Ling Zhao looked at what she had on hand. Her highest priority right now was to hire an employee.
“The reason I was given ten employee recruitment notices is… because I might get rejected?” Ling Zhao asked, rubbing her chin. “Are these employees drawn from a gacha pool, or are they people from this world who can actually apply?”
【Recruitment notices can be purchased through the system and distributed within a selected area. Depending on your company’s reputation, different employees will apply. There is a very high degree of randomness.】
【Gacha employees are mission rewards. They cannot be directly recruited, but they can be specially customized.】
Her company’s current reputation was zero.
In other words, almost all the people who applied would probably be mediocre at best.
More likely, no one would come at all.
Ling Zhao lightly tapped the desk. “How large is the area?”
【The areas currently available for you to choose from are as follows: Lingfeng Town, Qingshui Residential Community, Auto Repair Shop Camp, Supermarket Survivor Settlement…】
Apart from Lingfeng Town, which was slightly larger, the remaining areas were all very small.
Ling Zhao thought about the difference between the recruitment pools.
It was the wasteland, after all…
Even by common sense, it was obvious that the larger a survivor community was, the harder it was to maintain. Naturally, they would also have a higher chance of having good employees.
As for those small communities, judging from the places she had seen so far, she didn’t know how many had already been blown away like dust in the wind.
“In that case, there is no doubt about who my first employee should be.”
Ling Zhao pulled out one recruitment notice, then took out the other nine and held them up.
“I invite you, my system.”
“You’re the closest person—or rather, existence—to me, and no matter how I look at it, you have the greatest potential to become an employee. My B15 level happens to be without an AI right now. Would you be interested in taking over and becoming my assistant?”
【You really are… If you wanted to invite me, one would have been enough. Why did you take out nine?】
“I’ll give you nine chances to reject me. You’re worth that price.”
Ling Zhao used a metal clip she had found to pin her long hair behind her head, tying it into a ponytail.
“And the last one is the safety net I’m keeping for myself.”
【I’m not suitable for a newly established shelter company.】
The taciturn entity let out an unsurprised sigh.
【Your operating costs will include the energy required for my computational processing, and those costs will increase as my computational workload increases. If I’m not your employee, you won’t need to pay those costs.】
“But you won’t give me your absolute best.”
Ling Zhao raised an eyebrow and smiled faintly.
“What I want is for you to assist me with everything you’ve got, rather than simply watching from the sidelines—waiting for me to die before going off to find your next host. If that’s how things are going to be, then to you, I’m no different from any other carbon-based life-form in this world.”
“Guide me, teach me, remind me. Then I’ll digest everything you teach me and turn it into nourishment for myself.”
Until I surpass you—I will keep you aboard my ship.
Ling Zhao gently curled her hand into a fist and pressed it against her chest.
“I’ll become your boss, your student, and your most special host.”
The kind of employees she could hire would almost determine how she could begin.
So what could possibly be better than the system itself?
She only wanted the best.
“Become my employee. I’ve chosen you.”
Ling Zhao raised the nine recruitment notices and watched as one of them slowly faded away in midair, inch by inch.
【…I don’t have a name with which to sign an employee contract with you.】
“I’ll give you one.”
Ling Zhao tilted her head and looked upward. The white light illuminated her face, giving her a solemn, almost baptismal appearance.
“Sistem. That’s what you’ll be called.”
The nameless system—now called Sistem—signed its own name.
For some reason, being chosen by this person gave it a strange feeling.
Because this person only wanted the best…
And to her, it was the best.
This was a form of “affirmation” that belonged solely to it.
Among countless numbered systems, it was now different.
【Your first newbie mission has been completed. Reward obtained: 10 draws.】
“Mm.”
Ling Zhao immediately opened the roulette wheel and looked at the dazzling assortment of goods displayed on it.
“What is the difference between drawing from this and opening a business project myself?”
【The draw covers your entire range of selected business projects, rather than only the projects you have currently unlocked.】
Ling Zhao understood.
Drawing meant she could obtain things far beyond her current level of development, while the latter would only allow her to progress step by step.
“Draw.”
Weapons, armor, food, energy, clothing, minerals, technology…
Ling Zhao watched as the sections of the wheel lit up one after another, then went dark one after another.
【Draw complete. You have obtained: One box of small bread (30 pieces), a holographic module for leadership speeches, one box of Nuka-Cola (30 bottles), 500 g of salt, a music album by an idol from before the wasteland era, one stationery and journal set, one broken desk lamp, one half-empty lighter, Wasteland Shelter Pest Control Guide, and one Sentinel-I General-Purpose Patrol Robot (55% battery remaining).】
Ling Zhao designated all the supplies to be delivered to B18, into her own storage room.
