Chapter 372 - 361: I Need a Marketing Director
Chapter 372: Chapter 361: I Need a Marketing Director
Hub City, second floor of the New West headquarters.
Seventeen files were piled on Colin’s desk, each marked "Urgent."
He was coordinating shipping times with academy branches on other planes, approving after-sales service tickets for Lilith’s Cottage on his terminal, and had an un-drunk cultivation potion clenched between his teeth.
Vera pushed the door open from the office next door, clutching a stack of résumés. She didn’t look happy.
"Two of them quit."
Colin’s hands paused. "From where?"
"Right here at headquarters. One in charge of warehouse logistics, the other in client relations. Same reason for both: too much work, mentally exhausted."
Vera slapped the résumés on the desk. "The rest of the staff are already working around the clock. If this keeps up, we won’t be dealing with resignations, we’ll be dealing with a mutiny."
Colin took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
The consequences of Weisren Heavy Industry pushing forward with three business lines simultaneously were now coming to a head.
The educational support business was running in eight academies, with new ones to negotiate with. The Golem Division’s orders were backed up into the next quarter. The newly established environmental protection division was receiving dozens of inquiry letters for waste disposal from major commerce chambers every day, and they also had to arrange to rent more workshops.
They were severely understaffed.
"We need to hire," Colin said.
"We are," Vera said, sitting down. "But some core positions aren’t for assembly-line workers. You can’t just plug anyone in. Especially..."
She pointed to a blank job description form on the desk.
"Marketing Director."
Colin glanced at the blank form and fell silent.
The position had been vacant for nearly two months. It wasn’t that no one applied; it was that none of the applicants were suitable.
Weisren Heavy Industry’s product lines were too specialized. Educational Golems were sold to academies, war Golems to family factions and Mercenary Corps, and waste recycling was aimed at industrial companies.
Three types of clients, three different sales pitches, three separate models for psychological gamesmanship.
The few apprentices and even First-level Wizards who applied only knew how to hard-sell products. The more talented Wizards were already out making money for themselves, not working for others.
"We don’t need a hawker who can just shout about our wares."
Vera leaned back in her chair. "We need someone who can accurately gauge a client’s emotions, predict their bottom line, and make them willingly part with their money at the negotiating table."
"Someone like that is hard to find," Colin said with a wry smile.
Just then, the office door was pushed open.
Allen walked in, still carrying the residual Magic Power fluctuations of cross-planar travel.
He glanced at the mountain of files on the desk, then at the nearly identical looks of exhaustion on Colin’s and Vera’s faces.
"Boss, I have to remind you of a fact." Colin’s voice was laced with extreme fatigue, his throat dry and hoarse. "I’m the company’s COO, not a tracked Golem on the assembly line."
"We are desperately short on people. To be precise, we need a marketing director who can oversee external business and accurately manage client psychology, as well as a director to sort out our convoluted internal personnel affairs. If this goes on, Vera and I will die from our Sea of Spirit drying up before we ever get promoted to Second-level Wizard."
Vera sat on a sofa on the other side of the room, using Witchcraft to treat her throbbing temples.
Upon seeing Allen, she didn’t say a word, simply opening a dozen light screens. They were densely packed with class schedules for the various New West branches and background checks on newly hired tutors.
Allen gave an awkward smile and sat in the main chair. He knew Colin and Vera had reached their limit.
The growth rate of Weisren Heavy Industry had exceeded everyone’s expectations. Traditional Wizards simply couldn’t adapt to this high-intensity corporate operational model from his previous life.
A plan flashed through Allen’s mind.
He could replicate and restructure "Jarvis," the workshop’s will from the Cybertron Half-Plane, to create a "Central Intelligent Secretary" exclusively for Weisren Heavy Industry.
Jarvis could take over all the tedious reports, client data analysis, and scheduling, even directly guiding employees through their terminals.
But back then, Jarvis had been bound to Cybertron using Core Witchcraft, integrating parts of his own emotions and memories, making it impossible to create another copy.
And DSeek wasn’t as intelligent as Jarvis; it needed to be combined with one of Allen’s sub-threads to handle complex tasks.
The "artificial soul" technology he planned to research still required more Credit Points to purchase the relevant knowledge.
Allen had no choice but to dismiss the idea for now. AI-assisted management would be added to the long-term plan for deeper research later.
