The discussion continued for the entire day and Mark only returned home around 6 in the evening. He did not continue writing Solo Levelling, and instead changed his clothes and freshened up, before heading out to the hotel once again.
…
“I am sorry, Mister. Ms. Shaw is currently out. Do you wish to send her a message?”
“Yeah. Please give her this landline number and address. I’ve written my name on it as well; Mark Whitehall.”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you so much man,” Mark genuinely thanked the dude for being a helpful fellow, before leaving to return home and have a quick dinner. Then he pulled out his Solo levelling notebook and continued writing from Chapter 2.
[“Jason, Why are you so adamant on becoming a hunter? Fighting like this will only bring even more risks,” Lucy said with a downcast expression as she healed Jason’s wounds.]
[“Sorry.”]
[“I’m not doing this for an apology! I’m just worried,” Lucy’s expression darkened even more before she suddenly turned her expression to the others in the raid party as they slaughtered the D-Rank monsters, and thought to herself, ‘At least the raid is almost over.’]
[“Hey Jason… do you have a reason… to not quit being a hunter?” Lucy asked, slightly frustrated that Jason never once listened to her advice of quitting and living happily as a normal human.]
[“I- I’m just doing this for fun. If I don’t do this, I might just die from boredom,” he quickly made an excuse while hiding the real reason.]
While Mark was writing, he came across the section where Jason thought to himself, “I don’t have enough money. Soon, I even need to send my little sister to college. And, my sick mother, for my family. I’m going!” And Jason decided to go into the double-dungeon that appeared in the D-Rank dungeon.
This would bring them a lot of potential benefits, but the rank for the second dungeon was not known, so it was impossible to know how strong the monsters on the other side truly were.
‘Toretto would be proud.’
Then, Mark decided to end the writing session for the night and went to sleep.
…
The rest of the week continued like clockwork, with work involving mainly brainstorming the major plot line of the movie, and the backstories of the possible characters involved. During this period of time, Mark, who had been giving plenty of useful ideas, was given a personal character to create, just like all the other Junior Screenwriters.
Of course, these characters would be side characters at best, and only appear for a moment on screen at worst. But they would be there, so Mark naturally got to work on setting up the character he wanted to be part of the story.
Since most of the original characters were already in use, he simply decided to make an overzealous storm-trooper who was made with slight genetic defects. Not only is his face incredibly contorted so he never removed hi helmet, even during breaks, but he also yells out into the enemy phrases like “For the Emperor!” “Purge the heretics!” “My face is my shield!” “Abandon reason! Know only war!” “I will endure a thousand deaths before I yield!” “Die scum! No Prisoners! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” “If I am to die, I die standing!” “Burn the bodies! Sear their souls!” “Sanity… is for the WEAK!”
It was meant to be a comic character in an otherwise ‘dark side’ of the battle, but at the same time, to those who understood what it meant to drive someone to this extreme of madness, they would also understand the atrocities that occur even within the army of the Empire.
As for how much time the soldier would get to speak these lines… Mark was not sure, but he really likes the concept of having a Warhammer 40k mindset soldier in Star Wars.
Of course, this character was still a work in progress, but the idea of such an odd soldier for an otherwise faceless ‘bad-guy’ concept would be difficult to convince Kraig to accept. But he had a long time to do it, since the deadline for the submission of the rough draft was still a week out.
…
“Alright, with that, the vote for Mark’s character has concluded; with a majority, Mark, your character has been selected to be part of the script. We will still need to get Mr. Lucas’ opinion on it before submission, but for now we can add it.” Kraig nodded to Mark before turning to Silvia.
“Now, we will vote on Silvia’s character of having a slug alien be the main slaver on Luke’s home planet,” Kraig frowned and looked down at the paper in his hand, before nodding and continuing, “Jaba the Hut. All those in favour, raise your hands.”
Mark immediately raised his hand, and so did almost everyone in the room, much to the surprise of Silvia and Kraig. It appeared that the screenwriting group’s cooperation would be considerably smooth since everyone present likes each other’s ideas.
‘Perhaps this is why George Lucas interviews even interns like myself personally to make sure we fit in with his view of the world,’ Mark could not help but nod at the man’s foresight in such matters.
After the meeting for the extra characters, Kraig began assigning things to the people in the room. With the outline of the plot already completed, Kraig assigned the other with making a scene-wise outline, adding individual dialogue, adding descriptions and screenplay elements important to a finished screenplay, and proofreading, to the others. Then, Mark was handed the responsibility of using the typewriter to convert the hand-written script into a more appealing printed format.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
‘With this, I can also get practice on how to use type-writers more efficiently,’ Mark nodded to Kraig’s instructions and got himself set-up at the end of the table, where the proof-reader Kraig himself would hand him the text to be typed out.
…
Upon returning home, Mark decided to have some dinner before beginning his daily session of writing out a chapter of Solo Levelling. Well, he was closer to completing a previous chapter rather than starting a new one.
[“The door is nearly closed,” Mr. Alex sighed with a shocked and fearful expression as he finally realised that as people left the older, the door would close ever-so-slightly; perhaps another one of the games created by the owner of this god-forsaken dungeon, “It’s too late now, but I finally get what is going on.”]
