Self-Summon [Demon Summoning/Evolution litRPG] Chapter 11: [1.11] Contractually Obligated Motivation (Part 2)

Read chapter 11 of Self-Summon [Demon Summoning/Evolution litRPG] by Drim on NovelPedia.

Angelica had already checked on her webcomic that morning, pleased with the amount of engagement she’d gotten from her double-release. And with her three banked chapters, she had the next week of releases covered. That meant she could focus on making some money, to further vindicate her choice of becoming a full-time creator and avoiding real work like a plague. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t willing to put effort in. It was more the nature of working for a company that Angelica definitely didn’t want to return to; the fake friendly smiles, the pretending to be busy to shirk all duties, the way her colleagues would absolutely backstab each other, herself included, just for even a shot at a promotion. It was disgusting, more demonic than anything she’d experienced thus far, and that was just a life she didn’t want to live ever again. So being a freelancer certainly fit her more. A few commission requests had piled up. And thanks to her new ability to force motivation upon herself, her output could be sped up greatly. She also imagined it would make it possible to remove her own artistic preferences from the equation, able to give the requestors something closer to what they wanted, rather than constantly being tempted to switch things a bit to suit her tastes. That was a bit of feedback she’d gotten regularly, and had lost her some repeat customers—adding or changing things to make them look objectively better, but they weren’t how her commissioners imagined them, so they usually weren’t thrilled. At the very least, she could keep her signature style, her soul of the art, so that would be enough. Unfortunately, her intake of requests wasn’t enough to sustain her entirely. Living was expensive, as was proven by the good deal of money she’d just spent on food and to even do laundry. Her savings was down to just over $100. A subject she’d been adamantly avoiding was performing the cost analysis on just how much money it would actually take for her lifestyle to be feasible. She had been caught up in both the denial and depression of her situation, but she wouldn’t ignore it any longer. Angelica didn’t know why she’d been fatefully hit with a book a few nights ago, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity given to her. She would use these new powers to secure the life she wanted and to prove her dreams weren’t unreasonable. And to spite Ms. Gate, but mostly her mother. Over the last few days, she’d accepted a bit more that her landlord's demands weren’t unreasonable, and she’d supplanted some lingering feelings towards her main authority figure. But still, she wanted to spite her nonetheless! Maybe there was a bit of a demonic side to her, after all. Fortunately, thanks to her actuarial background, such budgeting was trivial work for her, barely taking a few minutes once she put in the effort. Accounting for her rent—on a normal month when she wasn’t being double-billed—all necessary expenses for both herself and Cherub, phone bill, and just a teensy bit extra in case of emergency, she could survive soundly on $1,500 a month. But if she wanted to have any sort of real joys in life, $2,000 would be more reasonable. However, to reach the point she’d consider thriving and comfortable, not needing to worry about money, able to take breaks when and if she needed, Angelica would want to hit $3,000 a month. To break it down, that would be $100 a day, which frankly sounded manageable. One of the commissions waiting in her queue was for a bigger piece of art, a book cover, that the requestor offered $300 for. It would probably take her at least a day minimum, maybe two, possibly three if they requested a lot of changes, so that sounded about right. She was genuinely looking forward to it because it had a dragon where she could really let her mind run wild with the design, and also a car for some reason. The rest were all the usual smaller stuff, ranging from $20 to $75, but she could do multiple of them in a day. If she could just do c