Chapter 48
The mission of the vase today is to contain the monsters, and first investigate the authenticity.
It is impossible to recruit new people at the moment, so we can only prioritize training the employees we have.
The last mission to rescue Kotaro was too easy, and he failed to test Rama's skills. This time, Li Pan took the lead and asked Rama to investigate, while he fished in the floating car and, ahem, provided support.
"Boss, we found it."
"...so quickly?"
As a result, Li Pan had been squinting for less than half an hour when Rama came back holding a vase.
"Well, this is it. It's the same as the one in the photo. You see, the pocket watch is also spinning."
Li Pan picked up the vase in Rama's hand and looked at it. The blue and white porcelain was dirty, and there was nothing strange about it. 'Come.
I compared it with the company's mission files and found that it was indeed this bottle.
Although QVN and the security system have returned, the chaos of 0791 has just begun. The Yushiba Group is in a fierce business war with other forces to compete for the legacy of Takamagahara. Many collectible antiques that originally belonged to Gao Tianyuan's chaebols have also appeared on the streets. It is obvious that the struggle has intensified, and each family is cashing in to raise funds to increase their 'combat power'.
The company came across this monster that seemed to have failed in purchasing on a certain grocery store website, so it assigned an investigation task as usual.
But I thought it was just a similar imitation, but it turned out to be the real thing? And...
"Rama, how did you get it? Did you buy it with money?"
Rama was honest, "I saw no one was in the grocery store, Shiba said there was no surveillance nearby, so I took it out."
" ..."
Is this okay?
The biometric monitoring of the chip showed that everything was normal with Rama, as if the vase had no effect on him at all. In fact, Li Pan didn't think there was anything weird about the vase when he held it in his hand.
Could it be that monster containment is actually a very simple activity? So what the hell was the 'procurement failure' before?
Li Pan is quite cautious when it comes to monsters.
He asked Rama to watch the vase and wait in the car. If there was any trouble, he would go back to the company first. He also went to the grocery store of the mission target.
This is a small self-employed shop, with people living upstairs and a shop downstairs. It sells miscellaneous small commodities, all civilian products with first- and second-level technology. The streets were deserted and no one was passing by.
There was actually an old man in the store, hiding in the corner. Li Pan glanced at him, and he probably understood why Rama said, "There's no one in the store."
He cannot see.
The old man in the corner was somewhat similar to the woman in red with the hairband, but he was much weaker. He was so weak that Li Pan estimated that he could swallow the woman in his stomach and refine it with just one breath.
"Hey, boss, let's buy something."
He raised his hand and waved it in front of the old man's eyes. The other man didn't respond and stared at the door with dull eyes.
Seeing that Li Pan couldn't find anything out, he ducked and went upstairs, casually opened the security door on the second floor, and broke into the house.
A stench assaulted my nostrils. Sure enough, the old man was dead. He was all mashed into paste. He died on the tatami. There was already a sticky human-shaped gelatinous substance on the bed quilt, with yellow and green lumps. The gelatinous pus is like mung bean and pork ribs porridge.
Li Pan walked into the house, took Shiba in and searched the local laptop. He also looked through all the photos of clothing and supplies in the cabinet, and probably found out everything.
The old man’s name is Hiroshi Tamura. He was a MM when he was young. Ahem, the Mars Marine Corps is similar to the Starship Corps. It is a new military branch of this era. It is a specialized space combat force. It is named because it is usually stationed on Mars for training. It is responsible for Special forces for planetary assault mission.
This force selects elites from the planetary army and receives tactical training in various gravity environments to form a quick reaction force. Habitable planets were discovered during space exploration, and these were the first people to drop harmful insects and kill them via airdrops.
Most of the elite veterans of the border star field also have service experience in this army. After all, they have to be screened repeatedly from the elites in order to carefully select the true kings of soldiers.
Of course, Tamura has not yet reached the level of a soldier. After being discharged from the army, he worked in a security company and was assigned as a driver to drive bodyguards for company officials. Looking at the medical records, it turns out that he was seriously injured in a certain operation. He couldn't afford the surgery and was fired because he couldn't continue working. His wife took the money and ran away with her lover, and his children ignored him, so he opened a small shop and collected rags. , working odd jobs to make a living, and the last person died alone in this ancestral house.
As for the vase, there is no more detailed record. Tamura old man works part-time as a rag picker to make a living. The company occasionally asks him to collect old goods from the warehouse and read correspondence emails. Some old comrades will also send some inheritance to him after they pass away. That is him Grocery stores are out of stock.