She cleared out one room in her living quarters to store all these things. As for the corpse, she would deal with it later.
There were still eight recruitment notices left.
Ling Zhao rubbed her chin.
If she used them appropriately, could she perhaps use them to make a trade?
“Choose the nearest location to distribute them. Which place do you recommend the most?” Ling Zhao asked casually.
【Here.】
“Hm?”
Ling Zhao looked up in surprise.
【Right here. Noah Shelter Company.】
She watched as the screens in the control center lit up one by one. The radar showed several figures appearing in the distance. They were heading toward the shelter.
“Looks like we have guests.”
She narrowed her eyes and slowly said, “Nicely done, Sistem.”
The screen in front of her displayed the condition of the shelter. Among the surveillance cameras that were still operational, one particular feed caught her attention.
【I have taken over the shelter’s system. You can now use it to perform more detailed operations on the shelter and your employees.】
Ling Zhao studied it for a while and discovered that the system was essentially similar to a management simulation game app.
She could modify the shelter’s layout, post recruitment notices, issue orders to employees, and check their status—although the latter currently had no targets.
There was also a series of technology trees that she could unlock through upgrades. This was actually her scope of operations, but Ling Zhao didn’t know what else to call it, so she simply called it the technology tree.
“Is it real-time feedback?” Ling Zhao asked, rubbing her chin.
【It is timely feedback.】
Ling Zhao tried posting a recruitment notice at the shelter’s main gate—the entrance to the external fortress.
The next second, she indeed saw a white object appear on the gate through the surveillance feed. It looked particularly conspicuous.
As long as she was willing to spend energy, Ling Zhao could also make simple adjustments to the interior space, as well as perform operations such as opening and closing doors.
So, when she had nothing else to do, she could play The Sims and Stardew Valley and do some interior decorating?
The employee operation panel was completely grayed out. She would have to wait until she actually had employees before she could use it.
Ling Zhao kept the remaining eight recruitment notices.
With one posted at the main gate, that should be enough to attract people over, right?
【Recruitment notice is now active. Time remaining until expiration: 23:59:59…】
【A wandering squirrel has been attracted by the recruitment notice…】
【A wandering wastelander has been attracted by the recruitment notice…】
【A wandering Night Demon has been attracted by the recruitment notice…】
…
Upper Levels of the Shelter, Lush Forest Area
After a grueling day’s journey, a group of wastelanders finally reached their destination as dusk fell.
A shelter that was supposedly out of energy—
This was the favorite kind of place for every faction in the wasteland.
Usually, they could find treasures inside that people during the disaster era would never even have dared to imagine. Sometimes, they could even capture shelter employees.
Those soft-skinned, delicate-looking people who knew all sorts of things were hard currency in many places.
There weren’t many people in the group, only six, and only three of them carried guns.
They came from Lingfeng Town, a small settlement on the edge of the forest.
These six people represented half of the town’s armed forces.
Lingfeng Town was called a town, but in reality, it was probably no larger than a village. The entire settlement consisted of several villas and a small abandoned residential area, with only around three hundred people.
One hundred and ten years ago, meteorites fell from the sky.
Afterward, the world was destroyed.
It was said that when the meteorites first fell, many megacorporations and companies had built shelters for themselves. Over the long years that followed, some of these shelters disappeared, while others erected towering walls separating people according to their social class.
Now, all survivor settlements existed under the protection of shelters. These shelters were relics left behind by the previous civilization, and regardless of their number, they were all guarantees that people could survive.
Lingfeng Town had no shelter of its own. They had been trying to enter the jurisdiction of Shelter No. 199, but Shelter No. 199 had no interest in this rundown place that had no noteworthy specialties.
Without a shelter backing them and providing essential supplies, they were just like all the small towns on the wasteland that could disappear at any moment—mere blades of grass. They might die in winter, only for new ones to grow again in spring.
The reason the mayor of Lingfeng Town had become its mayor was because she had discovered the basement of a villa. The large stockpile of supplies left behind by its former residents had become her first capital.
Now that she had learned of a shelter that might have run out of energy, the mayor planned to claim the place as her next base if they were lucky. If there was nothing useful inside, she would simply offer the shelter’s coordinates to Shelter No. 199 in exchange for getting Lingfeng Town onto the list of settlements under its protection.
“We’re finally here!”
The first person to climb up the slope was a girl wearing a hat. Rather than carrying the long rifle on her back, she was practically dragging it behind her. Both of her legs were wrapped in bandages that had already turned gray, with firm muscles visible beneath them.
