Chapter 123 Going Home

Having ended the call with Leif, Han Xiao stopped repairing his mecha, left the workshop, came to the bridge command room, and issued a recall order, summoning all levels of officers in the fleet for a meeting.

There was no need for the officers to keep an eye on cleaning the battlefield. After the order was issued, the fleet's officers arrived at the flagship one after another, gathered in the command room, and nodded to Han Xiao as they entered.

Han Xiao nodded in response to his veteran cadres: the dejected Raki, the steady and reliable Melos, the graceful Sylvia, the reckless Haimo, and the three newly-joined Calamity Grades from three years ago, Kamber, Marion, and Miskechi, among others. He had plenty of talent.

Besides the legion's cadres, there were also other Zero Organization members in the expeditionary fleet. After fighting side by side for half a year, they were quite familiar with each other and chatted intimately.

After everyone arrived, Han Xiao knocked on the table, and the murmuring immediately ceased as everyone looked over.

"The reason I've called everyone here is to inform you of our next course of action. I just received news from the Purple Crystal. They are very satisfied with our achievements over the past six months and have decided to summon us back for a long vacation. Our mission is over, and we can rest for a while."

Upon hearing this, everyone was overjoyed.

"That's great! I haven't been home in half a year. My wife has been asking me when I'm coming back every day. Haha, I can give her a surprise now!" One of the core members from another force spoke first, his tone filled with joy.

"Maybe she'll give you a surprise..." Raki patted his shoulder consolingly.

"Thanks," the man said gratefully, feeling more confident.

"Finally, some rest..."

Sylvia's eyes shone with excitement. She bit her lower lip and covered her heart with her hands, nearly cheering out loud.

Han Xiao glanced at her and nodded inwardly. In the past three years, Sylvia had devoted herself to actual combat, walking on the edge of life and death. Her growth rate far exceeded what it had been, and she had entered a period of rapid development.

In his previous life, Sylvia's Version 3.0 was a Calamity Grade, earning the title of "Mechanical Valkyrie." Over the past three years, this potential gradually manifested, and Sylvia had once envied Fu Ding's terrifying talent. Now, she too had discovered a similar talent.

Han Xiao estimated that Sylvia might truly grow from Grade B to Grade A during the update period, with nearly seven years of growth time remaining.

However, Sylvia's greatest change was her appearance. A girl changes a lot between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four. Over the past three years, Sylvia had gradually blossomed, with long, wavy, flaxen-brown hair, a tall figure, and snow-white skin. As the saying goes, fair skin covers up a hundred flaws, but she was not only not ugly but also very beautiful. Her features were not only three-dimensional and pretty but also combined to create a pure yet enchanting look. Her heroic demeanor was tinged with a natural allure, making her a total "pale, poor, and pretty" type.

And instead of wearing heavy alloy armor, she mainly used lightweight combat suits, focusing on shields, so she looked quite cool, revealing large swathes of her hot figure wrapped in high-strength fiber bodysuits, giving off a strange charm. Her charm value had increased by at least thirty percent.

Beauties are always pleasing to the eye, and he couldn't help but sigh. In his previous life, Sylvia was a frequent figure in the hentai community. He figured this life would be no different; it was just a matter of time before some horny players discovered her.

"Old Mei, after we go back, you'll take over Reynold's work and check on the industrial development in each star system," Han Xiao turned to Melos and instructed.

"Alright," Melos nodded.

Melos had always been an important management cadre. In the past half a year, in order to hone his skills, he had followed the fleet on its expedition, while the Black Star Army's daily affairs were temporarily handled by Reynold and a group of administrative officers stationed at headquarters, who reported to Han Xiao regularly.

In comparison, Han Xiao trusted Melos's ability more. Other than his love of playing cards, Old Mei was quite reliable in other aspects. He had also gained a lot in the past six months, becoming one of the best among the Grade B+ powerhouses, and had finally begun to touch the threshold of the Calamity Grade.

