No, thirty silver coins is already the price for hiring someone to commit murder?
[ Ever-Changing Master Ye ], as a peace-loving Soul Returner, obviously has no such need. Besides, if he wants to kill someone, he will personally take his knife and go. He has not reached the point where he needs to ask a half-dragon for protection.
He shook his head, looking at the half-dragon whose face was contorted in a grimace, as if he were prepared to die.
"No, no, no, there's only one thing I want you to do, and that's to catch mice, catch as many mice as possible."
He looked at the two half-dragons who were blinded by the silver coins and said seriously:
"You are my personally trained apprentices. In a moment, you will be responsible for teaching the other half-dragons how to make 'rat poles' and catch rats."
"There are other half-dragons?!"
The expressions on their faces were somewhat subtle, and [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] quickly reassured them:
"Their salaries won't exceed yours, and I'll pay them strictly according to their working hours. Furthermore, if the final results exceed expectations, I wouldn't mind adding an extra project bonus."
Eating the empty promises made by the visitors from another world, the two Dragonborn felt a hollow sense of satisfaction.
Soon they followed [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] to [ Great Prospects General Store ]. Seeing that the owner had bought ten long wooden poles and hired two Dragonborn, who then hung large cages on their backs, they roughly guessed the owner's intentions.
One of the Dragonborn helped [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] carry the unprocessed wooden pole, while the other, with keen insight, ran to the Dragonborn warehouse to buy Bee Silk for the boss.
Half an hour later, [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] looked at the four Dragonborn in front of him and said:
"You two, teach those two how to make rat rods and fish for rats. You have one hour!"
Two hours later, [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] saw [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] again, along with four cages full of Thorn Rat beside him...
"No, buddy..."
"No, please, check please. I'm logging off in three minutes."
Looking at the dense Thorn Rat in front of her, [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] felt like crying:
Is it really necessary to go to such extremes?
Looking at this Greenhouse owner who was solely focused on ranking and otherwise detached from worldly affairs, [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] nodded heavily:
"Ranking disputes have always been like this..."
"All right."
With the two Dragonborn completing the Thorn Rat points as quickly as possible, both [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] and [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] showed a hint of anxiety on their faces.
The former is anxious because the final payment hasn't arrived yet, while the latter is worried because...
She thought the person in front of her had gone mad!
Trembling, [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] placed the nearly forty silver coins in [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ]'s hand, a look of relief appearing on his face.
[ Ever-Changing Master Ye ] turned around and handed all the money to the two Dragonborn he had hired first, Whisper something in their ears, then created a [cocoon] and logged off directly by the roadside in front of the Greenhouse shop.
After getting rid of those lunatics, the [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] was finally free.
She lay on the small bed in the Greenhouse, instructing the Deadwood Vine to keep an eye on the Thorn Rat and prevent them from running around, before immediately leaving the World of Disorder and waiting for news from her three friends in reality.
More than an hour later, it was morning in reality.
[Pond Fish and Old Abyss] finally replied to [Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop's message, commenting below "Something terrible has happened!!!!":
"What? Someone else is supporting Ed in the polls?"
Seeing that the other party had officially gone offline, [ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] simply said "It's inconvenient to type" and then made a phone call directly through the chat software.
"Hey, is there something urgent? I have an elective class in a bit."
A somewhat noisy sound came from the other end of the phone.
"Rat, about rats..."
"Mice? Thorn Rat? Oh, how's the acquisition going? There should be two more days. Have you collected a couple hundred yet? Those little guys are really hard to catch. If nobody wants to do this work, maybe we should raise the purchase price..."
"Too many!"
[ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ] finally found the opportunity to interrupt the other person, adding amidst their astonishment:
"My Greenhouse is infested with rats now. There are at least five hundred alive so far. Although the little guys might eat some of them when they get hungry, at least eighty percent of them will survive to tomorrow."
"So many? Could it be some kind of divine being...?"
"Yes, it's that fisherman called ' Ever-Changing Master Ye.' I don't know how he developed his unique skill, but it seems like he can catch two or three fish every minute."
"That one person catching five hundred is a bit too much..."
"He hired people! I just saw him hire four Dragonborn. He was whispering with Dragonborn before logging off. Maybe tomorrow morning my Greenhouse will be full of rats. And he came to see me three times today, about three to four hours apart, and the number of people doubled each time. I feel like he's expanding exponentially according to some mathematical formula..."
"..."
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. [ Pond Fish and Old Abyss ] seemed to be using her mathematical knowledge to calculate what would happen in the next fifty-odd hours. Soon, she came up with a number that even surprised herself.
Gripping her phone tightly, she instinctively spoke to her friend on the other end of the microphone:
"Not good!
"Thank you so much for telling me this. I need to discuss it with [ Zhong Lele ] and [ Dark Archmage ], otherwise the event budget will explode!"
"But didn't you say there were elective courses?"
A sigh came through the receiver:
"There's nothing we can do; it's an elective course, after all."
Ten minutes later, in a four-person voice chat room.
[Pond Fish and Old Abyss]: "So that's roughly how it is. Does anyone have anything to say?"
[ Zhong Lele ]: "... Miscalculation! There's actually a math genius here..."
[ Dark Archmage ]: "It's not a math problem, it's just that we really didn't expect the Thorn Rat to have such a simple way of being captured. This is practically a trade secret. Just who is this [ Ever-Changing Master Ye ]?"
[ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ]: "I used to be one of the few fishing enthusiasts who regularly spawned there, but recently I seem to have gotten hooked on the Fir City raid and am now broke again. I'm currently saving up money..."
[ Zhong Lele ]: "Oh no, they're going to fleece us to pay off their debts..."
[ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ]: "He actually earned enough to pay off his debts..."
[Pond Fish and Old Abyss]: "Now that things have come to this, does anyone have any remedial measures?"
[ Dark Archmage ]: "No, our acquisition contract has been certified by the Root Network and Seraphina. If we rashly break the contract, not only will we lose our deposit from the Adventurers' Guild, but the trust levels of important NPCs like Ed and Seraphina will also decrease..."
[ Vanilla Ice Cream Scoop ]: "Is there really no other way?"
[ Zhong Lele ]: "Actually, there's another way, but it depends on luck."
Everyone: "What is it?"
[ Zhong Lele ]: "Given the realism of the World of Disorder, the number of Thorn Rat and Dragonborn temporary workers is limited. We can only pray that these little creatures weren't spawned by some code, otherwise we're really doomed!"