Chapter 52: Chief Engineer
The construction of various interstellar campuses inside the game was in full swing.
Lu Yunxi had also secured a job near the dungeon—assisting in the construction of the galaxy’s very first virtual military academy.
She truly had no choice in the matter. They simply offered far too much money!
In this world, if you wanted to build a structure, possessing real-world architectural knowledge wasn’t enough. You had to physically learn the game’s specific construction mechanics before you could actually lay a single brick.
In the interstellar era, building a house didn’t require much manual technique. The primary focus was on aesthetics, as the heavy lifting was entirely managed by automated smart-construction systems. If a proposed blueprint was structurally unsafe or prone to collapse, the system’s artificial intelligence would automatically reject the design and issue a warning to the owner.
Consequently, while practically anyone in the interstellar era could design a house, the ancient method of hands-on, manual construction was an entirely different beast.
Because of this steep learning curve, all the major universities were frantically recruiting labor. The site where Yunxi worked, for instance, offered a staggering fifty silver coins a month—a wage completely detached from the baseline economy of the starting zones.
Lu Yunxi found it impossible to turn down such a massive sum of money. Granted, she had vastly superior methods of generating capital, but out here in the middle of a remote mountain forest, where else was she supposed to earn coin? She might as well take a local job. Besides, fifty silver really was a small fortune!
However, the school’s construction progress soon ground to a absolute halt.
“I heard your manual construction skill has already reached the intermediate tier, is that correct?”
A man suddenly approached her station, eyeing her with a look of profound skepticism.
Yunxi, who had been taking a short break from her duties, offered a polite smile. “It is. You can just call me Xiao Lu. Is there something I can help you with?”
The man nodded, forcing a stiff, practiced smile that made it obvious he rarely grinned in his daily life. “I was wondering if you would be interested in supervising the construction of our main campus. Our institution will provide a full corporate salary: twenty thousand star coins a month, a standard healthcare and housing benefits package, along with complimentary room and board. What do you think?”
Following an emergency meeting, the university board had concluded it was vital to establish their campus infrastructure as quickly as possible to jumpstart their research into the game world. They were completely willing to throw massive capital at anyone who could deliver. Unfortunately, the prestigious architects they had imported from the real world were utterly incapable of completing the project. Those specialists only understood interstellar composite materials and modular grid systems; they were completely baffled by the crude, raw materials utilized in ancient times.
Yunxi was initially stunned by the offer, but a wave of internal joy quickly followed. They want me to design the school? “I would love to assist,” she replied smoothly. “But I’ll need to review your current blueprints first, if that’s alright.”
Hehe, she thought. If she gained direct access to the architectural blueprints, she wouldn’t even have to sneak around to learn their curriculum. She could easily hop over the perimeter wall whenever she pleased to audit their advanced interstellar classes!
“Of course, right this way,” the man said, smiling as he gestured toward a temporary command tent. “By the way, your record is incredibly impressive. You currently hold the highest construction proficiency index on the network, don’t you? I never anticipated a player would dedicate so much effort to mastering ancient masonry.”
Yunxi’s heart skipped a beat.
What on earth do you mean by ‘highest proficiency index’?!
How could she, a literal native NPC, possibly be visible on the player leaderboards? She let out a dry, hollow laugh, quickly changing the subject to avoid closer scrutiny.
The moment they stepped into the temporary workshop, the air was thick with the sound of intense, angry shouting. When the researchers noticed the administrator entering with a young girl, the expressions of the surrounding specialists turned incredibly ugly.
“This is an absolute farce! I am a top-tier graduate from a world-renowned university, yet you claim my structural calculations are invalid for this crude simulation—and now you drag in a complete amateur?!”
“This is an insult to our profession! If you intend to hand this project over to an unknown nobody, I am resigning immediately!”
“…”
The glares from the surrounding architects sliced toward her like physical knives. Within moments, the entire team storms out of the tent in a collective fit of petulant rage.
Yunxi and the administrator maintained their polite smiles, completely pretending to be deaf to the insults. The man smoothly unrolled a massive architectural rendering, holding it up for her appraisal.
However—
The pleasant smile instantly froze on Yunxi’s face.
Are you people out of your minds?
Rendered across the blueprint were towering, sleek skyscrapers, massive floor-to-ceiling glass paneling, expansive luxury balconies, and… No, she literally couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.
Inspecting the structural data tags, she felt her head throb. They actually expected to erect these high-rise complexes to a height of one hundred stories! She finally understood why their automated smart-systems were constantly freezing.