In his previous life, Melos had died early in the beast tide on Sunil Star, and Han Xiao didn't know if he had the potential to become a Calamity Grade powerhouse.

But since he was a protagonist-type character with a lucky aura, his talent and aptitude, even if not comparable to Fu Ding, who had some kind of old lady cheat, were at least far beyond ordinary people.

…

After giving his instructions, Han Xiao ended the meeting.

By this time, the battlefield had also been cleaned up, and the fleet set off to return to Colton.

Han Xiao locked himself in his office to calculate the current operating status of the Black Star Army.

In the past three years, the Black Star Army's development had been smooth sailing. The importance of mercenary business had declined to third place. The industry had gradually completed its transformation, no longer a mercenary group, and finally became a large-scale armed organization of a private nature.

The original mercenary business was separated to form the mercenary division of the Black Star Army, following the form of a mercenary group to specialize in mercenary business, thus satisfying the wishes of many free mercenaries. It did not lose much talent but instead increased its appeal to mercenaries.

The mercenary allied forces of the Shattered Star Ring had already established a prototype, but it had not yet been formally listed. The Black Star Army was currently one of the designated high-level seats.

Sky Ring, Blade Edge, and other large legions were taking advantage of Han Xiao's name to recruit members all over the star field. At the same time, they also had to negotiate with the Mercenary Union Alliance. This was a cosmic-level large union. The Shattered Star Ring was only one of the divisions of the Mercenary Union Alliance, and if they wanted to form an allied force, they had to pass the union alliance's test.

With the mercenary business relegated to third place, the Black Star Army's main business was the Purple Crystal's long-term cooperation treaty, fighting secret wars for them.

The second most important business was mining. Dozens of Star System civilizations had invited and supported him to establish branch bases in their respective territories, allowing him to mine resource planets. The profits in this area were the most terrifying and were the largest source of financial income for the Black Star Army.

With branch bases established in dozens of star systems, the Black Star Army's territory had expanded to most of the Colton Star Cluster.

So many star systems were far apart from each other. If its own funds were used to build bases, the expenses would be very large. In addition to maintenance fees, logistics fees, and other expenses, the legion's cash flow would become unhealthy and even face broken chains.

Although the contract fees given by these Star System civilizations were not small, they could not support the huge expenses. Not to mention that if it wanted to mine resource planets, it would have to invest more costs, recruit a large number of people, and manufacture or purchase various mining equipment, which would be another terrifying expense.

Although the Star System civilizations would provide some support, they would naturally not fully help the Black Star Army collect their own resource planets. They would only provide a certain number of people and equipment so that the Black Star Army could collect one resource planet at most.

Collecting resource planets required huge upfront investment, and most forces could not afford to play around. If it only used the legion's funds to independently conduct mining, then the level of development of the value of resource planet mining rights would be extremely small. Even with the help of the Black Spirit Race, although the Black Spirit Race was good at mining, it was still very backward. It had been killed off at Sunil Star, and its population had not recovered in just a few years.

However, Han Xiao took a fancy to the characteristics of merchants pursuing profits and promoted the Black Star Army's mining rights contract with various Star System civilizations. He publicly invited bids, and the bidding objects were financial groups from all over the star field. These financial groups knew the huge profits contained in resource planets and flocked to seek cooperation.

Han Xiao certainly could not resell the civilization's mining rights, but it was no problem to pull people together for cooperation - allowing financial groups to provide funds to help the Black Star Army conduct large-scale, multi-planetary mining, and the collected resources could be sold through the channels of these financial groups, allowing them to earn a cut.

Han Xiao separated the cooperative mining quotas of different star systems for bidding, clearly dividing the areas responsible for investment and sales for each financial group.

In this way, although the profits were not as good as independent mining, they could accumulate into a quantitative change.

A large amount of funds poured in, enabling the Black Star Army to complete its business expansion in multiple star systems in three years. The branch bases in each star system were mining six or seven resource planets, and the actual income far exceeded independent mining, maximizing the utilization rate of mining rights.

