Ling Zhao silently thought to herself, Open the Character Panel.
【Ling Zhao (Chairwoman)】
【Star Rating: Unrated】
【Age: 27】
【Traits: Extreme Greed, Eye of Value Deconstruction, Chairwoman】
【Attributes: Strength F, Constitution E, Intelligence A, Agility F, Charisma A+】
【Skills: Execution MAX, Goal Setting LV9, Task Breakdown LV8, Deconstruction LV7, Research LV7, Birdwatching LV7, Fishing LV7, Wheelchair Driving LV6, Nutritional Porridgeology LV5… (Click to expand)】
The first thing she saw was her own abilities.
【Eye of Value Deconstruction: Everything in the world is reduced to its purest value in your eyes. You can predict the value trends of various things over a certain period of time. However, be careful not to become accustomed to measuring everything by its value.】
As for her other attributes, Ling Zhao wasn’t surprised. She had been frozen for so long, so there was no way her physical condition could be particularly good.
Once things settled down a little…
No. She couldn’t wait until things settled down. “Later” meant she’d never have the time.
She would start exercising for ten minutes tonight.
After adding physical recovery to her schedule, Ling Zhao went to look at Bei You’s attributes. That was when she finally learned Bei You’s name.
However…
Ling Zhao asked inwardly, “What are the respective upper limits for skills and attributes?”
【The upper limit for skills is LV10. Anything above LV10 is displayed as MAX. The upper limit for attributes is SSS, while the lower limit is F-.】
Ling Zhao nodded, ended her communication with Systerm, and looked at the attributes of the employee she had just recruited.
【Bei You (Sniper)】
【Star Rating: Three Stars】
【Age: 14】
【Traits: Purity, Focus, Wild Instinct】
【Attributes: Strength B, Constitution A+, Intelligence C, Agility B, Charisma E】
【Skills: Sniping LV8, Wind Direction Perception LV7, Optimism LV6, Frugality LV5, Concealment LV4, Iron Stomach LV4, Wasteland Cuisine LV2…】
【Employee Description: A pure yet lost wasteland dweller, a kite with its string tugged by the wind. She has no particular aspirations or expectations for life and simply muddles through each day. Her wish is to have a small gravestone after she dies. In a sense, she is also a blank sheet of paper. What kind of person can she become?】
【Expected Salary: Fluctuates around 300 Management Points per month.】
After looking through the panel, Ling Zhao discovered that the star rating had nothing to do with skills. Instead, it corresponded to the number of traits.
“Can the star rating be increased?” she asked. “I’ve noticed that the star rating corresponds to the number of traits an employee has. What’s the difference between traits and skills?”
【Traits are innate talents, while skills are abilities acquired through learning,】 Systerm explained. 【The highest skill level is MAX, which means reaching the pinnacle of mastery.】
【Traits, however, have no upper limit to what they can accomplish.】
“I understand.” Ling Zhao nodded. “So the star rating can only be used as a reference at most.”
Just like her own abilities.
She could even see the value of taking a person apart and selling them piece by piece.
She only glanced at that information before closing it, but it reminded her of something. There was certainly no shortage of organ-trading businesses in the wasteland. At the very least, she needed to know who these people were.
Ling Zhao looked at the nervous people sitting opposite her.
Sentry-I had timed things perfectly. They had just witnessed Ling Zhao activate the shelter’s defenses. Seeing the Night Demons turn into black ash beneath the shelter’s protective barrier had been extremely shocking.
The group had already become as timid as quails, and Ling Zhao could see that they were all much more restrained now.
Those fifteen minutes or so spent bathing had already changed their minds.
……
The survivors who had come for the interview looked at one another.
They saw the woman sitting in the chair. From the moment they arrived, she had been examining them with a scrutinizing gaze. Her sharpness under the lights was like the edge of a blade, seemingly peeling them apart layer by layer and leaving nowhere for any darkness to hide.
Before coming here, they had even planned what they would do if they successfully got hired.
The water here was so clean. If they brought a bucket into the shower every day, bathed for the full fifteen minutes, then spent the last few minutes filling their own buckets and carried the water outside, they could sell it for a huge sum.
No wonder this really was the legendary shelter said to be rich beyond belief.
The eyes of two of them had practically turned the color of nuts. As long as they could get in, they could already envision the life that awaited them—throwing their weight around outside and being treated like important figures.
And now, they had this opportunity.
All they needed to do was perform well.
This was a chance to rise to the top in a single leap!
Wastelanders didn’t tend to think very far ahead. They could only see what was right in front of them, and right now, they could see enormous benefits practically within reach—
As long as the person sitting opposite them nodded!
