NOVEL NEXT Chapter 106: Creating a World
Savior decided to take a look at the corporate world; he left it millions of years ago.
Initially, rank 12s listened to him and followed his instructions. However, after one million years, the results were disastrous.
While it was better for ordinary people, it was deemed unfavorable from a corporate profit perspective.
The world corporate board voted to reverse all changes.
The Board elections were canceled, and the shareholders regained the right to appoint all board members with no strings attached.
Despite this, the impact of what the Savior did then persisted for some time.
The corporations led by rank 12s remained firmly controlled by them as they set up loopholes for themselves directly in the world's laws. However, many rank 9, 10, and 11 corporations experienced changes in ownership.
During the million years when the boards were elected, many corporations began taxing the previous shareholders as much as possible.
Faced with hefty taxes, many had no choice but to give up their shares. Most boards used the shares to create nonprofit corporations with corporate constitutions that guaranteed election rights.
Nonprofit corporations are very lightly regulated; most likely, any change in world laws would not affect them.
After a million years of taxing previous owners, these nonprofit corporations gained the outright majority of shares. Therefore, even after the mandatory voting requirement ended, most corporations continued to, in effect, at least indirectly hold elections for board members.
The new rules didn't prohibit voting; they simply stopped mandating it.
Of course, the idea of creating nonprofits originated from Savior, who believed the World Corporate Board could reverse its stance, as it ultimately did.
As time passed, however, things changed.
No longer bound by the world's laws to maintain elections, many nonprofits began chipping away at voting rights.
Most times, they failed, but sometimes they succeeded.
By the time Savior left, most corporations returned to operating as they did before he made changes, or even worse.
The existence of nonprofits made corruption easy.
Many nonprofits only cared about their personal profits, not even about profits for shareholders.
Because the nonprofit's shareholders were the people, the two-layered approach of people voting for nonprofit board members, who then would elect the governing corporations' board members, made everything murky and non-transparent.
Those elected to nonprofit boards often enriched themselves as much as possible, offering only lip service to the people. Even if they lost reelections, they became wealthy by that point.
Over time, nonprofits completely lost their original purpose.
Witnessing this disappointment, Savior decided to leave.
No matter how well-designed the system is, when people are corrupt, nothing will work; this was his conclusion.
He left, wandered around, and eventually decided to sleep.
Now, however, he wanted to see what had happened.
...
The world corporate board is in another yearly meeting.
A young CEO continued, "The best way for us to help the poor is to mine more, tax more, and increase our profits!" he said confidently.
If someone looks without paying attention, they may think he is fighting for some righteous cause.
After Savior's reforms, talking points in the yearly meetings began with 'How can we help the poor?' followed by proposed solutions that ultimately aimed to increase profits. It had become more of a tradition, akin to saying 'How are you'—everyone said it, but nobody truly meant it.
The young CEO left, and the next one approached the podium.
"The best way for us to help the poor is opening up the mines in the east ocean; those mines have recovered and can be mined again."
East Ocean mines were mined to extinction a few million years ago; it caused an extinction among sea creatures so bad that the world corporate world banned mining there completely.
The next one approached the podium and started talking, "The best way for us to help the poor is a tweak in world's laws that allow us to buy shares of absent shareholders," she said.
She undoubtedly aimed at shares of organizations that didn't join the board as a form of protest.
The next CEO said, "The best way for us to help the poor is to repeal laws that mandate feeding the hungry! Those laws are cutting into the profits!" he said with passion and concerned face.
A few hundreds of millions of years ago, after a great famine that killed more than half of the population, the World Corporation Board instituted a law that mandated food for the hungry.
It didn't cost much, but even fly meat is still meat for corporations.
The next one came and said," The best way to help the poor is to repeal the drug laws! Let the free market do its job!" she said.
Nearly 900 million years ago, a few corporations began producing very addictive drugs that almost addicted the whole mortal population. It got so destructive that the World Corporate Board prohibited them.
...
After a few weeks of concern for the poor, the meeting ended.
...
Allen Short, CEO of Black Snow Corporation, was nearly asleep in a meeting room.
He is unique; other rank 12s would not fall asleep this easily.
A notification from the world barrier guards came in a meeting room only among the big 50.
"Hmm? Greenlong? He is back!" Allen, the corporate board chairman this year, waved his hand and opened the world's entrance.
"Such a loser!" someone said with a smirk.
Most thought this way.
Someone with the main protagonist's luck, yet this useless. Who would have thought?
After a while, Savior reached the room.
"Hey, Savior!" Allen smiled warmly and greeted him.
Savior nodded and slightly bowed. After all, these people are rank 12.
"Let me go straight to the point; I have a way to preserve profits while improving people's lives," Savior said.
"Of course, of course, we'll talk about it," Allen said with his smile. He no longer took Savior seriously.
