After hanging up the call with Laifer, Han Xiao stopped repairing his mecha, left the workshop, went to the bridge command room, and issued a summons, ordering all officers of the fleet to come to a meeting.
The cleanup of the battlefield did not require constant supervision from the officers. After the order was given, the fleet officers arrived at the flagship one after another, gathered in the command room, and nodded to Han Xiao upon entering.
Han Xiao nodded in response to his veteran subordinates: the dejected Lagi, the steady and reliable Melos, the graceful Sylvia, the reckless Harmon, and the three Calamity Grade who joined three years ago, Kampe, Marion, Mischich, among others—a veritable wealth of talent.
Besides the legion's officers, there were also several other members of Section Zero in the expeditionary fleet. They had been fighting side by side for half a year and were very familiar with each other, so they started whispering and chatting.
Once everyone had arrived, Han Xiao tapped the table, and the chatter immediately ceased as everyone looked over.
"The reason I've gathered everyone here is to inform you of the next steps. I just received a message from Amethyst; they are very satisfied with our achievements over the past six months and have decided to recall us and give us a long leave. Our mission is over, and we can rest for a while."
Upon hearing this, everyone was overjoyed.
"Great! I haven't been home for half a year. My wife asks me every day when I'm coming back. Haha, now I can give her a surprise." A key member of another faction spoke first, his tone excited.
"Maybe she's giving you a surprise..." Lagi patted his shoulder reassuringly.
"Thanks." The man looked grateful; that solved the problem.
"Finally, I can rest..."
Sylvia's eyes sparkled with excitement. She bit her lower lip, clutched her chest with both hands, and almost cheered loudly.
Han Xiao glanced at her and nodded secretly. In the past three years, Sylvia had devoted herself to real combat, walking on the edge of life and death, and her growth rate was far greater than before. She had entered a period of rapid growth.
In her previous life, Sylvia version 3.0 was Calamity Grade, earning the title of "Mechanical Female Knight." Over the past three years, this potential has gradually become apparent. Sylvia once envied Fording's terrifying talent, and now she has discovered a similar talent.
Han Xiao estimated that Sylvia might actually be able to grow from Grade B to Grade A during the update period, with nearly seven years left for her to grow.
However, Sylvia's biggest change is in her appearance. As the saying goes, a girl changes a lot as she grows up. Over the past three years, Sylvia has gradually blossomed. She has long, wavy, flaxen-brown hair, a tall figure, and fair skin. As the saying goes, fair skin can cover up a hundred flaws, but she is not only not ugly, but also very outstanding in appearance. Her features are not only three-dimensional and beautiful, but also have a kind of pure yet alluring look. Her heroic and dashing temperament reveals a natural charm. She is definitely a beautiful but poor girl.
Instead of wearing heavy alloy armor, she mainly uses a light combat suit with a shield as the primary protection, so she looks quite cool, revealing large areas of her hot figure wrapped in a high-strength fiber tight-fitting combat suit, giving her a unique charm that increases her attractiveness by at least thirty percentage points.
Beautiful women are always pleasing to the eye. He couldn't help but sigh. In his previous life Sylvia was a regular in the world of doujinshi, and he figured she wouldn't escape it in this life either. It just depends on when some lewd players will discover her.
"Old Mei, when we get back, you'll take over Reynold's job and check on the industrial development of each star system," Han Xiao instructed Melos, turning to him.
"Okay." Melos nodded.
Melos has always been an important management officer. In the past six months, he has been accompanying the fleet on expeditions to hone his skills, while the daily affairs of the Black Star Army have been temporarily handled by Reynold and a group of administrative officers who are stationed at headquarters, and they report to Han Xiao regularly.
In comparison, Han Xiao still trusted Melos's abilities more. Apart from his love of playing cards, Old Mei was quite reliable in other aspects. He had also made great progress in the past six months, becoming one of the top performers in the B+ rank, and had finally begun to touch the threshold of the Calamity Grade.
