phonographs is fully increased and the promotion is fully rolled out, it is foreseeable that most middle-class families will show great interest in them.

Not to mention that DeWalker Art Company’s promotion channels currently don’t even utilize 5% of its resources - and this is where its value lies.

"You have to work harder, Mr. Jones."

Cecilia suddenly said something out of the blue.

"Come on, what?" Roger didn't quite understand.

"Record...a special release record!"

Cecilia prompted somewhat speechlessly.

"Oh, don't worry about that."

Roger shook the four master discs in his hand:

"I'm going to see Mr. Edmund."

"Is this... a master record?"

Cecilia took a closer look and guessed the contents from the outline of the brown paper bag.

She has learned a lot about records in the past two days, so she also knows the existence of master discs.

"Yes." Roger nodded.

"Huh." Cecilia breathed a sigh of relief:
"Why don't you go quickly then?"

"Good, good, good."

Roger felt like laughing at his sister's serious look, but he nodded very seriously, walked past Cecilia, and went straight to Mr. Edmund's office.

"Good morning, Baleno."

Compared to the last time he met Roger, Mr. Edmund's attitude was obviously more familiar:

"Please take a seat."

Roger also greeted him and noticed that there was a new portable phonograph on the other person's desk.

He sat down on the chair and handed the four master discs in his hand to Mr. Edmund.

"Fortunately you arrived in time, otherwise your assistant would be so worried."

Mr. Edmund laughed, and he was teasing Cecilia.

He then tried putting the master record into the sample portable phonograph on his desk and tested them one by one.

Immediately afterwards, a hilarious scene occurred in the office.

The two violin pieces, "The Sorrow of Love" and "The Four Seasons - Autumn", made Mr. Edmund cry and laugh at the same time. After being tortured like this several times, he finally stopped playing.

"How about it?"

Roger asked, suppressing a smile.

“It’s a really impressive piece of work, and the quality of the recording is excellent.

Mr. Edmund blew his nose into a tissue and gave a very high evaluation.

"I will send the master disc for burning later, and I will also help you apply for the copyright certificate.

“Especially for ‘The Sorrow of Love’, because this piece has never been performed publicly, the composer needs to be identified.

"Cecilia will arrange for someone to deliver the autographed record packaging to your residence today... I'll be sorry to trouble you then."

Roger was slightly stunned when he heard this. He only remembered this at this moment.

10000 first-release bonus albums...autographed!
In this era, the so-called autograph is a real autograph, signed with a pen on each record.

He had an urge to curse at that time, but he had no choice but to go ahead with it because it was for sales considerations.

"Then I'm sorry to trouble you."

Roger then declined Mr. Edmund's offer to have him dine with him and went straight back to No. 15 Minsk Street.

"What's wrong? You look like you're facing a great enemy."

Because the commission from the editorial department of Tussock Humorous Stories had been completed, Klein had nothing to do today.

"I……"

Just as Roger was about to complain, he heard Cecilia's voice.

"Mr. Jones!"

Roger's body trembled, he turned his head, and immediately saw a scene that made his scalp tingle.

Four freight wagons were parked in front of him, and behind each wagon were five iron boxes.

"Please sign for your goods."

Cecilia said to Roger with a grin, looking like she was enjoying the fun.

"Don't you have to go to work? Did you come here on purpose to watch the fun?"

Roger complained a bit, then called Klein out to help move the boxes.

As he expected, Klein's mouth opened wide when he saw the boxes in the four-horse carriage.

"What is this?"

The detective asked in surprise.

"Record packaging, 10,000 copies."

Roger curled his lips and didn't explain further.

With Klein's help, 20 heavy boxes were moved back home. Roger opened them one by one and found that they were all filled with black record sleeves.

Each of these envelopes has a white space reserved for writing.

He roughly counted and found that there were about 500 envelopes in each box. Cecilia seemed to have given him a few extra to make up for her mistakes.

Roger and Klein stared at the envelopes in silence for a moment. Suddenly, the latter heard the former shout:
"Alister, Perseus!"

However, the two brothers did not react at all.