Tamura collected and took pictures of vases and other items, and uploaded them to his grocery store website for sale from time to time. It seems that they were uploaded for more than half a year. It may have been screened by the company's intelligence department recently.
Li Pan turned around twice, and found that except for ordinary people who only had white smoke left after death, the 'soul' of old Tamura could gather into a human form and huddled in a corner, and he didn't notice any other suspicious signs. As for his own strong willpower, , or is it a side effect caused by long-term exposure to 'vase', I can't be sure.
"Okay, the task is completed. Let's go back and write the report."
However, Rama actually completed the task so easily. Li Pan didn't know how to evaluate it, so he just went to put the 'vase' in the constant-temperature warehouse.
The constant-temperature warehouse at the company's headquarters, also known as the 'yellow zone', is specially used to house monsters that are temporarily contained, have not yet been identified, have unknown behaviors, and are dangerous to life.
Li Pan glanced at the controls in the elevator in the yellow area. The blue, yellow and red warehouse area has almost the same structure. There is a direct elevator from the lobby. There are also eight floor number buttons in the elevator. The bottom is the reception room. F0 and the other seven floors are arranged from F50 to F56.
Similarly, in the red zone, the rows are from F57 to F63. The only difference is the color of the elevator lights, which are blue, yellow and red. If there are 'monsters' stored on any floor, the corresponding elevator button will light up. Otherwise, it will be an empty storage space that can be used to store new products.
The basic policy of warehouse management is basically the same. Each monster corresponds to a separate floor. However, the floors in the 'blue zone' basically have no containment measures. It is an empty office area with cabinets, chairs, etc., as long as the 'monsters' 'Just don't affect each other.
In addition to various containment measures, the 'yellow zone' and 'red zone' both require 'turning off the lights'.
In other words, these 'monsters' are all stored in some kind of extradimensional space.
There may be various restrictions on the 'turn off the lights' storage method, or there may be cost issues. In short, companies generally do not recommend keeping all monsters at the company headquarters.
Therefore, usually after the technical department determines the safe containment method for monsters, a special external warehouse will be set up to store and manage numbered items for a long time.
In addition, external warehouses are not only found on the earth, but also in space. TheM Company also has asteroid bases, vacuum cargo compartments, and fleet warehouses in the asteroid belt, all of which are used to store "war backup" monsters. The general manager can open the inventory on earth at will, but those items need to be reported to the head office.
In short, Li Pan glanced at the yellow area. It was full from F50 to F54. To put it bluntly, it was all a mess left by the previous session. He had collected gadgets that he had not had time to classify and contain. He would have to test them one by one when he was free. Then report for containment.
Alas, the work is never done.
So he put the 'vase' in the yellow area F55, and Li Pan went to the red area F58 to look at the 'sheets', and used the Nine Yin Magic to beat the 'sheets'.
Don't tell me, this tattered bed sheet is really resistant to beatings. Li Pan estimated that he could punch it with a flying fist of Jiuyin Superman, with at least ten tons of force, but he still couldn't break it. Instead, he used cyan sword energy to condense it on With his fingertips, he used the Jiuyin Magic Skill at the same time. With one finger, he could poke a hole in the sheets. Although it would recover in a blink of an eye, it would definitely be broken.
It seems that monkey swordsmanship also has merits, and we can't just abandon it and not practice it.
Li Pan didn't have a full breakfast, and he didn't want to waste his limited physical strength on the tattered sheets. He practiced boxing and kicking, warmed up, and then went back to write a daily report and completed the tasks of 'Monster Containment' and 'Monster Testing'.
For successful monster containment tasks, the company was quite generous. They directly gave Li Pan and Rama who participated in the task a silver key each. Completing a task in one day was considered worthy of the two thousand five hundred yuan.
So Li Pan let Rama roam freely. This kid has been locked in a cage. He has never gone to school seriously and doesn't even know about maggots. Now he is educating himself by relying on the educational videos Shiba downloaded from the Shenzhen Internet.
Then he and Aqi discussed continuing to recruit new people.
"Why, the OL with beautiful legs who came for the interview that day refused? What a pity. I don't think these professional personnel are easy to fool. Maybe engineers, prosthetists, finance or accounting majors will be given priority." "But these professions are not easy to fool.
