Chapter 199: Business Resumes
"Ugh, we couldn’t even leave for two whole days."
"We knew you were here, Boss Hart, but we just couldn’t get out!"
"Yeah, it was so infuriating! Those damn Guardian Corps said they were catching spies, but it looks like they were just having fun for the past few days!"
Lily Hart listened, lost in thought. It was more or less what she had figured. But now that the matter was resolved, there was no need to worry.
Time flies when you’re busy. It was noon before they knew it. But everyone was especially busy today, so they didn’t gather for a meal.
In the afternoon, Lily Hart finally had some free time and strolled around with her hands clasped behind her back.
First, she checked on the convenience store. Everyone was handling things with ease, unfazed by the customer traffic.
Behind the convenience store was the factory. Lily Hart dropped by to see Seth and saw him scrambling around by himself before she even got close.
He had specially opened a window two meters to the left of the roll-up door.
It was set up like a bank teller’s window—a square opening, about a meter by a meter, with counter extensions on both the inside and outside. Seth was busy behind it.
He had even made a simple menu, writing the available fast-food meals on a piece of A4 paper with a thick marker. There weren’t many, fewer than ten.
They were: Stir-fried Beef, Stir-fried Pork with Green Peppers, Stir-fried Beef with Green Peppers and Potatoes, Braised Spareribs, Braised Pork Belly, Diced Chili Chicken, and Braised Pig’s Trotters.
The paper was taped crudely next to the window.
A customer would choose a meal, Seth would take the Crystal Cores, and then turn around to grab the requested meal from a table behind him.
The process was simple, but there were a lot of people. Seth, having never experienced a scene like this, was inevitably getting flustered.
Lily Hart stood and watched for a moment. Since one fast-food meal was 288, a situation arose where three Crystal Cores were too much, but two were too little.
And Seth didn’t have a points exchange machine.
She ordered a points exchange machine, carried it over, and placed it on the counter with a CLANG.
Some of the customers recognized her, others didn’t, but for a moment they were all intimidated by her presence.
Seth, however, let out a huge sigh of relief. "Boss Hart, you’re here..." he said, as if a great weight had been lifted.
Lily Hart gave him a nod, placed one hand on the counter, and asked the customer at the front, "What do you want?"
The customer had already made up his mind, but Lily Hart’s interruption made him forget. He blurted out, "Two Diced Chili Chicken and one Braised Pig’s Trotters."
"Nine Crystal Cores." Lily Hart pointed to the points exchange machine.
This one wasn’t shaped like a Lucky Cat; it was just a plain, square metal box with a round hole on top.
The customer hesitantly dropped nine Crystal Cores into it. Immediately after, he felt his Light Brain vibrate twice on his wrist.
He looked down, and a clear line of text appeared on his Light Brain: Points Balance: 900.
"Whoa! I have points now!" the customer said in pleasant surprise.
Lily Hart continued, "That’s right. Those are your points. You can use them at the lottery shop, convenience store, fast-food place, and bathhouse."
As she explained, she pointed to each of these places, hesitating slightly when she mentioned the "fast-food place."
’This is clearly a factory, not a fast-food place,’ she thought. ’But it’s a fitting description...’ So she just went with it.
"This is great! Hey, Boss, don’t just stand there, get me my food!" the customer shouted.
Seth snapped out of it, quickly grabbed the customer’s meals, and passed them through the window.
With the points exchange machine, the transactions went very smoothly. All Seth had to do was hand out the food.
Seeing this, Lily Hart left, very satisfied.
In less than ten minutes, the fast-food meals on the table behind Seth were all gone.
He leaned out of the window and apologized to the customers, "Sorry, the morning batch is sold out."
A wave of groans went through the crowd. "Boss, how can you have so little stock?"
"Yeah, will there be more this afternoon? I’m dying to eat it!"
Everyone chattered at once, but Seth just listened quietly, his expression unreadable.
He waited for the customers to calm down a bit before saying, "There will be another hundred meals this afternoon."
This reassured them, but a new argument quickly arose.
"A hundred is way too few! There are more than a hundred people in line right now!"
"Exactly! Boss! Make more! We don’t mind if it’s more expensive, as long as we can get some!"
"Yeah, a hundred is really not enough, it’s not enough to go around!"
Seth scratched his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to make more; the machine’s output was just that low—two hundred meals a day.
That’s why he’d decided to sell one hundred in the morning and one hundred in the afternoon. It was just that some people bought two or three at a time.
That’s why it sold out so fast...
’Looks like I’ll have to set a purchase limit,’ he thought. ’One per person.’
He tactfully refused. "Only a hundred. First come, first served." With that, he shut the window.
Seeing this, some customers sighed and left, planning to get lunch at the convenience store or the bathhouse.
The buffet at the bathhouse was actually quite good, but the portions were a bit small, not quite enough to fill you up unless you paid for more.
Others remained, stubbornly waiting, planning to stay right there until the afternoon.
Seth couldn’t be bothered with all that. After closing the window, he slipped out a side door and, when no one was looking, snuck into the bathhouse.
As one of Lily Hart’s employees, Seth didn’t need to spend points.
He first got a number tag, got in line for a scrub and a massage, and then went to the second-floor buffet to feast!
After eating until he was about seventy percent full, he got a bucket of popcorn and casually strolled into the movie theater.
He found a seat, and halfway through the movie, the number tag in his pocket lit up. It was his turn.
Seth immediately got up, found the scrubbing room with practiced ease, and lay down to wait for his scrub.
Even though he had just been here last night, he had already enjoyed it once. This place was simply paradise!
After his scrub, massage, and a nice soak in the bath, a content Seth returned to the factory.
He turned on the machine and watched the assembly line slowly start moving, then walked to the end of the line.
He placed the finished fast-food meals onto a small cart, one by one. Once it was full, he shut off the machine.
Then he pushed the cart over to the table behind the window and neatly stacked the meals by type.
Although it looked like mindless grunt work, Seth was quite happy. It felt like he was getting paid to just coast.
Meanwhile, Lily Hart had also wandered over to the bathhouse. In the previous two days, there had been very few customers, and most of them were just heading for the lottery shop.
Business at the convenience store and bathhouse had been dismal, not to mention the Dawn Hotel, which hadn’t even opened yet.
Today, however, there were a great many customers. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the place was packed.
The first floor was especially crowded. After the last upgrade, the men’s and women’s bathing areas had been greatly expanded.
Originally, each had only fifty small cubicles, but now they each had two hundred. At a squeeze, they could accommodate three hundred people.
With her hands behind her back, Lily Hart surveyed her domain like a landlord inspecting her estate.
The Zombie King, Owen Warren, was sitting leisurely at the front desk. His eyes lit up when he saw Lily Hart.
For some reason, after meeting Lily Hart, he had lost all interest in other humans. His only desire was to eat her.
But Boss Hart was clearly no easy target. He knew very well that he might never get to eat this piece of "ambrosia" in his entire life.