About half a month later, enough mid-tier adventurers had been recruited for the experiment.
There were forty-nine in total—Sui Xiong felt that his "command" stat was surely inferior to Renard's, so he cut the number in half. At the same time, he thought "forty-nine" sounded more grand and impressive than "fifty," so he cut one more.
Out of nearly five hundred applications, an acceptance rate of less than one-tenth was simply... only to be expected. Neither the applicants nor the Northwest Republic's staff found anything wrong with it.
A legendary powerhouse was recruiting students, and the requirements had even been lowered to the mid-tier. It was only proper for the selection to be demanding. If he indiscriminately admitted everyone, good and bad alike, that would be what seemed wrong.
If that really happened, the applicants would instead be somewhat worried, because it would mean that this senior powerhouse had not taken them seriously and had merely picked a few people at random.
Now, this senior had not even filled all fifty slots, which showed that he had indeed selected carefully. Some of the chosen applicants were outstanding in their own right; others, though not particularly remarkable, must surely possess some potential that had yet to be discovered. In any case, there definitely would not be any worthless fools there merely to make up the numbers.
This immediately filled the selected applicants with confidence, while those who had not been chosen envied them immensely.
As for protests or suspicions... this world's standard of living was far lower than Earth's. A relatively harsh society could not nurture soft-hearted do-gooders overflowing with sympathy. If the weak were not sufficiently humble before the strong, everyone would only see them as brain-dead idiots begging for a beating; no one would feel even the slightest sympathy