The chaos was a symphony to him. Calm Mind (MAX) didn't just suppress emotion; it transformed it. Panic, fear, and despair were no longer feelings; they were data streams, color-coded and prioritized in his mind's eye. The triple-pronged crisis wasn't a disaster; it was a complex optimization problem. And Leo was born to solve it.
"All of you, stop what you are doing," he commanded. His voice was not loud, but it possessed a quality of absolute zero that froze the simulated panic in its tracks. The five virtual employees turned to him, their faces a mixture of terror and desperation.
[Time Remaining: 29:40]
"Your previous objectives are now obsolete," he stated. His eyes moved from one team member to the next, issuing commands with the speed and precision of a supercomputer allocating processing power.
"Ben. Abort the data redundancy protocol. It's irrelevant if the department is defunded. Project Vanguard's launch data was just piped into our server. You have twenty minutes to find a critical structural flaw in their proposal. A logistical oversight, a budget miscalculation, a fatal security loophole. They rushed to market. Find the corner they cut. That is your only priority."
[System Notification: Your directive shows an aptitude for counter-strategic analysis. A new skill tree is becoming available.] [New Skill Unlocked: Corporate Espionage (Lv. 1)] [Effect: Allows user to detect and exploit weaknesses in rival projects, proposals, and strategies with enhanced accuracy.]
Ben, the cynic, stared, then a flicker of something new appeared in his eyes: a hunter's gleam. He cracked his knuckles and turned to his monitor, a new, predatory energy about him.
"Sarah," Leo continued, not missing a beat. "The Centurion report is no longer about recovery; it's about salvage. I don't need the full report. I need a one-page executive summary and a list of our core analytical models used to build it. We are no longer delivering a product; we are showcasing a capability."
Sarah, the overachiever, blinked, her mind rebooting. She nodded sharply, a new, more urgent mission overriding her previous one.
"Tom, David. You are now on data-mining duty. I want every piece of internal communication regarding Project Sentinel for the past six months. Find every email, every memo, every chat log where a senior manager praised our work or acknowledged our project's necessity. Build an arsenal of our political capital."
The two passive members of the team, jolted by the direct, actionable command, began typing furiously.
"Jessica," Leo said finally, his gaze pinning the office gossip to her chair. "You have the widest social network in this department. I need to know who on the Vanguard team is ambitious, who is sloppy, and who is sleeping with whom. Find me a human weak point."
The order was so unorthodox, so ruthlessly pragmatic, that Jessica could only stare in stunned silence before a slow, wicked smile spread across her face.
He had taken a dysfunctional, panicked group and given each of them a task that perfectly suited their archetype: the cynic became a hunter, the overachiever a salvager, the panicked drones became miners, and the gossip became a spy.
He turned back to his own screen, his fingers flying across the virtual keyboard as his two core skills activated in perfect synthesis.
[Calm Mind (MAX) and Efficiency Demon (Lv. 1) are now operating in full synergy.] [Cognitive Processing Speed: +500%]
The simulation's data streams, meant to overwhelm him, became his tools. He pulled the half-finished Centurion summary from Sarah, cross-referenced it with the political ammo Tom and David were digging up, and began weaving it all into a new, audacious proposal.
The simulation's internal clock seemed to struggle to keep up. The virtual world flickered for a microsecond, as if the processing power required to model his actions was causing a system strain.
[Project Integrity: Stabilized at 20% and climbing.] [Team Morale: Stabilized at -50% and climbing. Current emotional state: Terrified, but focused.] [Time Remaining: 15:00]
He had neutralized the immediate threats and turned a rout into a counterattack. The data overload that was meant to break him had become his weapon. He had defeated the simulation's logic. Now, he would face its soul.