Elite selection?
Upon hearing this, many players immediately thought of the "Thirty-Second Real Man Club" that had left with Black Star, and were instantly disheartened.
Could it be that Black Star means we have to go through this test again? But I can't do it! If I could pass, we 1.0 would have already flown to the heavens shoulder to shoulder with you!
"As long as you can pass the test of my warriors and prove your strength, the doors of the Black Star Mercenary Group will be open to you..." Han Xiao explained briefly, then threw out the task he had already set up.
[Mercenary's Selection]
[Mission Introduction: The Black Star Mercenary Group has fought across the stars, and its members are all powerful warriors. Only by successfully passing their tests can one join Black Star and become an elite mercenary.]
[Mission Requirement: Pass a battle test with any mercenary]
[Reward: 1 experience point, Black Star Mercenary Group faction unlocked, Black Star Mercenary Group relationship +100]
The players quickly glanced at it and began to discuss it animatedly.
"So it wasn't Black Star who personally selected the people."
"The description doesn't specify the form of the combat test. Is it a one-on-one duel like before?"
Han Xiao gave a wink, and the mercenaries behind him brought out a large, semi-transparent screen that had been prepared beforehand. They placed it next to them, and Han Xiao pointed to the screen, saying, "If you want to participate in the selection, enter your information on it. Phillip will give each applicant a number, and the screen will show the selection battles that will be held in batches. Pay attention to which battle you are participating in."
The screen lit up, and a blue ring pattern appeared in the center, surrounded by floating particles that trembled slightly. At the same time, the built-in speaker emitted the voice of artificial intelligence.
"Black Star AI Phillip... buzz... happy to serve you..."
Many players looked surprised and followed suit, entering their names, occupations, and other information to receive a number representing their identity. Soon, a new interface appeared at the top of the screen, indicating that a new selection was about to begin, with hundreds of participants needing to go to the arena to take the test.
The text also shows that Melos was the mercenary who presided over the selection.
After studying it for a while, the players understood the selection mechanism. It wasn't a one-on-one selection, but a one-to-many selection. One Black Star mercenary would test hundreds of players. What they had to do was to last for a certain period of time. Once the time limit was up, if they hadn't fallen into a near-death state or remained within the arena, they would be considered to have passed the test and could join Black Star, becoming the victors.
The selection process takes place in multiple sessions at the same time, with varying numbers of participants and different opponents in each session. The Black Star mercenary you will encounter is random, entirely based on luck. Most importantly, even if you lose in the selection battle, you can apply to Phillip again without any restrictions, making it like a challenge that can be repeated indefinitely.
Many players, unsuspecting and finding it quite amusing, were filled with enthusiasm and submitted their applications.
Han Xiao decided to conduct the selection in this way, having his hundreds of mercenaries help him assess the players. Since these mercenaries were idle anyway, instead of letting them waste time playing cards every day, it would be better to give them something to do, which would not only save his own effort but also be more efficient.
The selection process is merely a formality. Of course, he knows the current strength level of the players. Although recruiting as many players as possible is good, it's impossible to just let any player come along, say "I want to join," and immediately accept them. That would be too simplistic. The better factions all have prerequisites for joining. Setting up a selection process is a clever way to make players feel that joining a mercenary group has a threshold and is challenging, not something they can just join on a whim.
He thought about it yesterday and decided to make the selection a routine activity in the eyes of the players. A mercenary would select dozens or hundreds of players at a time—the exact number would be controlled by Phillip and depend on the mercenary's strength. The goal was to ensure that the number of participating players was within the mercenary's capabilities and could be easily handled, and Phillip, who kept records of the mercenaries' data, would not make any mistakes.
Each match has dozens or even hundreds of players, like a chaotic brawl. Besides dealing with the BOSS (mercenaries), players also have to sabotage each other to ensure that they and their companions are the last ones standing and become one of the final winners, thus creating a competitive environment.
Han Xiao's initial idea was to have no mercenaries involved, allowing players to select themselves and gather groups of players for free-for-all battles, similar to a battle royale mode. However, this would result in low recruitment efficiency—because without powerful external factors like mercenaries, each selection process would take a long time, as there would be many opportunists everywhere, and it would also fail to showcase the strength of Black Star mercenaries.
