Su Jin slowly drummed his fingers against the walnut desktop. After a moment of heavy thought, he broke the silence. "So, are all my colleagues human?"
"No," the Steward replied. "Any sentient species across the cosmos has the potential to join your division. Once an entity crosses a specific power threshold, the Company extends an invitation. Alternatively, anomalies with the perceptual bandwidth to detect our existence can apply proactively."
"Faced with a Calamity designed to annihilate all reality, virtually zero apex entities refuse the contract. In corporate terms... the Company has monopolized the ultimate powerhouses across the multiverse, while those still scaling are simply waiting in the talent pool."
"That is a hell of a performance metric to live up to. I seem to be a massive outlier. Is there anyone lower on the org chart than me?" Su Jin asked, his lip curling cynically.
"No. You are indeed an extreme outlier, but only in this current financial quarter," the Steward smiled faintly. "However, there is zero tactical value in disappointment. You have an army of apex predators backing your position. If you inadvertently cross paths with a colleague during a deployment, they will not hesitate to allocate resources to assist you, clear your roadblocks... or even aggressively power-level your stats."
"Are you sure about that?" Su Jin raised an eyebrow. "We don't know each other. Out in some apocalyptic wasteland, wouldn't someone try to liquidate me for my gear?"
"You represent the survival probability for countless civilizations. You are the designated asset meant to leave the fire of the Xinhuo for myriad worlds. The Company values your vertical deeply. These apex entities also crawled out of the dirt; they possess a high aggression index, but they haven't forgotten the core mission is planetary salvation. Furthermore, buffering your survival costs them virtually zero overhead."
"Even if a colleague has a personality conflict with you, they will not initiate hostile action. Simply by holding the title of Xinhuo, even if your combat rating was that of a literal ant, they would afford you basic professional courtesy."
"The Second Generation Xinhuo experienced two massive spikes in his baseline power entirely due to chance encounters with colleagues. Even this office infrastructure was heavily subsidized and modified by his network."
"I can state with absolute authority that by signing the contract... you have, to a certain extent, mathematically become one of the most high-value VIPs in the multiverse."
Su Jin blinked, his brain struggling to process the sheer scale of the nepotism.
After a long pause, he exhaled. "Alright, that sounds like a solid benefits package. Good to know I have heavy hitters watching my back. But earlier, you said..."
"Correction. You do not have 'heavy hitters watching your back.' The Company's macro-objective is to stabilize realities and incubate your growth, but aside from issuing deployment mandates, HQ will not micromanage your operations. Naturally, corporate policy does not override individual employee actions."
"Speaking of corporate policy, that reminds me." Su Jin leaned forward. "During my last drop, I received a sudden audio transmission. I couldn't tell if I was hallucinating or if HQ was piping directly into my comms. Is that standard protocol?"
The Steward tilted his head. "What was the specific transmission?"
"'Do not ask what the Company has done for you, but ask what you have done for the Company.'"
"Auditory hallucination," the Steward replied with clinical certainty. "Psychological fracturing under extreme duress is a standard biological response. I can verify with absolute confidence that it was a delusion."
"First, no corporate entity is authorized to override your autonomy, especially when your onboarding process was still pending. Second, direct system broadcasts are routed exclusively through the Central Hub... The individuals with clearance to manipulate Hub directives can be counted on one hand. They form the absolute peak of the Board of Directors. You are currently lightyears below their perceptual radar. They would not waste processing power on such a trivial prank."
"Alright, fine. Then what about my first deployment? The system flagged a rare sample for extraction and compensated me with a Reward... some kind of 'Gang Sai'? But I haven't been able to requisition it since. What was the deal with that?"
The Steward paused, his eyes whirring with data retrieval. "Objectively speaking, given your baseline stats, the difficulty parameters of your first deployed world were severely overtuned. It broke standard scaling. Moving forward, you will deploy to other failing realities. While the entropic root of the Calamity is identical, the localized infection mutates into radically different forms depending on the host world."
"If the Company identifies an undocumented mutation of the Calamity, it will mandate sample extraction for R&D, compensating you with a corresponding Reward. Because the First and Second Generation Xinhuo already cleared massive swaths of the database, you will not trigger these bounties on every drop. They are statistically rare."
"As for this 'Gang Sai'... checking the logs, it translates to an emergency trauma suppository manufactured by the Seta. They are an extraterrestrial civilization possessing dual, surgically embedded lumbar orifices. Prior to combat, they plug these ports with bio-stabilizers and slow-release neural narcotics. The Company calculated that your biology was compatible enough to absorb it... Unfortunately, human physiological architecture lacks the dedicated ports. You had to improvise."