Bei You put on her glasses and adjusted the focus to look into the distance. She spotted a patch of gray among the jungle.
“That’s it!”
“What a shame…”
Another member of the exploration team walked over to her. He had a prominent nose and wore a mask that covered half his face. A pair of delicate-looking eyes could be seen through the gap between his mask and hat.
Like all wastelanders, he was wrapped up from head to toe, but his equipment was clearly of much better quality.
“This should be quite a luxurious shelter,” the scholarly-looking guide said.
He pointed toward the exterior camouflage he could see. Now that the shelter had run out of energy and could no longer maintain its camouflage, they could see that it was an enormous fortress-like structure, several feet taller than the mayor’s villa.
“Just the fortress around that entrance is worth quite a bit.”
“If this shelter were still operational, that woman, the mayor, wouldn’t even need to beg Shelter No. 199. She could just move here directly.”
The captain nodded as well. After a moment, he grinned.
“Hey, outsider, how does this compare to the shelter you were fired from before? Don’t tell me this is the one you used to work at?”
“I don’t know. I need to go inside and take a look first.”
The guide, Lin Xiao, paid no attention to the man’s teasing. He answered seriously, “Without seeing the actual thing, I can’t make a judgment.”
Lin Xiao carefully surveyed the surrounding area.
His first priority was to make sure there weren’t any other dangerous creatures nearby. Otherwise, if they encountered danger inside the shelter, their retreat could easily be cut off by something else.
Whether it was a Mutant Species or a Mutated Creature.
Both Mutant Species and Mutated Creatures appeared only in highly radioactive environments. Once they entered an area like this, the radiation would make things extremely difficult for them.
The presence of either one would prove that the shelter was quite dangerous. No matter how much the mayor paid him, Lin Xiao wouldn’t go in under those circumstances.
“Tch, what a show-off.”
Watching Lin Xiao walk away, the captain curled his lip.
“He’s so serious all the time. Won’t even take a cigarette or drink alcohol. Dogs from those companies really are easy to raise.”
“Heh, serious? He’s just stingy.”
Bei You, who was wiping her glasses beside him, said, “He even retrieves every bullet he fires.”
Tang Yuan, cigarette dangling from his mouth, was much more respectful toward the only sniper in the entire town. He asked, “Why are you cleaning your glasses right now? Are they broken?”
“A little.”
The girl nodded. She put the glasses back on her face.
They were a piece of equipment of unknown ownership—probably already several owners removed. They could calculate things like a sniper rifle’s firing range and wind speed.
She treasured anything that helped her make a living.
Tang Yuan immediately became nervous.
“What do we do then? What’s broken?”
“I think there’s definitely something wrong with this thing.”
Bei You sighed.
She had a pair of round, almond-shaped eyes that looked especially clear when she was puzzled.
“Otherwise, why can’t I see how many nuts I have in my pocket?”
Nuts were the currency used by Lingfeng Town and all the towns surrounding Shelter No. 199.
One hundred and ten years ago, there had been a nut-processing factory near Shelter No. 199, which had stockpiled huge quantities of nuts in various sizes and specifications. Because they were difficult to counterfeit and there was a massive reserve of them in the region, they had become a regional currency.
Now, nuts circulated throughout Tianshui City.
“…”
Tang Yuan was speechless.
“Could it be that your pocket has a hole in it?”
“Ah!”
The girl cried out in a muffled voice.
“I’m doomed! What am I going to do? At this rate, I won’t be able to save enough money for the winter! There’s no way that old bloodsucker, the mayor, is going to hand out firewood for free!”
“Keep your voice down. If I hear you say that again next time, I’m telling the mayor.”
Tang Yuan glanced irritably at the sun, wiped away his sweat, and cursed under his breath.
“Damn, it’s hot!”
Every year, before winter arrived, the people of Lingfeng Town had to pay a firewood tax to the mayor.
When the weather became coldest in winter, the mayor would distribute the wood, then charge everyone a small “storage fee.”
At those words, Tang Yuan’s expression also grew heavy.
Because this year, the mayor had changed the firewood tax from being charged per household to being charged per person.
He looked into the distance.
The autumn wind was already swirling through the air, carrying fallen leaves away.
But he still didn’t know where he would spend the coming winter.
…
Lin Xiao found the entrance to the shelter within the outer fortress.
Not all shelters were created equal.
