Rafael's days blurred into a rhythm—scouring markets for raw materials, assembling straws in his cramped room, delivering batches to the relief group.
At first, it was just a trickle of orders. Twenty here, thirty there. Enough to pay rent, meals, and buy more supplies. But within two weeks, demand surged.
A barangay captain called. Then a church group. Then a local NGO. Word was spreading faster than Rafael could keep up.
The Codex's new function pulsed constantly in his mind:
[Supply Chain Optimization]Suggestion: Outsource manual assembly. Recruit low-cost labor. Expand storage.
Rafael grimaced, looking at the piles of tubing and mesh scattered across his room. He could barely move without stepping on something.
He muttered, "So what, I hire neighbors to work in my room? That's insane."
But the Codex calmly projected a solution: renting an abandoned bodega nearby, cheap and discreet.
Three days later, Rafael stood in a dusty warehouse smelling of old rice sacks. It wasn't much, but it was space. He had convinced three jobless tricycle drivers to help, teaching them the simplified assembly steps while secretly refining key parts himself.
Production tripled overnight.
Stacks of finished straws filled crates, ready for delivery. For the first time, Rafael felt like a factory owner.
But success brought whispers.
At a coffee shop in Manila, two men in plain clothes sat watching a delivery truck marked only with masking tape labels.
"That's the third shipment this week," one murmured. "And all the groups say the same thing—miracle straws, cheap and durable."
His partner sipped his coffee. "Too good to be true. Either he's scamming, or…" He lowered his voice. "…he's sitting on tech no one else has."
The first man's eyes narrowed. "Then we find out who he is."
Back in the warehouse, Rafael loaded crates into the relief truck, wiping sweat from his brow. His small team laughed and joked, happy for the day's pay. To them, it was just simple work.
But Rafael felt the Codex's warning hum in his head:
"Anomalous interest detected. Surveillance probability: 12% and rising."
Rafael's stomach knotted. He glanced at the street, suddenly aware of shadows that lingered too long, of cars that passed twice.
His empire was still just a seed. Yet already, the world had begun to notice.
And Rafael knew—attention could be more dangerous than poverty.