They didn’t know what an interview was, but they had already made up their minds to perform well.
It was just unfortunate that Tang Yuan and that outsider couldn’t tell them anything.
Once they got hired, they would definitely teach those two a lesson.
Hmph!
When they raised their heads and looked at the interviewer before them, however, they immediately became incomparably meek and respectful.
“May I ask when the interview will begin?” someone asked.
Then the interviewer spoke.
“The interview?” She gave a soft laugh. “Yes, there was indeed such a thing…”
“But…”
“There certainly was such a thing. I just thought you weren’t in a hurry…” She deliberately drew out her words.
“All of you are disqualified.”
“Therefore, the interview is over.” She continued, “As for the reason… I already told you. You were all late.”
“What?! Late? I didn’t want to be late! It’s all this robot’s fault! It clearly knew the time, yet it still led us around in circles!”
A tall, dark-skinned survivor instinctively shouted. But when he noticed that the well-informed Tang Yuan and the unfathomable outsider both looked perfectly calm, while he was the only one who had spoken up, he immediately shut his mouth.
He reached out, covered the mouth of the information clerk beside him who was about to speak, and glared fiercely at him, forcibly rearranging his own expression.
He was the carrier responsible for transporting supplies in the group. He and the man who had been dragged away by the Night Demons had carried most of their equipment. After that man was gone, most of his load had been redistributed among the others, but even so, he was still carrying the heaviest burden.
Fatigue easily made people irritable, especially after walking for so long.
Normally, they wouldn’t dare shout at an important figure.
But the luxurious bathwater had given them the mistaken impression that the person in front of them was unusually approachable and simply didn’t understand the wasteland’s rules.
“You received my recruitment notice, so you knew exactly what time the interview would begin, yet you still spent the full fifteen minutes bathing just for those few mouthfuls of water,” the woman said.
“With all due respect, if all of you had gone in to bathe at the same time from the beginning, you wouldn’t have been late even after finishing your showers.”
“As for my employee, I have its entire route recorded here. The extra distance it traveled to avoid the Night Demons…” Ling Zhao let out a derisive snort. “Heh. If it hadn’t taken that detour, you wouldn’t have made it here alive.”
“But you could clearly kill the Night Demons,” the man argued. At this point, he had simply decided to throw caution to the wind. “You could clearly have killed them, yet you still let them inside!”
“Because the moment you stepped into the surface fortress, my test had already begun,” Ling Zhao said. “My recruitment requirement is for combat personnel who can operate independently.”
Lin Xiao looked at the person sitting opposite him and felt a familiar spot on the back of his neck begin to ache again.
Such a familiar corporate style…
The Night Demons were actually nothing more than a test?
The others hadn’t noticed the girl’s condition earlier, but Lin Xiao had.
Just moments ago, bluish-purple veins had already begun appearing on her face, and her pupils were on the verge of losing focus.
Yet after injecting herself with some kind of substance, her condition had recovered.
This shelter really was strange in every possible way.
It clearly didn’t have many people, yet it possessed capabilities that even some medium- and large-sized shelters might not have.
“Do you know how much damage you’ve caused me?” the woman asked again. “Or perhaps you’d like me to keep you here and demand compensation?”
“If you want to become my employees, then at the very least, you need to demonstrate the appropriate value.”
She issued them their dismissal.
“Go. Leave.”
The corpses of the Night Demons still lay at her feet, those terrifying creatures gradually disappearing piece by piece.
No one felt that they were tougher than those evolved monsters among the zombies.
She sat there as though she represented the starting point of an entirely new life.
When she clearly rejected them, almost all the fantasies they had just entertained were shattered.
Two people left angrily, while the other two departed thoughtfully.
Bei You watched them leave, uncertain whether she should follow after them.
Tang Yuan, who was walking in front, looked back and noticed that someone was missing.
When he looked again, he saw her standing there blankly.
“Bei You, aren’t you coming?”
“Me…” Bei You didn’t know how to explain.
“She passed the interview.” The interviewer spoke calmly. “She is now my employee.”
“Ah… oh…” Tang Yuan opened and closed his mouth. In the end, Lin Xiao was the first to congratulate her, and only then did Tang Yuan awkwardly scratch his head and say, “Then… congratulations.”
As she watched their figures disappear into the distance, Bei You gradually became uneasy.
“What’s wrong?” The interviewer said. Then her gaze shifted toward the doorway. After a moment of thought, she seemed to understand. “You want to say goodbye to them?”
Bei You nodded, then shook her head. No matter how slow she was at dealing with people, she had noticed it just now.
For that brief moment, the way they looked at her had changed.
