Elite? Selection?
As soon as he said that, many players immediately thought of the Thirty-Second True Men Club that had left with Black Star, and they immediately felt a little discouraged.
Could it be that Black Star wanted to test him again? But this concubine can't do it. If this concubine could pass, we would have flown into the sky together with you!
"As long as you can pass the test of the warriors under my command and prove your strength, the door to the Black Star Mercenary will be open to you …" Han Xiao explained briefly, and then threw out the mission that he had prepared beforehand.
[]
Mission Introduction: The Black Star Mercenary is a force to be reckoned with in space. All members of the Black Star Mercenary Group are experts. Only by successfully passing their test can you join the Black Star Mercenary Group and become an elite mercenary.
Mission Requirements: Pass any mercenary's battle test.
Reward: EXP, Black Star Mercenary Faction unlocked, Black Star Mercenary Relationship + 00
The players hurriedly read through it and started discussing.
"So it wasn't Black Star who personally chose him."
"It doesn't say what the combat test will be like. Will it be a one-on-one duel like before?"
Han Xiao gave a signal with his eyes, and the mercenaries behind him brought out a large translucent screen that had already been prepared. He pointed at the screen and said, "If you want to participate in the selection, enter your information on the screen. Philip will give each applicant a number, and the screen will show the selection battles that will be carried out in batches. Pay attention to which battle you are participating in."
The screen lit up, and a blue ring-shaped pattern appeared in the center. Particles were floating around it, and they were vibrating slightly. At the same time, the speaker of the artificial intelligence sounded.
"Black Star Artificial Intelligence Philip, hum … Happy to serve you, hum …"
Many of the players were surprised and followed the instructions. They entered their names, professions, and other information and received a number that represented their identity. Soon, a new interface appeared at the top of the screen, indicating that a new selection was about to begin. The participants had hundreds of numbers and had to go to the arena to participate in the test.
It also showed that the mercenary in charge of the selection was Herlous.
After studying for a while, the players understood the selection mechanism. This was not a one-on-one selection, but a one-on-many selection. A single Black Star mercenary was testing hundreds of players. What they had to do was to persevere for a certain period of time. Once the time limit was up, if they did not fall into a near-death state, or if they were still in the area, they would be considered to have passed the test and could join the Black Star mercenary group, becoming the winner.
There was more than one round of selections happening at the same time. The number of participants was different, and the opponent was different in every round. Which Black Star Mercenary they would meet was random, and it all depended on their luck. Most importantly, even if a player was defeated in the selection battle, they could still apply to Philip again. There were no restrictions. It was like a continuous challenge.
None of the players had any doubts. They found it quite interesting, and their morale was high. They sent out applications one after another.
Han Xiao decided to use this method to conduct the selection and let the hundreds of mercenaries under his command help him test the players. Anyway, these mercenaries had nothing to do. Instead of letting them play cards and waste time every day, he might as well find something for them to do. Not only would it save him energy, but it would also be more efficient.
The selection was just a formality. Of course, he knew how strong the players were now. Although it was better to recruit as many players as possible, he could not just let any random player come over and say, "I want to join." That would be too simple. Which of the better factions did not have prerequisites to join? Setting up the selection was a clever way to make the players feel that joining the mercenary group had a threshold and was challenging. They could not join just because they wanted to.
He thought about it yesterday and decided to make the selection into a daily activity in the eyes of the players. A mercenary would select dozens or hundreds of players at once. The specific number of players would be controlled by Philip, and it depended on the strength of the mercenary. He had to ensure that the number of players participating was within the mercenary's ability and could be easily dealt with. Philip, who recorded the mercenary's data, would not make any mistakes.
There would be dozens or hundreds of players in every round, and it would be like a chaotic battle. Other than dealing with the BSS (mercenaries), they would also have to cheat each other to ensure that they could stay until the end and become one of the final victors. Therefore, there was competition.
