So Hayden sighed.
Angela shook her head: "You're still a long way off."
--------------------------------
That evening, the dark elf Joanna Hadersdottir returned to her home in New Seattle. Throughout the journey, she maintained her confident smile, appearing quite pleased with herself.
She rented a luxury apartment in New Asia. Like Karen's previous apartment in New Asia, it wasn't large, but it had excellent security features, soundproofing, and privacy. The building management claimed, "Unless a god is watching you, we can guarantee your privacy here."
So when Joanna returned to her apartment and closed the door, the smile on her face vanished instantly.
The next instant, a rough, hoarse voice rang out in the room:
"Number 28. Do you think things went smoothly today?"
However, what was both eerie and terrifying was that the sound wasn't coming from anywhere else in the room. In fact, the sound was coming from inside Joanna's own body.
"The first day was not bad, number one."
Joanna shrugged and tossed the new employee handbook and other materials she had brought back from Newbud City onto a living room chair.
"That famous Hayden is probably a virgin. He's very sensitive to my physical contact."
But she had barely taken five steps when another shrill voice came from within her: "A virgin? But isn't he the son-in-law of the Peacock King?"
"There's still no definite news about marriage. Although King Peacock and Goddess Hela trust him, it's probably just an engagement." Joanna was clearly getting impatient. "Besides, I can tell from the look of Kallen that she's definitely the kind of rigid woman who's focused solely on her career and doesn't understand love and romance. Plus, she's thin, flat-chested, and incredibly domineering."
As she said this, she even gave a smug, cold laugh.
“That kind of woman can’t satisfy a man. Especially a man who is actually very capable. He may reject me now, but as long as I arouse his ambition and drive, he will soon fall for me and will never be able to stand that Karen again.”
However, the other voices within her seemed to have doubts. The shrill voice spoke again: "The other party is the son-in-law of the Peacock King, and Karen herself is a powerful new god. Does Hayden really dare to take your bait?"
Joanna, however, was very confident: "If fear could suppress a man's desires, the world would not be what it is today."
"Furthermore, we cannot underestimate Hayden. Over the past three years, he has propelled Karen to godhood with tremendous force, and he is the man favored by the Peacock King and the Goddess Hela. Does such a man truly lack the ambition and desire for independence and dominance? Many gods are currently only noticing Karen's rise, but have not paid much attention to Hayden's potential. We cannot let this opportunity slip by."
As she said this, she gave another cold laugh.
"Do you want to be slaves to your boss for the rest of your lives? Do you want to waste your incredible talent and not fight for godhood yourselves? Now is the best opportunity. With this talent, we can do it."
Joanna walked towards the bathroom as she spoke, looking at herself in the mirror. However, what was reflected in the mirror was not just herself... but dozens of dark elves, men, women, children, and people of all ages and heights!
"Because we are a multitude of souls (personalities) united as one, a jack-of-all-trades, master of all skills!"
Looking at "us" in the mirror, Joanna was clearly very proud.
The many personalities residing within her, though each with their own thoughts, couldn't refute Joanna's words. They all genuinely yearned to climb the social ladder, elevate their status, and even become gods—though Joanna's reckless behavior still worried them greatly. After all, she was undeniably the most arrogant of all the personalities.
So some people were more cautious and disagreed: "The person above only instructed us to be spies and to sow discord between Karen and Hayden as much as possible. He didn't tell us to seduce him."
“Anyway, the higher-ups want us to be spies, so there’s no escaping the danger,” Joanna retorted to her reflection in the mirror. “Wouldn’t getting Hayden be even more rewarding? Don’t worry, I’m the best at seducing men among ‘us.’ As long as we continue to approach Hayden as a prospective employee, shorten the distance, and seduce him away from Karen and to our boss, then we can also get the chance to become gods—it’s not impossible!”
Just as the dozens of personalities were about to start arguing, the hoarse voice that had spoken first finally spoke again: "Alright, how can we let ourselves fall into chaos first? We've always been good at finding the best ideas and adapting to changing circumstances. There's no need to argue anymore. Let's just follow the orders from above first, and we can worry about how much extra we can earn as we go along."
"Hayden is indeed very vulnerable to women and has little guard against us. But it's hard to say about others. Karen may have excellent intelligence agents under her command, so we still need to proceed with caution."
