In his short web novel writing career, Aiden had realised that authors were far more connected with each other in web novels.
Writing for the same website, they would all have groups where they would talk with each other. As Aiden's stature had grown, he was also invited into one of these groups.
There, he had talked to a few authors but had found out that there were three types of authors. The first one that would try to be friendly with him just because his novel was doing good — The bootlickers.
The second one would act like they don't care about talking nicely and would be in their own space like 'Soulless', the top ranker and the third kind were the genuine ones that would talk about things nicely and won't have hidden intentions in their heart.
The third ranked author 'Dragon Eternal Sunshine' was the third kind.
He was a very talkative person and would often talk about how he had started out with web novels. During college and how he had stuck with it due to the money.
Aiden knew him much better than any other author, so he naturally asked him about the problem he was facing.
Using his pen name 'The Dreamer', he texted him.
[The Dreamer: Hey, Dragon, I need a bit of help.]
A minute later, the reply came.
It was fast but expected. 'Dragon Eternal Sunshine' was someone who was always in front of the screen. Either writing novels or reading one. He had no life outside this which Aiden always felt was a bit sad.
[Dragon Eternal Sunshine: What's up, Dreamer? Been a long time since we talked? I heard your novel is about to end? I'm reading it daily and you have done a great job.]
[The Dreamer: I have been good and yeah, it's ending. I just wanted to ask you something. Is there a way I could defeat 'Soulless'?]
Aiden went straight to the topic but there was no reply for a few seconds. It was only after a minute passed that a reply came.
[Dragon Eternal Sunshine: I have already tried a lot to be honest but it's hard to beat him. I thought you would be able to but I guess there's no way when someone is burning money to advertise his novels day and night.]
'? What ?'
Aiden thought about reading the whole sentence.
He had not seen any kind of for 'Soulless' novel on the website or anywhere for that matter.
He quickly asked what he was talking about.
[The Dreamer: What s are you talking about?]
A reply came soon after he asked that.
[Dragon Eternal Sunshine: Ah, it seems like you don't know but 'Soulless' does heavy marketing of his novel online by using ads. You are watching a video and the ad for his novel will start. Apparently, he had studied online marketing before this, so he's a master of knowing what type of people would read his novel. A few other authors tried it too but they failed as it was too much money to push for a web novel. They weren't making a profit.]
Reading the whole paragraph, several questions came to mind.
He understood that 'Soulless' was marketing the novel pretty hard and that's why he would always get new readers. But if the whole thing was not profitable, how was he able to keep doing it?
Was he earning that much from his published novels? Or was it something else.
There was only one answer that Aiden felt was the right one.
'He must be pretty rich.'
There was no other way around it. 'Soulless' was someone with a lot of money laying around and he didn't mind putting it in his novels until he could see them at the top.
From the start, he wasn't in it to earn money.
[The Dreamer: Thanks. I didn't know 'Soulless' had that much money lying around.]
[Dragon Eternal Sunshine: There are rumours that he's the son of some multinational company owner and other stuff. Anyway, I advise you to give up on thinking that you could beat him. It helped me and I'm very satisfied with my third rank these days.]
Being content with what you have achieved — That wasn't bad advice but Aiden's reply was completely opposite of it.
[The Dreamer: Thanks but I feel like I know a way to defeat 'Soulless'. An easy way actually.]
Saying that, Aiden bid goodbye to 'Dragon Eternal Sunshine'. The third ranked author was confused by Aiden's answer but he didn't try to think too much of it.
Finishing his talk, Aiden felt like it would be pretty easy to defeat 'Soulless' now.
His mindset had completely changed.
After all, if 'Soulless' could market his novel, then why couldn't he? Until now, Aiden had hidden his identity as writing <Archer's Ascension> was nothing more than a relaxing project for him.
Something that was away from the tag of Aiden Silvereye. With a new pen name, he felt like a different person altogether.
Moreover, he knew that if he revealed his true identity, then it wouldn't be fair with other authors. He wanted to compete fairly.
But now that his novel is coming to an end, he doesn't care that much.
Making his decision, Aiden opened up his Skygram account and linked his novel while making a post. He did the same with his Sparrow account.
In a few minutes, his novel spreaded to his tens of millions of followers.
***
'Soulless' was the son of a CEO of a big corporation. He had lived his entire life seeing the worst sides of humans.
From his father who was mostly absent to his mom who couldn't care less about her family.
But he always had money.
And he realised early that money was the best thing in the world. With that, he could do anything.
Throughout school, he was the most important person due to the amount of money he had. In college he was the only one driving Lamborghini and dining in five star hotels.
People were always attracted to him due to his lifestyle.
But it always felt lacking to him.
After all, he never truly felt like he was at the top. That people were looking up to him. He knew that people were just looking up to his money.
That's when he found out about web novels. Those have sucked him in and he knew after a few months of reading them that he wanted to write them.
At first, when he started, it was hard but he had a knack for it. So, he adapted very easily and he found good success with it but it wasn't at the level he wished for.
That's when he thought about boosting his novel by playing ads. Anyway, his father was more than happy to give him tons of money every month and there was no better use of it.
He had seen a sudden boost of readers coming to his novel and soon found himself becoming the top author.
Even an author with a better novel than his couldn't dethrone it.
After a few months of playing online ads to boost his sales, he became a master of it and the feeling of being at the top really captured his heart.
He could now flex about his rankings and novels to others. It didn't matter to him how he had reached there.
The only thing that mattered was that he was at the top.
It went on like two years as he defeated several other novels. A few authors complained that he was playing ads but it wasn't cheating. He was just using money for his novel to reach more people.
Though in the past few months, he did feel a bit scared as a new novel came in the market.
<Archer's Ascension>
It was a novel that appeared out of nowhere and reached the top ten in just a month. It headed straight for the throne soon but 'Soulless' was never going to let that happen.
He had to increase the money he was paying for the ads but it did work. After <Archer's Ascension> hit its peak and stabilised, he was sure that it wouldn't pose another threat to his top spot.
But he had never thought that the competition was far from over.
On a Saturday morning, when 'Soulless' woke up and opened up the website to check the rankings, he felt shocked to see it.
For a minute, he felt like he was seeing things.
He refreshed the page. Not once but five times but it wasn't a glitch. In front of him, his novel was not on the first place like everyday but on the second place.
<Archer's Ascension - 13 million views - 1st rank.>
<I'm the Son of the Villain - 13 million views - 2nd rank.>
The rank was decided on the basis of views and ratings and suddenly, <Archer's Ascension> had 13 million views.
He was sure that just last night, it only had 11 million views and in a fortnight, they have increased by 2 million.
'How is this possible?'
'Soulless' thought in his mind and at that moment, he suddenly felt his phone vibrate. He was suddenly getting a lot of messages.
