Life Game In Other World
Chapter 479: Allies (Large - for Monthly Votes)

Chapter 479: Chapter 479: Allies (Large Chapter for Monthly Votes)

"Honey, come help me with this."

Elsa entered excitedly, pushing the door open with two huge supermarket bags in her hands.

"Coming, coming."

Jack, who was fiddling with a mechanical model, put down the model and hurried towards the door.

"Mom, what did you buy? Is there anything tasty?"

A little girl with two adorable pigtail braids followed behind her dad, poking her head out. She was holding a golden toy doll, her face full of anticipation.

"It’s all tasty stuff."

Jack took the two large shopping bags from his wife, helped her close the door, and said to his daughter with a smile.

It had been almost a year since their family had left Dawn City for Kaye City.

Initially, with the help of a young man searching for clues about his parents’ deaths, they had managed to escape Avis Energy Group’s surveillance and reached this industrial city near Dawn City.

"Yay, yay!"

The little girl, excitedly hugging her doll, followed her father.

Jack stroked his daughter’s head and placed the shopping bags his wife had brought onto the table.

Kaye City was nowhere near as prosperous as Dawn City, without the bright neon lights or the gold-drenched nightlife.

And there weren’t as many employers looking to hire, either.

When he first arrived here, he even braced for his life to get worse.

But the reality turned out to be completely opposite of what he had expected.

Life in Kaye City wasn’t great at first, but a series of reforms implemented by Mr. Vian transformed the city dramatically.

One after another, new projects were launched, new factories were built, and the roar of machinery echoed through the night.

Along with these changes came better living standards.

Even though neither he nor his wife had received a raise, their apartment rent decreased, the tuition and living expenses for their child’s school dropped, and his wife found a permanent job at a supermarket under the Nolanka Group.

A few months ago, an insurance company under the Nolanka Group launched an affordable medical insurance plan, and the group purchased this insurance for all employees.

This insurance’s reimbursement rate was much higher than the previous medical insurance; Jack had been to see a doctor once, and what would have been a bill of over two hundred federal coins now cost him less than fifty federal coins.

The reduced living expenses allowed Jack and Elsa to now afford things that they could previously only stand outside the shop window and quietly look at for a while, and their daughter could have toys she couldn’t even dare to dream of before.

"What’s this? A new brand of synthetic steak?"

Jack opened the shopping bag and took out the product that piled up the most.

"It seems like it’s a new product from the meat product company under the group," Elsa, at the door, took off her work shoes, massaged her ankles wrapped in flesh-colored pantyhose, and switched into the home’s foam slippers,

"There was a big discount today for the new product launch. The supermarket restocked two or three times and it was quickly sold out. If I hadn’t been working right next to the shelf, I wouldn’t have been able to grab any."

"It’s selling that well?"

Jack looked curiously at the steak box in his hand, then scooped up the steaks and walked towards the fridge, opened the freezer door, and immediately, a full freezer of various frozen products appeared before his eyes.

"How could it not sell well?" Elsa slowly walked over. "It’s said that Mr. Vian has invested a lot of money in these food companies, always at a loss. Even without discounts, these products are snapped up. Although I don’t know what Mr. Vian is planning, we should still help out as much as we can."

"Yes,"

Jack nodded lightly, opening a drawer; frozen bacon, roast chicken, and pizzas appeared densely before him. "It seems we can’t fit anything more in here. I said before that this apartment’s fridge was too big."

"How could I not let it go?"

Elsa brushed her husband aside, taking the steaks from his hands.

Then Jack watched his wife continuously take things out and put them back in, as if performing magic, stuffing the whole bunch of steaks into the fridge.

"There, isn’t that letting go?"

Elsa turned her head toward her stunned husband, her eyes cunningly twinkling.

Then her gaze shifted slightly, falling on a small figure crouched at the edge of the dining table, carefully pulling out two small cakes from the open shopping bag.

Suddenly, a hand covered in light calluses rested on her tiny shoulder, "You can only have one small cake a day."

Upon hearing these words, the little girl stiffened for a moment, turned her head to look back at Elsa, and then, under her mother’s stern gaze, reluctantly looked at the small cakes in her hands and carefully put them back.

Jack watched as his wife coaxed their daughter with a few words and then sent her to her room to do her homework, only emerging after quite a while.

"What’s wrong?"

Elsa looked puzzled at her husband, who had been watching her all along.

Jack smiled, took out a small white box from behind him, and gently opened it, revealing a silver bracelet inside, "Happy birthday."