Roger paused and spoke again:
"There are snacks, come and have some snacks!"

With a "bang", the door on the second floor opened and the two brothers ran down together.

“Where are the snacks?”

Perseus asked curiously.

Roger took out two one-pound notes from his pocket:
"Go to the grocery store at the east corner of Minsk Street and buy me 20 bottles of blue ink. You can buy some snacks with the rest.

"By the way, we're out of salt at home."

Klein added something, and the two brothers nodded enthusiastically before immediately grabbing the money and running out.

"You have 20 minutes to come back!"

Roger was afraid that the two brothers would get so drunk on the snacks at the grocery store that they would forget to go home, so he gave them an extra instruction.

After a while, the two brothers came back carrying bags of snacks and two bags of ink.

"The boss said there are only 16 bottles of ink, not 20."

Alister chewed a biscuit and threw the bag of ink on the sofa.

"Okay, thank you for your hard work. It's almost enough."

Roger nodded, dipped the pen he had prepared long ago into ink, and began to write on the envelope.

After writing less than 100 letters, Roger felt a pain in his hands. He looked at the envelope that was as high as a mountain and still had no signature, and secretly felt a toothache.

"Do you want me to write it for you?"

Klein looked at Roger's anxious expression and took the initiative to speak.

"No... your handwriting is different from mine. Art collectors have sharp eyes and will do comparative appraisals." Roger shook his head. He wrote for a while and suddenly thought of something.

He stretched out his hand, and tentacles of flesh and blood began to separate from his arm.

These flesh tentacles quickly extended and reorganized, soon turning into something like a hand.

Roger tried to pass the pen to the hand and let it try to sign the name of Baleno Jones.

"It seems OK, no difference..."

Roger carefully checked the handwriting, relaxed, and recovered the flesh and blood.

"Klein, bring all the pens in the house."

Soon, Klein took out his three pens and the four pens that brothers Alister and Perseus usually used for homework.

Roger also went to his workshop and got two unopened spare pens, so he had ten pens in his hands.

"Prepare……"

Roger took a deep breath and quickly separated a large number of flesh and blood tentacles from his cuffs, collar and ankles.

The ends of these fleshy tentacles twisted and changed rapidly, and soon turned into nine white right hands.

In this way, including Roger's own right hand, there are ten right hands.

But Roger soon discovered that it was difficult to control all ten hands at the same time and he could not write as smoothly as he could with one hand.

"By the way, you can try 'Little Duck'."

Roger slapped his forehead, and then used the "puppetization" ability of "Little Duck".

Under Klein's gaze, Roger's body quickly softened, and then his spirit quickly separated, but there were still many imperceptible lines between the two.

Sure enough, in this puppet-like state, Roger entered into a strange ideology.

Every part of his body became a visual component, and the demigod-level "puppet" seal allowed him to multitask and smoothly manipulate all of these parts at the same time.

With the help of the "little duck", the caps of the ink bottles automatically unscrewed, and after the pens were dipped in ink, they flew into the phantom right hands.

They took the record cover that flew over to them and began to write furiously.

Roger's efficiency therefore increased from signing 10 times a minute to signing 1 times a minute.

Roger couldn't help but think of a mysterious post he had read in his previous life. The poster asked how he would use it if he could obtain a mysterious ability in modern society.

There were many different opinions among the netizens who responded at that time. Some said that they would use the dual-path knowledge ability to engage in technological innovation and become handmade anchors, some said that they would use the "pharmacist" ability to research new drugs to fight cancer, or they wanted to use the ability of the "Wheel of Fortune" path to change their fate.

There are those with greater ambitions who wish to use their abilities as writers to achieve world peace, or perhaps become ancient scholars to help humanity solve the mysteries of ancient and even super-ancient civilizations...

But at this moment, if Roger were asked to evaluate the use of the "Puppet" ability, he would definitely say something.

That is, the "puppet" is simply a tool for working people like cattle and horses...

Even without the "Rose Bishop"'s ability to separate flesh and blood, this ability would allow him to use his hands and feet separately to do different things, and he could even temporarily remove his head to do work that required his mouth.

