Free Web NovelChapter 235: Chapter 203: Sir Gordo Craig (2)
The spacious hall quickly fell silent.
"Hello, we’re..." Big Mo was about to introduce themselves.
"The Morris Brothers, I presume."
A servant emerged from the shadows, pushing Gordo, who was seated in a wheelchair.
He looked a bit unkempt, not at all like a nobleman of high standing.
Messy hair, a messy beard, and a face etched with exhaustion.
If not for the expensive-looking wheelchair he was sitting in, it would be hard to believe this sloppy middle-aged man was a member of the Craig Clan.
"Sir Craig, I’ve always heard you enjoy helping homeless children, but I never imagined you’d take such good care of them. That was honestly the most beautiful choir I’ve ever heard. You’re truly a kind and good man."
Big Mo had barely listened to a few choirs in his life.
But facing a potential investor, he decided to employ every flattering technique he had ever learned.
Praising someone’s work or hobbies was usually more effective than praising the person themself.
It was a new little trick of flattery he’d picked up.
"What if I told you these children are actually being raised to satisfy the special perversions of powerful people?" Gordo suddenly interjected.
The atmosphere instantly became awkward. Big Mo froze, unsure of what to say.
The silence lasted for a full thirty seconds.
"Hahahaha, just kidding! Look at the shocked expression on your face." Gordo laughed until he started coughing.
"These children are my treasures. I want them to become big stars, or at least be able to support themselves without having to work as child laborers in factories."
"Oh, you were joking. You scared me. I knew Sir Craig wouldn’t be that kind of person." Big Mo let out a sigh of relief.
’If he was telling the truth, I definitely wouldn’t have continued this partnership. If the investment is gone, it’s gone. Once the player is made, I’m sure I could find someone else willing to back it.’
"Don’t be so tense. I was just telling a joke to help you relax. No need to keep calling me ’Sir.’ Just call me Gordo." Gordo said, extending his right hand.
Big Mo quickly reached out and took it.
"Ah, my hand!" Gordo’s face twisted in pain.
"Huh? What’s wrong?" Big Mo tried to let go, but found his hand was being held in a tight grip, impossible to pull away.
The tighter the grip, the more panicked he became. He gave a sudden, frantic tug, and then stared in disbelief as Gordo’s hand came off along with his own.
"No, this... I..."
At a loss for what to do, it was Xiaomo who pointed it out. "Brother, it’s a fake hand."
"Huh? A fake hand?"
"Hahahaha!" Gordo burst out laughing again. "Got another one! How about that? My prank was pretty good, wasn’t it?"
After two scares, Big Mo was a little stunned.
"It’s a shame this trick only works on people who don’t know me. Anyone who does knows I can’t move my right hand. To be precise, I haven’t been able to move it since last year."
Gordo said it in a completely casual tone.
Big Mo didn’t know what to say. ’Do all rich people think this strangely?’
"So you’re Little Morris?" Gordo turned his gaze to Xiaomo, who was standing to the side.
Xiaomo didn’t reply, just nodded. Except when he was with his brother, he always came across as withdrawn.
"Incredible. To create that... what was it, the Inscription Prediction System, at such a young age. It put several Inscription Masters in our family out of a job, just like that."
"Sorry." Big Mo quickly apologized on his brother’s behalf. No matter the reason, it was never wrong to apologize first.
"No need to apologize. It’s not your fault for creating something that pushes progress forward. On the contrary, it’s a great contribution. As for how to minimize the negative impacts of new things, that’s something for people like us to worry about. Though, it’s pretty obvious that people like us aren’t very human either."
Although Gordo’s tone was very light, Big Mo couldn’t help but feel he was incredibly pessimistic. Beneath the jokes was a heart filled with despair.
But Big Mo could understand. If he had the same illness, he would probably be even more depressed.
"Let’s see what you’ve made."
Big Mo hurriedly handed over the adjusted player, and the servant behind Gordo received it with both hands.
"What content did your brother put on here? As far as I know, as an employee of the Zog Group, any work he produced during his employment would have its copyright tied to the Zog Group."
"I didn’t put any content on it," Xiaomo answered first.
"Ha, I like you," Gordo said.
Big Mo walked over to the servant and said, "Let me explain how to use this."
But Gordo shook his head. "I think a good music player should be intuitive enough for anyone to use without instructions."
"If we put it into production, it will come with a manual."
