Life Game In Other World
Chapter 462: Born Destiny (Big - for Monthly Tickets)

Chapter 462: Chapter 462: Born Destiny (Big Chapter for Monthly Tickets)

"Factory Technician Recruitment"

"Requirements: Under 40 years old, weekly salary of over 350 federal coins, physically fit, able to endure hardship and work hard."

"Weekly salary of over 350 federal coins, salary negotiable upon interview."

The man gazed at the recruitment flyer posted on the door and glanced up at the sign in front of him, ’Allen Employment Agency’.

He turned his head towards the girl next to him who was seriously looking at the job listings, "Are you looking for a job?"

"No," the girl lifted her head slightly and shook it, "Ever since my father lost his job, I’ve been regularly checking these recruitment ads, hoping to find a new job for him. It’s become a habit over time, so I subconsciously want to take a look."

"So have you found a suitable job for your father?"

The man looked at the job ads and asked softly.

"No," the girl shook her head gently and said softly, "There are too many unemployed people now, and those big enterprises and corporations have basically stopped releasing recruitment needs for management positions."

"What about factories?"

The man looked at the wall plastered with flyers, many of which originated from various factories. It seemed like these factories were short-handed, with the only issue being the seemingly low wages.

"Although factories are always short of people, their recruitment requirements have become higher,"

the girl whispered while looking at the factory job ads, "Right now, a lot of people are looking for jobs, and factories can easily find workers. When my father first became unemployed, the age limit for factory recruitment was 42 years old. Now, it has dropped to 40 years old, and many factories have even dropped it down to 38 years old,"

she paused, "and the physical demands of factory work have also increased compared to before. My father has always had health issues, and I’ve called many factories. People like him, who have a history of working overtime and are older, especially those from office administrative management positions, are generally not wanted by factories. They think they won’t get much work done and could even suddenly die on the assembly line."

"How about other industries that are a bit more relaxed?"

The man’s eyes fell on a recruitment notice for a full-time employee at a convenience store.

"Now, most bosses only hire employees under 40 years old,"

the girl sighed,

"People in this age range are strong, can work overtime, and demand lower wages, making them ideal employees for bosses.

"But for someone like my father, who is nearly forty-five years old and unemployed, he’s not very welcome among bosses.

"Even if there are some companies willing to accept job seekers who are older, they offer very low wages. Moreover, these jobs are in the form of casual or part-time work without purchasing any social security or health insurance. The money earned can barely subsidize household expenses, not enough to cover the mortgage.

"Actually, during this time, I also know my father has taken on some odd jobs, but these jobs don’t last long because the industries that need casual labor typically have seasons of high and low demand, like the tide. They only hire casual labor to help during the busy months of good business, and most of the time, they don’t recruit extra workers."

At this point, the girl fell silent for a moment. She looked up at the towering skyscrapers in the distance, "When I am alone and quiet, I often wonder, did my father do something wrong?"

"When he used to go to work, he often stayed late, leaving home at six or seven in the morning and not returning until eleven or twelve at night. There was a long time when I resented him for not caring about his family, for not taking care of my mother."

"When my mother was dying, he was on a business trip out of town and couldn’t make it back to see her one last time."

"But all his life, he’s worked so hard, and it seems like he’s saved nothing. Grandpa’s medical bills, mom’s medical bills, mortgage interest, my tuition fees. He managed to save a bit and buy a house, only to be laid off and unemployed.

"I still can’t understand why my father was laid off.

"He’s smart and hardworking. His dismissal notice said it was because of company project adjustments, but I know he was assigned a new project, which encountered problems, so their team was laid off.

"But were the decisions regarding company project adjustments made by him? He worked hard, in the wrong direction, tirelessly, and when the project failed, he was the one cut loose. Why should he pay the price for someone else’s mistakes?"

With her back to the person behind her, the girl covered her face with her hand, obscuring her expression.

"In this world, many times, effort and talent cannot change the fate we are born with."

The man behind him seemed to recall something, and sighed softly.

The girl’s voice paused for a moment as she wiped her cheeks,

"I asked a classmate whose family owns a bank, and they said if we can’t pay the mortgage, or the property tax, the house might be repossessed by the municipal government and auctioned off.

"Nowadays, there are so many people unable to pay their mortgage, and so many houses being auctioned, that homes could sell for as low as seventy percent or even less than the purchasing price.

