Locking In With My Life System

Having set up his account on a gig site and a wallet for payment two days ago, Aiden went about the rest of the week.

Despite it being rather uneventful, he’d had his quests and his freelancing ventures to keep himself busy.

He’d also managed to squeeze in time to game with his buddies for a while. Considering they’d all gone to various places for their vacation, they were rather occupied on their own fronts.

Larry and Clyde had gone to summer camp. Benjamin was spending his vacation in France with his grandparents. Casper was still halfway across the country dealing with the intricacies of his family’s business.

In any case, Aiden’s weekend was set to be rather uneventful too.

However, upon switching on his laptop for the day, he couldn’t help but wonder what in incarnation was going on.

No sooner had he accessed his social media account--TweetTalk specifically, he’d realized he’d gained roughly over two thousand followers.

Even now, the number was ticking up by a single digit every five minutes or so and his DMs were blowing up with messages.

”The hell is going on?” Aiden muttered to himself without even checking them, more concerned than he was perplexed.

Slowly, he began filtering through his posts, trying to locate the source of it.

Soon enough, he found it.

It was from a post a couple week’s back. One he hadn’t put much thought into when he replicated the art and credited the original artist, much like he had been doing for several others.

Unknown to him at the time though, the art he’d replicated was from a popular 18+ NSFW creator named ’Dommy_Mommy’ whom had recently retweeted his post earlier today.

Turns out, she had decided to draw a SFW art for a change of pace, her illustration one of a particularly popular video game character with notably big thighs assuming her battle-ready position.

In any case, upon reading her caption of his post;

Young Padawan. Won’t you come to the dark side?

Aiden’s fingers blitzed across his keyboard, his brain processing the information faster than he’d like to admit.

His answer was practically immediate;

Fuck no, absolutely not!

It didn’t even take a minute after he responded before her reply came back;

Resist as you may. The dark side, always wins.

Then the she added a gif of zesty looking green-alien rubbing his palms.

Aiden hadn’t even come up with a retort to that before a new wave of comments poured into the already viral post with 1.5 million views.

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Gooner4Life: The hardest of choices require the strongest of wills. Come to the dark side brother. Goon with us. Then, make me a zesty cover art of a busty, elf MILF with baby-bearing hips.

Naughty_Nutting_November: You deny your weapon its purpose?! Our queen has chosen you! Don’t resist!

Zesty_Sonic: Make us proud, young padawan. Use your powers for goon, not good.

Kinky_Zelda: Just think of all the money you could make. We could make you so... so... rich~.

Goonshin_Impact: I shall be watching you with great interest, young padawan. Do not fail me.

Palpatine’s Will: Dew it!

Sussy_Eren: What do you think you’re doing? Get up. Draw that art. Post it to you know where! You wandered into our space, didn’t you?

Goblin’s Mask: Innocent youngling... you’re struggling to have eveeeerything you want, while the internet tries to make you choose...

-

Aiden was practically dumbfounded at this point, his mouth slightly agape.

Then he began to cackle, his mirth so unrestrained, his laughter was practically echoed through every wall in his house.

Soon, he recovered and simply replied with a certain toon bunny character saying the word; No.

Then he left the post. For as grateful as he was for the boost in followers, he’d long locked in what he wanted to do from day one.

To that effect, he began checking his DM’s.

Though most of it composed of people trying to commission NSFW art, Aiden was able to get roughly ten people who wanted the traditionally commissioned, SFW art.

Informing each of them of his price for commissioned pieces being $50 per one, Aiden soon moved over to the NovelFire app to check if he had any requests on there.

Sure enough, he did.

Unfortunately, since he had now shifted to a payment structure, most authors had a habit of ghosting him whenever he mentioned his price for their commissions.

Not that he hadn’t been expecting it. Still, he responded to each message, informing them of his price.

Already expecting most of them to ghost him once again like, he went back to his TweetTalk account. Yet again, the same thing played out, as only three of the ten responded favorably.

Upon replying to those three, Aiden then hashed out the specifics of what they wanted.

And though he asked of them if they would be willing to place the order on his gig account, all three had opted out, citing that they much preferred a direct interaction with the artist himself.

Soon enough though, he got paid, his phone buzzing with a notification. Casually, Aiden picked it up to check;

-

[Wallet Notification]

You’ve received $150.00 USD from multiple transfers.

Previous Balance: $0.00 USD

Current Balance: $147.00 USD

Thank you for using SwiftPay.

-

Grinning ear to ear at the digital Benjamins, Aiden placed the phone face down and stretched his arms out with his palms interlocked as he cracked his neck.

Then he got down to work.

Although $50 was objectively small for the kind of skills he had, Aiden was more interested in building a portfolio first.

