Knight Asylum

Red turned his head and saw the beautiful secretary holding a spray gun towards him.

"You are three seconds later than expected!" The middle-aged man raised his voice in dissatisfaction.

"President, this is not within my job scope. Please ask the accountant to settle the salary later," Erika Satonaka threw the spray gun aside, pushed the door open forcefully under Reid's dull gaze, and raised her hand as a gesture of inviting him in.

Red was professional yet perfunctory, and he felt that the amount of information today was a bit too much.

"This is Chairman Mitsuo Hongshang, the founder of the Hongshang Foundation."

Red walked into the office in a daze. Only then did Red notice that the office of the richest man in the world was filled with all kinds of kitchen utensils. It was more like a huge kitchen than an office. On the desk in front of Mitsuo Hongo, which was no different from a cooking counter, was a chocolate ice cream cake with his name on it and a small sign with congratulations on his birth.

A standard birthday cake, but Red's birthday is still a long way off.

"Ahem - Reed Leonardo, Happy Birthday! This is a great day!"

Perhaps feeling that what he said before was not good enough, Mitsuo Hongo opened his hands, said it again, and handed over the knife and fork.

Reid's mood at this moment was extremely complicated.

Seryuu and Asano's attitudes made him feel that the meeting with Hongue Mitsuo was a very serious and grave matter. To say how serious it was, it was like the peak battle between Ye Gucheng and Ximen Chuxue in the Forbidden City. Ximen Chuxue was absent due to some emergency, and he had to go up and inform Ye Gucheng, whose mood was almost ready, to go back and let Ye Gucheng be the emperor's bodyguard.

And now?

As soon as he went up and hadn't said anything, Ye Gucheng performed the Balala the Fairies transformation in front of him and handed him a cake.

Although today was not Red's birthday, and Red had no idea what Mitsuo Hong was doing, he at least sent him a piece of cake.

Red, who was still a little confused, nodded and thanked him, then sat down and started eating the chocolate ice cream cake in front of him, which was a bit heavy for him.

Mm, it tastes pretty good.

After taking a few bites, Red nodded and unconsciously sped up his pace. However, because he ate too much in one breath, his head felt a little painful, and this pain brought Red back to his senses.

Now he is meeting with the richest man in the world. Although there is a hint from Mitsuo Hongo, the fact is that he ignored Mitsuo Hongo and ate cake there. Normally... he should be angry.

Reid looked up at Hong Shang Guangsheng somewhat awkwardly, but to his surprise, Hong Shang Guangsheng, who had been ignored until now, did not show any signs of being angry, and even looked a little... happy?

"Um... President Hong Shang? Speaking of this meeting..."

"Hmm? Ah~ Go ahead and eat. This cake is at its most delicious right now. It would be a sin to miss its most delicious moment."

Mitsuo Hongo waved his hand, took off his cute pink apron, handed Erika Satonaka to him, adjusted his tie, and walked out from behind the kitchen counter. Erika Satonaka also pushed over a blank blackboard very skillfully.

"Red Leonard, how are you doing in history?"

"It won't be the kind that would cause the parents to be called in," Red took another bite of the cake and couldn't help muttering in his heart, what kind of punch is this?

“But since [S.L] came out, I feel like every day is a day of witnessing history while simultaneously denying the past,” Reid added.

Monsters did not fall from the sky, but have existed for a long time. There are monsters like the Gurongi who were sealed a long time ago and are only now unsealed, and there are also monsters like the Yagi clan who not only have their own systems and territories but have always lived among humans. The records in history books seem pale and powerless in front of these monsters.

"Great - Red Leonardo!" Hong Shangguang raised his voice with great excitement. He took off the cap of the marker and drew a perfect circle on the blackboard. He also drew a pattern of an eagle flapping its wings inside the circle. "Do you know what this is?"

Red raised his eyebrows in surprise, "The only currency in circulation in [S·L] is the O coin."

"Then—do you know where this coin came from?"