"Our family’s loan is ’amortized repayment’, which means the payment amount is the same every month. With this repayment method, most of the earlier payments go towards interest, and not much principal is settled. We’ve just started paying not many years ago, which means up till now, most of the loan payments have been interest to the bank, with very little principal.

"By this calculation, once the house is auctioned off, after paying off the owed principal, penalties, and the back taxes on the property, we’d almost get no money. The down payment we made and the portion of the loan we’ve already paid would be completely lost. There’s a chance we might even end up in debt to the bank. And this is if the house sells at auction."

The girl turned around, smiling despairingly,

"This is the result of my father’s lifetime of hard work."

Then she took a deep breath, trying to compose herself,

"I feel much better after talking about it, Uncle Roger. Please don’t mention this to my dad, to save him the worry.

"Actually, I shouldn’t worry too much either. After all, these experiences belong to my dad. He hasn’t dwelled on them, so neither should I, especially after learning about his past achievements. That takes a lot of the sting out of it.

"Although there’s a persistent sense of indignation in my heart, I’m not worried anymore. This ’confession’ is my last obsession.

"My mom used to say, when she was still alive, that being able to live well is the greatest happiness."

Those who are seriously ill or on the verge of death often speak of ’living well’.

Ennie’s story actually didn’t move Roger deeply. He had seen countless more tragic and desolate fates in the underclass than hers etched in his memory.

Having seen the irregularities of the world’s lowest depths, he had become numb to such tragic stories.

It was only when hearing this story that he was briefly reminded of that young man who had taken down the Avis Energy Group with his life.

That young man seemed to be part of an organization called ’K’.

After meeting that young man, he had also formed some sort of connection with this organization.

Every member of this organization seemed like a madman with a death wish, plunging into the fire recklessly, like moths to a flame.

They all seemed to carry a certain oppressive despair.

The boy named Joey back then faced the purest form of despair, with his family broken and no way out.

And now ’Pete’ faced a more temperate but even more painful despair. He had worked hard all his life, fought all his life, once thinking he could change his fate, only to find himself falling into an even deeper, darker abyss.

At this moment, the life he had fought so hard for seemed to have lost all its value, bringing him despair not because of some sudden mishap, but rather something deemed inevitable.

It was the destiny he was born with, a fate that could not be changed even after a lifetime of effort.

Of course, all this is based on the premise that ’Pete’ is an ordinary person born to an ordinary life, not a Transcendent who has retired to live quietly in the countryside after a glorious past.

Contrary to what Ennie believes about her father ’always being powerful’, Roger tended to think that Pete might have gained Transcendent powers after becoming unemployed. Before that, Pete was likely just a simple ordinary person.

After Pete lost his job, he might have incidentally met someone from the ’K’ organization and then, through a fortunate set of circumstances, joined ’K’.

For a secret organization of potentially high stature, granting a member great power is an easy task, but great power often comes with a steep ’price’."

Roger did not share this information with Ennie. He simply nodded lightly to indicate he would keep Ennie’s secret and then gestured for her to turn to the side.

Ennie understood immediately and turned around cooperatively.

As they looked again at the job postings, a casually dressed man hurried past them towards the deeper part of the street.

Then both of them turned around and walked towards the streets outside.

—

The moment Officer Zadi stepped through the doorway, the metal door behind him began to spin quickly again, sealing the door shut.

Only then did Zadi look up at the scene around him.

Although this "safe" was named as such, its interior was more like a small room.

With the door acting as a divider, the entire room could be split into left and right sections.

On the left was a large refrigerator with a transparent glass door. Inside the refrigerator, neatly arranged test tube racks were mostly empty, except for the topmost level which held some "reagents."

On the left side of this level were some semi-transparent, milky-white liquids, and on the right, there were test tubes glowing with a red light. The test tube racks in the middle were also empty.

This was the situation on the left side of the "small room." On the right side, there was a row of silver metal cabinets.

This design was a classic model of the Federation’s "supercomputer." The supercomputer was assembled from multiple computing units to form a huge computing whole, and these computers were quite pricey.

At the very right of this computer, embedded with a simple electronic screen, appeared to be its interactive device, which was off at the moment.

Zadi’s gaze lingered on the screen for a while before he slowly shook his head and walked towards the refrigerator.

He scanned the reagents inside the refrigerator then opened the door, taking out the seven most intensely colored reagents from the top right corner.

