Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 477 - 425

Chapter 477: 425

As the mother ship engaged in the magnificent war in the skies, the conventional fleet covered the amphibious landing ships, desperately approaching the beaches of the islands in the Great Ocean. Each island was of paramount importance, for once the land-based anti-ship missile forces were to take effect, the enormous mother ships would be shot down like live targets.

Scattered along Xia’s coastline were countless radar stations, missile bases, and docks, all prepared for this very moment. Kyushu High Pavilion and Heavenly Cardinal Manufacturing launched fifteen hundred long-range rockets and over four hundred medium-range ballistic missiles within two hours, effectively suppressing the advance of Black Fire Innovation’s fleet.

"By this time tomorrow, we’ll see the outcome." A veteran military enthusiast on the deep anonymous network interpreted, "Given the terrifying rate of consumption, either they will amicably come to the negotiating table tomorrow, like three good brothers, starting to join hands against Kyoto Infinity and the Great Ocean Project to avoid wearing each other out, or it will be a fight to the death, betting all the prospects of the company’s development, emptying their coffers, gambling they can kill the opponent in one fell swoop and consume its corpse to survive the economic winter."

"These islands are too close to Xia and far from Taiya, which will become the decisive factor in victory or defeat," another enthusiast commented, "Xia can launch twelve air strikes in the same amount of time, while the Taiya Archipelago can only launch six. Besides, there will be torrential rain tomorrow. I wonder which company triggered it with climate weapons, which will affect the mother ship’s strike efficiency."

No one could know the true direction of the war. Xu Yang mused in the dark.

The controllers of Heavenly Cardinal Manufacturing, Lu Shibo and his daughter Lu Sizhou, Chairman Zhan Sicheng of Kyushu High Pavilion, and Chief Executive Officer Jose Alonso of Black Fire Innovation were among the most cunning and experienced entrepreneurs in the Eastern Hemisphere, with various capitals backing them. They had ten thousand ways to avoid war, yet now they were going all out in the Great Ocean, competing for supremacy over the Eastern Hemisphere. The winner takes all, the loser is doomed, yet they still went all in, sparking the largest corporate war in the scale of the Eastern Hemisphere, proving that the situation had become irreversible.

"All shipping is affected." Lila sent a message to Xu Yang, "Cargo throughput is expected to drop to one-twentieth of the same period, affecting factory production efficiency."

"No worries," Xu Yang replied, "We can get minerals from the Moon."

Another quarter of an hour passed, and Kanako sent a message through an encrypted channel from the Near East.

"Xu Yang?" Kanako messaged, "I’m so heartbroken."

"What happened?"

"I’m now in a corner of the Near East, a small city called Basha Cape." She sent a message, "My mother is about to enter the mental space, I can’t contact her, she took everything from me, my company, my money, all assets in my name, even my ninjas are gone. I really don’t know what to do; I only have over twenty million left on me. I so much want to go back, to be with you."

"War has broken out. It’s not possible to come to the Northern Archipelago now." Xu Yang’s heart ached, but he had to tell the truth.

"How long will it last?"

"A few weeks at the shortest, several years at most."

"I miss you so much." Kanako turned on the video, and Xu Yang saw her in a silk tank top, with long black hair, sitting on the terrace of a medium-sized hotel, with a backdrop of a small town in the Near East, full of low, thick houses and men and women in long robes.

"Kanako, just be patient for a while," Xu Yang turned on his camera and assured her, "Once this war is over, we’ll meet again."

They gazed at each other through the signals of the web, Kanako slowly began to shed tears.

"I only cry in front of you," Kanako’s tears streamed down her cheeks, "I only cry in front of you."

"And I swear, I will definitely come for you," Xu Yang felt a surge of indescribable emotion, "to bring you back to the Northern Archipelago. By then, it’ll be all right, Nestor Corporation is now very large."

"...I see," Kanako wiped away her tears, showing a feeble smile, "Now it’s a famous company. The locals are all watching Wei Shiyue’s videos and even forming support groups. I also heard you defeated a lot of inexplicable Crystal People in Shangjing, that’s really awesome."

"I do my best," Xu Yang spoke earnestly, "striving to establish our own business in this world, to leave our own mark."

"The homepage of Nestor Corporation is too rudimentary." Kanako tried to lighten the mood, "Hire a front-end engineer to design it, will you?"

"Does it look that bad?" Xu Yang went into Nestor Corporation’s various websites and truly found it to be the most rudimentary, limited by manpower, needing to expand recruitment.

"Get another programmer then, what an effort," Kanako chuckled, "The company’s homepage is like a person’s face."

"Alright," Xu Yang posted a recruitment notice, moved to the corner where the shuttle machine sat down and looked closely at Kanako, "Now, tell me more about yourself... what exactly happened after you went to the Near East?"

Meanwhile.

