《On a Blank Canvas》Chapter 9: Jobs & More Reading
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Having left the administration building, i was strolling leisurely on the sidewalk to gather my thoughts.
I had noticed that despite people not looking at me with reverence, they had all seemed to notice the signal my new card was giving off, as i was able to feel it as well.
People around had given me a lot of personal space to walk, forming a sort of invisible barrier of a certain radius around me, as if recognizing my status.
It was sort of like in the mall as the person who had injured me approached from behind, and everyone had moved further and further away as he came closer.
The currency used in Ganion was called a Rode, with cash and coin still being used in this age but almost all transactions were done virtually, with a lot of places not accepting cash.
That being the case, i went straight to a nearby bank to register for an account. The process went quite smoothly and was completed in under five minutes due to my Silver status, the staff seemingly treating me with much more care and respect than normal customers.
I had gotten a card and even gotten a 3000 Rode loan with a 3.5% interest per year. They had explained that it as the privilege of Silver status to be able to loan any amount lower than your allowed allowance per year.
My allowance was actually 100,000 Rode for my status but i knew it was extremely excessive to even loan more than 10,000 Rode and just settled to loan 3000.
The value of one Rode was not much different from one US dollar, but i knew that in this world the difference between the rich and poor was at least ten times more pronounced than on earth.
Obviously, a lot of products would be tailored to the poorest of the poor and the riches of the rich.
This unexpected development and influx of money didn't change my decision to get a job, and i was pretty sure that Noraxia Academy students had some sort of allowance given to them.
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"GaiaBurgers… finally… I can get a taste!"
Of course, i had gone straight to the same mall to keep my promise to spend my first amount of money on GaiaBurgers. Though it was literally just yesterday that i had made the promise to myself, the earlier i could get a taste of those amazing smelling burgers, the better!
I was already standing outside of the same place as yesterday, doing the same thing i had done yesterday but less conspicuously, the fact that i was attacked here not bothering me at all.
I can't believe how thankful i was for my Silver status than right now, as i had not needed to wait in line to order, and they had immediately started to prepare my order.
They were no one there that was visibly annoyed at this happening, knowing that i was had a Silver status.
I had gone for the biggest and juiciest looking burger called the Galaxy burger with fries and a drink, i had gotten a table for myself and in the next few minutes, a member of staff had personally brought my food over on a tray.
The burger was absolutely enormous, but not looking over packed with stuff or looking like it would fall over.
It was exactly like those burgers seen on ads that were very obviously photoshopped.
Not wanting to torture myself further, i had picked up the burger and taken a huge bite of it. Immediately, i was able to taste the juices of the patty flow into my mouth, as well as the melted cheese and crisp vegetable.
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Delicious!! Spectacular!! Absolutely amazing!!!
Literally the best burger i had ever tasted in my entire life, the fries and drink also being on another level, but the burger was still the main attraction.
It had actually cost me 70 Rodes but i didn't hesitate to buy it as i still had a lot of money, and i knew i wouldn't regret buying it.
I had no problems finishing the entire thing as i had cast a spell that was able to increase the rate of digestion as well as increase the efficiency at which my body absorbed the nutrients, resulting in lesser waste product produced.
It was quite an essential spell for those we needed a huge amount of energy like bodybuilders, close combat mages, and soldiers, it was also helpful to foodies as they could eat much more than they normally could.
After that, i had gone to look for a job recruiter, and by the time i had found one, it had already hit noon.
I was not too sure of the variety of jobs in this world due to the existence of magic, and that i had not scanned any books on anything relating to jobs as of yet.
Looking at the wide variety of jobs available at the job recruiter, where the requirements also needed you to have experience and ability to cast certain set of spells, or spells that met a certain criteria, I knew that i had to pick something simply despite my wide array of spells and extremely good efficiency of casting with them.
Just based on the spell requirements, there were also other requirements in terms of job experience and few that required zero job experience and just knowing how to cast a few spells which had an awful pay.
I had decided to settle for what i was familiar with instead, which was working in a fast food chain.
When i was looking through the list of fast food chains that had an opening, i noticed that the exact same GaiaBurgers i had just eaten at had an opening and had a generous salary compared to the other chains.
The requirements were having a high index of learning, above Bronze II in status as well having experience with certain high tier spells that was explained to be needed while cooking, no work experience required.
Those were some pretty high requirements just to work in a fast food joint. No wonder their food tastes so good!
Upon choosing to apply for GaiaBurgers, the recruiter had me perform some tests to see if i was able to do the stated spells, or if my spells met the specified criteria.
As well as measuring the efficiency of my spells to see if it met the minimum efficiency required, as spell efficiency revealed how much experience you had with a spell or how good you are at casting it.
The minimum efficiency needed for a spell to be deemed as successfully cast varies from 30-50% for most spells, higher tier spells needing 60% minimum.
Thinking that my business at the job recruiter was done, i had started to head for the exit before the recruiter had called out to me and asked politely if i could wait for a couple minutes.
Though a little confused by the requests, i wouldn't lose much by waiting a few more minutes for whatever he was going to do and decided to sit at the waiting area at the entrance of the building.
After a few minutes, the recruiter had walked out from deeper inside the building and had informed me that my application had been approved and that i was hired, telling me that i should start tomorrow at 6:00 AM
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I was already used to power my status had brought me and was very confident that i would be hired, but i had never expected that just a few minutes after i had applied for the job that i would be hired.
Actually, thinking back on it, the recruiter had never asked me for my mobile number. It must've been because he already knew that i would be hired in the span of a few minutes and didn't bother asking me.
That's actually really convenient for me as i didn't have my phone anymore, and even if it did, i don't think it would work in this world.
