When X snapped back to reality, she was still in the Manager's office. It seemed as though she had never moved, and nothing had changed, but a single glance upwards revealed the differences... The screens were already a chaotic crimson mess.
Messages from Safety Department Dean Netzach were flashing incessantly in the bottom right corner of the screen, and the Meltdown Alarm blared in chaotic sync with a bizarre, violent cyberpunk beat.
[Ah...? Manager, the Safety Department employees are acting a bit strange. Could you help me check on them?]
[The employees' behavior is really weird, Manager, did you notice what's happening here... Whatever, weird things happen all the time.]
On the screen, the little sprite characters were moving frantically inside the department. The Containment unit doors were wide open, not even shut properly, while another employee, transformed into a monster, waited quietly inside the unit, refusing to run out.
The remaining Safety Department employees were attacking employees from other departments... They had started fighting with the Control Department employees.
When an employee loses their mind, the best method is to snap them back to their senses. But under normal circumstances, the weapons in the other employees' hands would beat the unhinged employee to death before they could ever wake up.
In the end, the Safety Department employees were completely wiped out by the Control Department employees. The Safety Department fell into absolute silence, with only a few scattered clerks cleaning up the corpses in the hallway.
[Safety Department employees... Uh... Are they dead already? Manager, is this what you promised me?]
[The Safety Department has been completely annihilated... Do you have anything to say for yourself? I'm listening, Manager.]
One sarcastic, harsh remark after another streamed in from the bottom left corner of the screen. X desperately wanted to say something, to offer a response, and to fix this mess, but she couldn't do a thing. She could only watch.
What had already happened could not be undone...
Watching herself brush off those warnings, ignoring the Dean's mockery, and stubbornly ordering the remaining employees to perform Repression work on the Containment unit. Alternating Repression cycles eventually gathered enough PE-Boxes to satisfy the energy demands, and the Abnormality's information slowly unlocked itself.
At the cost of massive personnel casualties, she had single-handedly finished today's Energy Quota.
Was all of this... Really worth it?
[I... Did I perhaps overestimate your capabilities... Manager.]
[Malkuth, you should've known from the start, this guy only cares about energy... Ah, all the employees in my department are dead, what else can I even do?]
Even Dean Malkuth, who always loved to encourage her and believed in her abilities, wore a look of disappointment. Though the Energy Quota was fulfilled, not a single person had a joyful expression on their face.
X wanted to open her mouth and explain herself, but this was herself inside the simulator, powerless to change the actions she had stubbornly committed.
Herself, sitting in the Manager's office and commanding the employees through the screens, refusing to retort to a single word of the Deans' mockery, stubborn and deaf to advice, clutching the gathered energy and clocking out the moment the day was done, not spending even a single extra second on overtime.
Soon after, as the simulation progressed, she was reported by the Deans, neglected her duties, and the AI Secretary, after 'listening' to the Deans' opinions, locked down the Manager's office, deciding to 'educate' the Manager.
Under her own bizarre field of view, much like when she first opened her eyes and was bound to a Corporation chair, she was tied to the chair by Angela using red ropes.
The red rope was folded in half from the middle, looping around her neck, trailing down from her collarbone, and tied in a knot across her sternum and hips.
Then it wrapped around her waist and headed downwards, tied into a knot slightly above and to the side behind her back.
The red rope passed through a loop at the back of her neck, pulling the cord to the left and right, coming down from above. While adjusting the position and tightening the rope, she finally tucked the cord into the belt.
[Manager, are you really seriously reflecting on yourself?]
The Intelligent AI said this, but... whether she was reflecting or not probably didn't matter much to her.
[Employees are the Corporation's important assets and resources. To suffer so many casualties under such simple containment conditions means you aren't putting your heart into the work at all.]
The Intelligent AI's slightly chilly fingers propped up X's chin, forcing X to lift her head and meet her gaze.
[You should know that if a Manager fails in their duties, you must accept punishment.]