Furthermore, this kind of brutal selection process might make some players feel disrespected. Therefore, Han Xiao ultimately chose the current model, having his mercenaries conduct the test. This not only improves efficiency but also acts as a lubricant, reducing the probability of player dissatisfaction and making the selection process less barbaric.
Players do not consume any resources to participate in the selection process, and if they fail, they can wait for a lottery to try again. This ensures that the threshold is not too high, giving players the opportunity to keep trying. At the same time, since players can only do Sanctuary missions at the current stage of the Mutation Disaster, the selection challenge is quite interesting and can serve as a break from missions.
The selection venue was naturally the Sanctuary Arena, which he had built himself. The professional league had been held here before, but it was now vacant. Han Xiao took it back for his own use, Bennett and Huang Yu naturally had no objections.
More than ten minutes later.
Thousands of players flooded into the arena for the first qualifying battle. Even those who hadn't yet been selected came to watch and see how it went so they could get a better understanding of the situation.
Melos stood in the center of a large arena, holding his ship-slaying sword. Hundreds of players were watching him intently from all sides, giving him a feeling of being surrounded and facing a chilling, desolate place.
The onlookers were buzzing with discussion.
"The time limit is two minutes. After two minutes, as long as you haven't fallen out of the arena or are not in a near-death state, you can join the Black Star Mercenary Group."
"Several hundred people, holding out for two minutes should be quite easy, right..."
"Easy? Don't be ridiculous. Haven't you seen Meat Bun's Black Star series videos? He's Melos, a powerful Black Star executive. One strike and this arena is gone! Even if you haven't seen the videos, you must have experienced yesterday's battle, right? Didn't you see him sweeping through the beast horde?"
"I didn't see it, I'm dead."
Melos looked around. Han Xiao had instructed him to hold back. If he went all out, two minutes would be enough for him to take down all the participants. Most of these players were Grade D, with only a small number reaching Grade C. This small number was not enough to make up for the gap.
Looking at the sea of superhumans, Melos felt a surge of excitement. Black Star hadn't lied to him after all; there really were hundreds of thousands of superhumans here!
Planet Sunil was suffering from Calamity. Han Xiao had promised to bring a crowd of people even more terrifying than the Calamity to resolve Sunil's predicament. Melos had always believed in Han Xiao's promise, and now that he saw the promise come true, he was overwhelmed with excitement.
Silently counting the time, Melos gripped his ship-slaying sword and nodded.
"The selection begins..." Phillip's voice echoed.
Boom!
The next moment, the vast majority of players rushed towards Melos, unleashing a barrage of attacks. Their numbers gave them confidence, and they didn't care about holding out for two minutes. They felt they could defeat Melos like a boss, and they all unleashed their attacks.
Only a very small number of players retreat instead of advancing, hiding behind others.
Attacks came from all directions, but Melos remained unfazed. With a casual whirlwind slash, the circular blade wave spread 360 degrees without any blind spots, covering half of the arena and directly annihilating all ranged attacks. The Pugilist Class players who were approaching could not withstand the aftershocks and were directly slashed away, crashing to the edge of the arena, their health instantly dropping by about 40%.
"Holy crap, that AOE damage is terrifying!"
"That was close, we almost got knocked down."
The charging players suffered a great loss, their faces changing drastically. The few players who dodged were outside the range of the slash and escaped unscathed, feeling extremely fortunate.
Fortunately, we didn't stubbornly confront them head-on; we knew our limits.
For today's players, Melos's strength is completely overwhelming. Han Xiao had already guessed that the players would initially approach the selection battle with the mindset of fighting a BOSS. The first round was hosted by Melos in order to establish an invincible image in the players' minds. Moreover, in the following rounds, the ones who took action were all cadres-level members.
The result was no surprise. Even though Melos went easy on them, he still managed to utterly defeat the players, killing them one by one with a single strike.