My next task was to use my time to increase my abilities and overall strength, how? By scanning more books at the library.
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I had left the job recruiter for real this after that and went to buy a cheap magic-tech accessory that functioned just like a smartphone, able to make calls, browse the internet and be linked with my bank account to be able to pay money.
It was already hundreds of times more advanced than the smartphone i had which was actually a recent model in my old world though.
After that had spent the entire rest of my day just scanning the books in the library, only pausing for an hour to eat dinner at a pizza place with amazing cheese pizzas.
While also scanning more mathematics, magic and science books, i had also scanned a wide assortment of genres and topics that i was either interested in or i had thought would be useful.
Some of the things i found interesting were topics like the wildlife in this world, and as expected, due to Vaes in the atmosphere the animals had mutated into monstrous looking beasts, but human still easily dominated at the top of food chain.
Topics like programming i had an interest in and also thought it would be useful. Upon reading a few beginner programming books, i had noticed how useful programming could be for my magic, as the method to cast spells was very similar to how programming worked.
Scanning a lot of programming books after realizing the fact, i was able to improve my understanding of magic and how to increase the efficiency of my spells by applying my programming knowledge.
I had scanned language books, fiction books, business books, books on finance, books on investing. An awful lot of books that had caught my eye.
Not just one book per topic, i usually read at minimum a dozen books per topic and subject so that my understanding of it is substantial enough that i could be considered to have "dabbled" in it when people ask me about them.
With a large amount of information filling my canvas… It was actually quite annoying trying to organize it into files and all, and so i decided to just create a sort of "Google" App that had similar functionalities as google, i would input what information i wanted and the app would give it to me.
[Library]
I had named it the app "Library", visualizing the icon as an old school kind of library you see in movies.
Now any and all information i insert into my canvas would be stored in the library, including videos and images.
I had also scanned a series of books called "linking everything in the world" which taught you how everything in the world was linked, from the relation of magic, science, and technology to relation of society to people.
Even the relation between the different species of birds was not left out from its hundreds of books covering different types of relations.
They had claimed at the start of every book that the relationship between everything in the world did not flow in a straight line with a start and finish. The Universe was like a spider web that's linked each and everything in it together.
Every single book i scanned had linked bits of information inside of my library, information which i had first assumed had nothing to do with each other had blended into one another after reading a few books.
Each book in the series was extremely lengthy with thick pages and tightly packed small font, taking me around 2-3 minutes to scan each book.
I had only scanned around 70 books of the series as i realized it was nearing 12, the series still had hundreds of books left, having its own little corner in the library.
I had not randomly read different books in the series but actively searched for books pertaining to the relationship between magic, science, technology, and mathematics.
Those books had greatly solidified my understanding of the relationship between those topics and made me feel as if i was one step closer to finding out the truth of the Universe…
You never really notice how powerful the knowledge within books are as you could never dream to be able to remember it all…
But enough of that, after i had decided to end my "reading" session there, i didn't sleep in the alleyway but had gotten a room at a cheap hotel, setting my wrist device to wake me up at 5:00 AM, using a spell that improved the efficiency of sleep on myself and then a sleeping spell to finish it off.
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The next day, i had gone straight to the mall without stopping for breakfast, applying a sanitize spell on my clothes and a bath spell on my body.
The sanitize spell had the ability to clean clothes and remove their stench from being worn for long periods of time.
The shower spell was just like the name, it cleans a person's body to the point that its as if they had just take a bath.
Arriving at GaiaBurgers with still a lot of time to spare, Al saw that people were already busy preparing ingredients and tidying up the store before it opened.
"Hey, you the new hire? Come over and help us over here!"
A gruff looking man had called out towards Al, while he was setting some things on the nearby counter in the kitchen.
Al had come over as he was asked to help lighten the workload by doing some heavy labor, carrying what seemed to be fresh ingredients into the kitchen, doing it quite easily using the telekenisis spell.
The events afterward were Al being trained and taught on the job, as the same gruff looking man had explained his duties of being one of the chefs, teaching him which spells to use for certain situations or circumstances to create the desired outcome of their signature burgers.
He had not failed or wasted ingredients and thought he did quite a good job cooking the burgers until he was told that what he cooked didn't meet the minimum requirement and had been tossed out.
He was informed that all the tossed out food would be recycled as fertilizer so it didn't go to waste, making him feel a little better.
After a few hours of business, Al had gotten the hang of it, meeting the minimum burger requirements around 90% of the time.
Due to being put straight to work the moment he had arrived, he had only noticed after the rush had died down that no one in the staff had treated him like how people usually had treated him due to having Silver status.
They just treated him like a normal co-worker, actually better than a normal co-worker as they would give tips and advice to him, and didn't hesitate to help him out when he needed it, unlike his co-workers in his previous job.
This must be another reason why burgers here are so good, which due to the amazingly cohesive, efficient and helpful members of staff.
Each and every staff member a vital part of the team, who are also flexible as there was no confusion or panic amongst them when an unexpected situation occurred, also able to easily integrate me into the team and make me feel welcome.
I was working quite hard when i first came to make a good impression and also because it was my first job in this world, but now i worked even harder so that i could contribute a little more to the team that would function perfectly fine without him.
Upon asking why such an amazing team of people needed a new hire, they had explained that they wanted to distribute the workload more evenly in order to increase the efficiency of the shop.
They had praised me for being able to easily work together with them on the first day which was not what they had originally expected, but they had no complaints and were quite happy actually.
I promised to them that i would work as hard as i had today, and promised it to myself as well, leaving my shift at 12 PM as i had the morning shift, having free lunch there and going back to the library to scan even more books.
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