The hoarse voice stopped there, then suddenly reached out and began rubbing their own faces in front of the mirror.
Strangely enough, Joanna's face, though made of flesh, began to deform as she rubbed it. In just a few seconds, Joanna's face—and even her entire body—was completely transformed.
She was no longer a seductive, curvaceous woman, but had transformed into a slender, tall young man. Aside from still being a dark elf, he bore absolutely no resemblance to the original Joanna. Just in case, they had even prepared multiple false identities in case their disguises were exposed—truly the embodiment of a hundred faces.
The newly conjured dark elf boy sighed (he clearly thought Joanna was too promiscuous), but still changed into new clothes, adjusted his mood and consciousness, and leisurely walked out the door.
Sometimes he is cunning and resourceful, sometimes a talented singer and dancer, sometimes a master craftsman in metallurgy, and sometimes a secret healer skilled in using poison and medicine. When necessary, he can also unleash superb martial arts and magic. With his ingenious transformations, he can employ hundreds of techniques and become a thousand faces, regardless of gender or age.
Because he truly possesses so many personalities (minds), such rich skills and knowledge, plus a wondrous spirit that makes his actions completely unpredictable—all residing within the same body.
The new cadre candidate chosen by Hayden seems to be such a formidable character.
245: Outstanding Employee
In short, Joanna began working under Hayden, and theoretically she should have received new employee training—that said, in reality, Hayden had almost nothing to train her on, because Joanna knew almost everything.
Her primary job was network engineering? She certainly did it very well; in fact, she included a master's degree in network engineering in her resume. And her qualifications were genuinely reflected in her practical skills. Although Hayden was currently assigning peripheral tasks to newcomers, Joanna was doing them exceptionally well.
Hayden and his colleagues expected her to be a representative of the new employees, and Joanna did a great job of that. In reality, Hayden simply couldn't understand how she could so quickly win over 47,000 new employees from all over the country. It seemed physics-wise impossible, right? After all, those 47,000+ people each had their own ideas, didn't they?
At least that's what Hayden thought, but Joanna actually did it. While she didn't make all 40,000 people like her, she certainly made sure none of them disliked her. That's not that far off.
So, just to be on the safe side, Hayden secretly observed how Joanna interacted with the other new employees one day, only to discover that her talent was beyond belief. She seemed to know everything, even how to play. This meant that Joanna could connect with almost anyone's interests and talk to almost everyone about what they liked. No matter how niche or esoteric the subject, Joanna seemed to understand it and could discuss and enjoy it with others.
This truly baffled Hayden. Joanna was only twenty-four years old—at least, her documents stated she was twenty-four. Yet, a twenty-four-year-old shouldn't be able to play thirty musical instruments, know twenty different board games, be proficient in over a dozen different sports, and be able to lead others in playing them. As for other more niche things, such as coffee, bartending, various classical or popular music and art forms, and even various ACGN subcultures, Joanna seemed to know them all quite well.
But this should be physically impossible, right? What 24-year-old can learn so many things at the same time? She's not just a cloud, she really knows how to do it!
This is ridiculous!
So when everyone had their regular meeting the following week (Hayden's core group has been trying to meet at least once a week lately, even if it's just to sit together and eat), Hayden casually mentioned this during the meeting:
"Don't you think this resembles the multi-threaded processing capabilities of a true god? Could Joanna be a true god disguised as a corporate spy?"
Hayden himself was joking when he said that. While, in his own understanding, only a true god, with multi-threaded thinking and processing capabilities surpassing even supercomputers, could accomplish such an incredible feat, the idea of a true god infiltrating the world was simply too far-fetched.
So Abigail immediately complained: "A true god abandons her own business to infiltrate us, and she has to do it right under our noses without being seen through. How many resources do you think she needs to consume every day? Even a great god can't afford that kind of money. Her own business will explode first."
Even Alastor agreed with Abigail at this point: "To try and deceive us at such close range, she would have to be a bodhisattva or a deity spying for us. Comrade Hayden, do you think that's possible?"
That's impossible. Everyone knows those bodhisattvas and deities are busy playing their massive, competitive battle royale games. Wasting their precious computing power to infiltrate would be utterly insane.