"This...I heard it's a secret of Hongshang Foundation."

"No, this is a well-known fact in [S·L]. This O coin comes from desire," said Mitsuo Hongo, who raised his marker and tapped the blackboard like a teacher. "Every resident of [S·L] is a producer of O coins. Have you ever been to a bank in [S·L]?"

Mitsuo Hongo gave a meaningful smile.

Reid paused and then shook his head, "I was planning on going."

"So tell me, Reid Leonardo, what is [S.L]'s bank like?" Mitsuo Hongo's tone seemed to be inducing, but also to be interrogating, and the seemingly meaningless question made Mitsuo Hongo feel oppressive.

Erika Satonaka subconsciously looked at Reid.

Many people were forced by Hong Shangguang to lose their confidence and were crushed to the ground.

"The game room, I've always found it incredible," Red took a bite of the cake and nodded, "How did they do that? And there's also that withdrawal method, can Hongshang Fund really benefit from it?"

Not everyone dreams of a society where they coexist with monsters. In fact, most people reject this idea. After all, they are monsters. The Gurongi have a terrible killing game, and the Yagi tribe treats humans as food. But [S·L] is still called the most exciting place in the world. Every day, countless people line up to enter [S·L]. The reason for this is only one word.

money.

There is no bank in [S·L], only game halls opened by the Hong Shang Fund. There are only two kinds of game machines in the game halls, slot machines and coin pushers. Currency from any country can be used here. This alone is enough to make Hong Shang Guangsheng the richest man in the world, but Hong Shang Guangsheng set a very bold and incredible rule.

No matter what currency it is, no matter how low the denomination is, a banknote or a coin can give you a chance to win a large number of O coins.

A ten-dollar bill can get you one chance, and a penny can also get you one chance. So should you use the ten-dollar bill to gamble once? Or should you divide the ten-dollar bill into a thousand penny bills and gamble a thousand times?

The normal idea of ​​​​people is to divide the cash on them into the smallest amount to get more opportunities. After all, they only need one success.

The probability exists, but Hongshang Fund has never shown a downward trend, and has even been on an upward trend, as if it had unlimited O coins.

"Loss? How is that possible? Desire is endless, so O coins are inexhaustible." Hong Shang Guangsheng put his hands behind his back, smiled meaningfully for a while, and then turned around neatly. "Of course, although every citizen of [S·L] is a producer of O coins, only O coins that flow into the [S·L] market through the hands of Hong Shang Fund are legal and real coins."

As if he was getting excited, Hong Shangguang raised his head and spoke loudly.

"Desire is great! The O-coins born from it are works of art! However... if it increases in value without control, the container of desire will soon break."

Reid frowned.

Since there are legal real coins, there must be illegal counterfeit coins.

Although he didn't understand what the container of desire that Mitsuo Hongo mentioned referred to, Mitsuo Hongo suddenly brought it up, most likely because he wanted him to solve the problem of the illegal O coins.

"What should I do?" Stuffing the last piece of cake into his mouth, Red stood up.

Mitsuo Hongue nodded, and Erika Satonaka stepped forward, pulled out a tablet from behind and handed it to Reid. On the tablet was a photo of a construction site.

"According to our investigation, some illegal O coins flowed out from this construction site. The specific information will be sent to your data terminal later. They are probably illegally manufacturing O coins through Yummy. Please be careful."

"Yummy?" Red tilted his head.

This word does not appear on either the official website introducing [S·L] or the survival manual.

"A monster born from desire that devours other things to grow stronger," Mitsuo Hongo shook his head.

"So he's a weirdo?" Red understood. He was probably testing him. As for more specific things, they were probably confidential to the Hongshang Foundation. He was curious, but asking too many questions was rude. "I understand."

Just as Reid was about to leave, he was stopped by Mitsuo Hongshang.