After this long, he no longer considered Savior anything more than an idiot who thought of useless things such as the wellness of mortals instead of focusing on profits.
Allen doesn't care about mortals at all; he only cares about profits. He is not an anomaly; nearly all immortals are like him. Those who care about others usually never reach rank 10, let alone rank 12.
Only the most selfish, profit-oriented individuals can reach rank 10 and above.
Rachel, who was in Savior's hands, sighed.
She agrees with Allen. While she admires Savior, she thinks he is dead wrong. People will always continue to suffer; What matters is how high one can reach.
Without her, Savior would have, at most, reached rank 9, and even that only because he had minor protagonist luck from birth.
There are three levels of protagonist luck.
One is minor luck, which could help one reach rank 9. It is regulated by the world internally.
Two is medium luck, which could help one reach rank 10; it is based on realization energy and is effective even outside the world.
Three is major luck, which could help one reach rank 11.
Finally, the main protagonist's luck could even affect rank 12.
As far as Rachel knows, there is no higher luck.
Savior started saying, "I think the best solutions are the simplest ones, with as few pieces as possible. My plan is simple: let's specialize corporations."
Allen asked, "What do you mean?"
Savior answered, "Currently, the government is under corporations' control; this distracts them. In my plan, we just give the governance duty to the people, and corporations can focus on profit-making!"
Allen rolled his eyes.
He, of course, knew of this system; many worlds use this system already.
It takes control away from the corporation, so it's an idiotic plan. But he didn't want to say this directly, so he said, "Your solution is great, but world laws wouldn't allow it; still, we would like to thank you for caring for the poor." Even Allen was infected by the 'helping the poor' speech.
"With respect, the laws would allow it! We just make a nonprofit that is technically a corporation but acts like a government," he said.
Allen's smile disappeared, and then he said expressionlessly, "We thought about it, and we refuse; now, the guest room is ready," pointing at the door.
Savior sighed and left.
...
"Rachel, help me, please!" Savior, who is desperate, pleaded.
"There is no benefit in helping the people; I'm not going to help," she answered.
In her previous life's novels, many cultivators centuries old still acted like horny teenagers making harems, while others behaved like crazies, fighting at every opportunity.
The author said they were hundreds of years old yet acted more foolishly than even children.
In fact, as she has come to experience it, most immortals are the same; they don't care about romance, not about a harem, not about the people, not about good or bad, not about grievances, not about revenge, not about family—they care about benefits. Everything else is illusory.
It is a process of natural selection; those who care about those things never find the opportunity to become immortals.
Rachel is the same; she does not care about the people; she helps if it is easy but not if it takes effort.
There is not a lot of character diversity among immortals, and usually, everything is boring; they avoid fights as much as possible, and rarely anything noteworthy happens. It's not like those novels where something new happens every day.
That happens in stories, not in reality.
In reality, billions of years pass without anything noteworthy happening.
Savior said, "I can't find my place in the world!" He sighed.
"Savior, you may not be able to change this world as you like, but hey, you are rank 11 with many complete laws! Go and create your world! Who cares what happens in the universe? Let's make a few people happy in your world!" she suggested.
It's not the first time; Rachel has already suggested this many times. Nevertheless, Savior refused every time; he wanted to help everyone.
But at this moment, he nodded. "Let's do it."
...
At an uninhabited place in the endless space, a man with green hair was staring at the empty space ahead.
"There!" he said.
As a rank 11 with many complete laws, he can code around a rank 11 world, and Rachel can help, too.
He took out ten complete laws: time, space, life, death, negative, positive, undead, transform, elements, and growth.
With ten complete laws, the world would be a weak rank 11. However, the code would be solid because the complete laws he is using are all very compatible.
First, he threw the two laws of time and space and started coding.
As the space complete law expanded, he began to code time.
Creating a world without space and time laws is possible, but it's much easier with them.
After a while, Savior coded and fixed the loopholes he found.
The most basic rank 11 world is already ready with time and space.
He didn't close the codes.
Next, he added life and positive on one side, death and negative on the other, with undead and transform in the middle, elements below, and grow above.
Then, he began coding.
With his masterful coding, life and death harmonized, with transform and undead mediating between positive and negative; HYe also coded elements below successfully.
However, he felt his skills weren't enough when trying to code Grow.
He is powerful, but he doesn't have much experience.
So, Rachel took over and completed the code. She also improved it in some places, made it more efficient, and fixed possible bugs. Finally, she closed the code.
After this moment, adding things further would be much more difficult because the code is now closed.
Repairing the world and improving it is extremely difficult; any small disturbance can explode the whole thing. Even rank 11 Rachel incarnations can't do it.
Savior went in and looked around.
The soil is rich, the temperature is suitable, and there is a lot of water, mountains, etc.
However, there is no plan and, of course, no living being.
"Time to buy inhabitants from Alive," Savior smiled.