"This dark elf lady is probably just like Panya, born with the talent for multi-threaded processing. It's not anything particularly rare."
As Alastor finished speaking, he casually asked the shadow behind Hayden,
"Miss Hongye, how about your end? Have you found out anything?"
The ninja immediately emerged from Hayden's shadow and said, "I have discovered that this Ms. Joanna's resume is fabricated."
This finally made Hayden and the others take it a little more seriously (they had basically just been chatting casually), and they exchanged surprised glances. Then Hayden quickly asked, "Then why didn't you report it to me immediately?"
“Because, the information I’ve gathered about her true identity doesn’t seem particularly special.” Hongye frowned, looking somewhat puzzled. “Joanna Alex Dottier, 28 years old. Her master’s degree appears to be fake, and she’s not a recent graduate. After graduating from university, she tried to start her own small software company, but it failed, at least that’s what I’ve found… But why would someone go to such lengths to forge an identity and come work for us?”
This information truly left everyone looking at each other in bewilderment.
Later, Pania muttered, "These days, buying a fake identity isn't actually that expensive, right? Especially a crude fake identity that was exposed so quickly; you should be able to buy one for less than ten thousand."
The people in the conference room had all done this kind of thing when they were ordinary people, and they nodded without even blinking: "Indeed."
Hayden even bought one for Angela when he was a mercenary. The truly masterful forgery is like the Peacock King, who can give you a genuine identity and even fabricate relevant personal details.
"In addition, there is another question about Ms. Joanna that is not yet certain."
Then Hongye continued.
"I discovered that she needs to fully unleash her energy when she works."
That sounded even stranger. Especially for an old person like Abigail, her first reaction was: "Isn't it great that you're using your full power to work for us?"
Ignoring the speechless looks from the other young people, Hongye nodded vigorously: "That's true! But this Ms. Joanna's energy consumption pattern is very strange. She not only pushes her energy to the limit when doing network engineering, but also when making reports, in meetings, reporting to her superiors, managing other new employees, and even when engaging in leisure activities with other new employees, she is pushing her energy to the limit!"
This is too strange. You know, pushing yourself to the limit and expending energy is an incredibly painful thing. Hayden felt like he was going to die every time he did it, and he definitely didn't want to do it again. But according to Hongye, Joanna sounded like she was running a marathon while coughing up blood and also playing with her colleagues.
This isn't even playing around, is it? Is it some kind of novel form of asceticism?
Hayden thought for a moment and quickly came up with a possibility: "Alastor, could this be the effect of the educational learning chip?"
In today's market environment, when it comes to cheating methods that can quickly turn someone into an all-rounder, Hayden will naturally think of the currently popular educational chips.
But Alastor still shook his head: "It's unlikely. Theoretically, educational chips can achieve this effect. Although they can't make you a top expert, they can make you a skilled worker in all fields—but there's at least one field of technology that definitely won't be made into educational chips."
This made Hayden frown: "What field?"
"Management".
Alastor said calmly,
“These days, it’s difficult for anyone who isn’t a member of the New Gods to even study business administration. The Mitra Corporation certainly wouldn’t be making educational chips out of this kind of technology right now. Yet this Miss Joanna seems to be quite skilled at it.”
At the same time, Joanna is clearly a dark elf, and her status among the gods is relatively low. Even if such an educational chip existed, the likelihood of her using it would be low—that's probably what Alastor meant.
After hearing what he said, Hayden also felt that there was some truth to it.
Even after all this discussion, we still don't understand what's going on with Joanna.
“Hongye, at least you don’t think she’s a corporate spy, right?” Hayden had no choice but to ask.
Hongye nodded: "Unless she's acting as a corporate spy for herself. I haven't found any connection between her and any other companies."
Being a corporate spy for oneself, in other words, simply stealing technology for one's own benefit. While many people particularly abhor this, Hayden doesn't see it as a major problem: people who want to start their own businesses and are willing to steal others' technology for their own benefit are actually easier to reason with than those blindly loyal slaves to their companies. Strictly speaking, aren't Hayden's group of friends a similar group?
Perhaps that's why Pania exclaimed "Ah!" and suddenly uttered a surprising statement: "I understand!"
Everyone turned to look at her.
