Chapter 172: Paradise Residency K
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 172: Paradise Residency K
A while ago, I had asked Kim Ji-hee to gather a list of people who wanted to enter Paradise.
My plan was to take the list, conduct interviews, and select them myself.
But seeing the automation through the Level 11 Safe Base's Mart and Warehouse made me change my mind.
Why go through the trouble of doing it all by hand?
I already had an excellent system called the Safe Base System.
Especially after reaching Level 11, the system had become much more sophisticated, even gaining a great feature that automatically adjusted things to match my thoughts, just like a Server System Administrator.
I added a new menu to the Paradise Membership called "Paradise Residency K."
The name was tacky as fuck, but it was the only thing that came to mind, so there was no helping it.
Even if it was tacky, what could I do?
That was just the limit of the Owner of Paradise's imagination.
Besides, holding some kind of contest just to name it would be lame, so I'd just do whatever I wanted.
The name didn't matter anyway.
What mattered was that anyone among the Paradise Membership members who wanted to reach Level 3 or become a Resident could submit a resume to take the first-round interview.
Of course, since the main purpose of "Paradise Residency K" was to recruit talented individuals for Paradise by selecting those with high-grade skills or useful abilities, restricting the application to only Paradise Membership members could work against me.
From the perspective of trying to recruit as much talent as possible, I was technically the one in the weaker position. If someone with a truly amazing skill hadn't joined the Paradise Membership, I might miss them or discover them too late.
But I gave up on worrying about even that.
I didn't want to play the underdog.
A better Mode.
Since I had added the server system to obtain better Modes, those who had acquired good Modes could come to me if they wanted.
As for any other Modes I happened to come across by chance, I could just take them through Predation anyway.
I was giving them an opportunity.
Even if I brought in people who had no interest in Paradise and told them to live here, there was no way they would cooperate properly.
It was better to just take those kinds of things through Predation.
The Eagle Five Squad, the Hunting Squads, and the doctors had all shown that to act as members of Paradise—rather than just simple Mode-dispensers—a certain level of will was required.
Well, plenty of applications came in.
Right from the moment the system opened.
As time passed, resumes flooded in, and quite a few were automatically filtered out.
I hadn't set the filtering criteria too strictly.
Even if a Mode's grade wasn't high, it didn't matter as long as the Mode itself was useful.
Besides, professionals like doctors and pharmacists were also needed in Paradise.
"Hmm. There aren't many B-grade or higher either."
Since updating the Modes through the server system, many posts about awakening Modes had appeared on the gallery and elsewhere.
But as expected, high-grade Modes didn't appear easily.
Then again, even before the update, high-level Modes weren't seen very often.
There was a surprising fact I discovered after the Modes were updated.
[Noona's Hands Are Healing Hands [SS][1★]]
- Healing efficiency increases by 100%. Healing duration is reduced by 100%.
This was Kim Ji-hee's Mode.
With the reorganization of the Modes, Kim Ji-hee's healing skill had also changed; its grade became SS, and its level became 1.
The original explanation for the Mode reorganization stated that any levels gained would be reset and retroactively applied to increase the level.
If so, shouldn't Kim Ji-hee's level, which was previously a Level 4 healing skill, be at least 3 or higher?
Or at least Level 2.
Yet, it had become Level 1, and its grade had changed to the highest tier, SS-grade.
It was a change that made no sense logically.
While a Level 4 healing skill was considered good, that was only because healing skills themselves were rare. Out of a maximum level of 10, a Level 4 skill would roughly translate to a C-grade, or at best, barely a B-grade.
Yet, it was SS-grade.
I could only conclude that my Normal Mode Points had influenced this.
It was the same for Oh Yoon-seop's Combat Readiness.
It started at a base of Level 6, plus the 1 level he raised himself, and the 8 levels I raised for him.
After the reorganization, it became Level 3, and its grade became A-grade.
Seeing that Lee Mi-sook's Level 7 Cooking Expert was A-grade, it was clear that what was raised with Normal Mode Points was reflected in the grade, not the level experience.
And this could be confirmed with a simple experiment.
[Normal Mode Level [1★] Points required for Mode Enhancement: 2]
Enhancement and level-ups were written separately in the Base Invincibility description. I hadn't realized it before because the Modes were combined, but it seemed to apply this way.
Enhancement cost 2 points, but thanks to the 50% cost reduction effect, only 1 point was consumed.
So, it was more accurate to say I had been enhancing them rather than leveling them up.
This was evident from the fact that "Mana Affinity" and "Pro Streamer" had both become SS-grade, with their levels reset to 1.
"Hmm. If there's a decent Mode, I can just steal it, raise it to SS-grade, and then level it up to 10. But that would cost twice as many Normal Mode Points."
