CHAPTER 204: THE NEW SINGING KING! [PART 1]

After entering the Seventh Training Room, Alex immediately skimmed through the list of challenges and shortlisted which challenges he thought would fit him perfectly.

"Singing King and Queen Challenge, Harmony Trial, Pitch Perfect, Battle Choir, Muse’s Call, Lament of Echoes," Alex muttered. "Yep. These challenges will do."

Without any hesitation, Alex entered and activated the Ranked Challenge.

When he was asked to select a challenge, he chose the most obvious choice.

"Singing King and Queen Challenge, please!" Alex, who had been a self-proclaimed karaoke king back on Earth, wished to attempt the challenge that was, in his not-so-humble opinion, made for him.

He already checked who the current singing Queen was, and it was none other than Astrea, who had accidentally pushed him in two different portals during the class allocation trials.

As soon as he picked the challenge, he found himself standing on a stage, as if he were going to perform to thousands of people.

A moment later, five fairies appeared and sat at the judges’ table.

"We will be grading your singing talent, human," a fairy with red hair said with a smile. "So make sure that you give us the best song!"

"All five of us will be judging your voice, and your score depends on how well you do," a fairy with orange hair commented.

"The maximum number of points that each of us can give you is 20 points," a fairy with blonde hair declared. "However, we have very strict requirements. Even the previous singing King only managed to get a score of 92 points from us!"

"So, do you have what it takes to be the next singing king?" A green-haired fairy smirked.

"Show us what you’re capable of, human!" The last judge was a blue-haired fairy with glasses. She was busy filing her nails as if she wasn’t taking this challenge seriously. "All you need to do is touch that crystal in front of you and think of the song that you want to sing. It will automatically play the instrumental for that song."

Alex had seen this orb before, so he knew exactly what to do.

He held it in his hands and thought of a song he liked. Instantly, the orb floated up, casting a gentle light over him.

As the melody filled the air, Alex began to sing right on cue.

"I don’t want another pretty face

I don’t want just anyone to hold

I don’t want my love to go to waste

I want you and your beautiful soul~"

When Alex had just sung the first line, the five fairies reacted strongly at the same time. They had goosebumps, not because the singing was that good but because they felt it was as if someone had aimed an off-key dagger straight at their hearts.

The lyrics of the young man’s song were really perfect. While they didn’t know if he wanted them, he had definitely come for their souls!

They were veterans of bad auditions—survivors of screechers, warblers, and the dreaded genre abominations.

But this?

This was on a different level.

The moment Alex got into his rhythm—if it could even be called that—an apocalyptic resonance echoed throughout the stage.

It must be hard to imagine, but it could be explained in simpler terms. Imagine if a banshee, a broken trumpet, and a dying goose merged into one cursed entity and used the young man’s throat as their vessel.

Exactly.

"AAAAAARGHHHH!" the winged redhead shrieked, diving under the judges’ table as if under aerial bombardment. "THE CURSED NOTE! HE HAS UNLEASHED THE CURSED NOTE!"

"My ears! MY PRECIOUS EARS!" the orange-haired fairy screamed, conjuring a pair of emergency earmuffs woven from cloud silk.

"Huh?! Are you—ARE YOU TRYING TO WAKE THE DEAD UP?!" yelled the blonde fairy, who was furiously scribbling something on a scroll.

The distress rendered her handwriting barely legible, but if you covered your ears and squinted you could make out something that probably read "My Last Will and Testament."

Meanwhile, the green-haired fairy had gone fully limp in her chair, eyes staring blankly into the abyss. "Mom...? Is that you waving at me from the riverbank? I still can’t go there now? But why? I miss you..."

Finally, the bespectacled fairy with blue hair was trembling. Her nail file was bent into an S-shape. "Who... Who am I? Where am I? What is this place?!"

The five fairies thought that things couldn’t get any worse than this.

They were wrong. They were very wrong.

When Alex got to the chorus, they felt as if they were witnessing the end of the world. But they weren’t exactly attentive witnesses either, because they were busy foaming at the mouth.

A few minutes later...

"Phew." Alex sighed after finishing his rendition of the song, Beautiful Soul, which was once a popular song back on Earth.

He was all smiles, satisfied with his performance. It seemed that his singing today was much better than before.

But remembering that he wasn’t the judge, he glanced at the judges’ table. There, he saw the five fairies with foam coming out of their mouths.

Confused, the young man blinked once, then twice, before calling out to them.

"Um, excuse me, ladies," Alex shouted. "I’m done singing. What’s my score?"

At the mention of the word "score," the five fairy judges slowly emerged from their various states of trauma.

Each one looked at the other, as if trying to understand what had just happened to them.

After confirming that all of them were in similar states—disheveled and somewhat soulless—they confirmed that what was happening wasn’t a dream.

It was a reality they were facing for the first time in their lives.

The five judges didn’t hesitate to input Alex’s score on their judges panel, which was then tallied to show the score the young man wanted to see the most.

The giant scoreboard behind the judges showed a big zero, which meant that Alex wasn’t even able to get a single point from any of them.

The young man stared at the scoreboard for nearly a minute, thinking that there must be some kind of delay. After all, he was so amazing, his score couldn’t possibly be zero.

However, when the number still didn’t change after a couple of seconds, he glanced at the fairies, who were all glaring at him.

"Um, my score, please?" Alex asked politely.

"That’s your score!" the red-haired fairy shouted. "Zero! Your score is zero! Halfway through your chorus, the stage tried to eject you from this domain, but your singing was so off-key, it lost the will to fight back!"

The orange-haired fairy took out some pills from her magical pouch and, with shaky hands, stuffed them quickly into her mouth, as if it was the only cure for the trauma that she had just endured.

The blonde-haired fairy, on the other hand, looked at Alex with an odd mix of concern and disgust.

"I used to believe that no one was truly tone-deaf," the blonde fairy began softly. "But you... you sang in a frequency only suffering understands. My ancestors just disinherited me in a dream. They said, and I quote, ’You let that into your ears?’"

"...I have reviewed over eight thousand vocal performances," the green-haired fairy said monotonously, clearly no longer able to vary her tone and pitch. "This is the first time I need a Cleric. I have been cursed. I am certain. A singing curse. I now fear lullabies. Babies crying sound better than you."

"I just want to clarify something..." the blue-haired fairy said, blinking. "That wasn’t a song, right? That was a summoning ritual, wasn’t it? Because halfway through, I thought I heard the cries of ten thousand goose honking in the afterlife, demanding that you join them on the other side."

Alex blinked because the fairies’ critiques made him think that they weren’t satisfied with his first song.

But that was fine.

It was just a warm up anyway!

"Very well. I’m done with my warm up!" Alex declared as he picked up the orb again.

The five fairies visibly flinched as his hand touched the orb, their expressions twisting in horror.

It felt like being stabbed by invisible swords of emotional damage as they watched, helpless, while the orb slowly floated upward, indicating that the young man had signed up to sing yet another song.

"S-Stop! Let’s talk this one out!"

"Oh my God! That was just a warm up?! Sisters, are we about to die?"

"He’s doing another one?! HE’S DOING ANOTHER ONE?! MOM, SAVE MEEEEE!"

The green-haired fairy’s body just convulsed as if she had a stroke.

"Dear mother of..."

The pleas and reactions of the fairies were drowned out by Alex’s singing voice.

The heavens wept.

Thunder and lightning echoed in the domain, as if finding Alex’s song to their liking.

The fairies screamed...

And then...

Only silence remained.