“That dark elf,” Pania said seriously, “must be a genius at studying! As long as I study hard enough, I can achieve dozens of times the learning efficiency of others, which makes sense!”
Reasonable my foot!
And so, Panya was dragged away and given a spanking. But Hayden later thought that Panya might have been right about some of what she said.
Perhaps Joanna truly possesses a special talent, capable of becoming a jack-of-all-trades by frantically channeling her power like she's spitting blood. What's wrong with that? The world is so vast; who doesn't have their own secrets?
Perhaps Joanna came here hoping to learn the techniques and start her own business like Karen, which is why she's willing to push herself so hard even while running a marathon. That makes more sense.
By the way, Karen didn't attend their tea party today. After all, these people are actually more relaxed and comfortable around Hayden. Hayden is their emotional core.
"In short, it seems we've stumbled upon a hidden talent. Her ability to connect with new employees at the bottom is exactly the kind of skill we need, so there's no need to overthink it. Let's just continue using her as she is!"
So Hayden finally came to a conclusion.
"Anyway, Hongye has already said that she is not a spy—besides, what spy in the world is so conspicuous?"
These words immediately filled the meeting room with a cheerful atmosphere.
Whether you're a spy or a thief, who would deliberately try to stand out and attract attention? Isn't that ridiculous?
Everyone agreed with this viewpoint, so they quickly moved on to the next topic.
After all, they weren't just having a tea party for this dark elf. They had a lot more to discuss!
--------------------------------
Two flowers bloom, one branch each.
Meanwhile, while Hayden and his colleagues were chatting in their meeting, most of the other employees were also finishing their shifts (some departments at Flower Magic Company now operate on a 24-hour shift system). Joanna, who had just been mentioned in the conversation, was no exception.
With a cheerful smile, she waved goodbye to her colleagues, then leaped into the air and flew home.
Newbeam City provides employee apartments, but Joanna obviously has to commute to get off work. Even if a spy can withstand prolonged exposure within the True God's barrier, they will eventually be detected physically. Fortunately, many employees already choose to commute, which isn't enough to arouse suspicion.
In fact, as Hayden and his friends demonstrated at their little tea party, they didn't really suspect Joanna much, nor did they bother to truly investigate her. Her performance at the company was impeccable, revealing no real flaws. Even Hongye, who kept a close eye on Joanna all day, didn't find anything wrong with her.
Joanna was absolutely flawless at the company!
...And now, she had just stepped into her luxury apartment in New Asia and closed the door when she immediately began to struggle painfully, like a whale washed ashore!
"Aa ...
Joanna writhed and screamed on the floor like a shrimp.
"What's going on with this bizarre company?!"
At the same time, other personalities within her voice complained: "Wasn't this plan your idea? Do you have the right to complain?"
Joanna's body, and all the personalities within her, are now incredibly exhausted. Because, in reality, they don't possess the high-speed learning ability Hayden imagined. In fact, their current situation is essentially a result of brute force.
Yes, just force it in.
They possess dozens of personalities (minds) within their bodies. Although they only have one physical body, they can engage in regular learning at dozens of times the normal speed on the StarNet, which is actually quite fast. Furthermore, although they don't have the complete version of the Mitra Educational Chip, they can still force knowledge into their brains using a hypnotic brainwashing program replicated by her boss.
Of course, such a replica brainwashing program would normally lead to serious consequences, even causing the user's personality to collapse—the early dream chips from a few years ago are a living example. However, Joanna is, after all, a god, and has dozens of personalities—so dozens of times more personalities naturally means dozens of times more mental resilience; since she has dozens of times more mental resilience, she can certainly use a replica brainwashing program to mimic the effects of the complete Mitra education chip!
This is dark magic that exploits multiple personalities to master a wide range of knowledge and skills.
As for the cost... hey, the cost?
Money is a price, copyright is a price, but her integrity is not a price—or rather, it's something Joanna is willing to pay.
The pain she endured when using this magic, like the torment of running a marathon all day while coughing up blood, was merely a small cost she was willing to pay.
Her cheating methods were so twisted that even Hayden and his team couldn't have imagined it.
But the fact that she is now wailing in her own apartment shows that her spy plan is not going well.
What has stopped her from achieving success this time? Was it her colleagues at the Hayden meeting today? Or was it Hongye?