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"I a.s.sume you still need some more members left?" asked Shen Lu casually without even bothering to tone down his voice.
This was because he knew that the surrounding people were still listening onto their conversation, even though from the surface, these people appeared to be minding their own business, chatting with each others casually or eating silently.
Naturally, Duan Li could also somehow guess the intentions behind Shen Lu"s question this time. Thus, he nodded and replied, "Yup, I would still need 7 more followers for now!"
Shen Lu chuckled out, feeling glad that Duan Li wasn"t someone that was too dense to understood his actions.
"I see, well how about this then. I knew a lot of students along with their background whom would be suitable enough to become your followers. But even though that was the case, I guess we should also open up a booth for people to fill in their names to apply!"
Hearing this, the surrounding people began to whisper silently.
"Did you hear that? Investigate whom these people that was mentioned by Shen Lu were!"
"They are opening up a booth! Great, I could try my luck!"
"This Shen Lu is truly a cunning person. I feel like there is more to this than meets the eye!"
"Definitely! The words spoken out by someone from the Strategist cla.s.s were not to be taken lightly!"
In fact, some of these people were spot with their deductions. Shen Lu does has an ulterior motive when he mentioned those two things out loud.
Firstly, although he knew a lot of people with powerful reputation and backgrounds with them, he was not 100 percent sure that he could invite them to become Duan Li"s followers.
Therefore, as the contingency plan, he purposely let out that they would be opening a public booth to accept application from the ma.s.ses!
This way, even if he could only brought in two or three people from his personal invitation, the rest of the empty slots could be filled out by these people and this also made it appear fair to them as well.
Of course, he would have to conduct a thorough background checks on all those people before accepting them, and this was not a problem for him.
Shen Lu"s smile was caught by Duan Li, and again, he could somehow understood the whole reason behind Shen Lu"s scheme.
"This... why do I feel like I could somehow know what he was thinking? Has my instinct also underwent a qualitative change slowly?" thought Duan Li as he found this to be strange.
But then, he soon remembered that back before this, after his first encounter with the golden mysterious pearl, he was already able to deduce whose potatoes it was during the meal with his mother and the number of copper coins inside the pouche bag that he could identify without even looking inside it.
"I see... So the changes has already been made back then. But why does this instinct of mine did not activate when I was in the Eternal maze before? It would"ve been a great help to me and I wouldn"t have to destroy that chamber as well..." Duan Li sighed inwardly.
This was definitely weird for Duan Li, he still couldn"t find out just what could stimulate the activation of this heightened instinct ability of his even after thinking for a while.
"Although brother, could I apply to become the manager for your party?" requested Shen Lu suddenly as he cupped his chin.
Manager?
So there was another position besides the mentor and advisor?
"If I give you the position of the manager, would you be able to handle it?" asked Duan Li wording his sentence around carefully. This way, it would imply to Shen Lu that Duan Li somehow knew what the responsibility of being a manager were, even though the reality was the complete opposite, he didn"t know a thing about it!
"Don"t worry, I could handle it. I would only manage and filter out the applications and you would still have the final say in deciding whether to accept them or not. Furthermore, I could also manage what their task should be if you wanted in the future, just ring the bell!" replied Shen Lu as he winked.
Duan Li nodded as he felt quite satisfied with Shen Lu"s answer. If Shen Lu were to mention that he also wanted to manage the resources as well, his view on him would have plummeted to rock bottom.
It seems that this guy knew where the borderline were!
Suddenly, w.a.n.g Xiolun whom was quiet all these while began to speak.
"It would be best if we could form a complete party soon. According to the recent news, another monster stampede will be coming soon, they will be a one star monster stampede!" he said with a serious expression.
As if he just remembered about this news too, Shen Lu snapped his fingers together.
"That"s right, now that we have joined under you, the academy would no longer group us among the other people as we would automatically become one group under the banner of the first squad as part of their reserve forces!" Shen Lu said with a serious expression to him.
"However, this would be beneficial for us too. Usually, if a student were not a member of a party under a Lord cla.s.s, they would be randomly inserted into a group formed by the academy based on their ranks and other criteria. But as we are now a party under you, we could become familiar with the battle prowess of each other and could complement the flaws by using teamwork!"
"The only downside to this was, a normal random group formed by the academy as part of the reserve forces consisted anywhere between 30 to 50 people. On the other hand, we could only have a maximum of 10 people, so we must focus entirely on the total battle prowess of our party!" he added.
Hearing this, Duan Li"s countenance also turned serious. In his mind, a one star monster should have the strength like the Earthly golem or the Komodo. He knew how tough they were to beat personally.
Not to mention, that during a monster stampede, these creatures would come against them like the flood!
"I see, how many days do we got before the stampedes, do we have the exact figures?" Duan Li asked, as he had just recovered today, he was not yet updated with the current news.
"The intelligence department estimated that they would attack the Jiu empire within two weeks time. The estimated total one star monster in this stampede were about 30,000!"
"We don"t know why, but their numbers kept on increasing dramatically during the last few months. This was also why the academy decided to form the reserve forces for the first squad of the Subjugation squad! Even the Second squad was being put on standby this time." replied Shen Lu with a grim countenance.
Pu!
30,000? That was way too many!
From his recollection, a one star monster stampede would only be about a few thousand in total at best, how did it jump into five figures in an instant right now?
"I have also heard about this issue two days ago and the senior teachers were currently having a meeting about it right now. According to their strategy, the whole 81 members of the First Squad would be deployed and they would act as the commanders for the groups of reserve forces." said Xiahou Yu as she joined in the conversation.
"Furthermore, the academy will deploy about 6,000 students from the academy to act as the reserve forces. Naturally, although we are a party of ten members, we would also be commanded by the members of the First Squad as well." she added.
"That"s right, the strategy that was proposed by the Vice-Princ.i.p.al this time would be to split the enemy forces into three groups. The enemy would appear from the north, Blastwinter desert. They would have to travel through the great canyon before they could enter the soil of the Empire!" w.a.n.g Xiolun said as he crossed his arms together.
"I see... splitting the monsters into three groups is a great idea indeed. I"ve heard that most of these First Squad members was at the Core formation realm?" said Duan Li, this was coming from his vivid memories.
"That"s right! w.a.n.g Xiolun was almost promoted to become one of their official members, too bad that their standards was way too high for us and we could only become the trainees." replied Shen Lu as he sighed, a little bit of disappointment could be seen on his face.
He then continued, "The basic criteria alone was that a single skill art should be able to take out, impede or knock unconscious 5 to 10 monsters at once! Unless one really has a very solid foundation, no one would be able to pa.s.s such a criteria against the one star monsters!"
"Thus as a trainee, we were required to hunt monsters and acc.u.mulate experiences to be able to achieve that!"
Duan Li nodded as he listened to Shen Lu"s explanation. He started to recall more about the Subjugation Squad from his memories.
Every single member of the squad possesses a terrifying might that could knock out tens of monsters at the same time! They are veterans of the battlefield and rarely would they ever fall during a monster stampedes.
Now that the enemy forces were divided into three, they would also have to divide themselves accordingly. Thus, there would be exactly 27 of them in each fronts that would command up to 2,000 students under them!
This was definitely going to be a bloodbath!
...