This doesn't even include the strange ability to control countless inanimate objects... If Roger didn't need to ensure that the handwriting on each record cover looked similar, he would have wanted to directly control those pens to write automatically.

"Ouch..."

At this moment, Bandit suddenly let out a cry of terror.

Klein turned around and saw this guy staring at Roger, who had eleven arms, and the flesh tentacles waving in the air with horror.

No wonder it was terrified. Even Klein, who witnessed the entire process, couldn't help but feel that No. 15 Minsk Street was the scene of the arrival of an evil god.

In desperation, Klein had no choice but to carry Bandit, who had transformed into a sword-back dragon, to his bedroom. He then warned the twins in a very serious tone not to go downstairs rashly. Only then did he barely maintain the sanity of everyone at 15 Minsk Street.

“That’s about a third of the way done.”

Half an hour later, Roger came out of the "puppet" state, put his separated flesh and blood back into his body, and took a rest.

He originally expected to be able to write 3000 signatures, but he became more and more proficient in it, and before he knew it, he had written more than 3500.

Although he has the ability to regenerate puppet-like limbs, he cannot guarantee what the consequences will be if his entire body is in a state of complete puppetry controlled by a spirit for too long.

So he decided to follow the "Little Duck" restriction of taking a break every thirty minutes and go make himself a cup of Dipsy coffee.

While the coffee was brewing, Roger used "Fate Leap" to destroy a record with "Four Seasons · Autumn" recorded on it, thereby transferring the negative influence of the "little duck" to it, and using the infusion of "positive energy" to completely cleanse his spiritual state.

After about an hour, Roger felt that his condition had basically returned to normal, so he split into multiple strands of flesh and blood again and began to sign.

This was repeated three times, and Roger finally signed his name on all the record covers.

He used the last bit of his remaining "puppet" time to control the record covers to fall back into the box and close the lid.

"That's all right."

Roger looked at the neatly stacked boxes and yawned.

At this time, he was extremely tired and felt that he could fall asleep as soon as he touched the pillow.

But before returning to his room, Roger did not forget to knock on the doors one by one to inform Klein, the frightened Bandit and the twins that "the terror has been lifted."

……

The next morning, before Cecilia went to work, Roger sent a message to her from the "De La Hoya Rat", informing her that a car would come to her house to pick up the signed record cover within the day.

At noon, when Cecilia appeared again with the four carriages, her face was full of suspicion. She obviously did not believe that Roger had signed all 10,000 record covers in one night.

However, when she saw the twenty neatly stacked boxes and randomly checked some of the envelopes, she had to admit that her cousin's ability was far beyond her imagination.

After seeing Cecilia off, Roger was finally able to relax.

He had lunch, told the two brothers to study hard at home, and then took a rented carriage to his own studio in the Royal Art Troupe again.

Roger wants to strike while the iron is hot and compose two more pieces of music!

As he twirled his pencil, he quickly planned his next creation in his mind.

Because his previous composition "Four Seasons Autumn" has now become a regular performance repertoire of the Royal Orchestra, the anchoring effect it brings not only makes the rules engraved in the music stronger, but also deepens Roger's understanding of the composition itself.

Not only that, Roger was also able to begin to engrave deeper rules, such as "contradiction rules", "conditional trigger rules", etc.

He can already influence the listeners' sensory levels beyond their spiritual bodies through composing music, such as directly controlling their physical and etheric bodies, but his influence on their astral bodies is still relatively limited.

However, Roger believes that at this stage he is not yet able to create musical works comparable to Vivaldi and Kreisler on his own. Fortunately, the first batch of portable wind-up phonographs will be delivered soon, which will surely bring him more anchors and a stronger understanding of music.

If Roger could complete the release and record burning of two new tracks within half a month, he would be able to reap the first wave of bonuses from the release of portable phonographs.

"There's nothing much to think about for the first one, it's definitely 'Four Seasons: Winter'."

Because Roger's "Four Seasons · Autumn" has received widespread acclaim in the music industry, and now is the turn of autumn and winter in the northern continent and the weather is gradually getting colder, so releasing "Four Seasons · Winter" now is a good choice.