A man named Jiang Yan walked into Shangjing. He was a programmer, 36 years old, balding, slightly overweight, dressed in a red and black checkered shirt, hailing from Xia, and had been to the Northern Archipelago for over a decade.

He crouched beside the road, the spring sun causing his body to overheat, the pervasive photochemical smog in the air making him uncomfortable, and Jiang Yan repeatedly refreshed his old mobile phone.

As a programmer who had switched jobs several times, everyone said that Nestor Corporation offered job positions, so he came, only to find none that matched his specialty.

Until the last refresh, as if by fate, Nestor Corporation released a recruitment notice for a Front-End Engineer position.

Jiang Yan quickly sent his resume, which he had optimized dozens of times, and almost instantly received confirmation, inviting him to the nearest Nestor service center for an interview.

His heart pounded, feeling hope and victory beckoning to him. Having a job could sustain life, and he was about to enter the legendary, mysterious Nestor Corporation.

In the past, Jiang Yan had looked down on Nestor Corporation, but this was a corporate ideology world, and people grew through constant challenges.

During his studies, his biggest dream was to enter Kyushu High Pavilion, become a proud employee of a giant corporate company, and enjoy a job for life, which was the most coveted thing among him and his classmates. Thereafter, he would inevitably marry another corporate person, have a corporate child, and thus establish a thriving corporate household, dutifully contributing to the prosperity of Kyushu High Pavilion for generations.

Then graduation meant unemployment. Kyushu High Pavilion already had hundreds of millions of people in its internal corporate households, making it exceedingly difficult for outsiders like Jiang Yan to get in.

He worked for a few years on outsourced services for Kyushu High Pavilion, feeling like a servant, used and discarded, and reeled back in when necessary. No matter how hard he worked, outsourcing was outsourcing, and a temp was a temp.

So he switched to the Northern Archipelago. First as a contractor for Shenkong Group, then signing a formal contract, and later Shenkong Tower was bombed into the sky by someone named Matteo with seven dirty bombs, the company went bankrupt, and Jiang Yan had no choice but to find another way out, eventually arriving at Enomoto Bank in Shangjing. Being relatively older, he worked hard for three months to prove himself, dizzy and blurred, completed the project at hand, and earned his retention.

Back then, he was furious, busily arguing online with those who claimed that you’re doomed if unemployed at thirty-five, citing himself as an example, stating that as long as you’re willing to work hard, the older you get, the more in demand you are!

A week ago, on his way to work, Jiang Yan was delayed two hours due to the Crystal People crisis and was fired that very day.

Bankruptcy happens overnight. For the apartment, the deal was a six-month deposit with one-month rent in advance. He spent most of his savings, paying seven months of rent to the real estate agent. After losing his job, Jiang Yan tried to get his money back from the agent, only to find that the agent had disappeared. When asking the landlord, he was told that he was only the sublandlord and not to ask him for money.

His body’s basic neural circuits and data chips had reached their service limit and were alarming. He was forced to take on debt for surgery to replace them, to avoid being electrocuted by a short circuit, which put him further into debt, with monthly repayments. The chain reaction of unemployment chilled him to the bone, with various platforms urging him to pay his debts.

Jiang Yan had contemplated suicide until a female clerk at a convenience store kissed him, and only then did he feel that there was still some hope in life.

Now?

He decided to invest himself fully in working for Nestor Corporation. Whether it was for the bank, a big company, or Nestor Corporation... it was all the same.

In Anjiu City, Nestor Corporation had a service center every four blocks on average. These were distributed data bases, without human reception, only several booths, each with identical functions, to establish interaction with Nestor Corporation. Whatever one needs or wants to handle, all could be done through these service centers.

He entered one of the booths to apply at the terminal. It verified Jiang Yan’s unique biological identification profile registered with the Corporate Alliance, and then the terminal gave him a set of high-level front-end design questions to tackle. Feeling the pressure, it tested him on knowledge points such as page module rotations, arrow functions, Uniform Resource Locators, image tag properties, and code characteristics.

Worried that hundreds of applicants were competing with him, Jiang Yan slightly hastened his speed, while also fearing a low score would lead to rejection, thus he doubled back to check his work again and again, taking three hours before submitting.

...Passed.

Without any delay, the terminal machine validated the answers and immediately announced that Jiang Yan had scored 97 points, entering a one-week probation period. It was noted that this week was not to check the new employee’s work results or technical level, but to hope that the new employee would carefully experience every aspect of Nestor Corporation and fully understand this company with a brand-new system before deciding whether or not to join Nestor Corporation.

What else could he say? Jiang Yan decided to go through with Nestor Corporation. He signed the contract on the terminal machine, pulled out a cable from his wrist, inserted it into the terminal’s interface, downloaded the navigation map and was directed to the Nestor Corporation’s communal dormitory.

Learn both arts and martial skills, dedicate them to the entrepreneur.