“I’ll give you a chance to say goodbye. I’m giving you your first task now.”
The black-haired woman pulled out a huge screen, projecting an incredibly clear surveillance image onto it. Black-and-gray humanoid creatures moved through the night.
“Take the ultraviolet desk lamp at the entrance. The main force of the Night Demons is about to arrive. Go over there and warn them of the danger that’s coming. If they believe you, you can even stay there. I can modify the employee contract you haven’t signed yet and sign a repayment contract with you instead.”
“If you die, you won’t have to repay me anything.” She smiled. “But if they don’t believe you, or if they do believe you but are still trapped in a desperate situation, I’ll give you one chance to come back.”
“If you return, that will count as your first completed order.”
With that, the woman disappeared from the spot, leaving behind only a small black device.
Bei You didn’t see this happen. She ran toward the direction from which the wind was blowing.
……
Ling Zhao leaned back in her chair and stretched her lower back.
【I really didn’t expect that after completing the transaction just now, you would simply let her leave like that.】
“Sistem,” Ling Zhao said, “she didn’t stay of her own free will. She’s a kite lost in confusion. I need to become the string that guides her.”
Only after returning would she truly have nowhere to call home.
“By the way, that protective shield you included really is useful. It wiped out the Night Demons in an instant when I activated it just now.” Ling Zhao thought for a moment. “I plan to renew it after this. If I have enough balance, just deduct it directly when the time comes.”
【Sure. But aren’t you worried about the danger of doing this?】 Sistem asked. 【You’ve practically made this shelter into a golden paradise in those people’s eyes.】
“I need to establish the shelter’s reputation,” Ling Zhao said. “This is the fastest way. Those people who left will naturally tell their employers about this place. Doing it this way also saves me the advertising costs.”
【You could contract all of them as employees. Employee contracts possess a certain coercive effect.】 Sistem said. 【That way, they wouldn’t be able to reveal any information about you.】
“And then what?” Ling Zhao sneered. “Then I die waiting because I haven’t reached a sufficient number of transactions?”
“You can’t want to leave someone with a deep and impressive first impression and then be stingy when it matters. Nor can you clearly need to live frugally while pretending to be some wealthy tycoon throwing money around.”
“I want them to submit to me willingly, to come back and beg me to let them become my employees. I don’t want to forcibly keep them here, watch them pay lip service while secretly going against me, and then have to find ways to win them over one by one, earn their trust, and only then get them to carry out my orders.”
“Let me tell you something else, Sistem.”
“My greed lies in knowing what I want.” Ling Zhao said. “I know what I want, and I know what I don’t want. Employees who can’t follow orders from the very beginning are not what I need.”
“The first employees will determine the atmosphere of the entire group. These people clearly came here expecting to enjoy themselves and then resell the shelter’s resources. No matter how badly I need manpower, I’m not going to create a hidden disaster from the very beginning.”
【No, I’m reminding you that there are two higher-star employees among this group. You let them go, too.】
“They’ll come back.” Ling Zhao said with absolute certainty. “They should come back. They’ll come back and beg me.”
“I’m allowing them to make that choice themselves.”
Sistem: 【You really are stubborn.】
Ling Zhao: “Thank you.”
【What if that child whose life you saved still dies?】
“I’ll take responsibility for every decision I make,” she said. “So will she.”
Just as Ling Zhao had allowed Sistem to reject her nine times, she was mentally prepared for all of her own choices as well.
She wanted to climb to the summit of success, and she didn’t mind taking a little path into failure along the way.
A greedy person would simply take in every bit of scenery along the road.
It was just that Ling Zhao hadn’t revealed the most genuine reason.
Because she couldn’t afford to support them.
The shelter simply didn’t have enough food.
Adding just one employee had already stretched her meager food reserves to the limit. If she really signed contracts with that many people, they would run out of food in three days.
Rather than signing employee contracts and then telling them the shelter’s true situation, Ling Zhao would rather use this period of time as a buffer.
She had already decided what her first business operation would be. She had previously used a serum that had expired fifty years ago to extract a new batch.
Her first business operation would be—
Recycling.
Even if she didn’t leave the shelter, there was still plenty of garbage throughout the entire shelter that could be collected for recycling.
……
In the distance.
The leader of the Night Demons was standing with its eyes closed, sniffing the air.
Author’s Note:
I’ll take Monday off and won’t update for a day. I’m keeping the word count down a little before the rankings. Kisses.
……
Here is the contents of Ling Zhao’s planner:
√ Complete Tasks One and Two, unlocking the character panel and her own talent.
√ Determine the shelter’s first product.
……
She uses a bullet journal.