Sensing Amiya's persistent gaze, Flandre reached out her hand and offered a enthusiastic wave.
Once the surrounding children had finished asking their endless stream of curious questions, they scattered into the hallway to play on their own, leaving only Amiya waiting patiently by the classroom door.
Flandre skipped over, happily looping her arm through Amiya's. "Dr. Kal'tsit promised me that you get to play with me for the next two whole days!"
Amiya gave a startled, affectionate smile. "I can definitely play with you, Flandre, but you have to promise to come to classes with me too."
"Of course!" Flandre nodded eagerly.
Hand in hand, the two girls stepped out of the classroom.
They returned to Amiya's office first to set down her study notebooks before strolling together down the main arterial corridor toward the central cafeteria. Upon taking a seat at a table, Flandre scanned the dining hall and noticed that her sister Remilia and the rest of the Scarlet Devil Mansion party were nowhere to be found. She couldn't help but tilt her head in confusion.
"Rhodes Island actually operates more than one cafeteria," Amiya explained upon seeing Flandre's puzzled expression. "Maybe your sister and the others are dining at one of the other facilities!"
"There are other cafeterias?" Flandre looked at Amiya in mild surprise.
"Naturally," Amiya nodded. "Although Rhodes Island is just a single landship, our total onboard population numbers in the thousands. Even outside of peak meal hours, people are constantly coming and going, yet a single dining hall can only seat about a hundred people at a time. On top of that, we have a large number of long-term patients and their family members staying over at the Medical Department. A single cafeteria couldn't possibly meet the daily nutritional needs of everyone on board."
Amiya gestured around the bright, bustling room. "The cafeteria we're in right now primarily serves our active field Operators. Since our Operators hail from every corner of Terra, the menu here is the most diverse, and the seasoning tends to be a bit bolder and heavier than in the other dining areas. As for the facility attached to the Medical Department, it mainly caters to doctors, recovering patients, and their visiting relatives, so the culinary focus is strictly on clinical health and dietary nutrition."
She paused, adding softly, "Of course... the flavor might be a little worse over there."
Hearing this, Flandre immediately understood that Hibiscus—the uncontested master of Rhodes Island's notorious "nutritional meals"—had not yet joined the landship's medical staff. Otherwise, Amiya would never have described the food over there as merely "a little" worse.
After all, it required a very unique, terrifying sort of talent to prepare a healthy meal so utterly foul that patients of every age, background, and species found it utterly unbearable to swallow.
Come to think of it, was that specialized culinary talent a divine blessing or a curse? Setting aside the horrific taste, Hibiscus's nutritional dishes were objectively unmatched in their restorative medical value. But since it was food meant to be enjoyed by human mouths, one simply couldn't set aside the taste!
Flandre was actually quite curious to experience what those legendary health meals tasted like, but since Hibiscus hadn't arrived at Rhodes Island yet, she would just have to wait.
After finishing a warm lunch, Amiya led Flandre down to the lower engineering decks for a stroll.
This level served as Rhodes Island's primary Manufacturing Area.
Amiya explained that although Rhodes Island operated as a pharmaceutical and medical enterprise, a vast majority of the Infected who sought refuge here arrived with virtually no financial assets to their name. Since Rhodes Island couldn't possibly offer completely free medical care to such a massive, ever-growing population without bankrupting itself, incoming Infected were presented with two distinct paths.
The first option was to formally join Rhodes Island and enlist as an Operator. After passing background checks and physical evaluations, they would be assigned to either internal logistics or field combat operations based on their personal aptitudes.
However, some individuals chose not to join Rhodes Island as permanent staff. Instead, they utilized a secondary system—work-for-relief—to earn access to Rhodes Island's medical resources.
The "work" Rhodes Island structured for these temporary residents naturally couldn't involve high-risk combat. That was precisely why these sprawling Workstations were constructed across the lower decks.
Rhodes Island purchased raw, unrefined materials from external trade markets, brought them on board for secondary processing, and then resold the finished components to commercial vendors. These temporary residents formed the core processing workforce. By laboring for Rhodes Island, they earned safe shelter, physical protection, and an steady supply of vital Originium-suppressing medication in direct return for their work.
Although they were not official employees on the landship's payroll, their living standards and access to care were functionally identical to formal staff. Rhodes Island deployed internal logistics Operators to provide technical guidance, workplace safety monitoring, and daily assistance.