"You... I... When did..." Elsa looked at her husband in astonishment, "I had forgotten my own birthday."

Then her eyes moved to the bracelet in the box, "Is that the one I saw in the mall last time?... It’s too expensive."

She extended her hand to press down on the box, slowly closing the lid, "It’s too expensive..."

"You ran so many times to make that doctor’s appointment for me, stood in line for so long," Jack gently placed his hand on his wife’s, "I just received a bonus, we can afford something like this now."

Elsa stared at her husband, her eyes brimming with shimmering light, as if filled with a spring of clear water.

Jack slowly reached out and embraced his wife, "Our days ahead will get better and better."

"You said the same when we first got married, you big liar."

Elsa’s head rested on her husband’s shoulder, her nose twitching slightly.

"If you don’t believe me, you have to believe Mr. Vian, right?"

"Mr. Vian certainly didn’t give you permission to squander money."

The gleaming window reflected the image of the two embracing figures as the brilliant moonlight rose slowly through their hair.

Moonlight spilled over the bright lights of each home.

——

In the conference room bathed in a gentle glow, He Ao’s gaze shifted from the moon outside the window to the incredulous woman in professional attire beside him.

"You..." Lina looked at He Ao’s cheek in surprise, "Are you really Vian? Alive?"

"Beep, 36.8 degrees," the robot controlled by Eve retracted the thermometer and stated seriously, "Alive."

Although Eve was indeed answering Lina’s question earnestly, the situation inevitably came across as somewhat comical.

The words Lina had been holding back also got interrupted by this act, and she forgot what she was going to say.

"Is there something you’re worried about?"

He Ao smiled as he looked at her.

"No..." Lina stared vacantly at He Ao, and ultimately, after hesitating for a moment, she spoke slowly, "I’ve heard that some Evil Gods descend upon the corpses of the dead, but... you have body temperature... I’m just a bit concerned..."

Worrying this was but a fleeting illusion.

"Everything will get better."

He Ao looked into her eyes and whispered softly.

Lina gazed into the man’s profound eyes, which seemed to have a strange magic that slowly calmed her tense and anxious heart.

Standing by his side, she always felt reassured and at ease, a feeling that had been there since she first came into contact with ’Vian’.

At this moment, she finally overlapped the person in front of her with the figure in her memories, recognizing him as Vian, the familiar ’Chairman of the Nolanka Group Board.’

Her mind, which had been suspended in worry, finally settled. She knew that Vian’s ’resurrection’ might really be linked to an Evil God or a Great Being, but none of that mattered as long as the person who returned was still him.

Just then, the conference room door slowly opened, and the sprightly butler entered, holding a stack of documents.

"Master Vian, here are the recent progress reports for the various major projects of the group," he said.

Lina looked up at the Elderly, witnessing the most spirited he had been in the past half-year.

"Could you give me a brief overview?"

He Ao casually picked up the topmost document and asked in a slow voice.

Although he had seen most of the information in the data report that Eve had sent him, he still wanted to hear Danny’s own opinions.

As the de facto controller of the Nolanka Group after Vian ’fell into a slumber’, Danny’s understanding of the Group’s current situation was certainly deeper than Eve’s.

After all, Danny’s personal files, which might not have been under Eve’s surveillance, contained many thoughts and analysis that Eve couldn’t comprehend.

"Currently, the progress of the Group’s major projects is going fairly smoothly..." Danny began.

Danny opened the electronic screen in the conference room and projected some documents onto the screen, starting his presentation.

The progress of the various projects introduced by Danny was not much different from the data Eve sent to He Ao. However, when discussing the current difficulties, his descriptions were much more detailed than Eve’s and included many of the butler’s own analyses and insights.

Overall, the Nolanka Group’s main issue matched what He Ao had initially anticipated – it was ’a money problem.’

The education and apartment price reductions in Kaye City were carried out in the form of subsidies, and subsidies meant real money spent.

However, after calculations and coordination by the group’s internal accountants, this part of the funds could still be covered by profits.

The most significant issue lay in the investment for new projects, new food factories, and new military factories.

Especially in the food and military sectors, due to Nolanka Group’s outdated technology, aside from the weakened version of Adam-type armor, the ’Cain’ type Mecha, many of the Group’s weapons production processes were far inferior to those of the leading military industry consortiums of the Federation.

Even the Group’s Mercenary Corps had only ordered a batch of ’Cain’ type mini-Mecha, while other weapons were still purchased from the Yiwis Space System company.

Developing advanced equipment and processes required further massive investments.