"Trust me, not many people read those seriously," he then said to his servant, "You give it a try. Don’t worry, just play around with it. But... why does this thing smell a little burnt?"
Gordo sniffed the air quizzically.
Big Mo’s eyes darted toward the ceiling, trying to hide his nervousness.
The servant turned on the player. It was a rectangular block, ten centimeters square and five centimeters thick.
When activated, it projected an Illusion display window. For Big Mo, using Illusion Technique was more familiar than using a screen.
The player defaulted to the Red Middle Network’s music platform.
This was a platform still in its trial phase. The number of music tracks wasn’t large, consisting mainly of works by the Underground Discard, as well as various film and game soundtracks from the Zog Group.
It didn’t have many users, because it was, by far, the platform Zog had released with the highest barrier to entry. To use it, you not only needed to know Illusion Mimicry, but also audio magic to play the music content yourself.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t still be in a trial phase.
Big Mo’s project was meant to solve the problem of most people being unable to use this platform.
In fact, the Zog Group was also working on solving this issue internally. But due to a severe lack of production capacity and the existence of many projects with higher priority than listening to music, this one had been scheduled for much later.
Gordo had keenly spotted this gap in the market and was preparing to make a killing.
The servant was about to log into his own account.
Gordo interrupted, saying, "Just log in with mine. My account has a membership, so you don’t have to listen to ads."
He then directly recited his account name and password, not bothering to have the Morris Brothers step away or anything.
"Zog really knows how to do business. They say all the music on the platform is free to listen to, but you only find out after you’re in that there’s a thirty-second ad before every song. If you don’t want to listen, you have to pay up."
Gordo hadn’t actually told the whole story. Besides the ads at the beginning, there was also the "extremely vicious" watermarking of the chorus, which would annoy you right when you were enjoying the song the most.
And the music platform’s membership was divided into many tiers.
The lowest tier got rid of ads, but had a daily listening time limit. Exceed the limit, and the ads would start playing again.
The next tier up was permanently ad-free, but the audio quality wasn’t the best. To unlock high-quality audio, you had to pay more.
Although most people weren’t sensitive to audio quality, and in reality, the difference wasn’t that big—far less than the difference caused by varying skill levels in playback magic.
But the very idea of a "higher tier," regardless of what it offered, had already perfectly captured the aristocrats’ specific desires.
Gordo was a supreme member of the highest tier.
In addition to top-tier audio quality, it also came with a cool avatar frame in the comment section, a dazzling title, and the privilege of sharing a designated song with a certain number of people for free.
This led to people messaging him every day, begging him to share songs.
It was annoying, but he didn’t block the messages, because it was also very satisfying.
The servant fiddled with it for a moment and successfully played a song.
It was one of the Underground Discard’s representative works, "Still Waiting."
The powerful, distorted strumming of an Arpeggio Harp rang out. Played through this burnt-out player, the timbre sounded cheap, but unexpectedly, it had an even more punk feel to it.
However, Gordo clearly wasn’t a fan of this kind of music and motioned for the servant to skip to the next song.
It didn’t take long for him to figure out all the player’s functions: selecting tracks, saving favorites, and even caching some tracks on the Magical Device to play when not connected to the network.
"Not bad. I have two suggestions for improvement. First, you could add an option to adjust the timbre. Second, there needs to be a way to listen to music without others hearing it. Any ideas?"
"Uh, not at the moment."
"No matter. You can take your time to think about it."
"But now, I’m confident I can make the music show even better."
"A music show?"
"Yes, a music competition show in collaboration with the Zog Group. We’ll use the show to promote the player, and the player will in turn support the show. It can even make my children famous!" Gordo explained excitedly.
Big Mo didn’t think that kind of show sounded interesting at all, but he still put on a smile and nodded in agreement.
"But the Craig Clan... aren’t they on bad terms with the Zog Group?" Xiaomo suddenly muttered.
"Xiaomo!" his brother said nervously.
"Yes, the relationship isn’t great. But we’re a big family, aren’t we? If some of us are on bad terms with them, then some of us have to be on good terms. Otherwise, how would my nephew be able to give so many decommissioned Mechanical Armors to Zog?" Gordo replied.
"Don’t put all your eggs in one basket?"
"Ha, I like that saying. Who said it?"
"My boss."
"I think your boss and I are quite alike," Gordo remarked with a sigh. "Neither of us are very human."