Actually, Han Xiao's initial plan was to not allow any mercenaries to participate and let the players choose by themselves, gathering groups of players to fight each other, similar to a battle royale. However, this way, the recruitment efficiency would be very low. Without a strong external factor like the mercenaries, the selection would take a very long time. After all, there were weaklings everywhere, and it would not be able to show the strength of the Black Star Mercenaries.
Furthermore, such a beast of a battle royale might make some players feel that it was not respected. Thus, Han Xiao chose the current method and let the mercenaries under him host the selection. Not only would it increase the efficiency, it would also act as a lubricant to reduce the chances of the players being dissatisfied, making the selection less barbaric.
The players would not need to spend any resources to participate in the selection, and if they failed, they could wait for their numbers to be drawn again. This would ensure that the threshold would not be too high, and the players would have the opportunity to continuously try. At the same time, at the current stage of the Mutation Disaster, the players could only do one Sanctuary mission. Thus, the selection challenge was rather interesting and could be used as a distraction between missions.
As for the selection venue, it was naturally the Sanctuary Arena that he had built. The Pro League had once been held there, but it was currently empty. Han Xiao had taken it back for his own use. Bennett and Huang Yu naturally did not have any objections.
…
Ten minutes later …
Tens of thousands of players swarmed into the arena. This was the first selection battle, and even the players who did not have a turn chose to come and watch.
Herlous hugged his Battleship Slicing Blade and stood in the middle of a large arena. Hundreds of players were glaring at him from all directions, and he felt as though he was surrounded.
The surrounding players were all discussing.
"The time limit is two minutes. After two minutes, as long as you do not fall out of the range of the arena or fall into a state of near death, you will be able to join the Black Star Mercenary."
"With a few hundred people, it should be quite easy to last for two minutes …"
"Easy? Don't joke around. Have you not seen Pork Bun's Black Star videos? He is Herlous, a powerful Black Star officer. With one slash of his blade, this arena will be gone! Even if you have not seen the videos, you should have experienced the battle yesterday, right? Did you not see how he swept through the beast horde? "
"I did not see it. I died."
Herlous looked around. Han Xiao had told him to go easy on them. If he went all out, two minutes would be enough for him to kill all the participants. Most of these players were Grade D, and only a few were Grade A. This amount of numbers was not enough to make up for the difference.
Looking at the sea of Supers, Herlous' heart was burning. Black Star had not lied to him. There were really hundreds of thousands of Supers here!
Planet Sunil was suffering from the Catastrophe, and Han Xiao had promised that he would bring a crowd even scarier than the Catastrophe to solve Planet Sunil's predicament. Herlous had always believed in Han Xiao 'promise, and now that the promise had come true, he could not suppress his excitement.
Counting the time, Herlous gripped his Battleship Slicing Blade and nodded.
"The selection begins, hum …" Philip's voice echoed.
Boom!
The next moment, most of the players rushed toward Herlous, focusing all kinds of attacks on him. The number of players gave them confidence. They did not care what happened and lasted for two minutes. They only felt that they could deal with Herlous like fighting a BSS, so they all attacked.
Only a small portion of the players did not advance but instead retreated, hiding behind the others.
Attacks came from all directions, but Herlous did not change his expression. He casually used Whirlwind Slash, and the circular blade wave spread out in all directions, covering half of the ring, directly wiping out all the long-range attacks. The Pugilists who were close to him could not withstand the aftershock and were directly sent flying, landing at the edge of the ring. Their health dropped by around forty percent instantly.
"What the f * ck, this AE damage is too scary!"
"So close, I almost got knocked off the ring."
The players who were charging at him suffered a huge loss, and their expressions changed drastically. A small portion of the players who were dodging were outside the range of the slash, so they were very lucky to have escaped.
Luckily, we are not so stubborn and know what we are doing.
To the current players, Herlous' strength was completely overwhelming. Han Xiao had already guessed that the players would face the selection battle with the mentality of fighting a BSS from the start. The reason he let Herlous host the first battle was to establish the image of him as unbeatable in the players' hearts. Furthermore, in the next few battles, the ones who fought were all high-level members as well.
