Chapter 3: Power Trumps All
It's the year 2019 in the month of July, the sun rose in its grandeur shining across the city of Mu. In a oldish yet not ancient building lay an unseemly exhausted Nan'Ke just awoken from his sleep bathe in the morning sun. After yesterday events and his 'quick escape' he was overcome with tiredness and just fell asleep on the bed just as he laid down.
Currently he's in one of the rooms of the Attaché hotel, a famous hotel chain across Long country. The hotel is not the average five star hotel that usually give hotels it fame but an Internet cafe that's on steroids. To put into perspective a businessman in Long country saw how popular Internet cafes are with youths and to a lesser extent those of middle aged, bought them and and added rooms to the second and third floors of the each building that could accommodate them.
In the one Nan'Ke is staying at is a four floor hotel with 5 rooms on each floor except the first, and two bathrooms for male and females. The best part of this hotel is that rooms are fully stock with beds, wardrobe, office desk and fully functional desktop with 5th generation configurations, which is seemingly immense as currently the latest is 7th generation but those are only what big corporations can have.
Gathering himself after waking up, he proceeded to go about his usual morning routine of showering, brushing teeth etc. After having his meal which is delivered and free, only breakfast and dinner are complementary at the hotel, and it cost $800/night just to stay here. That's right his rent for a month would only allow him a night. With his current cash on him he can only stay for another day before going to find somewhere cheaper or if he can land a job that would cover the cost of living he wouldn't mind staying here until he leaves for University.
That is the goal of day for Nan'Ke finding a job. Through his 18 years of life his only job was being the intern at the station, and that's only because he now had freedom to choose as he is no longer at the orphanage. Which wasn't his best time although he had 2 meals sometimes 3 meals a day and a roof over his head the lack of a usual childhood still plagues him not that he complains outwardly, he just wishes he had the power of choice at that time. But no point he thinking of that now as he hops on to the computer to search for a job that he might like.
He thinks to himself while scouring the internet, 'hmm what would be a good way to earn money now'. 'There is a janitor job at the coffee shop, a gopher at a car dealership, ohh this is interesting a paid internship at new investment firm start-up, but it needs a graduate degree/diploma from one of the top 6 universities' which I don't have yet'. He continues for about a couple hours not finding anything to his forte and if he did he didn't have the necessary qualifications as of now. While going through a 3rd party website a pop-up ad was displayed with the caption 'fix-bugs-now' with a link to the website page.
Seeing this at first he was skeptical knowing that these pop-ups could lead to a virus or 18+ content, he contemplates for a second before clicking it. After that he then began going through the website he was taken to and was taken aback as the website had job listings from all around, small or big companies unknown and known corporations looking for coders/programmers to fix the bugs or errors in their software and codes. His immediate response was "Such a job Exists!"
He looks like he just found water after eating a dry biscuit, what was that feeling salvation? He didn't care but he swiftly went through the information on the website and how to apply for this job. It was pretty simple really, all he had to do was fill up basic information such as name, location( his district not address) and banking details in order to get paid after the work is completed. However he notice that the naming didn't actually require one to use government names, knowing that coders could become hackers directly or indirectly keeping a lock on one's identity is crucial in this business. So his name on this business venture was C0D3-X (Codex) which is cringey at best he found the idea and pun funny. Since the website was pretty secure for the most part according to his criteria and knowledge, he didn't have to worry of others tracing him through the bank account, which for him would be easy if wants to find information on someone he can just follow the money so to speak.
After registering he then looked at the jobs on the list and saw that he was categorized in a level which being level one, 'so since I'm new here I am level 1 and can only accept jobs in that section.' He concluded and then continued 'to increase my level I need to complete more than fifty level 1 tasks and so on and so forth. Not a bad system it gives newbies experience as well as a track record that they can complete the work. No big company would give advance work to a newbie who hasn't even completed a basic task yet.' Nodding his head in agreement with his own statement he saw that there or over two thousand level 1 jobs which consists of web development, game code bugs, regular maintenance on websites etc. The pay that these jobs offer were definitely not much for the required hours one would have to put into this, its grunt or scut work.
The salary is based on a job to job basis with it ranging from $200-$500 with some outliers in the range of $800 that is because the client would want solutions with a harsher time period. An example would be the client wants a solution in 24hrs but on a usual schedule the solution would be given after 3days as the programmer may have other jobs or just resting( A/N: they do sleep, sometimes) so the client would pay extra for speed.
Seeing the pot of gold in front of him Nan'Ke began specifically selecting ten tasks that he can complete within the next few hours. So for the next 3 hours Nan'Ke was doing basic tasks like web maintenance, rectifying a few game bugs in some mobile games and he even did some low quality patch work which was good enough for the client in any sense. Once he was done, under the task-in-progress on his profile he saw it's status 'waiting for approval.' This means once the client was satisfied with his work they would directly pay him the money they posted for the job.
Nan'Ke would have to pay 10% of the job money to the website holders as the website was basically an independent entity that just house coders and companies, he must pay the website holders a fee of convenience. So when Nan'Ke completes a job for $200 he would only receive $180 while the website gained the other $20. Subsequently the company would pay 10% of the reward money as well as they are able to post jobs and get in touch with coders and their solutions. So the website makes $40 on every $200 job, It's a win-win-win situation for each party. After finishing up he went downstairs to the first floor, which was half Internet café and half restaurant and bar. Seeing he had to buy his own lunch he came here to grab something to eat. While eating he was watching the news on the television that was in the restaurant and a piece of breaking news was displayed; "Deputy Mayor Xiao Yun has died, he was involved in a vehicular accident this morning on his way to the municipal office….." The news faded as Nan'Ke froze seemingly frightened to his core. 'It hasn't been 24hrs yet, he is already dead.' His breathing became labored, he started hold his chest as he felt it tighten. He was sweating profusely as his body was cold sweating and at the same time a profound heat was welling up inside his body, he hurriedly left the restaurant after paying and went back to his room.
'Huff…..inhales…..exhales...inhales….exha- *drop*
He fell unconscious on the floor.
————————————————————————
Azure Villa No.3
A young man age 24 years old was listening to reports from an unknown voice over his phone even to him, but there conversation sounded like they had a relationship, "I see that you had completed the task, however why did you make it so public" said the young man, his face marred with perplexing emotions. "Young master Mu, you ask us for his death to look like an accident so we did. You didn't specify to keep it quiet and even if you did the money you offered was not enough for a silent death" The voice the phone was deep and unrecognizable, the young master couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman however he knew the services offered by 'The Correction' were the best so he didn't continue and offer his content for the service and hung up. Sitting in an office within the villa while tapping the armrest with his fingers contemplating something, he spoke aloud, "should I kill those Officers who 'interrogated' me. Well even though I disclose the existence of the organization and few small players its not like those 'beat cops' could threaten 'Ninth Heaven.'"
Haha *chuckles* then Mu Chen regain his regal composure and left the room putting aside the life or death of the officers aside…for now.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Mind_Medicine
Mind_Medicine Surpirse mother--Yosh Chapter 3- moving up in the world who would've thought. On another note, if you like what you read, thanks and i really mean that. Sigh I'm not gonna request any power stones and such because i'm unreliable so keep those for your favorite novel and an authors who delievers (seriously). I just wirte for the fun of it. however i do respect those who can dish out those novels and chapters like they are primordials...seriously i salute y'all. Spoiler alert...the Mc isn't dead.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone