Daniel quickly learned that payday in the Fortress of Eternal Night was less of a structured process and more of a legacy system with a critical memory leak that caused a full-blown riot once a month. The system was simple: a giant, rune-covered chest called the 'War-Spoils Coffer' was dragged into the hall, and everyone just took stuff.
When Daniel entered, the chaos was in full swing. Urgoth and his Orcs were elbowing their way to the front. Griznak's goblins were running a complex operation involving diversions, grappling hooks, and a back-alley appraisal of a chipped human femur. It was HR's job to "oversee" this, which Daniel's predecessor had apparently done by hiding under a table.
"This is utterly barbaric," a voice purred. Count Valerius and his coven swept past, wrinkling their noses. "Mere trinkets. We require… substantive compensation."
"And what is it, exactly, that you're looking for?" Daniel asked.
Valerius's crimson eyes glinted. "A 'red bonus.' A stipend of fresh, high-quality vintage. Not this… bottled swill."
A furious roar echoed as an Orc held a goblin upside down, shaking him. Gold teeth, cursed rings, and a half-eaten sandwich rained onto the floor.
"BUDDY PUNCHING!" the Orc bellowed.
"Is not buddy punching!" Griznak screeched. "Is… 'delegated asset acquisition'! Very efficient!"
Daniel's engineer brain screamed in agony. This wasn't a payroll system; it was a mess of spaghetti code with no error handling. It was inefficient, unscalable, and worst of all, just plain bad design.
That night, fueled by a foul liquid called 'Grog,' he got to work. His first instinct, the one beaten into him by years of software development, was to build the perfect system. He began sketching on his magical slate, his mind racing. He envisioned a multi-layered, rune-based architecture. A psychic API would track kills in real-time. A decentralized ledger on cursed scrolls would prevent fraud. An automated teleportation network would deliver loot directly to each soldier's bunk. It would be a masterpiece of demonic engineering. (how does he knows all that - of course bro got trained by leech before he even stepped out of his office first time, all the training material | in time skip --- story for another day)
He spent hours designing the intricate system. He mapped out the data flows, the authentication protocols for different demonic species, the whole nine hells. Then he stared at the sprawling, impossibly complex diagram… and felt a familiar, profound sense of exhaustion.
He'd done this before. Spent weeks over-engineering a solution for a problem that could be solved in a day. It was the engineer's curse.
"Screw it," he muttered to the empty room. "Why am I building a cathedral of code when all they need is a tent?"
He erased the beautiful, perfect, and utterly impractical design. He would embrace the engineer's secret weapon: pragmatic laziness. He would build the simplest thing that could possibly work.
He dismissed the dusty scrolls from Osseous the Lich. Instead, he focused his will on his magical slate, pouring in all his knowledge of VLOOKUPs and pivot tables. He wasn't building a new reality; he was just making a damn spreadsheet.
It was still beautiful in its own way. He created linked sheets that glowed with a faint green light: PERSONNEL, LOOT_INVENTORY, and his masterpiece, PAYROLL_DISTRIBUTION. He assigned values to actions: hazard pay for meteor shower duty, a discretionary fund for goblins who didn't blow anything up.
Then he hit a snag: the Dragons. They were the fortress's ultimate deterrent, ancient beings of immense power who slept on mountains of gold. They didn't show up for payday. They were the equivalent of aloof, C-suite executives who expected their bonuses to just appear.
Daniel's solution was simple and corporate. He built a special clause into his system, a magical IF statement. Before any distribution, the system would scan the Coffer, identify the top 5% most valuable items—the flawless gems, the singing swords, the crowns of forgotten kings—and teleport them directly into magically-linked chests in the Dragons' lairs. He called it the "Executive Hoard Tithe." They wouldn't even have to wake up.
The next payday, Daniel stood before the legions, his glowing slate in hand. "There have been some changes," he announced.
The moment he activated the system, the most spectacular items in the Coffer—a flawless shadow diamond, a crown that wept tears of gold—simply vanished. A moment later, a deep, telepathic rumble echoed through the minds of everyone in the hall, a voice ancient and vast.
"TITHE RECEIVED. ADEQUATE."
The entire legion froze, stunned into silence. The new boss had figured out how to pay the dragons.
With the VIPs satisfied, the rest of the system kicked in.
"Urgoth," Daniel said, "your legion's performance has earned you a 15% bonus allocation of steel-based plunder. It's already sorted in Crate A." Urgoth stared, dumbfounded, at his pre-sorted loot.
"Griznak," he continued, "your squad gets a bonus in 'unclaimed shinies' and a bulk distribution of Grub Coupons. Any 'delegated asset acquisition' will result in a 50% pay dock." The goblins gasped.
"And Count Valerius," Daniel said, "your 'red bonus' is approved, pending a successful intelligence report. Please fill out Requisition Form TR-4B in triplicate."
Valerius blinked, then nodded, deeply impressed. Bureaucracy. A language he understood.
It was the quietest payday the fortress had ever seen. Osseous the Lich floated over, his skeletal jaw agape. "By the Forgotten Gods… you abandoned a perfect, complex design for… ruthless pragmatism! It's the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed!"
Later, Xylos summoned him. "The old bone-bag called you the 'Prophet of the Good-Enough Solution,'" the Dark Lord said, examining a new skull. "Good work. Less screaming means more time for me to… strategize." He picked up his glowing crystal and resumed scrolling.
Daniel walked out, a warmth spreading in his chest. It was the feeling of genuine praise.
…The memory was sharp and bitter. His last performance review. The 'Outstanding' rating for a project he'd pulled all-nighters on for months. The fifty-dollar gift card for Chili's.
His complex work, his sacrifice, had been met with a meaningless gesture. All that effort for nothing.
He shook the thought away; even now, Daniel had always been an engineer first and HR last. and really, what engineer doesn't love seeing their work impact millions? Even if, in this case… those millions just happened to be the Dark Lord's army. (genuine work having a good impact, all I want is this, and being honestly praised for that, can't ask for more)
And for the first time in a very long time, that felt… good. Disturbingly good.