"The Company operates strictly on ruthless pragmatism. They do not factor your personal dignity into their logistics."
Su Jin rubbed his temples, letting that horrifying reality sink in. "You mentioned earlier that you are a localized construct, restricted to this office. Are you absolutely certain your intel on the Company is accurate?"
"Yes." The Steward gave a curt nod. "I cannot guarantee a zero percent margin of error, but my database is structurally sound. All my classified intel was manually uploaded by the Second Generation Xinhuo. Over the cycles, several of his corporate associates have also materialized in this lobby. It is highly probable you will eventually receive courtesy visits from his old network."
"And the First Generation?"
"A clinical sociopath, as previously stated. He compiled my code strictly to perform janitorial functions. During his tenure, this office was a barren concrete box," the Steward recalled, a flicker of genuine disdain crossing his features. "He would extract from a warzone and immediately hot-drop into the next. He would chain-clear dozens of apocalyptic worlds before clocking out."
"He would dump a mountain of anomalous garbage and high-tier loot onto the floor for me to catalog, then immediately breach the next dimension. My interaction logs with him are negligible."
"A psycho workaholic," Su Jin muttered in disbelief. "Did the Company force that kind of quota on him?"
"The Central Hub enforces zero quotas; he was actively cannibalizing the mission board himself. The First Generation existed solely for the grind. He possessed zero concept of work-life balance—he consumed raw atmospheric energy, slept in the dirt, and violently appropriated whatever resources he required." The Steward's brow furrowed in distaste.
"Despite being his creation, I fail to parse his psychological profile. Given his absolute dominance, there was zero statistical probability of him dying in the field. My analytical models suggest a severe case of burnout. He likely lost his operational purpose and simply chose to self-terminate."
"A genuinely ruthless bastard," Su Jin nodded, respecting the sheer grit. "Last two questions. How does the system calculate my deployment timeline? Temporal relativity dictates that time flows differently on every planet, right? And secondly, can I re-infiltrate a world I've already cleared?"
"I will address the temporal query first." The Steward raised a single, manicured finger. The expansive flooring of the office groaned, panels sliding apart to reveal a bizarre, eldritch piece of bronze machinery rising from the depths.
At first glance, it resembled a petrified bronze tree, its metallic branches sprawling outward, terminating in ten distinct, circular bronze plates.
The lowest bronze plate hummed with a faint, ethereal light.
"This hardware was co-developed by the Company and the Xinhuo line. It is designated as the Guiheng Platform, engineered specifically to streamline temporal logistics. For every world you successfully stabilize, one bronze node will ignite. Utilizing your native dimension—Earth—as the temporal anchor, it forcefully synchronizes the flow of time across dimensions. It has the bandwidth to tether a maximum of ten major worlds. Any further additions will sequentially overwrite the oldest nodes."
"Upon successful mission extraction, you are compensated with Contribution Points. You can expend this currency to establish a World Bridge. A World Bridge creates a physical transit corridor connecting all your stabilized realities, including this office. If you integrate these dimensions into a unified supply chain, allowing for cross-world resource and personnel trading, their planetary recovery metrics will skyrocket."
"A standard issue corporate tool that can literally overwrite the laws of time! What the hell kind of entity are we even fighting? I don't see how the Company could ever lose." Su Jin was utterly floored.
The Steward opened his hands, palms up. "Order versus Entropy. The Company's adversary is effectively its own mirror image. Every god-like mechanism the Company deploys, the opponent can replicate—and it utilizes them with far less restraint. The conceptual physics you and I can process are fundamentally incapable of rendering the Company's actual frontline. It is a realm of pure, abstract horror."
"In the same way a mortal cannot comprehend a god. Perhaps if you scale high enough up the corporate ladder, you will attain the bandwidth to understand."
"Fair enough." Su Jin exhaled, pivoting to his final point. "So what exactly are these Contribution Points?"
"You establish a stable network node for the Company; naturally, the Company generates revenue from that stability. The Central Hub algorithmically allocates your cut. In layman's terms, it is the salary the Company pays you out of its profit margins. Since your tactical mask is active, your HUD should be displaying your current balance."
"It's completely blank," Su Jin said, his face deadpan.
"My apologies, I forgot. Interns do not receive a salary."
"...."