Chapter 356: Settling In (5/15, Autumn Subscriptions)

The voice in his mind suddenly appeared.

Then, under the watchful eyes of Fang Yue and President Qian, a single scale on the wooden goldfish abruptly crumbled into wood dust and powder, scattering into President Qian's palm.

Fang Yue: …

President Qian: …

"…Tell the parchment to stop its precognition. Who knows, one day I might still need 【Leaping Over the Dragon Gate】 to save my life."

"Uh… I'll talk to her…"

After Fang Yue had the parchment quiet down a bit, he began to reflect.

Did I overestimate the United Front? Turns out the parchment is the real BOSS!

Before joining the United Front, Fang Yue had always assumed he was the one getting the short end of the stick on his side.

Only now did he realize that the uncanny object on the other side had been screaming: Don't come over here!!!

This really is… hard to put into words.

Next, Fang Yue chatted with President Qian for a while longer, confirming matters such as the benefits and treatment for joining the United Front.

Basically, once President Qian confirmed that Fang Yue had signed a contract with the parchment, his attitude clearly changed, becoming extremely friendly.

The United Front was a very large organization, headquartered in Jianghai City, with branches spread across all of Huaguo.

And in Jianghai City, because of its vast territory, it was divided by districts, with many branches established.

The branch Fang Yue belonged to was the United Front's Qingshui District branch.

Although it was only a branch, the actual number of personnel was extremely large; the entire building was full of staff.

It's just that most of them were in logistics, or scientific research, or media and other directions.

The actual combat teams numbered only ten.

Two to five members per team.

Most didn't even necessarily have an uncanny object.

Pairings like Qiu Dugu and Ma Shaoku working as a duo belonged to the strong type, which was why they could form a team of just two.

Fang Yue came in to replace Ma Shaoku's position, so he directly inherited the benefits and treatment.

As a formal employee, the benefits went without saying.

In any case, Fang Yue took one look and figured that for an ordinary person, these benefits were enough to coast through life until death.

And the most important point was that the United Front would protect the family members and close friends of formal employees.

For friends, each person had a certain quota, and Fang Yue had enough to list Bai Xiaoya and the others on the protection roster.

"Right, I'm replacing Ma Shaoku's position, which means I'm the captain of Team Ten together with Qiu Dugu, right?"

"Mm."

"Then can I recruit people into my squad?"

"In theory there's no problem, but our United Front has internal assessment standards. One more person and the assessment difficulty goes up a bit. If you bring along someone who holds you back, not only will they be no help to you, they'll actually be a drag, and the responsibility will still be yours. My suggestion is not to recruit people casually."

"Being able to recruit is enough; I know my own limits on the rest."

After a pause, Fang Yue asked again: "Right, does joining the team come with an assigned uncanny object?"

"No, unless you perform exceptionally well, in which case you can apply to headquarters to try."

Fang Yue pursed his lips. Looks like there's no luck trying to grab a small bargain. But Shadow would have plenty of uncanny objects. After all, Shadow was a rat scurrying across the street—whenever, he'd go squeeze them for some uncanny objects.

While Fang Yue was thinking about these things, his matter of joining the United Front was basically settled.

After giving Bai Xiaoya and the others a heads-up and telling them to come over, Fang Yue left President Qian's office.

Watching Fang Yue's departing back, President Qian fell into thought, then quickly went to the study, opened a secret room, walked in, contacted headquarters, and filed a report on Fang Yue's matter.

"The parchment has signed a contractor?!"

"Send Fang Yue's file to headquarters. We need a deeper understanding of this person."

"Just an ordinary person who has mastered an uncanny object. You're all too superstitious about Transcendence-grade uncanny objects. Compared to this kind of thing, the uncanny index is what we should be concerned about."

"Indeed, the situation is getting more and more severe. The upward trend of Jianghai City's major uncanny index is becoming increasingly obvious. Continuing to destroy uncanny objects only treats the symptoms, not the root cause. We need to cultivate more people to enter the game, to make the best preparations for that moment!"

"The third batch of Game Watches has gone on sale. This time the quantity is ample. I've arranged for a large number of personnel to enter; there are many good prospects inside."

"I've also already deployed personnel."

"Me too."

……

Jianghai City, Qingshui District, United Front branch.

After leaving the office door, Fang Yue saw Qiu Dugu still waiting at the entrance.

He had already received the notification on his end, knew Fang Yue had successfully joined the United Front, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

At the same time, he looked very happy.

After all, he knew Fang Yue's strength. With a partner like this, handling uncanny index surge incidents in the future would be much easier.

While leading Fang Yue to the staff quarters, Qiu Dugu shared his own experience with Fang Yue along the way.

With Qiu Dugu around, Fang Yue roughly understood the captain's duties, as well as most of the procedures.

Simply put, since a branch had combat squads.

Under normal circumstances, it was shift-based: one squad was on duty that day, and the other squads simply waited to be summoned.

For example, if Team One was on duty today and something happened, they were responsible for going out to handle it. If Team One requested support during that time, then Teams Two, Three, etc. would go to support. Or if another situation arose while Team One was out handling things, then Teams Two, Three, etc. would go handle it.

Each day, about five squads were normally stationed at the branch, taking turns to rest.

Of course, this was just the normal procedure. Someone like Qiu Dugu was the workaholic type—as soon as something came up, he charged to the front line first, basically never resting.

And a salted fish like Fang Yue would naturally just stick to the bare minimum on-duty shifts. Counting on him to take the initiative to work was impossible—after all, he still had games to play.

While Fang Yue was greeting the logistics department at work, Bai Xiaoya and Yuan Jie finally arrived at the building.

The three met up, and after explaining the situation, Bai Xiaoya pulled Fang Yue aside and lowered her voice: "Since you're now an official member of the United Front, finding Bai Su'e shouldn't be hard, right?"

"Mm, with the United Front's intelligence network, finding him won't take much effort. Actually, before you came, I had already sent people to investigate—just no news yet."

"... That's good. Also... the United Front really won't take me in?"

"I can use the Captain's authority to bring you in. But they don't provide Strange Objects—what you'd get is just access to the United Front's training benefits."

Bai Xiaoya looked up at Fang Yue, a slightly unusual emotion in her eyes.

She knew this kind of thing wasn't exactly proper, especially since Fang Yue had just joined and was already pulling strings for someone—people would surely gossip if they found out.

"... Thank you!"

"It's nothing."

Fang Yue waved his hand—he'd also gotten Yuan Jie a regular clerical position at the United Front.

Just the kind of desk job sorting ordinary paperwork.

Compared to Yuan Jie's chaotic schedule and barely-paid work, the civil servant job Fang Yue found her was definitely a huge upgrade.

So Yuan Jie accepted without hesitation, bouncing around happily.

(End of chapter)