Aria opened her bottle of orange juice, and before taking a sip, she told Sora, "Activate the mana pen."
Sora ignored the loud slurping sound from the manager as she drank and activated the object in his hand. A current coursed through his body, centering exactly where his mana was stored, the dantian. He was surprised by the familiar sensation.
'It's just like when I was a swordsman. The mana pen creates pathways and guides my mana for me...'
Seeing the look of surprise on Sora's face, Aria sighed. "Don't waste your mana. Start writing."
Sora nodded and activated [Mana Eyes]. He touched the contract she had given him and began tracing over the text. The moment the tool made contact with the paper, he felt his energy vibrate and come to life. Guided by the pen between his fingers, the mana was automatically drawn through his body and siphoned out. Since the task was relatively simple, Sora quickly focused on the trajectory of the mana—its behavior, its speed—and gradually began to understand the mechanics.
'The pen has several functions... It acts like a GPS, but also as a conductor for my energy. I'm just the battery.'
When he saw significant amounts of energy being wasted along the way, he realized why others avoided this job. 'And as usual, the optimization is trash.'
It was no wonder this job drained those who practiced it. If others relied solely on this tool, they would only finalize a contract or two a day. Having already experimented with his own skills, Sora couldn't settle for such poor efficiency.
For several cycles, he continued to observe the behavior of his mana before progressively taking control.
'Let's take this one step at a time. Like driving school—I'll start with the steering wheel.' Smiling at the memory of his disastrous driving lessons, Sora began his experimentation by influencing the mana's path. A few seconds later, a notification snapped him out of his thoughts.
[Job Level Up! : Human Resource Assistant]
Sora ignored it. He knew his job level and his mastery were correlated, and that any progress was rewarded with experience or new skills.
For several minutes, he continued tracing the text on the contract with his mana, watching his job level climb. While he was completely focused, the suction of his mana by the pen suddenly stopped.
He looked up at Aria and saw her stunned expression.
"You finalized the contract in one go... and you look perfectly fine."
Sora simply nodded and reached out for another contract. For the next twenty minutes, he infused his energy into dozens of similar documents, clearing the entire stack on the desk. He was getting faster and more efficient with every page.
Aria stared at Sora as if he were an anomaly. "That was the twenty-fifth... Can you keep going? I have more."
He nodded. "Send them in!"
Sora was like a child with a new toy. In less than half an hour, his job level had climbed to 10, and with every stroke of the mana pen, he discovered something new.
'At first, I was just blindly copying words written by lawyers and other classes. I was just guiding the mana and optimizing my consumption.'
'But once I hit Level 10, I started to understand how the mana transforms to be used in the contract. I feel like if I work on enough of these, I'll be able to create my own contracts in the future.'
Sora thanked Clement, who brought in an additional stack of contracts, and was about to start when Aria stopped him.
"These are slightly different," she said. Sora took one and began to read. It was something familiar.
Aria continued, "Now that you've finished the recruitment contracts, we're moving you to quest contracts. However, we need absolute discretion regarding the content. It is strictly forbidden to reveal the contents of the quests, their requirements, or their rewards to anyone."
Sora nodded and reached for the pen, but Aria chuckled and stopped him again.
"You have to sign a confidentiality agreement to continue..." Aria approached him and handed him a document.
He looked up and found Aria holding a contract even longer than the ones he had just completed. Sora read the entire thing, noting that Aria's agency promised total secrecy to its clients. When he realized that his own identity and work would also be anonymized, he nodded.
'Some people might hate this, but it suits me to stay anonymous. No need to advertise my talents for now...'
"Thank you, Mr. Eden." Satisfied, Aria handed him the pile of contracts and left the room to let him work.
Sora didn't react when she called him by his new name, only remembering she was talking to him once the door closed behind her.
He shook his head and got back to work. One contract after another. One quest after another. What had originally taken him several minutes now took only thirty seconds.
He was constantly gaining speed and efficiency, taking the opportunity to memorize every contract he finalized, hoping he would one day make his own. His job level rose rapidly, revealing a use of mana he had never even suspected.
'Mana can control, bind, and even constrain. And I'm discovering this through a job that looks so mundane. What else will I learn from other classes? Other jobs? Will I ever truly master this energy?' When the work was finished, he leaned back in his chair and thought about the potential of mana.
When he heard footsteps in the hallway, he stood up and headed for the door. When he opened it, Clement was standing there holding two massive mana potions.
Sora looked confused, and Clement answered his silent question. "These are a gift from Ms. Aria. She appreciates your talent and wanted to encourage you."
Sora smiled and accepted the gift. When he stepped out of the office, it was Clement's turn to be confused.
Sora explained, "I finished the 100 contracts. Do you have any more?"
