Chapter 423: The Next Great Act! Recruiting SAB-Rank Talents!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

On the dining table were four meat dishes, twelve vegetable dishes, and three types of soup.

On the other side, there was a huge pot of rice that could feed twenty people.

It was Shen Ke’s first time cooking for Hope One, and after hearing from Moore how terrifyingly huge Su Mo’s appetite was, she did not rest until she filled the entire table with her cooking.

After looking at the number of dishes on the table, Su Mo pondered for a while before opening his game panel to invite all the captains, including Lu Yongyi and Zhang Long, to join him. All fourteen captains were soon orderly seated around the round table.
“Master, I took the psychic energy water that hasn’t been upgraded!”

Looking at Moore’s eyes flitting around with guilt and his hilariously amusing body language was a show of its own. Su Mo chuckled, and everyone who was seated guffawed in laughter as well.

At that moment, Moore was relieved. He sat down, his eyes still darting around and unfocused.

“Alright, let’s eat and skip the formalities. Let’s toast to our successful survival!”

“Cheers!”

After the war, Su Mo did not skimp out on his meals. Even though they did not have white wine, there were two pints of beer in front of everyone present.
‘As beer mugs clinked against each other in merry joy, the dishes were quickly devoured as everyone present grew more at ease.

Shen Ke’s amazing culinary skills, paired with the allurement of psychic energy water and the wide variety of spices in the dishes, made every dish extremely appetizing.

‘When the rice finished, there were surprisingly still leftovers on the table.

As the captains were munching on leftovers and sipping their beer, they saw that Su Mo had paused and looked like he had something to say. All of them sat up straight and cleared their throats.

“Lplan to recruit a team of special talents from within the fleet of survivors to bring over to the New World. Would any of you like to come along?”

Whoosh!

‘As soon as Su Mo finished speaking, a captain squeezed the beer can in his hands so tightly it dented with a crack.

The people beside him were too occupied with their thoughts to be affected by the noise as an identical expression of utter shock appeared on each one of their faces!

What the f*ck!

The Almighty Su wanted to expand his team?!

If they wanted to join him, they could?!

To think that they had just been joking with each other on their way to dinner about how they might be able to join the Almighty Su’s team and go to the New World with him.

At the time, everyone had been talking about it, but in their hearts, they did not really hope to be able to join in since not only would they not be of any help to the team, but they would be a liability, especially when it came to the Almighty Su’s current capabilities.
For them to hear Su Mo say this.

It was such a pleasant surprise they did not expect, leaving their minds overwhelmed with dizziness!

“Hmm? So everyone wants to go to the Deep Seas? If that’s the case…”

“No, Almighty Su, I’ll go with you!”

“Me too!”

“Tl go…”

Whoosh! Besides Lu Yongyi, practically everyone else shot their hands up high without hesitation!

Even the rest, like Zhang Long and Liu Neng, were so excited they shot up from their seats!

‘They were captains with the highest rankings, with hundreds of crew members and a huge ship under them.

However, at this time, they did not have even an ounce of attachment to their past achievements as their eyes burned with a fiery passion!
New World?

It was all good!

‘Was there anywhere in the world more stable than where the Almighty Su was?

On the sidelines, Lu Yongyi was enjoying the show and teased, “Really? You guys wanna go too?”

“Of course! Why not? Leader Lu, I’ll place my ship in your care then…”
“Oh yes, Almighty Su, if we’re going with you, can we bring our family along?”

Zhang Long had no self-awareness about his ‘betrayal’ as he cheekily replied to Lu Yongyi, then sheepishly replied to Su Mo.

Su Mo nodded. “Sure, each person is allowed to bring three people with them on board. If you guys have a lot of family members, you can discuss with the other crews about trading your quotas, since one plus three each is not an issue at all.”

Combat units formed from family units were definitely stronger than lone wolves, and being family would increase their loyalty to the shelter as well.

This point had been well demonstrated at Hope Village!

“That’s more than enough! Where would we find so many people to bring along? We’ll just bring our family along, that’s all!”

“Leader Su, when you said special talents… Which areas of expertise were you referring to?”

“Leader Su, I have a nephew from a research unit, and I’ve heard that he’s been researching… Right, something about batteries… Would that be considered a special talent?”

Everyone chimed in enthusiastically, and as they talked, they slowly morphed their address of Su Mo from ‘Almighty Su’ to ‘Leader Su’. This abrupt yet gradual change made Lu Yongyi’s jaw drop in shock, while Shen Ke, who was seated at the side, beamed a radiant smile.
“No rush regarding that. I’ll come up with the details later, and at night, I’ll commence the first round of recruitment, so all of you stay back for a while. Let’s brainstorm to see what kind of talents we’ll need in building our own territory!”

Su Mo had no problem taking over Lu Yongyi’s men as he laughed and issued his first order to the bunch.

The weak were not worthy of becoming leaders.

Meanwhile, the strong would naturally gather a following.

Before he was at his best, Su Mo was nothing but reluctant when he had to face strangers. However, when his strengths and capabilities began to take form, the way he did things evolved to be the way that someone truly strong did things!

7 o’clock at night.
As the risen sun slowly glided down the horizon, and the moon crept up slowly from the other side, light illuminated the earth.

At the Tundra Fleet’s ocean region, all the boats did not move for a day.

From the anchoring of the big ship, all the raft ferries seemed to be stapled firmly to the surface of the ocean.

However, the atmosphere on these rafts was growing more merry and joyful, like the crewmates were ringing in the new year.