In the end, there was no suspense at all. Even though Herlous went easy on them, this group of players was still completely defeated by him.
The players had no choice but to change their mindset and move around crazily, trying to survive in the chaos. It was very exciting.
When the two minutes were up, there were less than ten people left standing. Herlous put away his sword, and the surviving players looked as if they had just woken up from a dream. Ecstasy appeared on their faces as they regained their senses.
"We — we won?"
The hundreds of defeated players were envious and furious. These idiots actually won the grand prize. There was no justice in this world!
Out of the hundreds of participants, less than ten had succeeded. The percentage was very low, but this was deliberately done by Han Xiao. He lowered the passing rate at the start to make it seem like there were very few successful people. Later on, he slowly got the mercenaries to go easy on them to increase the passing rate.
"Congratulations on passing the test. Black Star welcomes all of you. When you go to the galaxy and register with the Mercenary Alliance, you will be official mercenaries."
Herlous reached out and shook hands with the survivors one by one. This was Han Xiao's request, to show the difference in treatment.
The few of them were overjoyed. They realized that the faction interface had indeed been activated, and they could browse the faction store without needing to look for Black Star. The items in the store were no longer grayed out. Although they could not buy anything without Enas, the colorful interface was at least much better than being grayed out.
Only these few people's mission had been completed, and they had received 00 Faction Contribution Points. They had seen Pork Bun's video and knew that the 00 Faction Contribution Points could be purchased with 50 Enas. They all felt that they had earned 50 Enas!
The few of them were overjoyed.
The surrounding players were very envious. They sharply caught a piece of information. They heard Herlous say 'go to the galaxy'.
"In other words, as long as we pass the test, we can leave with Black Star after the Blue Star storyline ends?"
"My guess was right. Black Star is the guide who will bring us to the galaxy in Version 2.0!"
The eyes of the players sparkled, and they could not wait to participate in the selection.
The following selections were carried out step by step, and Han Xiao did not keep an eye on them.
Because there were many players, in the schedule that Han Xiao had set, there would be many selections every day. There would be a selection battle every twenty minutes. There were a few arenas in the arena, and every time, there would be a few selections at the same time. There would be one to two thousand selections every hour, which meant forty to fifty thousand people a day. The passing rate was temporarily controlled at about five percent.
There were hundreds of thousands of players in the sanctuary, and every player had a chance. This event could be carried out for a long time. After all, the selection battles were interesting, and most of the players believed that they would be lucky. Han Technician always felt that this illusion was very convenient for his plan, making the players jump into his trap.
"After a few more days, the players will get used to the existence of the selection battles. When they are on the right track, the passing rate will slowly increase. I won't have to worry about it."
Regarding the faction plan, Han Xiao had prepared many methods, but it was not the time to use them. The selection was just the beginning.
Furthermore, the difficulty of the selection battles created a need for the players to increase their strength in the short term, which would also increase their sales. He did not know how many birds he had killed with this stone.
…
From dawn to dusk, the square was bustling with people. After a whole day of bustling, Han Xiao was ready to call it a day.
In one day, his EXP gain had exceeded the one billion mark.
"A total of 1.29 billion EXP. I haven't felt so good in a long time …" Han Xiao let out a sigh of satisfaction. The last time he gained so much EXP was when he left Blue Star two years ago. It felt like rain after a long drought.
"This EXP is enough to reach level 20. There's still some left."
He opened the interface and was about to add EXP to level up when suddenly, there was a rumbling sound in the sky.
Looking up, he saw a new spaceship slowly descending. This was the spaceship that he had sent to pick up Mad Blade and the others. It had finally arrived.
Whoosh!
The hatch opened, and fifty players including Mad Blade, Pork Bun, Hao Tian, and the others jumped out with jetpacks and landed in the square.
Most of the players in the square recognized this group of professional players. They looked over with surprise.
"Yo, you guys are back too."
Many people greeted them warmly. This group of professional players had performed well in the Pro League and were quite popular. They had not seen these professional players in a long time.
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