The Legendary Mechanic

After hanging up, Han Xiao did not continue to repair his mechanical suit. He left the workshop, went to the command room, and summoned all the officers of the fleet for a meeting.

Cleaning the battlefield did not require constant monitoring from the officers. After the order was issued, the officers of the fleets came to the flagship one after another, gathering in the command room. As they entered, they all nodded at Han Xiao.

Han Xiao nodded to greet his own officers as well. The listless Lagi; the reliable Herlous; the grown-up Sylvia; the reckless Harmon; and Karmbe, Marian, and Misecech.

Other than the officers of the army, there were also a few other Section Zero members in the expedition fleet. Having fought alongside each other for half a year, they were all very familiar with each other.

When everyone had arrived, Han Xiao knocked the table. The sound of chatting suddenly disappeared completely as everyone looked over.

"This time, I summoned everyone to tell you guys the next step of the plan. I've just received word from Purple Crystal. They are very satisfied with our results over the last six months, so they have decided to call us back and give us a long holiday. Our mission is complete; we can rest for a while now."

Everyone was overjoyed when they heard this.

"That's great. I haven't been back home in half a year. My wife has been asking me when I will return every day. Haha, this time, I can give her a surprise." A core member of another organization spoke first with joy.

"Maybe she will give you a surprise…" Lagi patted his shoulder to comfort him.

"Thanks." This person's face was filled with gratitude. Now that you've said that, it will definitely not happen.

"Finally…"

Sylvia bit her bottom lip lightly and held her hands above her chest, almost yelling out loud.

Han Xiao glanced at her and nodded with approval in his mind. Over the past three years, Sylvia had been taking part in actual combat, walking at the edge of life and death. Her growth speed was much faster than before; she had entered her rapid growth period.

In Han Xiao's previous life, Sylvia had reached Calamity Grade in Version 3.0 and earned the 'Mechanical Lady Knight' title. In the past three years, this potential of hers had gradually started showing. Back then, Sylvia had been jealous of Feidin's extraordinary talent, but now she was showing a similar talent.

Han Xiao estimated that Sylvia might really be able to grow from Grade B to Grade A during the update. After all, there were still seven more years for her to grow.

Still, the biggest change in Sylvia was her appearance. In the past three years, she had gradually matured. She had brown and long curly hair, she was tall, and her skin was snow white. Her facial features were solid and pretty. Altogether, she had an innocent and pure yet alluring look.

Plus, she did not wear any bulky alloy mechanical suits. Instead, she mainly used thin, light battle suits that were focused on shields, which displayed her smoking body covered in the tight battle suit. The battle suit increased her Charm by at least thirty percent. Beauties were always a feast for the eyes.

Herlous turned around and said to Herlous, "Old Herlous, after returning, take over Reynold's job and check on the business developments of the various Star Systems."

"Okay." Herlous nodded.

Herlous was always an important managing officer. In order to train himself, he had followed the fleet for the last half a year, while the daily matters had temporarily been given to Reynold and the other officers stationed in the headquarters to take care of. They would report the situation to Han Xiao every so often.

Han Xiao had more trust in Herlous' ability to handle matters. Other than liking card games, old Herlous was reliable in most things. He had improved quite a lot in the past six months as well, becoming Grade B+ and finally starting to see the gate to the Calamity Grade.

In Han Xiao's previous life, Herlous had passed away early under the beast tide of Planet Sunil, so Han Xiao did not know if he had the potential to become a Calamity Grade.

However, since he was a protagonist-type character with Luck Glow, although his talent could not compete with cheaters like Feidin, it was still much higher than normal people.

…

After giving a few orders, Han Xiao ended the meeting.

The cleaning of the battlefield was also completed, so the fleet headed back to Colton.

Han Xiao locked himself inside the office to look at the current operation status of the Black Star Army.

In the past three years, the Black Star Army had been developing smoothly. The importance of the mercenary business had already dropped to being third. The Black Star Army's business transformation gradually completed. It was no longer a mercenary group; it was now finally a large armed organization.

The mercenary business was separated and formed the Black Star Army's mercenary division, which continued to accept hires as a mercenary group. Because of this, many freelance mercenaries were satisfied. Therefore, not only did the Black Star Army not lose many talents, but its appeal for mercenaries increased instead.

The Mercenary League of the Shattered Star Ring was in the process of forming but had yet to become official. It was decided that the Black Star Army would hold one of the high positions.

Sky Ring, Blades, and the other large armies had been borrowing Han Xiao's name to recruit people all over the Star Field. At the same time, they also had to speak with the Mercenary Alliance, which was an enormous universe-level guild. The Shattered Star Ring was just a division of the Mercenary Alliance. In order for them to form a league, they had to get past the Mercenary Alliance.

The Black Star Army's current main business was the long-term partnership agreement with Purple Crystal, to fight in the secret war for them.

The second most important business was mining. Dozens of Star System civilizations invited and supported him to build bases in their territories and allowed him to mine on resource planets. This was the most profitable and currently the biggest income of the Black Star Army.

Having built bases in dozens of Star Systems, the Black Star Army's range increased to just under half of the Colton Star Cluster.

With so many Star Systems distanced so far away from each other, if he had used his own resources to build up these bases, the expenses would have been very high. This would make the cash flow of the army unhealthy or even broken.