Afterall, the better his portfolio, the more chances he had of scaling up the prices for commissions in the future.

In any case, for the rest of the day, Aiden dedicated himself completely to finishing up the commissions.

In between, he also checked his DMs on the NovelFire app, responding to the one author whom had responded favorably.

After a few minutes of talking things out, the author sent half the payment. Since he’d informed Aiden he once had a terrible experience with another artist that had scammed him, Aiden didn’t mind his vigilance.

Putting that commission in particular on the side for the meantime, Aiden focused majorly on the previous ones.

Roughly six hours later, he was done. Afterall, he had spent about two hours on each of them, all of whom had pretty much loved what they’d gotten.

Not that there wasn’t a few nitpicks here and there. Still, Aiden had been patient with them and made the corrections.

Only after they were satisfied did he return to the cover art commission from the NovelFire author.

Unbeknownst to Aiden though, the sun was already setting and he’d been on the system since late morning.

Soon enough, his father whom was rather worried he hadn’t seen him all afternoon came up, curious to see what his son was up to.

Upon knocking on the door gently, Richard soon walked in when he noticed his son was completely engrossed in what he was doing on his laptop.

Curious to see what had him so focused, Richard’s eyes widened when he saw Aiden sketching out a character with such skill, precision and efficiency, he couldn’t help but remark aloud;

”All this time I’d thought you were being studious but damn...”

Aiden suddenly jolted out of his flow, his head whipping to face his father who spoke with pride;

”Color me surprised, champ. I didn’t know I was raising a Leonardo Da Vinci!”

”When did this happen?!” he curiously asked, to which Aiden sheepishly smiled;

”I’ve been practicing for a fair while, now. Felt I could earn a bit more money doing it asides working at the restaurant so... I decided to freelance my skills.”

”Pretty cool, right?” he showed his Pops some of the other arts he had been working on.

Evidently impressed, and surprisingly unquestioning of his son’s explanation regarding his seemingly excellent skills, Richard soon spoke;

”You know, your mum would’ve loved to see you taking up her favorite hobby,”

”I guess it runs in the family...” his words trailed away with a nostalgic, bittersweet smile.

Aiden on the other hand was rather stunned. He never had any idea his mum loved drawing as a hobby.

Noticing the surprise in his son’s eyes, Richard expatiated;

”She was great at it, I’ll have you know. Sadly, she had to stop after she got a full-time job and gave birth to you. There was just too little time on her hands.”

Feeling rather sad to hear that, Aiden looked to his laptop’s screen, the unfinished cover art still there.

Now it made perfect sense to him why his father wasn’t even questioning how he’d gotten so good at something he’d never actually seen him do before.

He simply believed it was in his blood and he had the talent for it.

But for Aiden, he had begun to look at the entire thing in a completely new light.

Though he’d gotten the skills ’cause he deemed it the fastest way to shore up more money, he was now viewing it from the perspective of someone who also wanted to make it a hobby of his own.

That way, he could share the same hobby as his beloved late mother.

Feeling his dad’s palm landing on his head, Richard said, seemingly having read his thoughts;

”She’d love that.”

”Yeah.” Aiden nodded softly, a wistful smile on his lips.

Then, after informing him that he’d make dinner and call for him when it was ready, Richard made his way downstairs.

Thankful for the gesture, Aiden refocused on the unfinished commission.

Within the next hour and a half, he was done. Forwarding the product to its owner, Aiden was glad to see him promptly respond with a more than satisfied remark.

Following that, his phone buzzed again. However, just as Aiden picked it up, it buzzed yet again.

Rather curious by the double notification, he swiped open the device’s interface.

-

[Wallet Notification]

You’ve received $25.00 USD from XXXX.

Previous Balance: $171.00 USD

Current Balance: $195.00 USD

Thank you for using SwiftPay.

-

[Bank Alert]

Incoming Transfer:+$672.00 USD

Sender:Haute Cuisine Restaurant

Reference:Bi-weekly Staff Payroll

Status: Completed

Previous Balance: $666.00 USD

Updated Balance: $1338.00 USD

-

Asides from the $5 iced tea he’d bought for his father a few days back, Aiden hadn’t spent a single dime of his money thus far.

Seeing both notifications at the same time though, his mind totaling both into an impressive $1533, his mood peaked.

If he kept this momentum going for the rest of the summer break, he was certain he’d not only hit the $5000 mark his quest had set for him, but equally also surpass it by quite a bit.

With a pep in his step, he made his way downstairs to meet up with his father and inform him of it.

Still, asides from being motivated to keep working harder at Haute Cuisine, Aiden was also looking forward to the quest his system might spring up on him a day from now.

Afterall, he doubted the quirky, secretive little thing he just couldn’t prove was sentient, already had something in store for him.