"Wait a minute, Reed Leonardo, this is your birthday present, in--"

At the urging of Mitsuo Hongo, Erika Satonaka curled her lips, turned around and walked out, and soon walked in front of Reid holding a long gift box.

Reid took the gift box, nodded and thanked Erika Satonaka and Mitsuo Hongue, then turned around and left with the heavy gift box.

After the elevator that Red was in started to descend, Mitsuo Hongo turned around and faced the huge floor-to-ceiling window behind him.

"Do you think his desires are worth cultivating?"

"Who knows--" Erika Satonaka seemed to have changed into a different person. She raised her hand to twiddle her hair in front of her forehead, and her tone became quite bad and impolite. "What do you think? Is it worth investing in?"

Mitsuo Hongo did not say anything, but just smiled and looked down at the entire [S·L].

Chapter 22: Yummy is Imprisoned

After leaving the Hongshang Fund Building, Red was just about to take a taxi to the location provided by Erika Satonaka when he heard a familiar whistle coming from the crowd. The mobile Pegasus drove out from the crowd like a ghost and stopped in front of Red.

The corners of Red's mouth twitched as he recalled a very unpleasant riding experience before.

"I'm going to take a taxi, why don't you go back to Servier Turia first?"

Mobile Pegasus didn't speak. Of course it couldn't speak, after all, it was a motorcycle. But Red could feel an invisible pressure from the car facing him. If he didn't ride it, something bad might happen. Red even had the illusion that Mobile Pegasus suddenly transformed and beat him up.

"Well, let's save as much as we can."

Finally, Red bowed to Mobile Pegasus, put on his helmet, tied the gift box to the back seat, and started navigating.

This time the mobile Pegasus was very obedient. It did not change gears automatically, nor did it find the direction on its own, allowing Red to drive out steadily.

Across the street from Hongshang Building, the windows of an extended Lincoln were rolled down, and Asano stared at Reed's departing back with resentment on his face.

Of course, he couldn't just go back to Selvi Turia in such an embarrassed state. He just couldn't understand why Mitsuo Hongo chose to meet Reid instead of him.

Who is Red? A poor boy who has only been in S.L for less than three days, with no background and no talent!

Who is he? The director of PR for Servi Turia!

But Asano didn't dare to complain to Mitsuo Hongo, because in front of Mitsuo Hongo he was not even a bug.

"Director, what should we do now?" The female companion with a bruise on her face asked cautiously.

"Follow him, that's not the way back to Selvi Turia. President Hongshang must have asked him to do something. I want to see what he can do," Asano snorted coldly and raised the car window.

The construction site is located some distance away from the Hongshang Fund Building, but not too far from the neighborhood. There is more than one construction site there. From a distance, you can see several buildings under construction and dozens of cranes that are approximately 60 meters high.

In [S·L], it is very normal for buildings to be demolished, so the construction industry is very developed.

As soon as Red got out of the car, the mobile Pegasus turned on its lights and honked its horn to the place where the road turned into a parking space and turned off the engine.

After complaining a few words in his mind, Red took out his mobile phone and compared the construction sites in front of him and locked onto one of them. It was exactly noon and time for lunch and break, so all the machines in the construction site had stopped working and there were not many workers walking around.

After thinking for a while, Red decided to go the stealth route. After all, Mitsuo Hong Shang had said that only O coins handled by the Hong Shang Foundation were legal. If someone privately made coins on the construction site, it would be illegal no matter how you think about it. He couldn't just go up and ask if they were illegally making counterfeit coins.

After thinking it through, Red rubbed his hands, looked around, walked quickly forward, stepped on the wall to gain leverage and jumped up. With both hands grabbing the construction fence of the construction site, he flipped sideways and jumped into the construction site. Because his body was strengthened by Yaguru, this set of movements was very coherent and did not make any noise.

Red looked around, and carefully moved forward along the construction fence while observing the construction site, but after walking around, Red did not see any device for processing coins, and there was not even a place to hide the device for processing coins.