Unlike the military industry, which at least had a leading product, Nolanka Group’s food sector barely had any leading technologies. The various food products, synthetic starch, and synthetic meat produced were of lower quality and yield compared to those of the big consortiums of the Federation.

Fortunately, the products developed by the food project series of companies could still be sold within Kaye City. This allowed the project to recover some funds, supporting its continued operations.

This was a matter of expenditure, but besides that, there was an ’income’ problem.

The Group was now facing an accumulation of products.

As the Group heavily invested in building factories, hiring workers, money was spent, but many of the produced goods were not selling and got stockpiled.

Although the increase in workers boosted internal consumption in Kaye City, the previously impoverished people dared not consume confidently yet. The city’s economic recovery was slow, and the locals could not absorb all the newly produced products.

Moreover, the markets of several cities where Nolanka Group had previously traded were already saturated, even showing signs of decline, which meant the ’excess’ products could not be fully digested.

At the heart of Nolanka Group’s financial crisis was the increase in income not keeping up with the increase in expenditures, leading to a deficit with more and more cash flow being invested into it.

The approach to solving this issue was straightforward, cutting costs was not an option, for the moment investment and production ceased, a massive wave of unemployment would follow immediately.

From the current situation, there was significant room for growth in consumer spending within Kaye City. After a reasonable adjustment of the industrial structure and extending the timeline, the goods produced by the factories could be consumed internally.

Therefore, the problem that needed to be addressed was the short-term financial issues.

Since cutting costs was not feasible, the only solution was to increase revenue.

There were two methods to increase revenue: one was to figure out a way to bring in a substantial cash flow, and the other was to sell off the accumulated stock of goods. If the current market couldn’t absorb it, then new markets had to be developed.

However, the major cities across the Federation had already been divided up by the various consortiums, and to acquire new markets, conflicts with some of these groups were inevitable.

In fact, Nolanka Group did have a new market.

It was Rock City.

After the collapse of the Mining Consortium, Nolanka Group smoothly entered the Rock City market and won bids for numerous urban reconstruction projects.

But due to decades of unsustainable exploitation by the Mining Consortium, the majority of people in Rock City were so impoverished they could hardly afford food, let alone consumer goods.

Though with a series of policies implemented by the new Mayor Wright, the economy of Rock City was recovering steadily, that was nonetheless a market of the future.

And Nolanka Group needed to address the immediate challenges.

Of course, money was the main issue, but not the only one.

There were some problems that money couldn’t solve.

For example, the healthcare problem.

The advancement of healthcare projects could almost be described as extremely arduous.

First and foremost, it was difficult for Nolanka Group’s hospitals to recruit enough doctors; the majority of the Federation’s doctors were trained by the Medical Consortiums and were bound to their positions with high salaries and substantial penalty clauses, preventing them from easily switching jobs.

And the top-tier doctors were basically impossible to poach.

Even if Nolanka Group managed to hire a batch of doctors at a high cost, they were almost like a drop in the bucket for the group’s healthcare projects.

More importantly, faced with Nolanka Group’s attempt to reform the healthcare industry, the Medical Consortium Alliance, led by Stars Pharma, united against Nolanka Group.

They would re-hire the doctors who had been poached by Nolanka Group at even higher prices and made great efforts to prevent them from switching to Nolanka Group.

Without qualified and experienced elderly doctors to serve as teachers, the envisioned academy for civilian healthcare could not commence.

Furthermore, after Nolanka Group launched a new type of health insurance, these medical consortiums banded together to raise prices, increasing the expenditures of Nolanka Group’s insurance companies. To date, the insurance company handling the health insurance had already shown signs of loss.

All these additional payments flowed into the coffers of the Medical Consortium.

And because Nolanka Group lacked its own doctors and medical schools, it had no bargaining power against the medical pricing, leaving them no choice but to accept the price increases.

He Ao was well aware that this was the Medical Consortium Alliance issuing a warning shot, to make him abandon the idea of changing the healthcare system.

Any change would face tremendous resistance, something He Ao had already understood when proposing these solutions.

So he wasn’t surprised by the difficulties Nolanka Group was currently facing.

Given Danny’s character, if this hurdle could not be overcome, he was very likely to choose to retreat, to preserve Nolanka Group and then plan gradually from there.

But if they retreated now, it might become even harder to advance a single step in the future.

He Ao organized the information in his mind once again; he needed an ally, a powerful one, and one that shared the same interests as the current Nolanka Group.

He raised his head to look at Danny, "What has the new Mayor of Dawn City been up to lately?"

It had been over half a year since Christos took office, he should have firmly established his position and started trying out some things by now.