Before he’d taken a single sip of his drink, Lamplighter was left a little dazed by Alex’s directness.
A chance at redemption?
Not being purged by Vought Corporation?
It wasn’t that Lamplighter had never thought about what his life would be like after retirement.
The best case would be being quietly shelved, and they would absolutely never give him any opportunity to lean on old camaraderie from The Seven.
And now…
‘Is Homelander testing me?’
A jolt ran through Lamplighter’s mind, and a terrifying thought rose in his heart.
A sting operation.
If he really dared to agree to this…
“Don’t rush to give me an answer.”
“No one else will know about this conversation today.”
“But I think you’ll understand all of this very soon, and that I will be your last lifeline.”
“This is my phone number.
If you have any questions, just call it.”
“At the very least, I can let you truly live like a human being, and atone for your sins.”
As he spoke, Alex raised the wine glass in his hand, gestured toward him from across the table, then took a small sip.
Lamplighter numbly picked up his own glass and took a drink as well.
Homelander’s words left his head a complete mush; he had no idea at all what they were supposed to mean.
He understood only one thing.
And that was that the other man seemed to have no intention of getting rid of him.
“Thank you, sir.”
Lamplighter said his thanks reflexively.
“As long as you understand, that’s good.
If there’s nothing else, go on back for now.”
Alex said gently.
Hearing this, Lamplighter hurriedly rose to his feet, bid the two of them farewell, and left with hurried steps.
“This is someone you’ve taken a liking to as well?”
Queen Maeve toyed with the wine glass in her hand, her expression playful as she spoke.
“Hardly.
He just has some value to be exploited.”
“Value?”
“Remember what I told you before?
Just the two of us isn’t enough to pull this off.”
“Lamplighter may not be able to feel it yet, but once he truly experiences Vought’s methods, he’ll understand everything.”
“And the guilt in his heart will drive him to keep doing just deeds endlessly, to fill that emptiness…”
“So that’s why you had him come over tonight.”
“Exactly.”
“As long as someone’s willing to protect order, whatever their reasons or original intentions, I think it’s all acceptable.”
“In the words of that five-thousand-year-old ancient civilization, a gentleman is judged by his deeds, not by what’s in his heart.”
“I never would have guessed you’d be interested in that sort of thing.
But it doesn’t matter—I’m not interested.”
“Until you take concrete action, I won’t be getting involved in any of these things you’re talking about.”
After mulling it over for several days, Queen Maeve gave her answer.
“A carefully considered choice.”
Alex nodded in approval.
Queen Maeve was not him; she didn’t have that kind of overwhelming power, nor the ability to resist the virus.
She was willing to join in everything Alex spoke of, but only on the condition that he could truly accomplish the things in his plan.
Such as taking control of Vought Corporation.
“Don’t worry, that day isn’t far off.
It’ll arrive very soon.”
The matter with Lamplighter was nothing more than a small interlude.
But from this affair one could tell that Queen Maeve was still quite tempted by his earlier proposal—otherwise she wouldn’t have said these things.
And so, this time when Alex went out for a stroll at night, he simply brought Queen Maeve along with him.
To carry out hero activities free of Vought Corporation’s oversight.
For Queen Maeve, this couldn’t exactly be called a first time.
But even when there had been such occasions before, they had all been furtive, secretive acts—and very rare.
Going out together with Alex like this, so openly and aboveboard, not even bothering to change out of her combat suit before running off to fight evil and uphold justice—that was a first.
It was absolutely an impressive thing.
Only, compared to Queen Maeve immersing herself in the joy of truly being a hero, Alex was now feeling a bit excited.
If he wanted to earn a big haul of Hero Points, it would definitely have to come from a peace economy.
And over these past couple of days he’d wandered back and forth around the area many times, yet he’d seen no prompt about any region becoming his territory where he could reap Hero Points—which was very strange.
You had to understand, the area around Vought Corporation already had very good public security to begin with.
With quite a number of superheroes here, ordinary criminals wouldn’t be foolish enough to commit crimes in this place; at most, in the dead of night a few bold ones might come around to wander about.
This meant that turning this block into a peaceful zone to supply him with Hero Points should have been a very easy thing.
But for the past several days there had been no movement at all, which was rather disheartening.
Yet just now—
Bringing Queen Maeve along, he’d found two fellows in a corner sneakily trying to steal a set of bladed rims.
After giving them a lesson and tossing them off to the police station, an abrupt system prompt appeared before Alex.
[System Prompt: Peace Economy has been activated.]
[Vought Tower has been incorporated into your jurisdiction.]
Seeing this prompt that had suddenly appeared, Alex’s eyes lit up.
A new panel had conspicuously appeared within the system, and the content on the panel was precisely a map.
On the map, nearly all the regions were entirely gray.
Only one place had been lit up, and that was Vought Tower, not far from where he stood!
With a thought, he tapped on Vought Tower, and more detailed information appeared.
[Vought Tower]
[Permanent Staff: 7,741 people]
[Current Security: Stable]
Seven thousand seven hundred people?
Before, Alex had only known that the tower had a lot of employees, but he’d never really had any concept of exactly how many.
He’d never imagined that the number of people coming here to work every day would actually be this large.
With this many people, according to the algorithm given by the system, as long as things stayed stable, that meant an income of seventy Hero Points.
Earlier, after running all over the place for a solid hour, he’d only managed to scrape together this little—and now he could collect the money just lying down.
After studying it carefully, Alex thoroughly figured it out.
Within the system, the smallest unit of a peace economy region was the building.
Like Vought Tower.
Then came blocks, communities, administrative districts…
Of course, that was here in Manhattan; in some smaller places, towns where only a few tens of thousands of people lived would be even simpler.
As for what had puzzled Alex earlier—why there had been no movement these past few days.
That was because, in order for a region to become his “territory,” he had to make clear contributions.
At the same time, those contributions had to reach a certain proportion, enough to satisfy the requirement for stability.
Take Vought Tower: after Alex’s days of wandering about, he had completely stamped out that last bit of crime.
Only then was this building officially activated.
Looking at the brightly colored building on the map, Alex felt a flicker of delight in his heart.
If Vought Tower alone could provide this many Hero Points, then what about claiming this entire surrounding block—or even all of Manhattan?
‘The rich district really is heaven.’
Alex was filled with emotion.
____
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