"We don’t have enough people?"
"Not nearly enough," Colin said without reservation.
Allen casually picked up the blank job description form and glanced at it.
"Marketing Director," he read the title aloud. "How long has this been stalled?"
"Two months," Vera said. "We’ve interviewed nine candidates. Not a single one was viable."
Allen put the form down.
The office was silent for a few seconds.
Colin and Vera both watched him, waiting.
They were all too familiar with Allen—this kind of silence usually meant the machine in his head was already whirring to life.
His gaze fell upon the lights of Hub City outside the window, and something flashed in the depths of his pupils.
Deep in his consciousness, DSeek pulled up a file that had been buried for over twenty years.
The shadows at the edge of a flight training ground. A girl clutching a notebook. Intertwined silver threads against a deep blue background.
"Your power is blue, and it has lots of silver threads inside... like a star chart... It’s beautiful."
"I know someone," Allen said.
Colin and Vera looked at him at the same time.
"She’s from a small branch of the Mind School. She can directly see a target’s emotional state, use mental fluctuations to subtly influence their emotions, and even delve into their shallow consciousness to collect thought fragments."
Colin’s hand froze over the terminal.
Vera frowned. "The Mind School? Emotion manipulation or reality-warping?"
"Not manipulation."
Allen corrected her. "The essence of her ability isn’t to forcibly rewrite someone’s will. It’s to perceive emotions, and she should also be able to exert a subtle, very covert influence."
He paused.
"In the realm of combat, this ability was defined by the instructors at the Heart Image Tower as ’imprecise’ and ’uncontrollable.’ But at a business negotiation table—"
Colin’s head snapped up, his glasses nearly sliding off.
Someone who can "see" if a client is lying.
Someone who can perceive the other party’s emotional fluctuations in real-time to judge their psychological bottom line. Someone who can use mental resonance to make a client lower their guard and build trust.
This wasn’t a marketing director.
This was a human lie detector, master hypnotist, and a nuclear weapon for business negotiations, all rolled into one.
"Her name is Lina," Allen said. "She was an Advanced Apprentice from my cohort at the Seven Towers Alliance. We did team missions together."
"What’s her situation now?" Vera asked.
Allen brought up his personal terminal. The contact information from their academy days was no longer valid.
He then used the Association’s intelligence channels to search the Wizard database, using their enrollment date as a filter.
A few seconds later, a short file appeared on the light screen.
[Lina · First-level Wizard · Registration Status: Independent]
Vera glanced at the file. The information was pitifully scarce.
No organizational affiliation, no distinguished record, and even her promotion to her Wizard level was later than the average for her cohort.
"An independent Wizard." Colin’s tone was nuanced.
In the Wizarding World, "independent" was sometimes a euphemism for "unwanted by any faction."
"You should be aware of the Mind School’s situation."
Allen’s voice was flat. "The strong can warp reality with a single thought, while the weak can barely protect themselves. Those in the middle—especially ones like Lina, who specialize in perception and resonance—have no place in the combat hierarchy and little use in academic circles."
He closed the light screen.
"But her talent is real. I confirmed it with my own eyes twenty-three years ago—she can penetrate conventional mental defenses and directly observe thoughts."
Vera’s fingers tapped twice on the desktop.
"Are you sure she’d be willing to come? A First-level Wizard, no matter how badly they’re doing, working for someone else is—"
"I don’t intend for her to be just an employee," Allen interrupted.
Colin and Vera exchanged a look.
"Give her shares?" Colin ventured.
"Give her a cause worth investing in."
Allen stood up. "People from the Mind School don’t care about money. They care about being understood and needed. Her ability is useless on the battlefield and heretical in academia, but in our business ecosystem, it will be an irreplaceable core asset."
He walked towards the door.
"I’m going to find her."
"Wait," Vera called out to him. "Do you know where she is?"
Allen’s steps paused for a moment.
"No."
He pushed the door open without looking back. His voice, carrying a seemingly random sentence, drifted back from the hallway.
"But I know she dreams often."
The door closed.
Colin and Vera stared at each other, baffled.
"What does he mean by that?" Colin asked.
Vera was silent for a few seconds, then she suddenly recalled the phrase Allen had mentioned earlier—"delve into their shallow consciousness to collect thought fragments."
Her expression changed.
"He’s not going to find her," Vera said slowly. "He’s going to make her find him."