Players were forced to abandon their head-on confrontation strategy and instead roamed around frantically, observing from the edges, and surviving in the chaos—it was incredibly exciting.
Two minutes later, less than ten people remained standing. Melos sheathed his knife, and the surviving players seemed to wake from a dream, their faces beaming with joy.
"We... we won?!"
Hundreds of defeated players looked on with envy, jealousy, and indignation. How could these few cowards have won the grand prize? It's outrageous!
Of the hundreds of participants, fewer than ten succeeded, a very low success rate. However, this was intentional on Han Xiao's part. He initially lowered the success rate to make success seem rare, and then gradually had the mercenaries make things easier to increase the success rate.
"Congratulations on passing the test. Black Star welcomes you. Once you arrive in interstellar space and register with the Mercenary Alliance, you will be official mercenaries."
Melos extended his hand and shook hands with each of the survivors—this was at Han Xiao's request, to demonstrate differential treatment.
The group was overjoyed to find that the faction panel was indeed activated. They could browse the faction shop without having to find Black Star, and the items were no longer grayed out. Although they couldn't afford anything without Enas, the colorful interface was much better than a completely gray one.
Only these few people received 100 faction contribution points after completing the [Mercenary's Selection] mission. They had watched Meat Bun's video and knew that 100 points of faction relationship below [Friendly] could be purchased for 50 Enas, so they all felt they had made a profit of 50 Enas points!
The group was overjoyed.
The onlookers were filled with envy; they had keenly grasped a key detail: they had heard Melos say, "Heading to interstellar space."
"So, as long as we pass the test, we can leave with Black Star after the Planet Aquamarine storyline ends?"
"As I guessed, Black Star is indeed the guide who led us to interstellar space in version 2.0!"
The players' eyes lit up; they were eager and impatient to participate in the selection process.
The subsequent selections proceeded as planned, and Han Xiao did not keep a close eye on them.
Because there are so many players, Han Xiao's schedule includes many selections every day, with a selection battle taking place roughly every twenty minutes. The arena has several stages, and several selections are held simultaneously each time. It is estimated that one to two thousand people will participate in the selections every hour, which means forty to fifty thousand people will participate every day. The pass rate is currently controlled at around five percent.
With hundreds of thousands of players in the Sanctuary, the cycle repeats, and every player has a chance. This event can continue for a long time, like a slow and steady stream. After all, the selection battle is quite interesting, and most players hold onto a gamble, believing they can get lucky. Master Han always felt that this illusion greatly facilitated his plan, making players willingly jump into his trap.
"After a few more days of adjustment, players will get used to the selection battles. Once things are on track, we can gradually increase the success rate. I won't need to worry about it anymore."
Regarding the plans for the faction, Han Xiao had prepared many methods, but it wasn't time to use them yet; the selection process was just the beginning.
Moreover, the difficulty of the selection challenge creates a demand for players to enhance their strength in a short period of time, which can also increase sales. He has no idea how many birds he killed with this stone.
From dawn till dusk, the square was bustling with people all day long, and Han Xiao was ready to call it a day.
By the end of the day, his experience gains had exceeded one billion.
"A total of 1.29 billion experience points. It's been a long time since I've felt this good..." Han Xiao exhaled, feeling satisfied. The last time he gained experience on such a large scale was two years ago when he left Planet Aquamarine. It felt like a long-awaited rain after a drought.
"This amount of experience is enough to level up to 120, with some to spare."
Just as I opened the panel and was about to invest in leveling up, a rumbling sound of air currents suddenly rose from the sky.
Looking up, he saw a new spaceship slowly descending. This was the spaceship he had sent out to pick up Frenzied Saber and the others; it had finally arrived at its destination.
laugh--
The hatch opened, and fifty players, including Frenzied Saber, Meat Bun, and Hao Tian, jumped out with jetpacks and landed in the plaza.
Most of the players in the square recognized these professional gamers and looked over with surprise and uncertainty.
"Oh, you guys are back too."
Many people greeted them warmly. This group of top players had performed brilliantly in the professional league and were quite popular. They hadn't seen these professional players for a long time.