[Mr. Alex grit his teeth for a moment before coming to a shocking decision, “You should all leave.”]
[“Mr. Alex!” Jason exclaimed as he realised what the middle-aged man was trying to do. He was going to sacrifice himself so that Lucy and he could escape.]
[“The Door won’t close as long as there is at least one person on this alter right? Go then! You two still have many more years to live. You have your entire lives left to live. Go on!” Mr. Alex motioned for the two to leave before realising something and turning to Lucy, sweat trickling down his face as dread filled his eyes.]
[“Ms. Weathers, can you heal Jason?”]
[Lucy collapsed to the ground just then, unable to move her legs as she looked around in confusion and fear, after all, she had seen those stone monsters kill so many of their party members, and was now facing a wall of them on all sides. “I- I can’t move my legs!” She exclaimed.]
[“It must be mana exhaustion. You used too much mana trying to heal Jason,” Mr. Alex sighed as his fears came true. Jason was heavily injured, to the point he was not able to even move properly, perhaps even see from all the blood pooling in his eyes.]
[“Mr. Alex, please take Lucy out of this place,” Jason requested after a short silence.]
[“I said I would stay!” Mr. Alex exclaimed.]
[“Then who will take care of Lucy!?” Jason yelled back with the little strength he had left, “There is no time! Go!” He yelled back, falling into a coughing fit near the end.]
[Mr. Alex looked at Jason with a sad expression, but then steeled his gaze and nodded, only to be interrupted by Lucy, “No! Jason! I would rather stay!”]
[Jason recovered from coughing and turned Lucy with a faltering grin that would make one pity him rather than anything else, “I promised to buy you dinner right? Once this was over?”]
[He raised a crystal to her, the light emanating from it reflecting on the streaks of tears running down her face, “Eat it first. I will get my payment once I return.”]
[“This isn’t the time for joke-“ Lucy was hid on the back of her with a controlled strike, causing her to lose consciousness. She was picked up and put over Mr. Alex’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, “I’m sorry, but there really isn’t much time left.” It was unknown if he was speaking to Jason or Lucy… or to his own conscience.]
[“Please take care of her,” Jason turned to the man with a tired expression from the bloodless.]
[“I will,” Mr. Alex nodded with sweat still rolling down his face, perhaps from the pain of having lost his arm, or from the decision to leave the weakest and youngest member of their exploration party as bait to allow himself to escape.]
[Jason watched them leave and sighed while breathing heavily, ‘At least… I’m the only one dying.’]
[“Heh… I would have at least got insurance if I knew this was going to happen. Mom would have been taken care of for a few years at least if that was the case.”]
[Jason noticed a sword behind him. It was the one left by Mister Alex after having his hand cut-off. “Hah… Hah… Since it has come to this, I will at least take one of you with me! Come!” Alex raised the sword feebly with trembling arms at the unsurmountable monsters in front of him. No, they were not monsters, they were forces of nature, unstoppable by mere humans like himself.]
[The closest soldier of stone, clad in thick stone armour and cracking the floor under it with each step, pulled its spear back, before launching it at speeds Jason could not even fathom. And then, he felt an intense pain unlike anything he had felt before emanating from his stomach, where the spear had penetrated straight through and into the stone alter behind him.]
[‘I don’t want to die! I son’t want to die! ‘Glad you are the only one dying?’ Stop lying to yourself! Liar! I don’t want to die! If… if only I had one more chance…’ Jason could no longer speak, but he saw as the other soldiers all raised their weapons as his body lay flat on the alter, like a turkey waiting to be carved into, unable to even move.]
[Then, all the colour from the surroundings faded, turning a combination of black, white and blue. A transparent screen appeared in front of Jason’s confused eyes.]
[{Alarm! You have the necessary requirements for the secret quest “Courage of the Weak”}]
[‘What is this?’ Jason thought to himself, his body still rapidly bleeding out and his vision slowly turning cold and dark.]
[{You have earned the right to become a “Player”. Will you accept?}]
[‘Earned? Accept? What is even going on?’]
[{You do not have much time. If you refuse, your heart will stop 0.02 seconds later. Will you accept?}]
[‘If… If I accept? I don’t have to die?! Yes! This chance… I’ll take it!’]
[{Alarm! Welcome “Player”}]
Mark dropped the pencil as he finished the chapter after two days of writing it, and interlocked his fingers before stretching out into the open air above his desk.
‘The plot for will not finally begin. But this should be enough of a hook to get people’s attention. Especially the phycological aspect of the entire event. Let’s try and complete Solo Levelling by the end of the pre-production of Star Wars IV: A New Hope’
‘Hmm, now that I think about it, originally, this movie was called just plain Star Wars, and was only changed after the prequels were set into production and the movie was rereleased or something. So why is it already like this?’
Mark spent a few minutes thinking about it before turning to a new page and beginning the next chapter. In total, he intended on completing the Solo Levelling novel in less than 200 chapters. The reason was simple. Compared to the original format, he had to compress a lot more in a single chapter in the new novel format. As such, the number of chapters would naturally reduce from the original 270 to less than 200.
This would also be something he should be able to fission while Star Wars IV: A New Hope was being written and pre-production was underway.
‘I wonder what Elise is doing?’ Mark wondered before heading into writing his novel.