In addition, Mr. Adams, the deputy director of the Royal Orchestra, and Viscount Birkbeck, the chief artistic advisor, were both looking forward to "The Four Seasons" becoming a complete violin concerto with four movements, and Roger did not intend to disappoint them.

After confirming this, he began to think about the musical rules that should be engraved in "Four Seasons: Winter".

The main emotional tone of this piece of music is the bleak and desolate feeling of the approaching winter and the withering of all things, but at the same time it also contains a small amount of meaning such as children playing in the snow and the approaching New Year. In the emotional atmosphere dominated by "bleakness", there is also a bit of contradictory complex of the innovation of all things.

So after careful consideration, Roger decided to combine the characteristics of the music itself to create a rule that has a dual effect on the human body.

The first rule is "freeze".

Anyone who harbors significant ill will towards Roger will experience a negative debuff upon hearing "Four Seasons: Winter," including a drop in body temperature, poor blood circulation in the limbs, and heaviness in the limbs. This is like being in the extreme cold of the north, severely impacting both mobility and bodily functions.

If you listen to "Four Seasons · Winter" for more than 1 minute, this freezing effect will continue to intensify, and may even lead to varying degrees of consequences such as necrosis of peripheral tissues and temporary loss of mobility.

In battle, Roger can influence his opponent by arranging positional warfare in advance and playing the record of "Four Seasons·Winter" on the battlefield. He can even use the "Singing" ability of the "Singer" to hum the melody of "Four Seasons·Winter" directly, and combine it with "Middle Voice Singing" or "High Voice Singing" to cause a compound blow to the body/mind and body/spirituality. He can also hum directly with "Low Voice Singing" to directly cause cumulative physical damage.

The specific strategy to be adopted depends on the opponent's capabilities and characteristics.

On the other hand, this rule is not without weaknesses. For example, the extraordinary people of the "Alien" and "Corpse Collector" paths have extremely strong physical immunity or body resistance, and the extraordinary people of the "Sun" path also have the extraordinary ability to dispel the cold.

However, for most other paths, especially the "Secret Prayer" and "Warrior" paths, which are extraordinary people who rely more on their bodies to fight, they are greatly restrained by the "Freeze" ability.

The second rule is "chill".

This sounds like a negative rule, but it is not.

On the one hand, cold can affect people's bodies, but moderate cold can also make people's minds sharper and quickly get rid of fatigue and unclear thinking.

This is a gift that Roger prepared for his true music listeners. As long as the listeners do not have obvious ill will towards Roger, they can gain clear thinking and keen awareness from listening to the music of "Four Seasons · Winter".

When portable phonographs became popular, this piece of music could be used to refresh and invigorate the mind in daily life.

This was also a manifestation of Roger's deepening understanding of the rules - the audience's attitude determined the results he achieved. Otherwise, if the performance of "Four Seasons · Winter" caused frostbite or even hypothermia to everyone present, including the orchestra and the audience, not only would no one play his music again, but it would also attract an investigation by the official Beyonder law enforcement agency.

Roger was also cautious in determining the degree of malice.

Generally, people who are critical of Roger's music or personality will not be affected by the "freeze". Only those who want to cause actual physical harm to Roger or want to threaten Roger will be affected.

This also gave Roger the ability to sense the ill intentions of others in a vast crowd. For example, during a music performance, if someone shivered or got frostbite, Roger could judge that the other person had ill intentions towards him.

Roger did what he thought of. Relying on his "composer's" super memory for music, he quickly wrote the score of "Four Seasons · Winter".

Not only that, he also relied on the improvement of his composing ability to fine-tune some details of the song, making the rhythm of the song more in line with the dual rules of "freeze-chill" without changing the overall artistic conception.

Roger was very satisfied with the results of this initial trial of secondary creation.

He doesn't dare to do too much at this stage, but this is a good start.

"What should I write next?"

Roger, who had already written three violin pieces, wanted to change his taste.

He walked out of his office and came to the rehearsal room outside. He looked around as he walked and soon stopped in front of a piano.

"How about a piano piece?"

(End of this chapter)