In his previous life, Melos perished early in the beast tide of Planet Sunil, and Han Xiao didn't know whether he had the potential to become Calamity Grade being.
However, since he is a protagonist-type character with Lucky Halo, even if his talent and aptitude are not as good as Fording's, who has an older sister-like cheat code, they are at least far superior to ordinary people.
After giving his instructions, Han Xiao ended the meeting.
The battlefield had been cleared, and the fleet set sail, returning to Colton.
Han Xiao locked himself in his office and began to analyze the current operational status of the Black Star Army.
Over the past three years, the Black Star Army has developed smoothly. The importance of its mercenary business has fallen to third place. Its industry has gradually transformed, and it is no longer a mercenary group, but has finally become a large-scale private armed organization.
The original mercenary business was separated to form the Black Star Army's mercenary division, which specializes in mercenary business in the form of a mercenary group. As a result, it satisfied the wishes of many freelance mercenaries, did not lose many talents, and increased its attractiveness to mercenaries.
The Mercenary Alliance of the Shattered Star Ring has taken shape, but has not yet been officially established. The Black Star Army is currently one of the proposed high-ranking members.
The Sky Ring, Blades, and other large legions are using Han Xiao's name to recruit members throughout the entire star field. At the same time, they also need to negotiate with the Mercenary Guild Alliance, a cosmic-level guild. Shattered Star Ring just one of the guild alliance's divisions, and to form an alliance, they must get past the guild alliance.
Mercenary business has taken a backseat; the Black Star Army's main business now is the long-term cooperation agreement with Amethyst, which serves as its Secret War ally.
The second most important business is mining. Dozens of star system civilizations have invited him to establish branch bases in their respective territories and allow him to mine resource planets. The profits from this are the most terrifying, and it is currently the Black Star Army's largest source of financial income.
By establishing branch bases in dozens of star systems, the Black Star Army's territory expanded to most of the Colton Star Cluster.
With so many star systems, so far apart from each other, building bases with their own funds would be extremely expensive. Add to that maintenance costs, logistics costs, and other expenses, and the legion's cash flow would become unhealthy, or even break down.
While the contract fees offered by these galactic-level civilizations are substantial, they cannot cover the enormous expenses. Moreover, if they want to mine resource planets, they will have to invest even more, recruit a large number of people, and manufacture or purchase various mining equipment, which is another terrifying expense.
While galactic-level civilizations might offer some support, they certainly wouldn't go all out to help the Black Star Army exploit their own resource planets. They would only provide a certain number of personnel and equipment, enough for the Black Star Army to exploit just one resource planet—that would be the maximum they could offer.
Mining resources from planets requires a huge initial investment, which most forces cannot handle. If the legion's funds are used to mine independently, the development level of the mining rights to the resource planets will be extremely small, even with the help of the Black Spirit Race. Although the Black Spirit Race are good at mining, they are still very backward. They suffered a massacre on Planet Sunil, and their population has not recovered in just a few years.
However, Han Xiao saw the profit-driven nature of businessmen and promoted the mining rights contracts between the Black Star Army and various star system civilizations, publicly inviting bids. The bidding targets were conglomerates from all over the star field. These conglomerates knew the huge profits contained in resource planets, and they all flocked to him seeking cooperation.
Han Xiao certainly couldn't resell the civilization's mining rights, but getting people to cooperate was no problem—he could have the conglomerates provide funding to help the Black Star Army conduct large-scale, multi-planetary mining, and the resources collected could be sold through these conglomerates' channels, allowing them to earn a cut.
Han Xiao separated the cooperative mining slots in different star systems into separate tenders, clearly defining the areas that each consortium was responsible for investing in and selling.
In this way, although the profits and Tu Shu cannot compare to the income from independent mining, they can accumulate into a substantial amount.
