Chapter 166: The Legacy of a Man Who Never Wanted to Be a God

The grand hall of the Seoul convention center was packed with young founders, executives in their twenties, and business students who'd queued since dawn.

On the main screen, a founder barely out of his teens was walking a rapt audience through his personal manifesto:

'THE TOTAL OPTIMIZATION PROPOSAL. Step one: eliminate all time spent on naps, novels, and non-transactional conversation. Step two: replace meals with twelve tubes of nutrient gel, thirty seconds each. Step three: raise personal output by 340%, in strict accordance with the management philosophy of Mr. Lucian Vance.'

Down in the VIP seats, Lucian, in a black suit, had a bucket of buttered popcorn. His hand stopped halfway into it.

He stared at management philosophy of Mr. Lucian Vance on the screen. A single kernel dropped into his lap.

Evelyn, sunglasses on beside him, helped herself to a fistful of his popcorn and shoved her phone in his face.

"Congratulations, boss. Bloomberg this morning: a young CEO out of a Silicon Valley mana-stone startup just filed a decision to fire himself."

Lucian blinked. "Fire himself."

"Ran the numbers. Concluded that the cost of him breathing, eating, and commuting had a worse return than a piece of automation code renting time on your servers. So he made himself redundant. For the balance sheet." Evelyn was delighted. "There's a whole scene now. Calls itself the Vance Method. Couple dozen firms, a few private academies, a very loud corner of the business press."

Lucian put a hand over his face.

"I optimized things so I could be lazy. I built the automation so I could sleep until dinner and eat cake. I have never, once, told a human being to turn into a load-bearing spreadsheet."

"Doesn't matter what you told them," Evelyn said. "It matters what they'll pay to believe. And a philosophy that says feelings are waste is very convenient for people who'd rather not have any."

Ting.

The V2.0 panel opened, and for once it was dry rather than triumphant:

[TREND REPORT — MEASURABLE INDICATORS ONLY]

• Firms publicly adopting 'nutrient-only' or 'zero-idle' work policies: 31 identified.
• Private academies advertising 'Vance Method' curricula: 9.
• Reported staff turnover at flagship adopter firms: rising sharply. Sick-leave claims: rising. Voluntary resignations: rising.

[SYSTEM LIMITATION: The System cannot measure 'creativity,' 'meaning,' or 'a good life.' Those are not quantities. It can only report that the people inside these firms are leaving them faster than they can be replaced.]

Stolen story; please report.

Lucian read the last line twice.

"They're not more productive. They're just quitting faster." He slumped back. "It's a bad incentive dressed up as a discipline. Somebody built a machine that punishes the exact thing that makes the machine worth running, and slapped my name on the side."

Rustle.

A rose-scented handkerchief dabbed lightly at his forehead.

Eleanor, beside him in a white gold-trimmed vest, tipped her head at him with a bright, needling smile.

"Look at that, God of Selling Electricity. Your disciples are turning themselves into your spreadsheet. You should be flattered."

Lucian batted the handkerchief away. "Stop it. I'm this close to buying the auditorium just to turn the lights off."

On stage, the young founder held up a box of nutrient gel and announced, ringing:

"Starting next week, we abolish the company cafeteria and install ten-second charging booths, so no one wastes time eating—"

Clack.

Lucian was out of his seat before he'd decided to be.

He strode onto the stage and took the microphone out of the founder's hand.

A good part of the hall went quiet — though a cluster near the front kept filming, and someone in the balcony was already live-streaming his face with a caption underneath.

Lucian tapped the mic head, thump, and looked out at the rows of eager young faces waiting for the secret to getting rich.

"Listen. All of you."

He pointed out at them.

"If you don't know how to waste twenty minutes on a strawberry popsicle — if you can't sit and watch a sunset, or cook something slow for a person you like—"

He bit off the words.

"—then what, exactly, are you earning the billions FOR?"

He put the microphone down on the podium, no theatrics, and walked off the stage.

The hall didn't fall silent in awe. It fractured. A wave of applause went up from one side. On the other, a knot of founders had their heads together, and Lucian caught the exact wrong reaction blooming in real time — a woman near the aisle turning to her seatmate, eyes lit: "It's about strategic recovery. Scheduled rest as a performance input. He's optimizing leisure—"

Lucian, halfway to the exit, nearly walked into a pillar.

"No," he said, to no one, "that's not — that is the opposite of—" He gave up and made for the door. "Unsalvageable. They're taking notes on how to schedule joy efficiently. I've made it worse. I've made it a KPI."

Bang.

The hall's side doors swung open. Sylvia came down the aisle fast, a tablet in her hand, ears flat, out of breath.

"Lucian. You need to see this now."

She turned the tablet to him.

"One of the copycat outfits incorporated. It's calling itself Vance Method Corporation, and it just filed a real war chest. They're not writing manifestos anymore — they're moving on the private universities. Lobbying, buyout offers for the campuses that are financially exposed, and a public campaign to pressure sponsors into pulling funding from every arts and literature department they can reach." Her jaw tightened. "They want the land and the legitimacy. And they're using your quotes to do it."