From 5 o’clock onwards, more and more people woke up from their slumber to receive a piece of good news—it was time for a celebration dinner!

50% of resources needed for the celebration dinner would be contributed by public-funded chests, and 20% would be sponsored by the Almighty Su. All the others had to be in charge of was the remaining 30%, and they would have been able to eat to their heart’s content!
Also, the Almighty Su would also organize the first-ever boatsmen recruitment during the dinner!

After getting this news, everyone that had heard it lost their minds! They reported their strengths and talents to their authorities as asked before jumping in the sea to take a bath and wash their hair. After that, they even wiped themselves down with precious freshwater.
There were even people who had spent some money on getting a set of new clothes from the marketplace. They changed into them with solemn reverence.

As of now, there were a hundred and sixty thousand survivors on Tundra Fleet!

Even if they knew that it was impossible for the Almighty Su to bring so many people with him, according to the list of requirements that had been sent out, more than half of them would have a chance!

7.50 PM.

There was an hour and a half until the celebration dinner.

As Su Mo watched the ten captains rush around to compile and organize the data given to them by their leaders from above, he did not stay idle as he made his way to them, took a few, and began his auditing process.

“Zhao Yangbo, 39 years old, expert repairman at the Sanlu Machinery Plant, an expert at maintaining all kinds of machinery, has a religious adoration toward fixing up machines. His life motto is, ‘As long as it won’t die on me during repairs, I’ll repair it to my death.

“Qi Tongwei, 41 years old, professional chess player, an expert at Chinese chess, Go, five-in-a-row, Chinese checkers, and many more. His nickname is ‘smarter than the Creator’.

“Xing Qu, 48 years old, national-level chef, a special class chef whom specializes in Sichuan cuisines. He has worked in seven five-star hotels as their head chef and has remarkable cooking skills.

“Xia Nian Zhen, 33 years old, graduated from Tsinghua University with a Ph.D., published 19 articles in the Sci magazine with core points of… Her area of research is artificial intelligence algorithms.

“Peng Wenshan, 39 years old, first-class researcher of Chengfei, has a unique understanding of flight dynamics and airframe manufacturing, His specialty? Bamboo-copter!”

Su Mo was shocked after reading the entire page of thirty-over names from the beginning to the end.
These people were all especially talented in their own ways, and were highly ranked in their respective areas of expertise.

Excluding skills useless in the wasteland like chess, fishing, and breakdancing, most of these people could be called the elites, the cream of the crop.

“Leader Su, on this paper are the most remarkable people around. On the papers following these, are those at a lower rank.

“We have tabulated these rankings according to the potential value and the capacity value we brainstormed that day.

“The people on the paper in your hands are all S-rank talents, a mere thirty-something of them out of the hundred thousand people around!”

Zhang Long stood up to explain when he saw how surprised Su Mo was. As he did so, he fished out the paper that had the A-ranked talents.

The people that appeared on this sheet of paper were clearly a bit weaker than the ones on the former paper.

These people may have all kinds of skills, but they were all generally seen as people who could only reach a certain level of expertise after some hard work. When compared to ordinary people, they were more knowledgeable in their expertise, and their skills were more refined.
In terms of the number of people, there were a lot more of them in rank A, which lead to a grand total of 129!

“We’ve estimated that we can bring 1500 people with us at most, but in reality, we won’t be able to recruit that many. Talents of rank SAB only come up to around 400 people.

“Besides that, these people usually only have one or two family members. There won’t be more than seven hundred of them!

“When it comes to those in rank C, there’s a whopping 2000 of them, and most of them have their entire families with them, so if we were to bring one, we’d get the whole package of five to six people, so.
“Our suggestion is that some ‘seeds’ are left behind for the Tundra Fleet. If not, and we bring all of them with us, they won’t be able to fend for themselves in the Deep Sea!”

Scratching his head, Zhang Long explained everything with seriousness.

Zhang Long, who was very skilled at managing data, had mastered a skill Chen Shen had not.

If this was in a company back on Earth, Chen Shen would be like the head of the marketing department, whereas Zhang Long would be the head of the Human Resources department.

He knew that if he were to let Su Mo decide who to bring and who to let go, it would be a tough decision for him to make, so he had taken it upon himself to complete the first round of choosing.

“Very well, very well thought out! We’ll do things according to that, then!

“However, we’ll have to be really strict as we judge the eligibility and the trustworthiness of the data they’ve presented. I don’t wanna see people posing as someone they’re not.

“Everything’s gotta go according to what we’ve decided!”

Su Mo gladly delegated tasks to his trusty subordinates.

He was a very different leader than Lu Yongyi.

Lu Yongyi was a very careful man, and his sense of security stemmed from him going through everything personally and having full knowledge and control over every subordinate of his.

Su Mo, on the other hand, was more careful than him, while his sense of security came from something completely different. It came from the fact that his capabilities were constantly improving!

In an organization, as long as the people in it could see the hope in the journey ahead for everyone to be able to live a better life, it would be nearly impossible for betrayals to happen!

Also, sufficient power delegation and power oppression would have every supervisor holding each other accountable, so the opportunity for corruption could be nipped in the bud.

This type of leadership was far more objective and way less stressful than Lu Yongyi’s!

Su Mo marched back to his captain quarters. It was a rare sight for him to put on his lamellar armor in the absence of war.

No one knew the significance of this dinner celebration, but in the war room on the second floor, Su Mo let out a long sigh as he looked at the survivors downstairs, who were swamped with preparations.
“A thousand people!

“To bring just this small amount over and to want to build a super fortress for the humans in the New World. This is really

“A hell-level game to play!”