By the time the team members returned, Happy Internet Cafe had returned to normal.
When the Challenger League ended, players and reporters swarmed there to see if they could catch a glimpse of anything. Unfortunately, the protagonists weren't there. And now that the finals had started, the reporters wouldn't be missing this annual meeting, and the players couldn't stick around the Internet cafe endlessly. As a result, people gradually took their leave.
Ye Xiu's trio didn't return to Happy Internet Cafe after they left Excellent Era. In fact, ever since they rented the gaming house in Forest Park, everyone apart from Chen Guo rarely went to the Internet cafe. This included Ye Xiu and Tang Rou, who previously worked in the cafe. Chen Guo employed new people to take their place, so they could commit their efforts wholeheartedly towards Glory.
Chen Guo felt that the house in Forest Park was no longer enough for them though.
The terraced houses were two stories tall: the bottom floor was used as a training room, while all the rooms in the top floor became the bedrooms, which accommodated two members each. In the beginning, Chen Guo thought this was enough, but after thinking about it now, she realised that she thought too simply of a team's structure.
Nowadays, players were the main core of the team. To keep up their fighting power, the guild and R&D departments were necessary.
Wu Chen was now completely committed towards Happy's guild department. The players they had met in the tenth server like Seven Fields didn't originally plan on joining the Heavenly Domain again. However, after seeing how successful Team Happy became, their hearts were moved. All of them planned on completing the Heavenly Domain Challenge, so they could fight their way through Heavenly Domain and assist in the team's expansion.
However, members like Seven Fields could only support part-time. Happy only had Wu Chen to take care of the guild full-time. However, the team would grow. No team would only have the guild leader alone in the guild office. Just from the number of people alone, the guild department would be the largest group in a club. There would be both full-time and part-time members. But since their job was limited to the game, most of them wouldn't come to the club for work. In the end, it didn't matter whether they worked at the club or not. But because they belonged to the club as permanent or contract employees, their numbers would be great.
As for the R&D department, it was the department requiring the highest confidentiality, so they appeared to be the most absolutely necessary part of the internal affairs fo the club. So even though the number of people working in there would be far less than those in the guild department, it was required of them to work at the club.
Happy wasn't that large yet, but as it continued to grow, they would eventually have to build these up. After taking in all these factors, the terraced houses in Forest Park wouldn't be enough to fit all of them in.
Should we rent another house?
While Chen Guo was thinking about how she should solve this problem, Ye Xiu brought a person before her.
"Guan Rongfei, the core God of Excellent Era's R&D department." Ye Xiu introduced Guan Rongfei to Chen Guo.
"Hi, welcome!" Chen Guo took the initiative to go up to shake his hand. She was extremely excited, because she knew that the person Ye Xiu brought here wasn't here to just look around.
"Hi." Guan Rongfei greeted Chen Guo simply. He didn't even bother to ask about her identity before he turned his head to ask Ye Xiu. "When should we start? Where's my computer?"
"Uh, over there." Ye Xiu had to search around the living room before he could finally point out a position. In the training room Chen Guo set up, there were twelve computers in a circle. If Happy included Su Mucheng, as well as Chen Guo, who was always using one, there was only one unused computer left. This remaining computer was allocated to Guan Rongfei by Ye Xiu.
"Oh." Guan Rongfei replied and quickly moved towards the computer. When he reached there, someone sat in the middle seat between the three computers and didn't even look at him when he went over.
"I'm Guan Rongfei." Guan Rongfei introduced himself.
"Mo Fan." That person only reported his name without even turning his head.
After that, Guan Rongfei sat down to turn on the computer and didn't pay attention to Mo Fan's reply. The two sat together without any bit of interaction as they did their own work.
The first thing Guan Rongfei did after the computer turned on was to connect to his external hard drive. He went through the documents as he controlled the keyboard and mouse with familiarity. He would occasionally murmur "This can" and "This can't."
Chen Guo followed along earlier. She saw Guan Rongfei move all the "can" documents into the computer while he instantly deleted the "can't" documents.
"Why can't we use those?" Chen Guo couldn't help but ask out of curiosity.
"Those are confidential, so they can't be used." Guan Rongfei said.
"Huh?" Chen Guo didn't really understand.
"It's the R&D department's NDA." Ye Xiu came over to explain.
Members of the R&D department definitely needed to sign an NDA, otherwise there wouldn't be any secrets about Silver equipment; a person could leave a club and take away large amounts of information.
