Monster Company Tycoon Chapter 59

Chapter 59

 

The incubus. He was a monster who had grown accustomed to being submissive after years of enduring his guardian older sister’s oppression.

Even the way he sat perfectly still was rigid and proper, without a single flaw in his posture.

“But there’s something I’m curious about. You said you have a phobia of older women, but you’re not afraid of me? You even came into my dream.”

“I’m curious about that myself.”

“Don’t speak casually to me.”

“…I am.”

The incubus stared at me with an expression that made it clear he couldn’t believe it himself.

“I’ve been alive more than ten years longer than you.”

“Perhaps… you don’t look like someone older than me at all…?”

He dragged out the end of his sentence, as though he wasn’t entirely sure.

“Really?”

“I’m sorry if that offended you….”

Judging by how he seemed to be cautiously testing the waters as soon as his guardian had disappeared, it appeared that I wasn’t included among the people he feared.

“It’s fine.”

I wasn’t particularly offended. Who would dislike being told they looked young?

I’d reached the age where even getting carded made me feel pleased.

“I’ll explain the duties you’ll be handling from now on. Once a battle is over, we’ll send injured employees to the break room. Can you treat them?”

A Monster Healer License. That was probably something like a medical license, right?

The incubus nodded quite confidently.

“If we have the necessary medical equipment, I can treat minor injuries….”

“Ask the Facilities Team about getting medical equipment. Why only minor injuries?”

“I don’t feel confident treating serious injuries. My skills haven’t reached that level yet….”

“Well… I suppose it’s better than having no one.”

Still, simply having someone who could properly look after our injured employees was a huge improvement.

“You’ll also be in charge of looting. How many attempts can you make?”

“Three attempts with a Grade 3 certification.”

I’d only been able to try once at most, so now we’d be able to get much more loot with the help of an expert!

“What exactly does item appraisal involve?”

“I can appraise the value of magical items. But I can’t handle items of very high grades, either.”

Hmm. I hadn’t seen a magical item yet, so we could put that aside for now.

“If you get any while looting, appraise them while you’re at it.”

“Yeah, I mean, yes.”

I narrowed my eyes.

They say you should stretch your legs according to the space available to lie down in.

He had no Brownie around to chew him out, and the moment he realized I was being somewhat lenient with him, he was already subtly testing the boundaries. He was quite cunning.

Since he’d been more or less forced into taking this job, he probably had some resentment, too. And since this was his first experience with working life, there was still a bit of cheekiness to him.

I didn’t feel like seriously responding to every little thing he did, especially when he was a newcomer to the workforce who’d only been alive for fifteen years. So I decided to let it slide. Even if his exterior looked old, I knew he was still fresh and young on the inside, so I didn’t feel particularly motivated to make a fuss.

‘So he really is only that old, despite looking like that?’

If you thought about it, even Sabira was still around kindergarten age if we counted the time since she was reborn as a monster as her actual age.

As expected, applying human age standards to monsters didn’t seem to have much meaning.

“Lastly, what’s a Dream Maker?”

“Um… it’s a technique for handling dreams on a more advanced level…. You can create an independent virtual space inside a dream. Simply put, it’s a technique for creating a dream dimension.”

His eyes had a rather insolent look in them. He seemed to be thinking, How can you not know something like that?

That’s common knowledge to you, not to me. I didn’t want to be looked down on by someone who couldn’t even put his own specialty to use.

“That’s not simple at all. Could you show it to me?”

“How should I show you?”

After thinking for a moment, he pulled something out of thin air.

They were two small, rectangular stone tablets.

He then drew something on one of the tablets with his finger before handing it to me.

“What is this?”

It fit snugly in one hand. There was something about the grip that reminded me of…

‘That’s right. A smartphone!’

“This is a Dream Core made by engraving my energy into it. It’s like an invitation. You need it because it invites you, or rather, the Administrator, into the dream dimension I’ve created.”

“Oh…”

“If you hold it and concentrate, you can enter a light doze. Since only your consciousness is transferred into the dream, it’ll have an effect similar to lucid dreaming.”

I did as the incubus instructed and held the Dream Core in my hand, concentrating.

Then, in an instant, I felt my mind growing hazy.

It was similar to that feeling when you have nothing to do, but time passes so slowly that you end up staring blankly into space. Then, at some point, everything around you becomes quiet, and your consciousness briefly seems to drift away.