A knee pressed between her legs, making her already unstable balance even more precarious, while the chair restricted her movements.
Her golden pupils dilated due to a sense of uneasy emotion. X watched the Intelligent AI drawing closer and closer in her field of vision, interacting with her in an increasingly reckless manner, as fear rushed straight to her head.
Uneasiness... anxiety, and perhaps many more complicated components mixed in.
She utterly loathed the thought of experiencing this so-called punishment; it was an indescribable feeling of disgust. She truly, deeply abhorred these things and had zero desire to experience them, nor could she allow or accept an Intelligent AI doing this.
Fingers touched the sleeves, neatly buttoning up the black shirt, though the fabric looked somewhat wrinkled solely because of the ropes.
Yet, this growing closeness... X hated this kind of thing.
And perhaps such intense feelings of disgust triggered some kind of protective mechanism...
The simulation broke... X snapped back out of the recalled scene. Aside from breaking out in a cold sweat, nothing seemed to have happened, as if it were all just an illusion. Time had even rewound back to the moment the Secretary was brewing coffee.
Everything was fine, everything was fine...
[Manager, this is the coffee you wanted. Per your request, milk and sugar have been added. If you need more, you can adjust it yourself.]
The terrifying AI Secretary inside the simulation was currently brewing coffee. A cup of coffee with a rich milky aroma was placed right beside Manager X's hand. Floating on the surface of the brown coffee was the same beautifully crafted latte art as always.
This should have been a relaxing moment, but X didn't even dare to look at the Secretary much. Her gaze was glued strictly to the coffee and the monitor, pretending that all her attention was focused entirely on work, with zero time to spare for trivial matters.
She didn't dare look. She was afraid a single glance would cause something to go wrong. Just hearing the Secretary's cold yet gentle voice gave X goosebumps, and the rich aroma of coffee felt more like a fatal poison than anything else.
On the screen, it was just the normal scene. There were no red triangular warning icons, no piercing alarm sirens, and no relentless barrage from the Deans over management mistakes.
Today's work had only just officially begun, and X could naturally still turn things around. The tragedy hadn't happened yet; everything could still be salvaged, whether it was the lives of the lost employees or her own dignity.
"Netzach, notify the employees to swap their weapons for suppression gear and stand by at [F-02-44]'s Containment unit. Find a bold, mentally resilient employee to perform Repression work on [F-02-44]. If that employee's mental state destabilizes while outside, suppress them immediately."
Absorbing the lessons from the simulator, she prioritized changing the employees' equipment, swapping out basic weapons for higher-damage E.G.O gear. This would reduce casualties during employee infighting and make suppression much easier.
Currently, the Abnormalities contained in the Control Department and Safety Department were of the non-breaching variety. They wouldn't run out and could only wait quietly inside their Containment units, making them the easier type to manage. Therefore, the main threats to guard against were employees losing their minds and rule contamination triggered by violating an Abnormality's rules.
Rushing for success only bred mistakes. While the Corporation's Energy Quota was urgent, it wasn't impossible to reach. Without a strict time limit, it was safer to prioritize stability and monitor the employees' states, letting them work only after they were fully rested.
Pressuring employees into endless labor and chasing meaningless quotas would only degrade their mental states, lower efficiency, and ultimately lead to a breakdown that triggered worse incidents and heavier losses.
Treating employees with a degree of benevolence was necessary. X was beginning to realize this, not out of pure sympathy, but because she recognized that this was the most efficient management strategy for the sake of performance.
A benevolent policy is the foundation of a stable rule; only then can one win the hearts of the people. And X, as a newly appointed rookie Manager whose Secretary only offered surface-level respect and whose Deans barely acknowledged her, would have nothing left to control if she ruled with an iron fist and stubbornly did as she pleased. The employees wouldn't recognize her as their Manager either.
Without Angela, whether the Deans would listen to her words or even grant her the title of 'Manager' remained an open question, it would simply be a joke of a hollow title.