The number of cooperative financial groups alone had jumped from single digits to 127, all of which were well-known large financial groups within the star field.

Therefore, in just three years, the Black Star Army's scale had grown like a snowball!

War, mining, and employment were the three major businesses of the Black Star Army, carrying out diversified development, thus showing certain characteristics of a financial group. The number of official members had already exceeded ten million, and the daily management personnel who handled miscellaneous affairs had also become an important part of the legion's members.

Because of the explosive growth in scale, the accompanying affairs also increased geometrically. There were a lot of problems that needed to be solved every day, making Han Xiao experience the pain in the ass of an interstellar contractor. If this thing was as simple as fighting, that would be great. He had no choice but to basically hand over the specific affairs to his subordinates to handle. He only needed to control the macro-blueprint of the force and often go out to fight. There was nothing else he could do.

"The legion's three major businesses have already been on the right track, with a continuous flow of wealth and a virtuous cycle. I only need to maintain the stability of the legion."

Han Xiao pondered.

Since the first wave of income from mining resource planets was credited more than two years ago, he had rarely looked at the amount of savings... anyway, he knew that as long as he didn't do charity, he basically couldn't spend all the money.

This vacation was hard-won. He didn't want to worry about the trivial matters of the force, but instead, he was prepared to use it to deal with the legacy mission.

In the past three years, Han Xiao had found a mission in his memory that could obtain a level 180 silver legacy blueprint. The mission process could be summarized as working hard to gain the recognition of the inheritor through a series of trials.

Because this was a level 180 blueprint mission, the process was extremely cumbersome, and the mission location was in another star cluster.

Han Xiao hadn't taken many vacations in the past three years and had only completed the seventh trial of this mission. He estimated that this long vacation should be able to handle this mission and obtain the legacy blueprint.

Obtaining the blueprint was only the first step. He also had to create an orange finished product. Han Xiao didn't want to use the mission completion card. In order to upgrade advanced knowledge, he had spent a lot of experience to upgrade his skills. Although killing Calamity Grade powerhouses had made up for a lot, his current experience reserves could only level up about ten levels at most.

There were still seven years before the opening of Version 3.0. He didn't have enough experience, and becoming a Super A was basically out of the question. His current strength was also relatively enough, so Han Xiao didn't think it was necessary to look for mission completion cards everywhere to quickly change classes... after all, the level 200 advancement mission was another hurdle.

While thinking, Han Xiao also opened the panel and browsed through the mission list, which was full of accumulated missions.

The fourth trial of \[Prey] had been silent all along. Wan Ying didn't know what he was thinking, but he had been silent for three years, making Han Xiao very vigilant. It felt like the calm before the storm, and the longer it brewed, the more terrifying it would be.

Han Xiao hadn't had time to do Godora's Grade S \[Bloodline] mission. He always felt that it would be very troublesome. With this time, it would be better to use it to develop and strengthen the Black Star Army. The rewards would definitely be greater than the mission rewards.

Aroshia's personal mission was still being dragged on, but Fu Ding's hidden mission \[Choice] had been completed in the past three years, reaching the fourth result... Fu Ding and Morning Star had gotten together. It was really me sleeping with myself.

The mission rewards were quite a lot, giving a lot of experience and a random reward opportunity. Fu Ding and Morning Star's favorability had increased greatly, making Han Xiao feel like he was a matchmaker for both parties.

Speaking of which, does this situation count as narcissism?!

Han Xiao couldn't even imagine what the wedding ceremony would be like if these two were to get married... it would definitely be very eye-catching!

Didi—

Just as he was flipping through the panel, Han Xiao's communicator suddenly rang.

He picked it up and saw that it was a message from Isora.

"Verna... hmm? Is this asking me to hand over work and cultivate a successor in advance?"

Han Xiao muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing immediately.