Even with a 50% cost reduction, raising a Normal Mode Level wouldn't consume 0.5 points, so the minimum of 1 point would still be used.
It felt like a bit of a loss, but since it was impossible for me to raise levels by using skills, it was an unavoidable choice.
I also needed to raise my reset Modes again.
If nothing else, my Mana Affinity had been reorganized, and my mana capacity had dropped significantly as its level fell.
Whenever I had time, I looked through "Paradise Residency K" and filtered out the first-round successful applicants.
I planned to watch for a few more days and then conduct the second-round interviews at the interview venue on the second floor of the Paradise Mart.
---
Ever since coming to Paradise, Jeon Ye-sol had lived in Trimage.
In fact, she had so little presence that I barely remembered if the kid was still around.
It wasn't like I toured Paradise often, and I had almost no reason to go to the Residential District.
Even when I went to see Lee Yu-ri, we were on different floors, so I never ran into her. I heard she lived next door to Lee Mi-sook, but she rarely came outside.
According to occasional updates from Kim Ji-hee, she played well by herself at home. I didn't have much interest in her, and since she didn't seem to do anything, I had even considered just using Predation on her and kicking her out.
Among the Residents, few did as little as Jeon Ye-sol.
Lee Mi-sook, Oh Yoon-seop, Lee Yu-ri—they all had their respective roles and were doing their part in Paradise.
Even Lee Yu-ri, who mostly just played and ate, did surprisingly well with her broadcasts, helping to promote Paradise. She had handled a lot of the promotion for the recent Mart opening, capturing the bustling crowd on the first day and livening up the atmosphere, which helped attract even more customers.
She had even shown herself riding a delivery motorcycle to make deliveries, firmly engraving the free delivery service for purchases over 300 Coins into people's minds.
But because she had absolutely no presence, I would only briefly think about doing something about her before forgetting because I was too busy.
The reason I suddenly found myself thinking about Jeon Ye-sol was because she had come to find me in the Residential District while I was preparing for Paradise Residency K.
"Oh? Ye-sol, you're here? Why? Did you miss me?"
"No... I have something to say to Ahjussi..."
"Really? What is it? Can't you tell me?"
"I... I... got a new Mode."
That was what she had apparently explained to Kim Ji-hee.
"Okay. I'll check it."
Getting a new Mode wasn't anything particularly special.
Thanks to the server system I added, the number of people awakening Modes late, after the Zombie Rush ended, had been increasing significantly lately.
It was no different for the Residents in our Paradise.
Even among the doctors, pharmacists, and nurses, someone had already obtained a healing-related Mode, even if it was just one person so far.
Since they had potential, the probability of getting a related Mode increased, so it was actually more likely for the Residents to acquire new Modes.
She was still just a kid who had lost her parents and was left alone at an age when she should be learning, so she was a bit slow of speech. But seeing her come to find me directly to tell me this, she didn't seem to be a complete fool.
She must be aware of it too.
Aware of her own position.
She had tried to explain it, but because of her poor expression, she couldn't convey it properly. Not that it mattered.
I could just look it up through the membership information.
[Jeon Ye-sol]
- Age: 6
- Mode: Mana Affinity [SS][1★], Frailty [S][1★], Mana Infusion [SS][1★]
I had already seen that her Mana Affinity had changed to SS-grade.
Frailty was a negative trait, but now that it had a grade and was marked as S, it oddly looked like a good thing.
Of course, the higher the grade of a negative trait, the worse it was.
Naturally, negative traits weren't entirely bad. Even if the penalty was severe for high-grade negative traits, quite a few of them still offered some kind of return.
I brushed past it.
Wait, it's the same?
I almost missed the newly created one next to it because it looked so natural at first.
Maybe it was because the name was similar to Mana Affinity.
"What the fuck...?"
But it wasn't.
They were spread out symmetrically like a decalcomania, but...
There were two of them.
Two SS-grade Modes.
Even if one was the one I had raised—which was originally Level 8—the other must have been newly acquired after the patch, meaning it was born as an SS-grade.
I erased my previous assessment of Jeon Ye-sol from my mind and rewrote it.
"She is an incredibly brilliant talent."
In the first place, people who are as useful as me don't really need to do anything.
Someone whose very existence is useful is worth several times more than a hard worker, even if they just play and eat all day.
[Mana Infusion [SS][1★]]
- Infuses one's own mana into another person.
- When infusing mana, it is transferred at 50% efficiency.
- 10% chance that mana is not consumed.
- Infused mana is stored separately from the target's current mana and maximum limit.
- When infusing mana, the target has a 1% chance to have their mana consumption reduced by 50% for 60 seconds.
Jeon Ye-sol's usefulness had finally been established.
A walking Mana Gas Station.
"The winner has emerged before Paradise Residency K has even begun."