"Malkuth, have that newly arrived employee repeatedly perform Attachment work on [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds], and alternate after three times."
If energy gathering efficiency relied solely on a single Abnormality, it would be far too slow. Control Department's Abnormality, [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds], served as an almost completely harmless Abnormality and was a crucial existence for ordering employees to perform Attachment work and training their corresponding stats.
The Corporation's method of harvesting energy was by squeezing Abnormalities, and the tool for doing so was the employees. As the most vital components, employee individual stats were immensely crucial. Only by training employees with exceptional stats could one handle more dangerous Abnormalities and tackle harsher work assignments.
Switching back and forth between [Pause] and [Double speed], she ensured that while employees were working, she could simultaneously monitor their physical and mental states. The moment a slip-up occurred, she would immediately order the employees to return to the employee break room to rest.
The Corporation-provided [Regenerator] could heal physical injuries while also recovering employee mental fatigue, restoring tense or neuro-polluted minds to a relatively safe and peaceful state. At least from the Manager's perspective, this didn't take long before work could start all over again.
Upon seeing a Safety Department employee successfully complete work on [F-02-44] and pull an 'Excellent' result, X finally heaved a slight sigh of relief, and her golden eyes, which had been locked onto the monitor, could shift away for a brief moment.
Opening the sugar cube jar, she dropped two more cubes into her coffee and stirred. The milky sweetness that dominated the coffee bloomed on X's tongue, a silky, blissful flavor. The sudden boost of sugar also made X feel much more energized.
One employee entered the Safety Department break room to rest, while another took over their shifts.
X noticed that inside the Containment unit, [F-02-44] had lowered its body. Its hideous physique resembled a grasshopper with its legs broken by someone, and the constant swaying of its head and the slightly twitching insect suction cups seemed to tell X one thing.
After the employee performed [Repression] work, the Abnormality was harmed, and it was reaching its limit.
Though the monster's appearance was hideous, it wouldn't attack employees. It merely inflicted mental pollution upon them through its ugly exterior and nauseating aura. Perhaps it had some peculiar taste, showing a singular fondness for [Repression] work.
It was almost as if... it was begging for release, pleading for an employee to kill it and free it from this flesh.
"Netzach, notify the employees to perform Insight work on [F-02-44], and then follow up with [Repression] work, alternating in order."
"When [F-02-44] lowers its body, do not perform Repression work on it; switch to other methods instead."
X carefully and cautiously observed the state of the Containment unit, deducing the monster's conditions and rules. Although she wasn't clear on the exact details of the punishments inside the simulator, she remembered the consequences of management errors during work all too well.
The most crucial point was that after consecutive Repression work on the monster, the monster would die, and the employee who performed the Repression work would replace the dead creature inside the Containment unit, becoming a New Monster.
Like a spreading curse, transmitting endlessly... The monster dies, but a New Monster will always emerge, and the New Monster will in turn plead for the next person to grant it release.
Yet the Abnormality with the Subject Number [F-02-44] had a stark bias toward Repression work, only Repression work yielded the highest success rate, while any other task proved to have a high chance of a poor result for the employees' current skill levels.
The energy output could only be described as utterly dismal, requiring her to rely almost entirely on the benevolent [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds] to make up for the energy loss.
Compared to [F-02-44], which would kill an employee for violating its rules, Control Department's [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds] gave X absolute peace of mind, requiring virtually no excess energy to manage.
This was one of the rare Abnormalities that practically never harmed employees while bringing them beneficial effects. If all Abnormalities were as easy to manage as [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds], how wonderful would that be?
But she could only daydream; everyone knew that was impossible. If all Abnormalities were that friendly, why would the employee turnover rate be startlingly high? Come to think of it, perhaps even the Manager's turnover rate would be startlingly high.
What number Manager was X since coming to Lobotomy Corporation? X didn't know, nor did she ask. Asking Angela wouldn't necessarily yield an answer either; the mysterious Intelligent AI was always so cryptic, only saying what needed to be said and revealing only the information X was supposed to know.
