Leo's implementation of the "Starvation Strategy" was as silent and ruthless as its conception. He never spoke to Arthur Harrison again. He didn't need to. He communicated through results. His newly empowered team, operating with the precision of a surgical unit, built the new logistics network piece by piece. Ben identified the most inefficient routes to feed the dying beast of OmniCorp. Anna, now fiercely loyal after witnessing Leo's strategic genius, identified and negotiated with the new, agile logistics partners.
The quarterly reports told the story. The eight-million-dollar bleed slowed, then stopped, then reversed into a profit stream that grew with each passing month. Leo had not just solved the problem; he had turned a corporate cancer into a source of immense strength.
The official announcement came three months after his meeting with the GM. It was a sterile, company-wide email from HR, but its impact was an earthquake. Marcus Graves was being promoted to Vice President of North American Operations. And filling his newly vacated role of Senior Manager of the entire Strategic Division was Leo Zhang.
He had not just climbed the ladder; he had skipped three rungs in a single leap.
There was no party. There were no congratulations. There was only a quiet, palpable awe on the 38th floor. His old team looked at him not as a manager, but as something else entirely—a force that had bent the company to his will.
His final reward from the System arrived not as a notification, but as a sleek black envelope delivered by an executive courier. Inside was not a letter, but a single, heavy keycard with a simple, embossed address. It was for a penthouse apartment in the most exclusive residential tower in the city—the kind of place where CEOs and old money lived in quiet, opulent isolation.
That evening, Leo stood in his new home. It was a palace of glass and steel, two stories of minimalist luxury hanging in the sky. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a god's-eye view of the sprawling city below, a glittering carpet of lights that stretched to the horizon. The apartment was vast, empty, and silent, furnished with impeccable but impersonal taste. It was less a home than a monument to success.
He walked to the window, the city reflected in his calm, unreadable eyes. He had started this journey as a rejected graduate at the bottom, looking up at towers like this with a bitter, desperate hunger.
Now, he was at the top, looking down.
He had survived the hazing, dismantled a toxic manager, neutralized a rival, passed an impossible test, and outmaneuvered the most powerful man he had ever met. He had played the game, and he had won. But as he looked out at the endless city, he knew, with the cold, hard certainty of his Business Instinct, that this was not the end.
It was the end of the tutorial.
His gaze fixed on the distant, glittering headquarters of TitanCorp's global rivals. His expression was not one of triumph or joy. It was the calm, focused look of a predator surveying a new, larger hunting ground.
The battles for the floors were over. Now, the war for the skyline would begin.
[END OF SEASON 1]