"Whoa... You're still here flirting with the female soldiers, kid? You'll need some real skills to tame them."
While the female soldiers were winking at Xu Ye, Shen Xinghai came running over with his little megaphone, his flamboyant cloak draped over him.
"So you mean if I can tame them, I can marry them all?" Xu Ye's train of thought took a turn.
"..." Shen Xinghai stumbled, then patted his shoulder. "An admirable ambition, but I'm afraid you couldn't handle it. These women aren't recruits. They've already seen combat. Take off their clothes, and you'll find just as many scars on them as on us men."
"You haven't seen them laying into Great Fiends and Aberrants with broadswords and spears. Once you do, you'll think of them as brothers, as comrades."
Great Fiends?
Xu Ye knew little about Great Fiends.
He had originally assumed they were simply wild beasts mutated by radiation. That was how the general education classes in Night Spirit City had described them, too.
But hearing the term from Shen Xinghai, a Sequence 7 powerhouse, gave it a different weight.
He seemed to place Great Fiends on the same level as Aberrants.
Seeing Xu Ye's confusion, Shen Xinghai gave a cheeky grin. "You'll find out once you join Crimson... Now get running. You can take on the Spirit Mirror Knight alone, so you'd better outshine everyone in the assessment."
"I won't run away, unlike certain people," Xu Ye teased.
Shen Xinghai bared his teeth, momentarily at a loss for words.
He stopped and watched Xu Ye recede into the distance.
"Interesting. Looks like we've got a dark horse."
He glanced at the time.
"Ten minutes are up. You lot, all eliminated!"
A gunshot rang out.
Nearly thirty people were running slower than the female soldiers-men and women,