The only piece of information X could be certain of now was that her own AI Secretary had a severe streak of mischievousness, finding amusement at her expense whenever bored, while constantly plotting for an excuse to 'punish' this incompetent Manager.
What a ridiculous punishment. Just thinking about it sent a chill down her spine, colder than a Coca-Cola with extra ice, worse for thermal capacity than flat soda, and severe enough that even flushing a botched cup of tea down the toilet wouldn't warrant such a fate.
"Netzach, that employee's mental state is terrible. Hurry and send them off to rest, and swap in another employee to take over their work. Watch the situation, [F-02-44] cannot handle any more Repression work."
"Malkuth, the employee who received the halo gift from [One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds] doesn't need to work anymore. Switch them out for someone who hasn't received it; all employees who haven't received it must rotate in."
Order after order was issued. Under the multi-layered pressure of potential punishments from the AI Secretary or the Department Deans, X had no choice but to pour all her energy into her work, desperately trying to keep her mind off those distressing thoughts.
Only by properly finishing the Manager's duties could she give Angela fewer excuses to punish her, and leave the unruly Department Deans with nothing critical to say.
Driven by this anxious urgency, X's Managerial performance today was exceptionally stellar. Not a single mistake occurred, containment alerts were dealt with in a timely manner, and not a single employee suffered mental collapse or death.
No employees died in the hallways, and none perished in the Containment units. They were neither devoured by monsters nor struck down by her own suppression batons. Peace, a word that seemed to have zero relation to the Corporation, had actually managed to appear in her work report.
After working overtime for a while and confirming that every employee today had obtained their respective Abnormality-matching accessories, X finally signaled for quitting time.
Today, she had not only successfully completed the Corporation's Energy Quota, but also fulfilled the tasks assigned to her by Control Department Dean Malkuth and Safety Department Dean Netzach.
X had properly stabilized the Abnormalities' emotions, allowing the employees to produce a massive amount of energy with 'Excellent' performance grades. Moreover, there were no casualties today, even the clerks responsible for cleaning and doing odd jobs managed to avoid any accidents.
It was extraordinarily rare. There was no minced meat clogging the wall cracks, no blood staining the floors, and neither groaning employees nor roaring monsters echoed through the corridors.
While the atmosphere couldn't exactly be called peaceful, it could certainly be termed harmonious. Today was a remarkably cohesive and peaceful day. The break room was safe, the corridors were safe, and nothing bizarre suddenly popped out of nowhere.
X didn't know what cup of coffee this was, but she knew... when she finally snapped back to her senses and shifted her gaze away from the monitor, the coffee on her desk had gone cold. The few remaining sips had turned ice-cold, matching the temperature of the air-conditioning blowing inside the Manager's office.
X didn't mind. She picked up the cup, intending to down the rest of the coffee in one go, only to be stopped by Angela.
[Manager, cold coffee should be poured out. I will brew a fresh cup for you.]
The coffee was taken away by Angela. The ice-cold brew was poured down the drain by her AI Secretary, and X could even hear the clear, rushing sound of water.
"That's a bit wasteful."
X muttered under her breath, but simply opened the sugar cube jar instead, taking out a cube and tossing it straight into her mouth to chew.
She hadn't really intended to drink the coffee in the first place; she simply wanted a quick intake of sugar. Sugar could dissolve feelings of anxiety and let her overworked brain relax just a little bit. Although being a Manager meant sitting in front of a monitor and giving orders, the job was by no means easy.
It was a task that consumed a vast amount of mental energy and took a heavy toll on the body. One had to pay attention to every minor detail, sensing the Abnormalities' states while looking after the employees' health, and even satisfying the demanding requirements of the Deans.
But at least today's work had been completed to perfection. There were no casualties, and on top of meeting the Corporation's Energy Quota, she had also fulfilled the requests handed down by Dean Malkuth and Dean Netzach.