The club couldn't stop the people from leaving, so signing the NDA was required. Although the agreement couldn't completely prevent the club's information from being taken, at least it wouldn't be used in such a broad and open way. People would often find loopholes, but it hadn't gone far enough that they could not tolerate it anymore and took it to court.
Guan Rongfei dove into his job without having a second word spoken. His increasing enthusiasm was rather shocking for Chen Guo. This God of the R&D department from Excellent Era... What sort of compensation was needed to keep him up and going?
For the past days, Chen Guo had constantly been pondering about these problems. However, it would be underestimating Boss Chen if her mind was completely blank. During the days they stayed at Heavenly Sword's place in City B, Chen Guo had humbly asked Lou Guanning about managing a team. As for Lou Guanning, he had even gathered the actual managing team of Heavenly Sword to help Chen Guo analyse Happy's current situation.
From what the professional team saw, Happy's current situation was excellent.
After defeating Excellent Era and advancing forward to enter the professional scene, no new team had ever received such widespread attention. How could Team Happy not get any sponsors in the new season? For them, this was simply impossible. In their current situation, sponsors might come to their doorsteps without even having to search for them.
The fact that Excellent Era might possibly split and be disbanded was very beneficial news for Happy's development. For sponsors in the same city as Excellent Era, if they still prized Glory as a good way to advertise, it was very likely for them to directly switch their sponsorship to Happy. By having a sponsor that was in the same city, they would naturally be able to establish a regional reputation. Since Glory was a popular esports, a team that won the championships would give pride to the whole city. By supporting a team in the same city, it would naturally give them a beneficial foundation in their local region.
Heavenly Sword taught a bunch of everything here and there to Chen Guo, and she was genuinely determined to learn this time. If there was anything she didn't understand, she made sure she could ask and be clear about it. She gained a lot within the few days. Even though she would constantly ponder about matters such as the compensation towards the team members, she was finally able to ease her heart. According to what the professionals in Heavenly Sword had said, Happy was a project that could not fail.
"What if we become the champion?" Chen Guo asked.
The professionals of Heavenly Sword looked at one another speechlessly. After a while, a glasses dude pushed up his spectacles before speaking. "If that really happened, I think this is probably what we call lucrative..."
After returning from City B, Chen Guo was enormously proud and was thinking about how she could improve their training environment. Now that Guan Rongfei was brought here, it really reached the point where they couldn't stay unchanged. The twelve computers were all used up. If someone else joined, where should they be distributed? In addition, it was unpresentable for a team to have the guild and R&D department to sit together! For technological jobs like Guan Rongfei's, they probably needed peace and quiet, right? However in guilds department, there would constantly be yelling and screaming.
After Chen Guo made up her mind, she pondered on the different kinds of ideas. From what she saw, now was the right time to discuss this matter, so she looked for Ye Xiu.
"Hold on, I'll give this to him first." Ye Xiu was organising Myriad Manifestation Umbrella's information for Guan Rongfei. Guan Rongfei was the one being impatient, not Ye Xiu. When he was finished with his external hard drive, he started to hurry Ye Xiu up with his eyes.
"It's nothing important. I was just thinking that since we have become a formal team, team members would increase in the future, which is why I think this place is a bit unsuited. I currently have two ideas. Hear me out." Chen Guo spoke.
"Sure, go on." Ye Xiu nodded as he continued to import the documents.
"I am personally leaning towards the first idea, as it's also more homely. I was planning to clear out the whole of floor 2 in Happy. That level would become the training center and no longer be used for the Internet caf business. After visiting Heavenly Sword, I feel it's enough for our training center and as well as some space for the guild and R&D department." Chen Guo said.
"Mm, not bad." Ye Xiu nodded.
"The other idea is to find a proper workplace and hire three to five rooms as our base. I keep feeling like it wouldn't be proper though." Chen Guo said.
"Are you telling me that you were planning on having us practice in an office?" Ye Xiu asked.
"It's not proper, right?" Chen Guo asked.
"Not at all!" Ye Xiu said.
"Then we'll go along with the first idea. We're currently unable to build another floor anyways!" Chen Guo said.
"The first idea is pretty good. Did you know that when I first started, the place where the team trained was in an Internet cafe. I'm merely walking through the same path from before again. However, we didn't have such good conditions at the time. The most we could do was to reserve a row of computers just for us in the Internet cafe." Ye Xiu said.
"Oh... Speaking of it, what did Tao Xuan used to do?" Chen Guo asked.
"Him? He used to be a boss of an Internet cafe as well..." Ye Xiu said.