" It's a popular industry, elite white-collar workers, the daily salary is probably more than 2,500, I'm afraid it will be difficult to convince them..." "
I know, but we have to rebuild the technical department as soon as possible, and we also need a capable helper to make extra money.
At this time It should be the right time to recruit talents. Now that Gao Tianyuan is dog-eat-dog, there must be many company dogs involved in office squabbling and being fired. They are desperate and don't dare to take the risk of jumping off the stairs. Maybe they will ask us for help. It's not necessarily that they are anyway
. What a good thing, I don’t feel any pain when I use it. It kills two birds with one stone and is mutually beneficial." "
Okay boss, I will discuss it with Miss Shiba and try to recruit in the internal forum of Gao Tianyuan."
Alas, there is no other way. In fact, Aqi has also contacted several resumes given by the human resources department these days, but only those who were desperate like Kotaro applied. Others who came for interviews, the talks were good at the beginning, and they heard that the monthly salary was two thousand five thousand. After working for three years, I declined outright.
In fact, after getting in touch with these monsters, Li Pan also understood the considerations of Monster Company. Because of their business content, containing monsters, they really don't need to hire so many high-quality talents.
To put it bluntly, the knowledge you learned in school and the prosthetics you put on were just to make fun of you in front of these monsters, so you are either gifted like Li Pan, or you are lucky enough like Rama. The other parameters are really useless.
And two thousand five hundred yuan is neither too much nor too much. Li Pan really needs to be ruthless and go directly to the slums to pick up people one by one and send them to the warehouse to try them one by one. If he loses control, he will immediately delete the files. . As long as enough human resources are invested, no monster attributes can be measured.
As for the organizational backbone that is actually used to maintain the company's operations, as well as the support staff of the technical department, most of them will wait for the school recruitment time to hold a seminar to recruit elite graduates with clean financial backgrounds.
Of course, such regular employees don't have to go to the front line. The dirty work is done by temporary workers. They just drink coffee and write reports in the office. This is what big companies in the universe do.
In this way, I wrote reports, took inventory, and spent another daily working day in which I seemed to have done a lot of things but nothing. As I was about to clock out and get off work, the phone rang.
"Containment out of control alarm in the constant-temperature warehouse!"
Huh? No, he obviously turned off the lights?
So Li Pan set off immediately. Aqi and Spider Shi, who were beating the sheets, were fully armed and rushed into the yellow zone F55 and turned on the lights.
Fortunately, there were no bloody explosions.
But there are two 'vases' in the room.
Li Pan turned off the alarm and frowned at the two identical vases on the table.
Then he turned the light off and on again.
Okay, there are four vases.
After using a pocket watch to identify the vase, every vase responded, but in my hand it was just an ordinary blue and white porcelain vase.
"...What do you think of Ah Qi?"
Ah Qi typed and announced,
"This monster seems to have some kind of self-replication mechanism. If we don't find a way to restrict and contain it, we may be in big trouble."
Isn't it? If this thing Exponentially doubling the copy without any extreme solution would probably be a world-class disaster. But after leaving it in the grocery store for so long, there is obviously no reaction?
"Hmm... maybe it's caused by 'turning off the lights'...
Let's check the old man Tamura's situation on Shiba, who he worked for as a driver before, what social networks he has, and see if he can find out what happened before the vase. The whereabouts of the things.
Save the things in the office first, monitor them with a spider, leave them alone like a grocery store, and see if there is any reaction. You should work harder tonight and keep an eye out. If this thing starts to replicate, notify me immediately. "
Okay boss."
So Li Pan got off work.
So what else? It is impossible to work overtime, and it is impossible to work overtime if the world is destroyed.
But it’s okay to have some side hustle.
Li Pan took the subway all the way to the old capital area. According to the coordinates and route map sent by Kotaro, he found a ramen restaurant and went around to the back alley to get into the sewer. Walking along the escape tunnel, you come to a huge air-raid shelter, which is the famous information center of New Tokyo Underground City, the 'Samsara Bar'.
'Reincarnation' is not an asset of the Dongcheng Alliance. The boss behind the scenes is a person from another world. Takamagahara was a neutral intelligence dealer during his time. The local chaebol gang also gave him face. All kinds of middlemen, mercenaries, spies and spies would trade here, and the people of the Night City Times, the tradition of this neutral zone has continued.
However, unlike the Peace Hotel, which advocates peace, Samsara is happy to send its guests to reincarnation. After all, most of the guests here will die. As vicious scum, it is easier to do it directly. Of course, you are responsible for life and death, and you have to break it. Things have to be compensated at exorbitant prices.