The influx of capital enabled the Black Star Army to expand its operations in multiple star systems within three years. Each branch base in each star system was mining six or seven resource planets, generating significantly higher revenue than independent mining operations, thus maximizing the utilization of mining rights.
The number of cooperating conglomerates alone jumped from single digits to 127, all of which are well-known and prominent conglomerates within the star field.
Therefore, in just three short years, the Black Star Army has grown exponentially!
Warfare, mining, and mercenary activities are the three main businesses of the Black Star Army, which are diversifying their operations and thus exhibiting certain characteristics of a conglomerate. The number of official members has long exceeded ten million, and the daily management personnel who handle miscellaneous tasks have also become an important part of the legion's membership.
As the scale of operations exploded, so did the volume of tasks. Every day, a ton of problems needed to be solved, giving Han Xiao a taste of the headaches of being a space foreman. He wished this thing were as simple as fighting. He had no choice but to delegate most of the specific tasks to his subordinates, while he only needed to manage the overall blueprint of the force and occasionally go out to fight. That was about it.
"The Legion's three main businesses are on track, generating substantial revenue and operating in a virtuous cycle. All I need to do is maintain the Legion's stability."
Han Xiao pondered.
Since receiving the first wave of profits from mining the resource planet more than two years ago, he has rarely checked his bank account balance... He knows that as long as he doesn't do charity, he will have more money than he can spend.
This holiday was a rare opportunity, and he didn't want to worry about the affairs of the faction. Instead, he planned to use it to complete the inheritance mission.
Over the course of three years, Han Xiao found a quest that, according to his memory, could yield a level 180 silver inheritance blueprint. The quest process can be summarized as passing through a series of trials and striving to gain the recognition of the inheritor.
Because this is a level 180 blueprint quest, the process is extremely tedious, and the quest location is in another star cluster.
Han Xiao hasn't taken many vacations in the past three years, and he's only managed to complete the seventh stage of this mission. He estimates that he should be able to finish the mission and obtain the inheritance blueprint during this long vacation.
Obtaining the blueprints was only the first step; he also needed to create the finished orange product. Han Xiao didn't intend to use the Mission Settlement Card. He had spent a lot of experience upgrading his skills in order to improve his advanced knowledge. Although killing the Calamity Grade had restored a lot of his experience, his current experience reserves were only enough to level up by about ten levels at most.
With seven years to go before the 3.0 update, Han Xiao felt he didn't have enough experience, making Beyond Grade A rank virtually impossible. His current strength was also relatively sufficient, so he didn't see the need to search everywhere for Mission Settlement Card to quickly advance his class... After all, the level 200 advancement quest was another hurdle.
While pondering, Han Xiao casually opened the panel and browsed through the task list, which was filled with quite a few tasks.
The fourth ring of [Prey] has remained silent for three Manison, for reasons unknown. This has made Han Xiao very wary, as it feels like the calm before the storm, and the longer it brews, the more terrifying it will become.
Han Xiao hadn't had time to work on Goddora's Grade S [Bloodline] quest, always thinking it would be too troublesome. He figured he'd rather use that time to develop and strengthen the Black Star Army; the benefits would definitely be much greater than the quest rewards.
Aroshia's personal quest continues to drag on, while Fording's hidden quest [Choice] was completed in three years, reaching its fourth outcome... Fording and Morning Star are together, it's really like I'm sleeping with myself.
The mission rewards were plentiful, giving a large amount of experience and a chance for a random reward. Fording and Morning Star's favorability towards each other increased significantly, making Han Xiao feel like a matchmaker bringing the two together.
Wouldn't this be considered narcissism?!
Han Xiao simply couldn't imagine what the wedding ceremony would be like if these two were to get married... It would definitely be an eyesore!
Didi--
As Han Xiao was looking through the panel, his communicator suddenly rang.
Upon picking it up, I saw it was a message from Iso.
"Verna... Hmm? Is she asking me to hand over my work and train a successor in advance?"
Han Xiao muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing instantly.