The administrator, completely oblivious to her horror, offered a helpful explanation. “Our historical data suggests that traditional structures from this era were relatively low-lying. For safety reasons, we didn’t dare push the limits to the heights we achieve on the Capital Star, but a standard one-hundred-story tower felt like a perfectly achievable baseline.”
Lu Yunxi wanted to scream. Just destroy the world already! I’m so tired!
Her training was strictly rooted in ancient structural mechanics. She was fully capable of raising traditional timber frames and masonry, not engineering century-high interstellar skyscrapers.
“I am terribly sorry, but this is entirely beyond my capabilities,” she said, shaking her head. “At my current proficiency tier, the absolute limit of my structural stability calculations is a three-story house.”
The administrator’s expression crumbled into panic. But catching her exact wording, a sudden realization struck him. “How about this? Could you stretch the parameters to design a four-story complex instead?”
“Are you certain?” She raised an eyebrow. “If you are willing to settle for that format, outline your core space requirements and I will draft a set of compatible blueprints for you.”
The man nodded frantically. He was completely out of options. If even the player holding the number one construction rank declared a skyscraper impossible, it proved the game’s physics engine strictly capped structural integrity at this tier. The interstellar architects had been banging their heads against the wall for weeks without making a fraction of progress; they had to adapt.
“A massive outdoor training plaza is our absolute priority—it’s vital for physical drills. We also require standard lecture halls, administrative quarters…”
By the time Yunxi finished logging the administrator’s extensive list of requirements, a massive headache was brewing. Based on his parameters, the total footprint of the campus would be astronomical. Thank goodness the virtual world’s land values in this wilderness were non-existent; otherwise, they would never have cleared the zone.
Following an entire afternoon of physical surveying and geometric calculations, followed by a few days of intense drafting, she finally presented her completed blueprints to the board.
“This is the absolute maximum extension of my structural capability. Do you wish to proceed with this layout?”
Following three days of intense administrative deliberation, the university leadership formally ratified her design. Lu Yunxi was officially promoted from a temporary mason to the position of Chief Engineer.
As the newly appointed Chief Engineer, she politely declined their real-world star coin salary and corporate benefits package. “I have no immediate need for financial compensation,” she lied seamlessly. “I simply immerse myself in this simulation out of a profound, academic passion for ancient architecture. There is no need to pay me.”
This was, of course, complete nonsense. She refused the salary because she was an administrative ghost—a literal NPC embedded in the code. Even if she wanted to accept a bank wire on the Star Network, she didn’t possess a legal identity or account matrix to process the transaction!
Left with no other alternative, the university board doubled her in-game compensation to a flat one hundred silver coins a month, guaranteed premium room and board, and occasionally gifted her rare, historical architectural schematics they managed to purchase from high-tier merchants.
Naturally, Yunxi flatly rejected the meals prepared by the luxury chef the university had hired at an exorbitant cost, opting strictly to collect the cash and the schematics.
Thanks to the influx of these rare architectural drawings, her construction proficiency began to skyrocket. At this rate, she would trigger another professional breakthrough in no time.
Yunxi was immensely satisfied with the arrangement, a feeling that only deepened when she browsed the community forums that evening.
I actually secured a legitimate corporate job inside the server! Back on my home planet, I was stuck collecting scrap metal for a miserable few dozen star coins a month. Now, I’m helping clear land for a university campus and pulling a clean one thousand star coins a month! I’m never going hungry again!
[To the poster above: if you’re stuck on a low-tier planet, you should try applying to a military academy project. Their funding is insane! Their elite cadets clear high-level wilderness bosses regularly, so their treasury is packed. The wages are way higher.]
[Exactly! Higher education budgets are vastly superior to elementary or middle school projects. After all, primary school teachers are dealing with young accounts, and they don’t have enough high-level personnel farming monsters to generate capital!]
Reading the threads, Yunxi chuckled quietly. The institutional strategy of utilizing an army of high-level students to farm resources to fund campus construction was genuinely brilliant.
However, just as she prepared to close out her system interface, her eyes caught the global ranking directories. Her breath hitched, and she immediately tapped on the link to maximize the directory data.
Her name was splashed across the boards.
Whether it was the regional combat efficiency lists or the various professional trade registries, her identifier was embedded across nearly every directory—and she held the undisputed number one spot on nearly half of them!
The administrator hadn’t been exaggerating; she truly was the top-ranked builder on the server.
Thank goodness that after her solo dungeon clear, she had permanently toggled her system privacy settings to ‘Hide Identity Under All Circumstances.’ Otherwise, the player base would have hunted her down weeks ago.
