Chapter 1
I'm Mo Xi. If you're reading this, I'm currently earning Paradise Coins by watching ads. If you kind, generous people are willing to help a poor soul like me, please send me 50 Paradise Coins as soon as you can.
The Paradise, Trading Market.
Mo Xi, who often posted pleas for help in the World Channel, sighed helplessly. This was her tenth day in the Paradise, and the last day before her newcomer stall expired.
If she couldn't sell anything today, it looked like she'd have to go mining to earn her stall rent.
“I should never have signed a contract with the Paradise. If I'd just died quietly, I would have been much better off than I am now.” Mo Xi lay across the counter and muttered.
Ten days ago, Mo Xi had worked himself to death at his company from the “blessings” of 996, and even 007, overtime. After he died, the Paradise found him and gave him two choices.
A. Be utterly annihilated and return to the heavens.
B. Sign a staff contract and work for the Paradise.
Mo Xi, whose life had always been utterly ordinary, had chosen B without hesitation. In her view, nothing could be more frightening than death.
As it turned out, she was wrong—and spectacularly so.
“What kind of person gets resurrected with a sex change? And why do I only have 500 Paradise Coins to start with?!” Mo Xi had complained when she first entered the Paradise.
To survive, Mo Xi had done her best to adapt to and learn the rules of the Paradise during her time there, which gave her a general understanding of the place.
Put simply, the Paradise was a powerful entity that operated by a set of rules. It sought out promising people, signed contracts with them, and sent those contractors to various worlds to complete missions.
Of course, the Paradise didn't only train people who focused on combat. It also trained people who weren't as talented at fighting, and they all shared the same name.
Staff.
Staff were, in essence, support personnel responsible for keeping the Paradise running and equipped with all kinds of life skills.
There were blacksmiths with masterful forging skills who could craft all kinds of high-quality armor, chefs with top-notch cooking skills who could make food that boosted attributes, and engineers who worked in both the life sciences and technology and could whip up all sorts of strange gadgets...
Then there was the apothecary (Novice Apprentice Edition), whose skill upgrades cost a fortune, whose early potions were useless, and whose market was so saturated that even passing dogs wouldn't spare her wares a glance. She'd complained herself hoarse.
What kind of staff was Mo Xi?
Mo Xi: “...”
In any case, thanks to the broad perspective she'd gained from fan-translating all sorts of material out of sheer passion in her previous life, Mo Xi had already begun to settle in here.
However, she'd run into a very serious problem.
She was out of Paradise Coins.
Here, everything required Paradise Coins: food and drink, leveling up, even blocking the ads that popped up whenever you blinked inside the upgrade pod.
You could say that in this place, you simply couldn't get by without Paradise Coins.
And now, with all her Paradise Coins spent on leveling up Potioncraft, Mo Xi was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Just as Mo Xi was fretting over what to do about her stall rent, a figure ambled over to her stall.
Seeing the familiar fake smile on the visitor's face, Mo Xi rubbed her temples, feeling quite troubled.
“Miss, would you really not consider our guild's loan service? Since you're a Tier One newbie, I can still offer you our generous deal: borrow 900 Paradise Coins and repay 1,300!”
Having been pestered by this loan shark for several days, Mo Xi didn't even feel like speaking. She shook her head and went back to leaning on the counter, lost in thought.
The loan shark wasn't bothered by the rejection. Still smiling, he headed toward another newcomer's stall, apparently not caring that Mo Xi had turned him down.
Watching the loan shark's retreating figure, Mo Xi fell silent for a moment, then turned to look at the few “Crude Potions” for sale at her stall.
“Crude Potion (Gray)”
Origin: Fantasy Paradise
Rating: 3
Effect: Drinking it triggers a random effect that changes your Health by -2% to +2%.
Description: This is the finest work of a certain apothecary apprentice. Please do not use it when you're on the verge of death.
Price: 10 Paradise Coins
Although Mo Xi thought her potions were absurdly awful, they really were the finest work of her current Lv. 2 Potioncraft.
“Why do I keep feeling like choosing Potioncraft was a mistake?” Mo Xi stroked her chin and thought to herself.
When a staff member first entered the Paradise, the Paradise would offer them a choice of one of three secondary professions based on their talent.
At the time, Mo Xi had chosen the apothecary, which seemed the most impressive, almost without hesitation. The reason was simple: her talent was suited to the profession.
Yes, as someone chosen by the Paradise, Mo Xi naturally had something special about her.
Profession: Angel (Unique)
[Due to the profession's traits, the contractor will be forcibly transformed into a woman.]
Skill One: Mercy Lv. 1
Cost: Once Mercy is activated, it consumes 3 Mana per minute.
Skill Effect: The contractor can freely choose a target and trigger either a healing or judgment effect. Healing restores 15 Health per second, while judgment deals 7.5 points of true damage to the target per second.
Skill Two: Breath of Life (Passive)
Skill Effect: Whenever crafting, enchanting, or performing similar actions, there is a fixed 33% chance of triggering Breath of Life. When triggered, it applies one “Sublimation” effect to the item.
Skill Three is locked. Unlocking it requires a Small Soul Crystal and 1,000 Paradise Coins.
At first glance, a 33% chance to trigger Breath of Life seemed quite high. It looked as though Mo Xi could trigger it whenever she wanted, as long as she was willing to try.
But after experimenting herself, Mo Xi discovered that this fixed 33% chance was a huge trap.
Everyone knew probability wasn't additive. A fixed 33% chance didn't mean success was guaranteed within three or four tries.
In theory, if Mo Xi was unlucky enough, she might not succeed even once after a hundred attempts.
Of course, generally speaking, no one could be that unlucky...
“At this rate, Potioncraft won't pay for itself anytime soon. Do I really have to go mining?” Mo Xi muttered to herself with a frown.
From what Mo Xi had learned about the Paradise's rules over the past few days, if a staff member's early development didn't go well, the Paradise would give them three choices.
A. Become an honorable miner and sweat it out in the Deep Hollow Mine.
Safety Rating: 5 (maximum)
Income Rating: 3
Time Required: Long
B. Help build up the Paradise by working as a receptionist in facilities such as the Upgrade Hall or the Forge Hall (the choice of most staff).
Safety Rating: 5
Income Rating: 1
Time Required: Moderate
C. Challenge a world mission with almost no combat ability.
Safety Rating: 2
Income Rating: 5
Time Required: Depends on the world's difficulty
Put simply, the Paradise gave staff relatively fair choices. Since they weren't the ones mainly responsible for fighting, they could focus on support instead.
If your support skills were excellent—for example, if you could forge decent equipment, cook tasty meals, or had the eloquence to make contractors feel as if they were bathed in a spring breeze—then the Paradise would provide you with some assistance and a sufficiently large platform.
If your abilities were lacking but you still wanted to do something, the Paradise would point you down a path where, despite the hard work, you could safely earn some Paradise Coins.
If you didn't want to limit yourself to support work and had enough ability and adventurous spirit, the Paradise could also offer you a high-risk, high-reward option.
What if you didn't want to do anything at all?
The answer was simple: certain death.
Because the world assessment mission that staff had to complete every so often would teach you just how costly laziness was.
Those were the Paradise's rules.