Naturally, a new face like Li Pan was spotted before he even entered the main entrance. Two people came up to test him, one with a gun and the other with a knife. They came up to greet him from both sides. They didn’t know whether they were robbing or cutting off their waists, including the bar. Passers-by, including bodyguards, watched the show.
Fortunately, Li Pan reacted very quickly. Seeing that their eyes were wrong, before the other party could say his lines, he swayed his body and swayed his feet. He walked past the man with a gun in front of him, ducked behind him, reached out and pressed his face and turned him around. Circle, twist the neck into a twist, break the head into an obtuse angle, and throw it to the ground.
Then he stepped forward again, shrank forward, jumped in front of the knifeman who was frozen on the spot, twisted his wrist, stabbed the knife into his stomach with his backhand, and raised his hand to lift it from his belly to his chest. He opened the chest, then added another inch of punch. With one punch, he tore a big hole in the edge of the knife and took out the heart.
The onlookers who were watching the show hiding in the shadows also felt like shit. They never expected that this newcomer would be so ruthless. They all swallowed and immediately turned their heads away, pretending to study the feces in the sewer.
The bodyguards at the door of 'Samsara' also quickly moved a step to let Li Pan open the door, so as not to be torn apart by the lunatic's hand.
I have to say that violence is the best passport. There are some people who will not dare to fuck you if you slap them in the face.
The air-raid shelter where the 'Samsara' bar is located was formerly the division headquarters of the New Tokyo Defense Force. It has more than a dozen floors and various branch air-raid shelters. Different entrances have different security levels. There are some passages exclusively for the upper class that are fully bulletproof. Elevator, then there will naturally be no gangsters looking for trouble.
As for the various entertainment facilities inside, there are naturally more, including heavy metal dance floors, petty bourgeoisie-style bars, and even various shops, hotels, black markets, exchanges, auction houses, and of course there are dancers and dolls. All kinds of service facilities, in short, as the most famous underground city in the Night City, Golden Cave can provide all kinds of services.
It's a pity that Li Pan only has 5 yuan, 3 cents and 2 cents on him, otherwise he would have to go shopping around and see the market once he comes here.
However, it is better to be poor than to be poor, and he couldn't afford to spend money anyway. Now he felt as clear as ice and looked straight all the way to the private room reserved by Kotaro.
Kotaro hasn't arrived yet, but the young master of the Feng Mo family is indeed quite polite. He has already paid for the drinks out of his own pocket, and the bikini smart maid brought a fruit plate and a Coke bucket.
Li Pan was not polite. He emptied the fruit plate first, ate all the melon seeds and mints, and drank half of the Coke bucket. Kotaro finally arrived... "Who are you?" "Manager, it's
me
. Ah, Kotaro,"
the woman with heavy makeup, long golden hair, fake eyes and a miniskirt, who looked like a nightclub princess said embarrassedly,
"Don't you recognize me? It seems that my disguise skills haven't deteriorated yet."
Li Pan He almost vomited out all the wine in his stomach,
"Holy crap! Why did you change into a prosthetic body when you have nothing to do!?"
Kotaro said seriously,
"Manager, I didn't change into a prosthetic body. This is the Demon Sealing Style Disguise Technique, a secret operation. It's a necessary disguise!
By the way, don't call me Kotaro now. This identity is inconvenient. Call me Annie."
Hearing that he hadn't changed yet, Li Pan was even more disgusted and trembling,
"Damn! It's better to do a full set if it's half! What are you doing! Just tell me where the Shura Club is, and we’ll be done with it if we fight in!"
Annie Kotaro explained helplessly,
"There’s no way, I’ve made inquiries, and the Shura Club’s clubs are more sophisticated, and they often play with dead people. , only entertains regular customers, and requires an introducer to lead the way.
However, I heard that the Shura Club sometimes finds some wandering warblers to make up the numbers. Although they have a bad reputation and women often disappear, they offer generous prices and some people still go. So I plan
to Taking this opportunity to infiltrate, I have swallowed the tracker into my body. This is the tracking program.
Boss, don’t worry, I will definitely avenge my shame this time and successfully infiltrate!"
Li Pan couldn't help but be shocked by his determination,
"Demon Anne , you can actually do this for the team's extra money! Okay, just go ahead and go!"
(End of Chapter)