Beyond my hazy field of vision, a pure white space unfolded.

“This is the dream dimension I’ve created.”

The incubus’s voice rang softly through my drowsy consciousness.

“I made it in a hurry because you asked me to show you, but as a Grade 3 Dream Maker, all I can construct is a simple two-dimensional space.”

It was a pristine space in which absolutely nothing existed.

When I became immersed in this kind of dazed feeling, there was one thought that inevitably came to mind.

‘Ah, I want to go home. I want to get off work.’

Then something strange suddenly happened.

My thoughts began appearing as text across the white space.

The incubus seemed to notice it, too, and immediately continued explaining.

“That’s Dream Walking, or dream interference. Since the Administrator has been invited into my dream dimension, guests can also interfere with it a little in that way.”

It would be nice if you explained things in a way that was a little easier to understand.

As soon as I thought that, my thoughts appeared as text across the white space once again.

“I have the authority to create and delete dimensions, but guests can only make minor modifications.”

The incubus had read my thoughts and adjusted his explanation to a more suitable level.

After hearing that much, something suddenly occurred to me.

‘The dream dimension the incubus had created was similar to a server that accommodated guests, as well as a platform.’

And the moment I reached that conclusion, a brilliant idea suddenly flashed through my mind.

I hurriedly woke myself from the lucid dream so I wouldn’t lose the thought.

“Yes, you can wake your consciousness whenever you want, just like that. Since I forced you to dream, I was worried that… um, the Administrator’s underlings…”

“What do you mean by calling my coworkers underlings?”

“I hope those people don’t misunderstand, either…”

The incubus trailed off, his face pale.

He must have been terrified that day. After all, he’d been surrounded by Brownie and the two team leaders in the conference room and thoroughly grilled until his very soul had been drained.

“Oh, right! More importantly, you can design that dream dimension however I want, can’t you?”

The incubus gave me that insolent look again.

“But my skills are still only around Grade 3, so I can’t make anything too complicated or elaborate. I told you, it’s two-dimensional. Surfaces and points. I can’t create anything beyond that.”

“No! That’s more than enough!”

The moment I saw my thoughts being written as text on the white screen, something suddenly occurred to me.

An intranet.

‘A company-exclusive network that only employees could use!’

A system where employees could access company announcements, work documents, employee information, internal messaging, community boards, and so on, all in one place!

If the incubus built a dream dimension and distributed Dream Cores containing access permissions to each employee, wouldn’t they be able to access that space whenever they wanted?

And they could use it conveniently from anywhere, with no more time needed than briefly dozing off and waking up.

Every time we had an announcement for the dungeon, I’d previously gathered all the employees in one place, taken off my glasses, and shouted it out loud. But now, we wouldn’t need to do that anymore!

And isn’t it true that camaraderie among coworkers usually blossoms in group chats and anonymous message boards?

Even if the employees showed obedience in front of me, they might still have complaints on the inside. They might also have things they wanted to suggest to the company.

We didn’t have enough employees for that to be particularly noticeable yet, but we’d already split into two teams.

As the teams interacted more and the number of employees grew, there would naturally be employees they wanted to get closer to individually.

And then, wouldn’t they start to feel attached to the company if they had coworkers they got along with?

Just like those people who said they’d stayed at a company longer than they otherwise would have simply because they liked their coworkers, even though everything else about the place was garbage!

The phrase I’d heard most often at my previous company was, I stuck it out and stayed longer because of you, Choi.

Our dungeon was still a startup that hadn’t even managed to become a proper shitty little company yet, and its working conditions were as terrible as they could get. But it should at least have one advantage.

‘A dungeon that feels like family!’

Not a dungeon that’s like a family… GaX-like dungeon.

“Can you make something like this?”

I asked while roughly sketching the layout of the intranet portal I’d used at my previous company on a sheet of paper.

“Only I can post messages in this section. Whenever there’s an announcement for the dungeon, I’ll write it here.”

“Then I don’t think everything would fit into your field of view at once.”

“Would it be possible to connect several smaller dream dimensions? For example, could you set aside a separate dimension for this section?”

“I’ve never thought about it that way before, but I don’t think it would be impossible. That’s an interesting approach.”

The incubus, who’d had to study for several certifications in various fields to find a way to make a living after failing to put his specialty to use, was surprisingly quick-witted.

I felt like I could confidently say he was the smartest monster in our dungeon.