He then opened his clothes to reveal the portable test tube bag inside and inserted all seven test tubes.

After finishing this, he glanced at the supercomputer once more, his gaze pausing again on the monitor. He then shook his head, closed the refrigerator door, and walked to the position of the metal door.

This time, he repeated the identity and password verification.

The thick metal door opened swiftly.

As the metal door opened, he gave one last glance at the monitor.

He vaguely felt something was amiss but couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

It was not until the metal door was fully open that he withdrew his gaze and stepped outside.

The metal door then slowly closed.

Click—

After the final sound of the metal door closing, a slim figure slowly emerged from the void, staring at the now shut metal door.

It was He Ao.

He didn’t have much time. As soon as Zadi realized his mistake and came back, the first thing he would do was to open the metal door to return the reagents he had taken. That was He Ao’s moment to leave.

The entire incident actually wasn’t complicated—it was a simple diversionary tactic.

But during the process, He Ao had made a slight judgment of Reid’s character, adding a touch of complexity to the strategy just enough to deceive Reid.

Given Reid’s suspicious nature, if He Ao really attempted a direct decoy strategy, even if Reid couldn’t find any clear clues, he would remain skeptical and hold his ground.

Therefore, He Ao embedded several layers of deception within deception, first setting up a decoy to draw Reid’s attention to Romock, then adding a feint to make Reid believe He Ao’s goal was to protect his daughter, and finally leading Reid to make the decision to "ambush" and besiege on his own.

In fact, there are many severe information gaps in this struggle, like if it weren’t for the C-level bodyguard, Roger, He Ao would definitely have tried to protect his daughter, and Reid’s judgment would not have been wrong.

For instance, Reid thought that He Ao was unaware of his background, whereas He Ao had already roughly deduced that Stars Pharma was behind Reid while he was using the airship to "pretend to leave the city."

Moreover, he had placed a mark on Kors, and found Kors at the first opportunity upon returning to the city, gaining even deeper intelligence.

These information gaps meant that Reid lacked some vital information when making decisions, and even the most intelligent person cannot complete a puzzle that’s missing pieces.

Reid doesn’t even know yet that He Ao is aware of the existence of the safe on the sixth floor of the Research Institute.

If he did know, he would never let anyone open that safe.

On Kors’s end, "bringing He Ao to the safe" was the second task that He Ao asked Kors to help him with.

This task was in line with Kors’s interests, as the old professor had already descended into a sort of madness over the data behind the safe.

Of course, the procedures for He Ao to enter the Research Institute were fully compliant.

Kors first used his authority to register him as a "Volunteer," and then he smoothly followed Kors into the Research Institute.

While inside the Research Institute, he didn’t always use Night Walk to hide himself, but walked around confidently wearing a mask, without arousing any suspicion about his identity.

Later, he changed into the assistant attire Kors had prepared for him, and let Kors recruit him as an "assistant candidate" under the guise of "hiring an assistant," going all the way down to the fourth sublevel.

The content discussed by Kors and Reid in the drawing room was also directed by He Ao through a mini earpiece.

Start with an impossible demand, then step back to a very difficult demand, then have the "decoys" Roger and Ennie prod Reid a bit, making Reid suggest a "plan" that was within He Ao’s scheme.

The entire process was very natural.

People often find it easier to believe in themselves, even though their decisions may well have been made under deliberate guidance.

The reason for having Kors find a reasonable excuse to go downstairs, apart from providing cover for He Ao, was even more crucial:

At this decisive moment, if Kors had gone into the Research Institute and directly to the safe, it would have easily raised Reid’s suspicions.

This series of "arrangements" was primarily to lower Reid’s guard,

and this entire setup was the reason why He Ao didn’t immediately visit the Research Institute to trouble Reid upon his return to the city.

Reid’s life and death weren’t that important, but the data in Reid’s hands regarding the Mars plan and the Fountain of Youth were extremely important.

He Ao needed to obtain more information about the Fountain of Youth and the Mars plan from Reid’s hands.

And now, he had arrived at the location where those records were stored.

He Ao glanced at the fridge, then walked over to the supercomputer first. He circled the supercomputer, then raised his hand to check his wristband.

This "safe" had no network connection to prevent data from being stolen by hackers, and it seemed that this computer wasn’t connected to the outside via a network cable either.

This was a "physically fortified against hackers" mainframe.

He Ao reached out and pressed the power switch on the computer, starting it up.