Even though the contract fees these Star System civilizations gave were not little, it was better than those huge costs. Also, harvesting resource planets required a huge amount of manpower, as well as the building and purchasing of various harvesting devices, which would cost a lot of money.

Although the Star System would provide a certain amount of support, they would not go all out to help the Black Star Army harvest their own resource planet. At most, they would only provide some manpower and devices so that the Black Star Army could harvest the resource planet.

Harvesting resource planets required a huge amount of investment in the early stage; most organizations would not be able to afford it. If Han Xiao only used the army's resources, the utilization of the right to harvest resource planets would be extremely low, even with the help of the Black Spirit Race. Although the Black Spirit Race was very good at mining, they were still very much behind in terms of development. After so many of them had been killed on Planet Sunil, their population size had yet to recover.

However, Han Xiao announced the Black Star Army's harvesting contracts with the various Star System civilizations and made a public bidding, open to all financial groups of the Star Field. These financial groups understood the huge profit involved in resource planets, so they all looked to partner with Han Xiao.

Of course, Han Xiao was not allowed to sell the harvesting right given by these civilizations, but finding people to partner with would not be a problem. He let the financial groups provide the money needed to help the Black Star Army harvest many planets at the same time while the resources harvested were sold through the channels of these financial groups for them to make commission.

Han Xiao set the bids separately for the various Star Systems, clearly dividing the area each financial group was responsible for.

This way, although the profit margin would not be as high, the overall quantity was much higher.

With the huge income, the Black Star Army was able to expand its business to many Star Systems within three years. The sub-bases in every Star System were harvesting several resource planets, so the actual profit made was much higher than if Han Xiao harvested them without the help of the financial groups.

The number of financial group partners jumped from single digits to 127, all well-known large financial groups within the Star Field.

Therefore, in just three years, the size of the Black Star Army had already grown tremendously!

War, mining, and missions—these were currently the top three businesses of the Black Star Army. Due to its versatile business operations, it showed some signs of being a financial group. Its official member count had exceeded ten million long ago, and managers dealing with miscellaneous tasks also became important parts of the army.

Due to the rapid increase in size, the number of problems multiplied as well. There was a huge pile of problems that needed to be solved every day, which gave Han Xiao quite a headache. He had no choice but to let his subordinates deal with the details of these matters while all he had to do was monitor and control the overall development of the entire organization, also going out to fight people from time to time.

The three major businesses of the army are right on track, making a lot of money, and maintaining a virtuous cycle. I just need to ensure the stability of the army.

After receiving the first wave of profit from harvesting resource planets two years ago, he rarely looked at his savings… All he knew was that as long as he did not suddenly decide to give everything to charity, he would basically not even be able to spend it all.

This holiday was very rare; he did not want to worry about the trivial matters of the organization but decided to settle the Class Advancement mission.

Within the past three years, Han Xiao had found a mission in his memories that rewarded a level 180 silver legacy blueprint. The mission involved passing rounds of tests to finally gain the acceptance of the inheritor.

As this was a mission that rewarded a level 180 blueprint, it was extremely troublesome. Also, its mission location was in another Star Cluster.

Han Xiao had not had many holidays in the last three years, so he had only finished seven rounds of this mission and had yet to complete it. He estimated that he should be able to complete it during this long holiday.

Getting the blueprint was just the first step. He still had to build an orange-grade product out of it. Han Xiao did not intend to use a Mission Completion Card. In order to level up the Cutting-Edge Knowledges, he had spent quite a lot of Experience. Although killing Calamity Grades gave him some Experience, the Experience that he had at the moment was only enough for him to level up around ten levels at most.

There were still seven more years till the start of Version 3.0. Without enough Experience, reaching Beyond Grade A was basically impossible. Anyway, he was strong enough for the moment, so Han Xiao did not think it was necessary to look for a Mission Completion Card everywhere and complete the Class Advancement quickly. After all, the Promotion mission at level 200 was another obstacle he would need to break through.

While thinking, Han Xiao opened the interface and browsed through his mission list. There were quite a lot of missions stocked up.

The fourth round of [Prey] was still inactive. Due to reasons he did not know, Thousand Shadows had decided not to do anything for three years, which made Han Xiao very alarmed. He felt like this was the calm before the storm.

Han Xiao did not have the time to settle Godora's Rank S [Bloodline] mission as well, as he felt that it would be quite troublesome and would rather use that time to strengthen the Black Star Army, which would give him much more benefits than the mission reward.

Aroshia's mission was still on hold as well. However, Feidin's hidden mission [Choice] was completed upon achieving the fourth ending. Feidin and Chen Xing fell in love—it really was self-lovemaking.

The mission reward was quite good—a lot of Experience, a random reward chance, and a huge increase in the Favorability of both Feidin and Chen Xing. It made Han Xiao feel like he was the matchmaker for the two of them.

By the way, doesn't this count as self-loving‽

Han Xiao could not imagine what the ceremony would look like if those two decided to get married, but he knew that it would definitely be difficult to look at!

Beep beep!

As he was looking through the interface, Han Xiao's communicator suddenly rang.

He picked it up. It was a message from Aesop.

"Vilna… hmm? Is this a hint for me to hand over my job and groom my successor in advance?" Han Xiao muttered and narrowed his eyes.