Ch.285[Episode 285] Tycoon City

Sir Dominic rushed to the farm as soon as he received Pedro’s call.

“What on earth is that…?”

Sir Dominic stopped at the entrance of the farm and looked up at the building.

Just a few days ago, when Sir Dominic had gone to rest, the building was only 23 floors high. Now it had already exceeded 120 floors, making his neck hurt from looking up.

This meant the growth was accelerating more and more.

Sir Dominic was surprised by the farm’s tremendous transformation, but he soon shook his head to regain his senses and entered the farm.

What mattered now wasn’t the farm’s growth, but the protest by the labor union that had declared overtime work.

“Pedro!”

“Ah, Sir Dominic, you’ve arrived?”

Sir Dominic met Pedro who was waiting for him at the entrance.

Pedro was wiping away his profuse sweat with a handkerchief as if troubled, and his hands were trembling strangely.

Seeing Pedro’s trembling hands, Sir Dominic seemed to realize something and spoke to him.

“Don’t tell me… Pedro, have you been working more than usual too?”

“…Yes, I have.”

Pedro tried to hide his trembling hands behind his back, but nodded as if he couldn’t lie to his employer.

Indeed.

Pedro’s trembling hands were a symptom of work addiction.

“But I’m different from them. At least I’m doing it to earn more money—”

Pedro tried to explain the difference between himself and the union members, but Sir Dominic wasn’t listening.

“Enough, enough! Pedro. We’ll discuss your work addiction issue later. For now…”

Sir Dominic cut off Pedro’s words and glanced through the transparent glass into the office.

It was the HR team’s office, a place that had been reorganized as the building expanded.

The HR team members appeared to be in an urgent meeting, and with the door open, the contents of their meeting were completely exposed.

Of course, from the HR team’s perspective, they probably left it open for quick movement as if they couldn’t waste even a second, but thanks to this, Sir Dominic could hear their conversation clearly.

“Team leader! We have a problem!”

“What is it?”

“We have no more people to promote or transfer!”

“What? What about additional recruitment? What happened with additional recruitment?”

“W-well… They said they can’t work with a Black Company that only works 8 hours a day…”

“Damn it! That’s the problem with young people these days! Back in my day, seniors only made me work 4 hours! The rest of the time was for resting or learning! And they’re missing out on this great opportunity just because they only have to work 8 hours?”

“I know, right? I only worked 6 hours myself. Kids these days only look for obligations and don’t care about rights.”

“Anyway, cancel the promotions of those who worked additional illegal hours, then transfer them and promote them again. That should buy us another day, right?”

“…Half a day at most. The entire labor union, no, the entire company is working overtime right now…”

“…Damn it. We want to work too!”

Sir Dominic lost his composure after hearing the conversation between the team leader and team members.

Setting aside whether what he just heard could be said by someone in their right mind, the bigger problem was that they all seemed to sincerely believe it.

In fact, this problem required facing the very deep abyss of Tycoon City to understand.

Tycoon City was originally meant to have a casual system assigned to it.

A utopia where everything could be finished by working just 10 minutes a day.

The residents of Tycoon City who were assigned to this place where they could rest so comfortably truly believed it was a utopia.

But the utopia didn’t last long.

After resting for too long, people began looking for work to do.

This is where the problem began.

Due to the extremely casual system, the amount of work that could be done was limited to about 10 minutes per day.

The structure made it impossible to work more, even if one wanted to.

Afterward, the people of the Tycoon World began to demand more working hours.

The system remained casual but became a bit more complex and rewarding.

However, people weren’t satisfied with this and demanded even more working hours.

The word “achievement,” which they had almost forgotten for a long time, had raised its head.

The satisfaction gained from working 10 minutes, 1 hour, or 6 hours differed greatly in magnitude.

People who became immersed in that satisfaction gradually demanded more and more work, and the system began to create more and more tasks.

That’s how the increase in working hours and sense of achievement intertwined to create today’s Tycoon World.

