ALL NOVEL Chapter 31: Exclusive Right
The celebration lasted until late at night. During the party, many adventurers crowded around Edward, trying to pry out information about the sequel to “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World.” Of course, Edward wouldn’t tell them anything. After using his identity as a grand mage to disperse the crowd, he quietly left the guild hall and silently made his way to the second floor of the adventurers’ guild.
About two hours later, when Edward came down from the second floor and saw that the hall was almost empty, he was surprised to find that the members of the filming team had not left yet. They were still waiting for him in the deserted hall.
“Why haven’t you left yet?”
In response to Edward’s question, Winry, who was helping with the cleanup, spoke first, “Lord Edward, We’re all waiting for you. After all, we won’t be seeing each other for a while after this. It’s essential to bid farewell properly at times like this.”
Just like on a modern film set, the crew Edward had assembled this time was only temporarily together. After all, the Durin Family still had debts to pay and couldn’t even support themselves, let alone a film crew. In this situation, once filming was over, everyone would bid farewell to each other and only reunite for the next shoot. It was inevitable.
“……”
Upon seeing the despondent expressions on everyone’s faces, Edward, who had been momentarily stunned, suddenly realized that he hadn’t discussed the future with them. So, with a wry smile, he slowly said, “I see, I forgot to tell you all…”
“Forgot to tell us? What do you mean?”
To Helena’s confusion, Edward just gave the poor mage girl a mysterious smile. Then, he took out a piece of paper with densely packed writing and said, “Yes, I forgot to tell you all. The Southern Adventurers Guild has signed a contract with me for the exclusive rights to broadcast and represent ‘KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World’ in the South. They will provide the screening venue, and the final revenue split will be 80-20, with us getting 80% and them 20%. The condition the guild leader gave me was that only the Adventurers Guild in the Southern Territory handle the screening.”
Indeed, this was what Edward had done in the past two hours. He had negotiated with the Southern Adventurers Guild in Nosrick City about the future screening of “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World.” They had finally established a complete contract, in which the Southern Adventurers Guild would be responsible for the screening and would receive 20% of the revenue after screening.
The term “responsible for screening” included venue setup, promotion work, and a lot of manpower and resources. In this case, they would only receive 20% of ticket sales revenue, which could be considered a very low price. In another world, it might even be considered absurd.
The reason the Southern Adventurers Guild did this was twofold. Firstly, they saw the potential of this new form of expression called movies. Secondly, the guild leader of the Southern Adventurers Guild was the first to see the changes this film would bring to the South!
There’s a term in the modern world called “influence.” When a movie is excellent, allowing people to immerse themselves involuntarily, viewers will identify with the protagonist as the story unfolds, even feeling compelled to do what the protagonist does, almost as if enchanted.
Although people in this world couldn’t understand this concept of influence, at least the guild leader of the Southern Adventurers Guild, after watching “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World” filmed by Edward, had the first thought: I want to become an adventurer!
Although he was already the guild leader of an Adventurers Guild, in such a high position, he felt even more eager to cast aside his boring duties and live a simple yet exciting life like the protagonist in the story. The source of this absurd situation was the so-called infectiousness brought about by the film and television stories. It was a terrifying power that could change a person’s values and influence a group of people’s interests.
The reason why this story filmed by Edward would have such terrifying infectiousness in another world where movies were not prevalent was naturally because this world was a genuine fantasy world.
Watching “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World” in another world, the audience saw a story of crossing into another world. Naturally, it lacked the infectiousness of turning fantasy into reality. After all, even if you were in the late stage of being a chuunibyou patient and wanted to cast a fireball spell, it was impossible. The intense infectiousness would gradually fade away due to the dull reality. However, in this world, casting a fireball spell wasn’t a fantasy if you were truly talented in magic!
Likewise, transforming a fireball spell into becoming an adventurer was the same. For the people in this world, being an adventurer was just a profession that existed around them, an easy-to-achieve chuunibyou goal.
Moreover, the most important thing was that becoming an adventurer itself had no threshold. Even the entry standards were thin as paper.
In such a situation, if “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World” was screened in the Southern Territory and became a hit, the result was self-evident!
For a long time, due to the occasional appearance of undead, the shortage of talent among adventurers in the South had led to a revolutionary change. There would be countless young people who voluntarily came to become adventurers because they watched “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World”!
Because he saw this point, even if he risked everything, the guild leader of the Southern Adventurers Guild would absolutely not let go of this opportunity and had demanded the exclusive rights to represent and broadcast “KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World” in the South at a price that Edward couldn’t refuse.
Upon hearing Edward’s explanation…
“Exclusive rights to represent and broadcast? What’s that?”
Aya’s words almost represented the thoughts of most people present, as these things were all fresh ideas coming from Edward, which were quite unfamiliar to these native inhabitants of the other world.
Seeing the surprised and puzzled expressions on everyone’s faces, knowing that these people couldn’t understand the profound meaning of his words, Edward finally decided to express his intentions in the simplest and most straightforward manner possible.
He slowly pulled out a magic crystal card issued by the Empire’s largest consortium and said, “A whole 5,000 gold coins. This is the first payment given by the Southern Adventurers Guild to secure the exclusive rights to represent and broadcast. It also serves as an investment for our next film. After the official release, the box office revenue will be calculated separately. Do you understand now? Our crew won’t disband, or rather, we’ve only just begun!”