Clement shook his head, quickly went inside the office to check, while Sora added, "Then I'll see you next time!"
Sora returned to the Job Hall and handed the token back to Riley, the woman in charge of his job.
"Back so soon?" Riley asked, taking the token. "I assume you met Aria. So, how'd it go? Manage to knock out a contract or two? And did you tell her I sent you?"
Sora's attention was already elsewhere, his eyes drifting across the other job listings. "Yeah, I saw her. It went well, thanks," he said, sounding distracted. "What else do you have for me?"
Riley gave a short laugh. "Aria's got enough work to keep you busy for a while. Last I checked, she had over eighty contracts in the queue. There's no reason to jump ship if things went smoothly. You can head back whenever you've got the time and move at your own pace."
Sora looked away from the listings and let out an exasperated sigh. "I want the other assignments. All of them."
Riley's smile faded as she felt the change in his tone. "Look, I can give you whatever you want, but you need to think this through. Every token is a commitment for the week. You have to actually show up at those offices. If you're just going to waste their time, don't bother—you'll be blacklisted across the board by Monday."
Sora hated wasting time as much as anyone, but he saw where the confusion was. He kept his voice level. "Madam, I'm already done with Aria's contracts. Now I'd like more assignments so I can keep leveling my HRA profession."
Riley looked skeptical, but she was a professional; she didn't argue. She just pulled up the logs to verify. She started muttering to herself. "Let's see here... 'Client Review: Work performed perfectly and in record time.' Wait, what? A hundred contracts? In an hour?" Her jaw dropped as she looked up at him, completely stunned.
Sora offered a thin smile. "See my point? I need more tokens."
Riley sat upright, reached under the counter for a stack of tokens, and began linking them to open roles. A few seconds later, she pushed nineteen of them across the desk. "Here. Nineteen tokens—seven government agencies and twelve private firms. They'll see your previous reviews, so don't be surprised if they treat you like royalty."
Then, she extended her hand. "And here's the payout for the work you've already finished." As Sora shook her hand, 10,000 gold entered his inventory.
It was his turn to be caught off guard. 'So much for staying low-key. Goodbye, anonymity.' He pocketed the tokens anyway and went to the nearest agency.
The work was identical to what Aria had assigned him. The same went for the third agency, the fourth, and every one after that. He spent the rest of the day with a grin on his face as the gold piled up in his inventory. Surrounded by NPCs, he felt at ease.
There was a reason he preferred NPCs over humans. These people had appeared during the darkest era of humanity, acting as guides while humanity was still stumbling in the dark. Even with the restrictions of the "rules," they provided quests, taught professions, and showed people how to wield mana. They were, in every sense, a blessing to the world.
'And to think we thanked them by experimenting on them and slaughtering their kind…' Sora remembered the atrocities players had committed. He thought back to when they first appeared in Ales, where he lived.
'The police had opened fire because the mayor accused them of trespassing. And since they were protected by the system within city limits, some people had resorted to baiting NPC farmers into the wilds just to murder them.' The system had permanently banned those killers from every safe zone in existence.
His thoughts drifted back to humanity and his own bitter history. The first thing he saw was the image of Rachel stabbing him in the back. Then came the memories of the player group that had ambushed his party, slaughtering all his friends. Every shakedown and every act of racketeering he'd endured in the years before his death served as a reminder of why he preferred the company of NPCs.
Souring, he made his way toward an inn. The constant mana drain was beginning to wear on his mind; even with his reserves full, the mental fatigue was a weight he could no longer ignore. He inhaled his meal and collapsed into bed for a few hours of much-needed rest.
By the end of another grueling workday, he collected his earnings and looked over the tidy fortune he'd amassed in just forty-eight hours: 185,000 gold.
'Way more efficient than monster hunting,' he thought, opening his profession menu. He smiled at the update.
[Human Resources Assistant – Level 29]
In just two days, he had hit his current level cap.
'Too bad the XP stops once the job level matches your player level…' He focused on his progress and pulled out a high-grade mana pen—a gift Riley had given him when he collected his last payout.
'It's better than the ones the agencies were using.' He activated the tool, watching with fascination as mana gathered at the tip.
The effects of [Mana Evolution] kicked in as he tried to decipher the energy flowing through the pen.
'Every time I worked on a contract, three concepts kept coming back to me: Binding Power, Equivalent Exchange, and Trust.' He didn't fully grasp it yet, but he noticed the concepts growing clearer in his mind with every level he gained.
'Maybe it's like being a swordsman? The higher my level, the more control I had, and the better the result I could get for the same energy spent.' Curious to see where his new profession could lead him, he looked forward to leveling up and experimenting further.
'I've only had this job since yesterday. There's no reason to rush.'