After thinking for a while, Red paused his exploration and took out his mobile phone to search the Internet for the start time of the project.

The construction industry in [S·L] is very developed, and because it is a society of monsters and humans, a lot of information can be found on the corresponding websites. It didn't take Red long to find the information of the construction site in front of him. This project was established two weeks ago, and according to the scheduled time, the building will be declared completed in two weeks at most.

Reid frowned.

The development of an industry means that the industry has very strict rules and regulations. Every construction project has very strict time requirements. After all, [S·L] is full of weirdos. A small conflict can destroy a large building. The construction team that cannot complete the project with super high efficiency would have been eliminated long ago.

Therefore, it is not realistic to use a construction site as a cover to secretly carry out illegal coin minting.

Then how did they privately make the O coin? Is it related to Yummy mentioned by Erika Satonaka?

Reid pinched the bridge of his nose, sorting out the clues in his mind.

Mitsuo Hongo said that O coins come from desire, so they are inexhaustible.

Mitsuo Hongo also said that Yummy was born out of desire and devours other things to grow itself.

If this is not a description but a statement, combined with the act of privately making O coins at the construction site in front of us.

Reid's eyes narrowed, and he looked up at the unfinished, empty building in front of him that was filled with darkness. His right hand subconsciously grabbed his pocket. Although there was a convenient payment method like online payment, he still had the habit of carrying change when going out, so he put some O coins in his pocket.

"Let's go and take a look first."

Red loosened his pockets and stepped towards the unfinished building in front of him.

After entering the building, Red looked around and didn't find anything strange. It was just an ordinary building under construction. He found the stairs and went up them. Looking at the rough walls, Red's thoughts began to diverge uncontrollably.

All the buildings looked the same at the beginning, but because of their different owners, they began to change differently and evolve in different directions during the construction process. So from the very beginning, these buildings were completely different existences, just like desires.

When he reached the third floor, Red heard slight movements, as if someone was laughing. Of course, this laughter was not the eerie laughter in horror movies. After going up two more floors, Red heard not only laughter, but also men shouting and cursing.

"airplane!"

"Wang Bang!"

"Take one three and give me money!"

"Oh my god - are you cheating?"

Red raised his eyebrows slightly. The sound was getting closer, so Red slowed down his pace and peeked along the wall.

Several men were sitting around a table, cursing and throwing cards in their hands. It was just an ordinary card-playing scene. The workers here seemed to be trying to make some pocket money from their colleagues during the lunch break.

There was nothing strange about it. Just as Red was about to turn around and leave, a pair of bandaged hands reached out from the corner and grabbed the man who was wearing a red safety helmet, which was different from the other workers'.

Red was startled and subconsciously rushed out, reaching out to the man in the red helmet and shouting, "Be careful!"

The man in the red safety helmet was startled, but he was not looking at the hands behind his back, but at Red. Apparently, it was not the bandaged hands that scared the man, but Red. The other workers also jumped up immediately and looked at Red with vigilance.

Red was stunned, slowed down his pace, and looked at the workers in front of him who were on guard against him with a questioning look on his face.

Although he didn't understand why these workers were wary of him, Red saw clearly the owner of the pair of bandaged hands. It was a mummy wrapped in white cloth. He seemed to have little reason of his own. He did not change his actions because of the change in the atmosphere. He still swayed his body stiffly and stretched out his hands to the man wearing a red helmet who was suspected to be the contractor.

This is probably the Yummy that Erika Satonaka mentioned, but this Yummy's situation looks a bit miserable, with her neck, wrists and ankles all tightly locked with iron chains.

"Uh-uh-"

Red was surrounded by weak howls that sounded like someone about to die of illness. Red woke up and looked around.

One by one, the Yummy heads, whose movements were restricted by iron chains, rose from the darkness and stretched out their hands toward the workers who were playing cards in the middle, with the iron chains on their bodies rattling.

"What is going on? What are you doing!?"

Red's intuition told him that these workers were doing something quite dangerous.