Chapter 173: Loyal! To! The! Cause!
The same familiar office.
Matthew sat alone in the empty office, his gaze sweeping back and forth between the System interface and Umbrella's financials.
Since Stage 1 of the Blacklight Virus required 120,000 System points, Matthew needed to find a way to bring in money fast, or he risked missing out on this Pass's rewards entirely.
"Low-interest loans... orphanages... free treatment and limb restoration for the disabled... urban reconstruction projects... these public welfare projects bring in a maximum of eight hundred System points a day."
"Eight hundred times one hundred eighty days, that's only 140,000 System points."
140,000 points sounded like a lot. More than enough to get the Blacklight Virus, with some left over for the rewards after that, too.
But that was the optimistic calculation.
Because the government reconstruction projects would wrap up eventually, and people's gratitude toward Umbrella would naturally fade over time too.
By then, the daily point output might not even reach six hundred.
"Tch."
"I need to find some other angles, or expand on what's already running." Matthew sat in his chair, brow furrowed.
The low-interest loan program was off the table for now.
That program had already stepped on a lot of toes, cutting into other people's profits, slashing other people's income... because of that, even the government wasn't especially supportive of it.
Which meant the orphanages were the only real lever left to pull.
The Nursery's facilities didn't have much room left for further optimization.
But increasing the System points generated from the orphanages was actually simple enough.
Stack the numbers!
One isn't enough? Then build two.
Two isn't enough? Then build ten!
As long as the numbers were big enough, the System points would follow.
Of course, this approach had its downsides too.
It cost money!
A lot of money!
The orphanages weren't just unprofitable, they were a flat-out loss!
To maintain quality across the board, to make sure the children's gratitude and the public's gratitude toward Umbrella stayed genuine, he was losing millions of dollars a day on this alone!
Medical care, education, facility maintenance, staffing, security, daily essential supplies...
If Umbrella weren't already the massive enterprise it had become, with super-soldier compound and Trauma Repair Agent contracts running with governments around the world, Matthew wouldn't even dare consider this.
He genuinely worried that one impulsive decision could drive Umbrella into bankruptcy.
"...Let's open five more orphanages for now." Matthew thought it over for a moment, murmuring to himself.
"As for the free treatment and limb restoration for the disabled, and the urban reconstruction..."
"Double it."
"The Trauma Repair Agent's already in mass production anyway. The cost per dose is under five thousand dollars."
And for urban reconstruction, all it would take was a little coordination with the construction materials companies under Wilson Fisk, and the costs could be driven down to almost nothing. That alone could potentially double the System points output again!
Matthew's logic was simple. If the benefits he gave the people were real and substantial, the feedback he got from the people would be real and substantial too.
Even now, he'd never once considered the idea of engineering disasters on Earth himself, just to artificially harvest System points from the public's suffering.
For one thing, Earth was under the Ancient One's protection, and if he ever genuinely considered something like that, she'd probably swat him dead on the spot.
For another, he simply couldn't get past it himself.
He'd always understood one thing clearly.
If he ever started "manufacturing his own supply" on Earth purely to farm System points, he'd never be able to truly claim he was "benefiting the people" again.
It was like solving a problem once by "eliminating the source of the trouble," and then, the next time trouble came up, you'd never be able to set aside the idea of "just kill it" again, not as your first instinct.
That was exactly why murderers, when they ran into a problem, always reached for murder first.
Sure, abandoning his principles could make System points come flooding in like crazy. But doing that would only mean disasters happening more and more often, getting bigger and bigger in scope.
Until, eventually, even destroying an entire planet wouldn't be enough to satisfy that hunger anymore.
So... he'd stick to projects that genuinely contributed something to the people of the world, projects that could actually be called "benefiting the people" without irony.
That way, people would keep remembering him fondly.
And who knew, maybe one day, if the company ran into trouble, or if he found himself at odds with the US government, all those people who'd benefited from his generosity would rise up shouting "Loyal! To! The! Cause!" and drape him in an emperor's robe.
He picked up the "command cube" beside him and laid out the next steps for Ada and Eleanor, one by one.
Once that was done, Matthew rested in the office a little while longer before finally heading back to his quarters.
Out in space, among the stars.
A massive, lifeless ship drifted silently through the void.
Though fire couldn't burn in a vacuum under normal circumstances, the accelerant gases leaking from inside the ship had ignited into malfunction-fueled flames scattered across its hull.
A tail of fire, several football fields wide, propelled the ship steadily toward some destination.
Some unknown amount of time later.
The ship slammed, out of control, into a heavily desolated planet, and only then did it finally come to a stop.
The Chitauri homeworld, Logistics Sector 45.
The crash had nearly leveled every structure in Logistics Sector 45.
A handful of Chitauri who crawled out from the rubble looked at the ship, which had hit the ground with no cushioning whatsoever, a flicker of confusion crossing their ferocious faces.
Wasn't this ship supposed to be part of the invasion fleet sent to Earth?
So why had it come back like this?
And from the look of it, the ship's commanding officer didn't seem to have made contact with the Chitauri homeworld's highest authority either, otherwise the highest authority would have evacuated the civilian population ahead of time.
So... what exactly had happened aboard that ship?
And why had it ended up looking like this?
Weren't humans supposed to be weak, the kind of species that wouldn't even put up a fight against an invasion?
Looking at the state of the ship, this wasn't just resistance. This looked like they'd tried to launch a full counteroffensive.
How else could the Chitauri's strongest warship possibly end up in this state?
"Automatic return in progress... Do not alter course."
"Automatic return in progress... Do not alter course."
"Auto... matic... matic..."
A garbled, repeating mechanical voice issued from inside the ship, the kind of sound that crawled under your skin.
Some time later, a squad of Chitauri soldiers finally arrived from a distance.
They looked at the ship, half-buried in the soil, exchanged a glance with one another, and were just about to step forward...
But before they could get close to the ship, the sealed hatch suddenly opened.
Or rather, it didn't open so much as fall off entirely.
Clang!
The hatch, corroded through by Alien blood, crashed to the ground.
In the roaring flames, a badly decayed, mangled hand gripped the edge of the hatchway.
Under everyone's watching eyes, the owner of that hand staggered out of the fire.
And when they got a clear look at who it was, they couldn't help but cry out in shock: "You're... the ship's commander?!"
One of the Chitauri, recognizing the figure as the ship's commanding officer, hurried forward to help support the visibly struggling "commander."
But the moment he got close.
The venerable, highly respected commander opened his bloody maw wide and bit straight into his neck!
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