Of course, the mental state of people working all day like this couldn’t possibly be sound.

“Hee, heehee! This feeling of working overtime without overtime pay, I can’t stand it!”

“How can they make us work only 8 hours? The boss must be a sanatorium officer from Retrograde!”

…Sir Dominic watched the HR team employees leaving the conference room, bending their joints grotesquely like zombies.

They had selected one person to open the office door to avoid collecting overtime pay.

The office door could only be opened with an employee card, and naturally, the time recorded when the card was used determined overtime and additional compensation.

The employee who was made to open the office door sat down at his desk crying, apparently quite upset about receiving overtime pay.

He only stopped crying when others apologized and handed him a couple more file folders.

…It was an inhuman scene.

That’s what Sir Dominic thought.

As Sir Dominic stood there speechless, just blankly staring at the scene, Pedro cautiously suggested after reading his mood.

“Should we give a bonus to that person who called you a sanatorium officer from Retrograde?”

Sir Dominic was about to ask why they would give a bonus, but then realized these were people who hated receiving money for overtime work.

For such people, receiving a bonus itself could be a punishment.

Nodding at Pedro’s suggestion, Sir Dominic suddenly realized why Pedro’s hands had been trembling.

“…Could it be that you had nothing to do because the employees had already done all the work?”

Flinch. Pedro took a deep breath and covered his mouth.

His expression asked how Sir Dominic knew.

Sir Dominic sighed and sought Pedro’s advice.

Since both the labor union and Pedro were in a state of work addiction, he thought Pedro might know the solution.

“Pedro. How can we make the employees stop… working overtime?”

Sir Dominic asked this very seriously.

The employees looked no different from zombies or skeletons due to excessive overtime work.

Seeing their appearance, which suggested they might collapse if they worked any more, Pedro sighed and said:

“I recommend paying them annual salaries instead of monthly wages, Sir, like they do elsewhere. And have the company deduct taxes before giving employees their wages, then tell them to file taxes separately. This will result in double taxation with additional surcharges, and the wages going to employees will drop to about 50% of the current amount.”

Of course, this is just a temporary measure. We need a proper solution.

“Actually, the reason our farm is growing so rapidly right now is because of this excessive work ethic. If there’s no way to curb this enthusiasm, then perhaps…”

Pedro let his words trail off.

Instead, he showed his still trembling hands to Sir Dominic.

Sir Dominic sympathized with Pedro’s words.

While solving the problem was necessary, there was also a need to curb that work ethic deeply embedded in the unconscious minds of Tycoon City citizens.

Sir Dominic began to rack his brain to somehow solve this problem.

And that was what Sir Dominic was least confident in.

…

While Sir Dominic was racking his brain over the labor union members working overtime, somewhere else…

“So, you want help expanding your business?”

“That’s right.”

Two men were having a conversation in a dark room.

One man was a middle-aged gentleman in a simple suit with neatly combed hair, whose sunken eyes cast shadows that gave him a charismatic appearance.

Opposite this middle-aged man was another man also in a suit, but unlike the neat appearance of the middle-aged man, this one had a plump belly, a double chin, and a greedy gaze that seemed somehow familiar.

At first glance, the fat man looked like a greedy businessman from Tycoon City, but in fact, he was a businessman from Gacha Land.

He had come to Tycoon City to expand his amusement park business, which had recently regained popularity and started recording profits.

“…You’ll need to explain in detail how you want me to help.”

“It’s simple. Just secure the proper land for me. Then we’ll build an amusement park on it. If there’s a bit more room, we could also build a zoo and an aquarium.”

“…”

The middle-aged man with deep eyes fell into thought after hearing the fat man’s proposal.

However, as soon as he determined there was nothing for him to lose in this business partnership, the middle-aged man extended his hand to the fat man.

“We have a deal, Don Castello.”

“I’m grateful to you too, Mayer.”

The fat man chuckled, excited about using the land provided by the middle-aged man as his canvas to paint his grand dream.

His new dream of creating an amusement park with the world’s best roller coaster.