Monster Company Tycoon - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Monster Company Tycoon
Chapter 4
I clawed desperately for reason.
“Wait, hold on! How am I supposed to know that’s real? You could say you’ll give me a billion Won and then just not do it.”
He’d said this was a different dimension from where I lived. But he could actually give me currency from my original world?
And even if he conjured real money right here, what if it’s counterfeit?
The Demon King, who’d been watching me fidget with excitement, slowly flapped one wing. A small white light gathered at the wing’s tip.
The luminous orb fluttered toward me like something alive and settled at my feet. The moment it touched the ground, it began to shift and transform.
“Huh—?!”
It was a bundle of 50,000 Won Banknotes.
Even at a glance, it looked like at least twenty million Won.
“An advance payment.”
The Demon King spoke in a languid voice.
“I brought currency of that value from your dimension, and in exchange, I left behind something of equivalent value. So you needn’t doubt. It’s genuine money.”
“An… advance payment? This money is really mine…?”
“It is.”
I reached down with trembling hands and clutched the bundle of notes to my chest.
The solid weight pressed into my palms, and my head spun.
Countless things I could do with twenty million Won flooded my mind, paralyzing my thoughts.
I barely managed to stop myself from blurting out agreement on the spot.
This was no time to let money cloud my judgment!
“You said this currency came from the dimension I came from—could I ever go back?”
What good was the money if I couldn’t return to a world where I could actually spend it?
At my words, the Demon King let out a long, weary sigh.
“I cannot send you back at present. Retrieving you consumed a tremendous amount of Causality. Moreover.”
The Demon King pointed with a wing-tip at the bundle of notes I held so carefully.
“Bringing that here completely depleted my remaining strength. As I am now, I cannot return you to your original dimension.”
I went rigid.
The Demon King having no strength left was something I hadn’t anticipated.
And he’d spent nearly all his remaining power just to bring me this twenty million Won?
A sinister feeling crept over me—a terrible suspicion that I might never go home.
“C-could perhaps… another Demon King do it? Send me back to my original world?”
“Abandon any thought of leaving this place to seek employment at another Dungeon. No Demon King would hire someone with no experience, and humans have no opportunity to meet with a Demon King anyway. You are merely livestock from which we extract fear.”
The Brownie hovering nearby chirped urgently.
“Absolutely not! Can’t have that!”
“N-no, of course not. I would never… I wasn’t thinking anything like that.”
I shook my head frantically, my shoulders sagging.
What was I supposed to do now? Was I really stuck living in this strange world forever?
Never seeing my family again. Never seeing my friends again.
When I thought about everything I’d struggled to save, all the time I’d lived, all the memories—left behind, never to be recovered—my vision swam.
Then the Demon King spoke slowly.
“To restore my strength, I must extract fear from countless beings. Should my Ranking rise to around eleventh place, I could send you back to your original world.”
Hope kindled in my chest the moment I heard that.
I could go home!
If I could get the Demon King standing before me to eleventh place, I could go home! And with a hundred billion Won besides!
Come to think of it, this wasn’t such terrible terms after all.
My only real option was the owl-like Demon King right in front of me anyway.
Refusing his employment would be shooting myself in the foot.
I had no idea how difficult raising his Ranking would be, but with my return home and a hundred billion Won on the line, wasn’t it worth trying my hardest?
“I’ll… I’ll give it my best shot!”
I clenched my fists with determination.
Even if I somehow couldn’t manage it myself, I could always hire a competent new employee later and hand things over to them.
The hundred billion was secondary. Getting home was what mattered most.
“Then the contract is sealed.”
“Excellent!”
The Demon King’s voice brightened noticeably. The Brownie erupted in cheers and darted about chaotically.
My résumé appeared before me once more.
Presently the bottom of the page began to burn, and a bright crimson seal materialized.
It was writing in characters I didn’t recognize, yet somehow I could read them.
The seal read: [Hiring Complete].
And so I successfully transferred to a new company—or rather, a Dungeon.
And then.
“Demon King…?”
The moment all the formalities ended, the Demon King simply collapsed onto the floor.
Within seconds, he was snoring away, sound asleep.
I’d just been hired, and the boss had already checked out to dreamland.
***
My bewilderment lasted only a moment. The earthen doll casually ignored the Demon King and came fluttering toward me.
“Hello? Let me reintroduce myself. I’m Brownie, the Bound Fairy who’s here to help you run the Dungeon.”
“Oh… hello.”
Brownie seemed to be in excellent spirits.
A thin mouth, as if carved into clay with a sculpting knife, curved upward like a crescent moon.
Brownie circled around me at waist height, chattering away in a voice that was quite high-pitched and slightly raspy. The personality came across as cheerful and bright.
“I have such high hopes for you! The more you make the Dungeon flourish, the stronger I become! My dream is to become a top-tier fairy. Please, please turn this place into a wonderfully notorious Dungeon.”
“I-I’ll do my best. Though I honestly don’t know much about…”
I had to give this my all if I wanted to get back home.
Maybe I’m only finding it difficult because I’m thinking of it as a Dungeon. What if I just treat it like any other disorganized company and get to work?
After all, I’m someone who survived four years at a notorious sweatshop living on starvation wages.
“Anyway, I’m relieved. The Demon King spent all his fortune buying the Dungeon, so I was terrified we wouldn’t be able to hire even a single employee.”
Just as I was reassuring myself, another bombshell landed.
“Wait, wait a second! Spent his fortune? What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, the Demon King didn’t tell you? He basically liquidated everything he owned to buy this massive Dungeon. Apparently, being called the Demon King doesn’t have the same ring to it with a small Dungeon, so he went all in. He probably picked up some debt too.”
I spun around urgently, taking in the empty space around me.
So he’d gone bankrupt just buying the company building?
Suddenly it seemed entirely plausible that that fat, owl-like Demon King would do something like that.
I’d written him off as merely lazy and unmotivated, but now it was clear he had no sense of economics and was utterly incompetent to boot.
So he ranked dead last in the Ranking.
Unbidden, my former boss came to mind. That man had been incompetence incarnate, and panic suddenly crashed over me.
Why is my luck with employers so terrible? The fortune teller said I had great fortune with people!
“So if there’s no money left, how are we even going to… run the Dungeon?”
“Fortunately, I have some basic operating funds set aside. It’s money I’ve been saving my whole life. I hid it away without the Demon King knowing, so this stays between us, okay?”
The fairy opened her mouth wide above my palm and dumped out a cascade of Coins—caked with dirt and covered in rust.
The weight of them in my hand made my thoughts turn white as snow.
“I diligently collected the Coins people dropped. I even went without candy I wanted so I could save these, so please use them wisely. This is my investment in the Dungeon! If the Dungeon grows, I grow too!”
“How much is all this…?”
Naturally, the currency looked a bit different from what I was used to in my world.
The Coins were rather large—nearly half the size of my palm—and surprisingly thin.
“About 100,000 Won. With this much, we should be able to hire a couple of incompetent field workers.”
“The unit is Won?”
The familiar denomination startled me.
“No, Awn. The currency used in the Annais Empire is Awn.”
“Ah… Awn.”
I had the idle thought that at least adapting to the money would be easy.
“We can actually hire staff with just this…?”
Since I didn’t know the exchange rate yet, I felt uncertain.
“There’s a job shortage these days. If you offer pay, there are plenty of monsters begging for work. Of course, with wages this small, only the really unreliable ones will show up.”
As Brownie said this, she gestured toward the business card the monster had given me.
So that terrifying green monster I’d met was considered “unreliable” by fairy standards.
“Monsters… have employment difficulties too.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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