The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

Chapter 268: Chapter 220: The Ringback Tone Business

"Lay-lo, lo-lay, lay-lo-lo-lay..."

In their dorm room, Galina was trying to imitate Susan’s singing style.

"Please, I’m begging you, just stop."

Uffie was on the verge of a breakdown. Ever since Galina was eliminated from the competition, she had become obsessed with practicing this singing style, all under the guise of ’learning from the best contestants.’

She would seize any free moment to hum a few lines, showing off the ’results’ of her latest practice session.

Yodeling really did give people the illusion that ’I could do that too.’

But as far as Uffie was concerned, there were basically no results to speak of.

"What? Is my impression that bad?"

Galina figured she was at least eighty percent as good as Susan. If she just performed it, she was sure to be a huge hit.

"How should I put this?" Uffie paused, choosing her words carefully. "Have you ever seen a donkey?"

"Are you saying I sound like a donkey?!"

Galina said, her cheeks puffed out in a pout.

"No."

"Hmph. That’s more like it."

"More like a donkey being whipped, to be precise." Uffie delivered the finishing blow.

"Aah! Take this!"

Galina let out a war cry and tackled Uffie onto the bed, her wicked fingers targeting Uffie’s armpits and the sides of her waist.

The room echoed with breathless laughter.

After the "fierce battle," Galina lay on the bed hugging a Bichu Beast plushie, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Am I really not good at singing?"

Seeing her best friend’s spirits were low, Uffie decided to temporarily set aside the virtue of honesty for the sake of their friendship.

"It’s actually not that bad. I was just joking with you. It doesn’t sound like a donkey at all."

"Oh, I’m not talking about my impression. I mean my own song, the one that got me eliminated."

"Your song... I thought it was pretty good."

Uffie recalled what had aired during the first episode. Even though the mentors hadn’t chosen Galina’s song, it had at least been broadcast in its entirety.

That was considered good treatment for the first episode. Many contestants’ performances were cut in half, and some were left with only ten-odd seconds of airtime.

To preserve the viewers’ experience, the truly ear-splitting parts were edited out. What was left, if not necessarily good, was at least upper-mid-tier.

Uffie actually quite liked Galina’s song. What was it the mentors had said? If she remembered correctly, their feedback wasn’t half bad.

The melody was nice, but it was too repetitive, lacking any real climax or variation. The lyrics were also a bit thin. It was fine for a short clip, but listening to the whole thing was tedious and eventually became grating.

For a song from the first episode, that was considered a pretty good review. Even Lady Roline hadn’t torn into it; she just said it was a shame, that it had the potential to be much better.

"It really was pretty good."

Uffie reaffirmed.

"Besides, didn’t you join the show to earn an appearance fee to spend on your games? You’ve earned the money, so you’ve achieved your primary goal. That’s great."

This was something Uffie had learned from her job at the corporation: of all the lofty goals set at a project’s outset, if you could achieve even one, it counted as a success.

"I did earn the money, but once you’re on the show, you can’t help but hope you’ll make it to the next round."

Galina said, her voice tinged with dejection.

"I really thought I’d go far on the show. Then I could finally shed the title of ’the Drama Guild Chairman’s granddaughter.’ Maybe then, when my grandpa went out, people would start calling him Grandpa Galina."

Having someone in the family who’s incredibly famous is a lot of pressure for the younger generation.

You’re always living in their shadow. No matter what you do, you’re constantly being compared, and if you’re not as successful, you’re mocked for it.

People tend to assume a genius’s child will also be brilliant, but reality is rarely so simple. Talent is difficult to inherit.

For society as a whole, this is a good thing. Ordinary families can sometimes produce world-class prodigies, while some once-illustrious clans may decline due to a string of mediocre heirs.

That might be true in principle, but Galina didn’t want to see her family decline on her generation’s watch. Among her peers in the family, her acceptance into Repin Academy already made her the most outstanding one.

Even if she only knew how to cast various fireballs, her siblings and cousins were even less accomplished.

There wasn’t much hope of making a name for herself in the Mage Realm with just big fireballs, so Galina had wanted to forge a different path and make her mark in the cultural sphere as well.

So far, it seemed she hadn’t made much of a mark at all.

"Oh, well, you’ve already succeeded a little bit then."

Uffie said suddenly.

"Oh, you don’t have to console me like that."

"No, I’m serious. You’ve succeeded, at least in one small way—regarding your grandpa’s nickname."

"Huh?" Galina didn’t understand what Uffie meant.

"Because my boss," Uffie explained, "he’s always called the Chairman ’Grandpa Galina.’ He got everyone else to start calling him that, too. Even his username on the company’s internal forum is Grandpa Galina."

"Hahaha!"

Galina burst out laughing. Just the thought of it was hilarious.

"Wait, but why?"

"It’s probably just one of Zog’s quirks. He calls Susan ’Elsa’s mom,’ and he refers to Astrid as ’that one from the Church.’"

"’That one from the Church?’"

"Yep. He just calls her ’that one from the Church.’ But not when any Church members are around, of course."

"He must really have it in for the Church, then."

"Maybe so."

Astrid was the only contestant besides Susan in the first episode to get a four-chair turn from the mentors.

Her online popularity was now also extremely high.

Second only to Susan’s.

No one had expected the Church’s Saintess to sing that kind of song, shattering the stereotype that all they did was chant scriptures and pray.

And she was a great singer with a great image, too. She had a fan club by the day after the show aired.

However, Galina suspected that the Saintess only being in second place was partly due to Zog pulling strings behind the scenes.