Flandre gave a firm thumbs-up after listening to the explanation. "That's actually a wonderful idea!"
"The Reunion Movement operates under a similar principle," Flandre added thoughtfully. "People who are lazy and refuse to contribute don't deserve free treatment. My sister always says that it's far better to teach someone how to fish than to simply hand them a fish. Things earned through one's own honest labor allow a person to feel the true dignity of being alive."
Amiya stared at Flandre in genuine surprise; she certainly hadn't expected the young girl to hold such a mature, crystal-clear perspective on social dynamics.
Truth be told, Amiya had previously worried whether forcing desperate Infected to perform industrial labor in exchange for life-saving medicine appeared too cold, opportunistic, or capitalist—attitudes that seemed to conflict with Rhodes Island's humanitarian ideals. But hearing Flandre frame it so simply, she finally understood the deeper wisdom behind Dr. Kal'tsit's structural design.
While blind pity and unconditional charity could resolve an immediate physical crisis, they inadvertently deepened the divide between the benefactor and the receiver, reinforcing a subservient social status. In contrast, survival and medical care earned through personal effort granted ordinary people a sense of self-reliance and an anchor of self-worth.
"Besides," Flandre giggled, leaning in slightly, "if you have a massive crowd of Infected with absolutely nothing to do all day, leaving them to idle around makes it way too easy for trouble to start! Just imagine—if a bunch of bored, restless Infected gather in a corner, and then some 'big genius' suddenly goes 'ehe' and announces they have a grand idea..."
Amiya envisioned the hypothetical scenario, shuddered involuntarily, and nodded in strong agreement. "You're entirely right, Flandre. Labor not only allows everyone to create tangible value and find purpose, but it keeps everyone constructively occupied so catastrophic ideas don't take root."
"Flandre?" a familiar voice suddenly called out from down the concourse.
Flandre turned her head and spotted Clever walking toward them. The Sarkaz woman had already shed her heavy wilderness travel coat and was now dressed in a crisp, sharp-fitting standard Rhodes Island Operator uniform.
"Clever! You've already officially joined Rhodes Island!" Flandre cheered, delighted to run into an acquaintance.
Clever nodded with a warm grin, then offered a polite gesture toward the young leader beside her. "Good afternoon, Amiya."
"Good afternoon, Clever," Amiya replied with a polite nod.
Flandre hovered closer, examining the new uniform with bright eyes. "I heard that when you enlist as an Operator here, you get to choose a custom codename! You're not still using 'Clever', are you?"
Clever flashed a playful peace sign. "Bingo~ I am indeed still going by Clever!"
"After all," the Sarkaz mercenary continued with a relaxed shrug, "for most of us Sarkaz wandering the wilderness, formal names and tactical codenames don't make much of a difference anyway. As long as people know who you are when they call out to you, it works. I've used the name Clever for so long now that I probably wouldn't even recognize a different codename if someone shouted it on the battlefield."
Clever went on to describe her whirlwind past two days, running continuously between the Medical Department's diagnostic labs and the Human Resources screening offices. "Phew... thankfully, there were a few senior staff members aboard Rhodes Island who recognized me from past mercenary contracts, so I was able to bypass a ton of redundant background verifications. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't even have received my Reserve Operator ID badge yet!"
Amiya confirmed her statement with an approving nod. "Clever's intake process was exceptionally fast. Under Rhodes Island's standard administrative protocols, a full security vetting usually takes at least half a month."
"Such low administrative efficiency just to process a single Trainee Operator?" Flandre wrinkled her nose slightly, looking somewhat unimpressed.
Amiya patiently outlined the standard onboarding workflow for her. "Generally, when a prospective candidate arrives, the Medical Department conducts a thorough physical examination while Human Resources performs an initial background screening, which takes roughly two to three days."
"Following that," Amiya detailed, "the recruit enters a mandatory one-week observation and foundational training period, during which combat instructors evaluate their physical limits, combat experience, personal aspirations, and potential Arts development paths."
"Once the evaluation report is finalized, it is forwarded to the Personnel Department, which then submits the candidate's file to Dr. Kal'tsit and myself for final cross-review. Only after we both sign off is the new Operator officially assigned to an active squad based on current team structures and operational vacancies."