Chapter 72: The Town of Ash

This was a very inopportune time to be receiving a call. Adam thought that the call would be from the resistance army or the pawn shop, and he was feeling quite disgruntled to be interrupted right when he had found such a perfect mission.

If he were requested to do something else, and the mission was taken by someone else during his absence, then that would've been immensely frustrating.

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Thankfully, the call was actually from Wang Shuai.

"Was the cleanse not thorough enough?" Adam was rather surprised to see Wang Shuai being projected out of the communicator. "Rest assured, according to the contract, we have an obligation to complete the cleanse of your psychic world."

"No no, I'm calling because I wanted to thank you."

Even though Wang Shuai was still looking quite physically exhausted, his mental state had clearly improved markedly compared with the day before, and the dark rings around his eyes and the bags under them were both far less pronounced.

"I know how much you did for me, and I know that you charged way too little considering you had to eradicate an emotional anomaly."

"It's alright, you also gave us additional compensation outside of the terms of the contract"

"No no no, I should've given you far more, but that was all of the money that I had on hand," Wang Shuai said in a very earnest manner. "In order to repay you, I'm going to recommend your services to any of my colleagues who require treatment."

"That would be great, but we've recently decided that we're only going to be focusing on more serious cases from now on, so please keep that in mind when recommending our services to others."

"Of course."

After making some more small talk, the call concluded, and Adam was in a much better mood after that call.

"What a great guy!" he mused.

However, Shae was a little perplexed.

"After what you did for him, the least he could do was give you extra compensation and call up to thank you. Aren't your standards way too low?"

"You don't understand. After going through the rigors of life, it's very commendable that someone of his age is able to maintain these qualities." Adam couldn't help but think of Peter as he spoke. "Some people are far worse than this. You'll know what I mean once we encounter someone like that in the future. That's enough talking, let's contact the client."

Adam put on his Metaverse helmet as he spoke, arriving inside the shop.

Kim Hee-cho just so happened to also be there, and he was sitting on the sofa.

Adam submitted the mission description to Kim Hee-cho, and the latter certainly wasn't going to complain about Adam's eagerness to take on new jobs.

"You're not even gonna rest a day before taking on this mission? That's some fantastic work ethic! Let me take a look... Hmm..."

"What's wrong?"

"This is a mission from the Ark Learning Children's Fund!" Kim Hee-cho was not very pleased to see this. "They pay very little for their missions. Most of the time, they only pay around a third the market rate, and we'll be lucky if they cough up even half of the going market price!"

"How are you so sure?"

"This is a non-profit organization with unstable revenue, so they're naturally going to be a bit more stingy."

"Then why did that other clinic take on the mission before us?"

"Those are people who want to improve their reputation. Some wealthy people, organizations, or companies would contact these children's funds when they need to do philanthropy work, and they'll help those children suffering from mental conditions at very low prices, sometimes even for free," Kim Hee-cho explained. "Hence, the missions released by these children's funds generally pay very poorly."

"That's fine."

"What do you mean that's fine? We're not a philanthropy organization!" As a member of the upper middle class, Kim Hee-cho didn't need to worry about his own reputation like wealthy tycoons did, and in addition to that, he wasn't a fan of doing philanthropy work to begin with. "Let me remind you that we've literally lost out on money in every single job that we've done so far. I'm not going to stand for this any longer."

"This mission is really important for me," Adam insisted.

"That's still gonna be a no from me."

"Why don't you ask them what price they're offering first?"

"Fine." Kim Hee-cho contacted the middleman using the information provided in the mission description, and he quickly received a quote: "500,000 and an official statement of gratitude from the Ark Learning Children's Fund."

"That's not even a third of the going market rate." Kim Hee-cho pulled up the attached footage after ending the call. "I don't know much about adapters and anomalies, but that nun anomaly looks like a real pain the ass to deal with. 500,000 is a joke! If the job wasn't being offered by a children's fund, I don't think anyone would take it even for 1,500,000!"

"500,000 is enough." Adam could see that Kim Hee-cho wanted to rebuke him, so he continued, "How much money do we normally earn from our jobs? The cheapest job that we did, that one for Peter, was only 120,000, wasn't it? In terms of the price for a single job, this is our highest one to date."

"Are you not afraid of dying?" Kim Hee-cho sighed. "I'm someone who values money above all else, but we've been working together for some time now, and I don't want to see you die. That job is too dangerous. If you keep doing jobs like these, you're going to end up dead sooner or later. As an agent, I've seen it happen way too many times. Let's think about this from a probability perspective. Even if there's only a 10% chance that you'll die in this mission, if you're constantly tempting fate, you're eventually going to pay the price! To put it bluntly, you are my cash cow! Regardless of whether it's from a profit or emotional standpoint, I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Don't worry, I'm confident that I can take on this job. Besides, I have you, don't I? As long as you react quickly if I encounter any danger, everything will be fine," Adam said as he approached Kim Hee-cho and patted him on the shoulder.

"Fine, do whatever you want. It's not like I have a say in it anyway. If I don't agree, I'll just end cop another mouthful from that little firecracker," Kim Hee-cho sighed, then accepted the mission.

……

With both the battle for the right to succession and the hunt for psychic mutants looming on the horizon, Adam was under a great deal of pressure, so he didn't dare to delay at all, setting off immediately for the site of the mission.

The Ark Learning Children's Fund had many branches, and the one that Adam was traveling to was outside of Sandrise City.

Sandrise City had a total population of 350 million people, and it was split up into a total of 100 areas. All over the entire world, metropolises like Sandrise City housed over 70% of the total population, but there were also people living in other places, such as smaller cities and villages.

Adam and Shae took the void rail to the edge of the city, then traveled by car for over two hours out of the city.

The entire city was surrounded by barren wilderness. It was said that Sandrise City had once been surrounded by a circle of industries that produced heavy pollution, which polluted the land and turned it into the bleak wilderness that it was today.

"This was roughly where I was when I was rescued by the people from the pawn shop for the first time," Adam recounted to Shae.

After passing through the wilderness, he was greeted by the sight of large sections of farmland.

While passing through the farmland, they spotted some farms, and a town by the name of Ash was nestled right in the center of several large farms.

Upon arriving in the town, Adam felt as if he had been transported back to a century ago.

The streets here looked very archaic with no neon lights and barely any automatons around. All of the passersby on the streets were also wearing very simple and rustic clothing, and virtually none of them had been retrofitted with prosthetics.

"I heard that only people who detest life in the cities choose to live in places like this," Shae mused as she inspected her surroundings. "Not everyone likes the sights and thrills of the cities, and not everyone enjoys the Metaverse and the convenience of a city-dwelling lifestyle. Perhaps it's a good thing that these people are gathered here."

"Perhaps so."

Looking at the expressions on the faces of the people in the town, Adam could see that they generally seemed to be in far less of a hurry than people in Sandrise City. It was as if the tempo of life had slowed down here.

The people here weren't in a hurry to work and earn money, and having grown accustomed to an urgent and fast-tempo lifestyle, Adam found this change to be a little jarring.

Perhaps this is how people should be living.