It was said that before the destruction of the world, there had been nine major megacorporations. Nearly every shelter built by those nine corporate giants possessed technology and a scale far beyond their era. Calling them priceless would not be an exaggeration. In fact, almost all large-scale survivor bases in existence today had been established on the sites of shelters built by those nine megacorporations.
As for the shelters built by scattered companies and small or medium-sized enterprises, sometimes the cost of maintaining them wasn’t even worth what could be gained from them.
In this era, when few people could even read, there were still quite a few who recognized the logos of the nine major megacorporations. As long as someone could confirm that a shelter belonged to one of the nine giants and report it to a reasonably trustworthy shelter nearby, they could generally obtain enough wealth to last a lifetime.
One of those megacorporations, called Ultimate Energy, had constructed the largest number of shelters. More than three hundred had been discovered so far.
He didn’t know whether this was one of them.
When Lin Xiao stepped through the gate and looked around at the most obvious places, however, he was disappointed.
The symbols of those megacorporations had been a form of deterrence even back in their own era. They would never hide their marks in inconspicuous places.
This shelter bore no megacorporation insignia, immediately cutting its value in half.
If it weren’t for the obviously enormous cost of constructing it, Lin Xiao probably wouldn’t even have bothered searching for the entrance leading underground.
This shelter had clearly been abandoned for quite some time, and the people who had left had most likely stripped it clean.
Collapsed tables and chairs, rotting cabinets, shattered glass windows, and vines crawling into the building from outside…
The floor, untouched by anyone else and bearing only his footprints, all proclaimed the same thing.
This was a shelter that could no longer operate—one that had been almost completely abandoned.
But he still had to take the mayor’s confidants with him and personally go down to inspect it.
“How is it?”
Tang Yuan entered through the gate from outside.
As the captain of Lingfeng Town’s militia, he and Lin Xiao had not gotten along ever since Lin Xiao arrived—though, in truth, it was entirely one-sided on Tang Yuan’s part.
Lingfeng Town was a small place. Every winter, when the mayor went to Shelter No. 199 to escape the snowstorms, apart from her family, she would bring only one trusted subordinate.
In previous years, that person had always been Tang Yuan.
But now, there was an additional Lin Xiao.
This gave Tang Yuan an unnecessary sense of crisis, so naturally, he couldn’t bring himself to be friendly toward Lin Xiao.
In previous years, he wouldn’t have had to worry about things like fuel.
Tang Yuan rubbed the mud off his boots against the ground and pinched his nose impatiently.
“Have you found the way down yet? You’ve been messing around for so long that we’re practically getting bitten to death by mosquitoes outside.”
Every year, there were always a few people who died from mosquito bites in the wasteland. It wasn’t unusual.
The reason every one of them was wrapped up like a ball despite the thirty-degree-plus heat was precisely to avoid suffering all kinds of wounds.
The gates opened, and the group filed inside one after another.
The gray squirrel was startled by the people entering and quickly fled through a window.
Following the direction from which it had come, Lin Xiao discovered a clearly visible hole behind it.
The light streaming through the main entrance had noticeably dimmed, signaling that the sun was about to set.
They had spent too much time getting here.
They could only spend the night here.
The wasteland was far, far more dangerous at night than during the day.
“I don’t really recommend staying here for the night. It would be better to head back the way we came.”
Lin Xiao looked toward the place where the gray squirrel had emerged. There was a passageway hidden behind a collapsed filing cabinet.
The wastelanders moved the cabinet aside, producing an ear-piercing scraping noise.
Lin Xiao frowned but said nothing.
“There seems to be something on it.”
Lin Xiao spoke, his tone becoming somewhat strange.
The thing above them was simply too normal.
So normal that it actually made him feel a little uneasy.
On a door deep underground, he saw something that looked as though it had just been pasted there…
A sheet of pristine white paper.
There was even the faint smell of fresh ink.
Lin Xiao narrowed his eyes.
Written on it were the words—
[Noah Shelter Company Is Hiring]
Lin Xiao tore down the strange recruitment notice. Just as he was about to speak, he heard a beast-like roar.
The surveillance camera in the corner flickered for two seconds, capturing the cigarette butt dropped by the lookout and the terrified expressions that appeared on everyone’s faces as the alarm sounded.
“Night Demons!! There are Night Demons nearby!!”
At that moment, the sun withdrew its final rays of light.
Author’s Note:
I forgot to mention that the gender ratio of the female protagonist’s employees is fifty-fifty. There are both men and women.
They’re all just workhorses.
Also, all the profanity in this novel has been processed through the Cat Kingdom™, so everything is along the lines of “meow damn it” or “for the love of meow,” but there won’t be much of that. (Author runs away. Author runs back.)