After Zhao Yuan had inspected the newly appeared terminals at the back of the restaurant, she had completely forgotten to check if anything major had occurred outside the compound walls.
Her attention was abruptly pulled back to reality as the automated meal-time alarm echoed through the facility. Her eyes widened slightly, realizing the hour. She spun on her heel and rushed back into the main dining area just as the doors unlocked to admit the hungry residents.
The service that day thoroughly impressed everyone. After days of tense, apocalyptic survival, the customers enjoyed being greeted by a genuinely happy face taking and serving their orders. Zhao Yuan practically beamed as she handed out hot plates, her mind already buzzing with grand operational blueprints. Some of the residents even murmured among themselves, feeling that their custodian was exceptionally kind and devoted to their well-being, completely unaware of the extensive labor plans currently being crafted in her mind.
Immediately after the service window closed and the last customer filed out, Zhao Yuan locked the restaurant doors. She packed up the leftover items and carried them back to her private quarters. After all, she had an exhaustive rota to create.
Sitting down at one of the sleek chairs in her room, she quickly wiped her food-stained hands clean on a cloth and got straight to work. Her hands seemed to become almost mechanical as she furiously scribbled, drafted, and drew across numerous sheets of paper for hours on end. Schematics for chore shifts, security patrols, maintenance rotations, and system task groups spilled across her desk.
She only seemed to be satisfied hours later, leaning back in her seat to admire the chaotic mess of drafted papers and unwashed dinner dishes scattered around her workspace.
Despite the late hour, her body did not feel tired in the slightest. Fueled by restless energy, she quickly cleaned up the dirty dishes before taking a seat at the main system control panel integrated into her room's central island.
Following the previous tier upgrade, a new management option had appeared under her customer profile icon. Tapping on the glowing interface, Zhao Yuan quickly started assigning work and operational tasks to the various shelter residents according to their system-evaluated levels and skill sets. High-ranking administrative titles like Leader and Deputy Leader were temporarily left vacant while the operational roles—cleaning, maintenance, perimeter monitoring, and resource handling—were quickly filled up.
After typing across the digital interface for what felt like forever, Zhao Yuan suddenly stopped, a sharp frown marring her features. She furiously searched through the list of available customer roles, scrolling up and down the digital menu, before she finally decided to make a direct inquiry to the system interface.
"Can't customers serve dishes in the restaurant?"
Sending out the query, she leaned back against her chair, unsure of what to expect as she waited for the system's official response.
[Notice: Negative. Food distribution and restaurant service can strictly only be conducted by the Custodian or designated Custodial Assistants.]
Reading the reply, Zhao Yuan found herself frowning even more deeply. She tapped the console and typed in a follow-up question.
"How can I get assistants?"
She did not have to wait long before a new prompt flashed onto the screen.
[Notice: Custodial Assistants become accessible following the second major tier upgrade. Upon completion, the Custodian may select an official assistant directly from the primary database.]
The system's technical response confused her slightly, making her wonder about the exact constraints of the role. She tapped out another prompt.
"Can shelter customers become custodial assistants?"
This time, the response was instantaneous and blunt.
[Notice: Negative.]
Seeing the rigid denial, Zhao Yuan felt a flicker of annoyance. She dismissed the inquiry window, swiped back to the new customer management panel, and began shifting people's assigned roles around to complete the organizational chart.
This time, she filled the top leadership position, assigning Gao Shen's name to the master leader slot given his sharp tactical mind and vanguard experience. Recalling how exceptionally well Xue Lili had led the students and cleared debris along the road during the rescue effort, Zhao Yuan decisively appointed Xue Lili as Deputy Leader. Meanwhile, Gao Haiming was assigned to oversee the sector terminals.
Going through her various appointments and roster rotations one final time, Zhao Yuan felt a wave of deep satisfaction after a few minor adjustments. She tapped the bottom of the screen and submitted her final assignments to the network.
In different rooms across the barely filled Block A, a sharp, harmonized chime echoed through every living space as the wall-mounted screens suddenly lit up with official shelter announcements.
In his room, Gao Shen stared at his display in quiet shock, his sharp eyes wide as he read his newly appointed title of Leader, wondering how on earth he had landed such a massive overarching responsibility. A few doors down, Gao Haiming blinked in surprise at his own designated role as Terminal Director. Meanwhile, Xue Lili smiled softly as she read her appointment as Deputy Leader, feeling ready to support the community. As everyone across the hostel blocks read their personalized notifications, some were thrilled with their assigned duties, while others were deeply unsettled by the sudden workload.
Zhao Yuan did not care for any of their private reactions. She swiped away from the roster panel, navigated back to her primary tasks icon, and tapped a brand-new icon that had lit up on her home dashboard:
[Delivery Service]
Reading the title, she could already feel her stomach drop as her eyes skimmed the dense requirements listed below it.
Starting tomorrow, she was required to initiate a mandatory delivery service, transporting vital resources to her outlying street shops and other independent survivor shelters across the region that were not operated by her system. To make matters worse, the protocol explicitly stated that only she or an official Custodial Assistant could execute these external delivery runs.
As she was internalizing this daunting information, a deep, resonant rumble vibrated through the foundation of the entire shelter. The ground shook violently once more as another automated system upgrade triggered across the territory.
Feeling the heavy tremors below their feet for the second time that day, the customers in Block A were significantly calmer than before. They remained inside their assigned quarters, patiently holding onto doorframes and bedposts as they waited for the shaking to pass.
Outside, the surrounding landscape shifted rapidly as entirely new public facilities materialized out of thin air. A state-of-the-art gym, a multi-story shopping center, and even an administrative school building rose from the ground along the newly paved avenues.
Simultaneously, the interior of the residential rooms expanded and transformed right before the residents' eyes. Single beds enlarged into plush, comfortable mattresses with high-grade linens, while modern decorations, smart lighting, and specialized utility equipment appeared along the walls. Staring at the miraculous transformations occurring around her room, Sarah smiled brightly, stepping forward to gently caress the sleek wood of her brand-new wardrobe.
Back in her private quarters, Zhao Yuan stood in the middle of the floor, bracing herself as she waited for the walls to shake or shift. But as the tremors subsided, she noticed nothing in her room had changed at all. She quickly realized her private custodian quarters existed in a separate, isolated spatial dimension from the rest of the public compound.
Although the spatial anomaly was slightly alarming, her mind was far too consumed by the prospect of acquiring an assistant to dwell on it for long. She eagerly tapped the newly unlocked database icon glowing at the corner of her screen.
The central system, which had not been given sufficient time to process the massive surge of operational data, felt temporarily overwhelmed. It scrambled to finish the structural upgrade, pull complex files from the deep database, and establish a cross-dimensional ping to its master network all at the exact same time.
Thus, as Zhao Yuan was busy browsing through the massive assistant registry, an unseen entity was actively watching her interface from across the network, quietly filtering the specific streams of information she could access.
The assistant database interface looked surprisingly like a dating app. Zhao Yuan had to swipe through individual digital candidate profiles, tapping on their portraits to read detailed summaries of their stats, operational histories, and skill trees.
After swiping through hundreds of distinct profiles, her eyes began to feel heavy with fatigue. The profiles all seemed fairly similar in their origin sections, though their listed specialized abilities, combat proficiencies, and management talents varied wildly. Whenever a candidate's credentials impressed her, she tapped a little heart icon on the corner of the screen to save their file to her favorites list.
Out of all the hundreds of profiles she had reviewed, only five had truly impressed her.
Staring at the five saved files and mentally comparing their qualifications, she finally selected the most impressive candidate of the lot—a highly rated operative named Tom.
The moment she selected his file, her screen burst into a vibrant display. A full-body holographic portrait of Tom appeared on the interface, surrounded by animated digital fireworks as a bright congratulatory banner flashed across the top.
[Congratulations on selecting Tom as your primary Custodial Assistant! Please click ACCEPT to join team.]
Reading the system's prompt, Zhao Yuan felt a brief flash of confusion, wondering what "joining a team" had to do with simply hiring an administrative assistant for her shelter.
However, assuming it was merely standard system terminology that she didn't quite understand yet, she reached out and clicked ACCEPT.
The instant her finger made contact with the screen, the system interface whirred into high-speed execution, instantly establishing a direct network bridge to its master node.
[System Alert: Welcome to the World Team! Your assigned Custodial Assistant will arrive at your current physical location shortly.]
The unexpected notification popped up, leaving Zhao Yuan with a sudden, creeping sense of unrest.
Up until this exact moment, every single system message, alert box, and display interface she had ever interacted with had adhered to a strict, standardized color scheme of clean reds, vibrant yellows, and muted greens.
Seeing this new, deep purple message box glow ominously against her screen, Zhao Yuan felt an undeniable instinct that something was fundamentally off. But after a brief second of hesitation, she forced herself to dismiss the anxiety, convincing herself it was likely just a unique color template reserved for high-tier team functions.
Curious, she tapped her main administrative profile, watching as the updated interface now officially displayed her status: Enrolled in Team.