Jiang Rui had all but given up hope, but upon hearing Lin Xinghai’s words, his eyes instantly lit up. He looked at him with eager anticipation.
"The thod I’ve devised is worth a shot, but if we actually go through with it, your rcenary Guild will probably have to take a huge financial hit," Lin Xinghai warned him upfront.
"That’s fine. As long as it helps the Star Shield Shelter develop quickly, it’ll all be worth it. Brother Lin, just tell what you have in mind," Jiang Rui said with a smile, though he felt a knot of unease.
But as long as Lin Xinghai could provide a solution, the rcenary Guild would have to grit its teeth and go through with it, even if it ant hemorrhaging funds.
"According to your plan, after our exploration team returns, you’re supposed to contact the major Third Level rcenary Corps and have them follow our route to conduct a preliminary sweep, killing Ordinary Zombies. If they run into trouble, the Military Departnt will be dispatched. Correct?" Lin Xinghai said.
"Yes, that’s correct," Jiang Rui nodded.
"The problem, then, is that Guanghan City is too dangerous. If they encounter Mutated Zombies or a zombie horde, the Third Level rcenary Corps that go in might not make it back out," Lin Xinghai continued.
"Exactly. The mont the Mutated Zombies inside Guanghan City realize what’s happening and trigger a zombie horde, even several Third Level rcenary Corps working together would be wiped out," Jiang Rui agreed, nodding repeatedly.
For a Third Level rcenary Corps, encountering a Mutated Zombie wasn’t their greatest fear. After all, the minimum requirent for a Third Level rcenary Corps was owning five chas; if they couldn’t win a fight, they could at least escape. But if the Mutated Zombie also launched a zombie horde, escape was no longer a certainty.
Lin Xinghai activated his wrist-mounted computer’s projection function, displaying a map of Guanghan City. He then drew a red line along the route they had taken.
"According to your plan, the Shelter needs to open a direct transport route to the Industrial Park. This requires the rcenary Corps and the military to push deep into the city. But once the Mutated Zombies realize sothing is amiss, they will almost certainly unleash a zombie horde."
"And on a narrow path like that, if the horde is large enough, any team that goes in will be completely surrounded, correct?" Lin Xinghai said.
"Yes," Jiang Rui nodded again, but a hint of confusion crept into his eyes.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Lin Xinghai. On the contrary, the logic was so painfully obvious that it hardly needed to be stated.
"Alright! Now, what if our zombie-clearing zone looked like this?" As he spoke, Lin Xinghai drew a large red circle on the projected map, encompassing the entire area of several dozen kiloters from the edge of Guanghan City to the Industrial Park.
"If we can clear out the Zombies on a massive scale, this entire cleared region becos a buffer zone. Even if the Mutated Zombies launch a horde, it takes Ti for a horde to form. With this buffer, and relying on the speed of the Armored Vehicles, there would be more than enough Ti to get out."
After hearing this, Jiang Rui gave Lin Xinghai a strange look. He held back for a long mont before finally forcing out the words, "But we can’t do that."
’What the hell?’ he really wanted to say. ’If we had the ability to clear such a large area, why would we have bothered with any other plan in the first place? We would have just steamrolled through.’
But considering Lin Xinghai’s status and power, he could only swallow his words.
"No, the rcenary Guild actually can do it. You just need to mobilize all the First, Second, and Third Level rcenary Corps. With the Military Departnt dispatching troops to coordinate and respond to ergencies, it’s not a problem," Lin Xinghai stated.
Hearing this, Jiang Rui’s eyes went wide. He was genuinely bewildered. ’Is there sothing wrong with his brain, or is it mine?’ he thought. ’It feels like we’re not even talking about the sa thing.’
Guanghan City needed to be cleared of Zombies, and yes, they were short on manpower. But the manpower they lacked was Third Level rcenary Corps!
What good would those First and Second Level rcenary Corps be if they went in?
Second Level rcenary Corps might be able to help out, following behind the Third Level ones to clean up any stragglers. But a First Level rcenary Corps going in would just be courting death.
You have to understand, in many First Level rcenary Corps, you’d be lucky to find even one or two mbers with good Gun Technique. They even needed to deploy chas just to deal with High Level Zombies.
In a place like Guanghan City, where High Level Zombies appeared so frequently, a First Level rcenary Corps would likely be crippled after encountering just two or three waves of Zombies.
Besides, even if they could sohow avoid such scenarios through careful planning and coordination, the real question was: would those First and Second Level rcenary Corps dare to go? Would they even be willing?
That was Guanghan City, the place known as the rcenary Restricted Area!
Even among the Third Level rcenary Corps, probably less than half would be willing to accept a mission in Guanghan City.
"Brother Lin, I’m afraid your plan is a non-starter. Those First and Second Level rcenary Corps will definitely refuse to go. And the Shelter can’t issue a war mobilization order unless it’s a matter of life and death," Jiang Rui said with a soft sigh, deciding to be blunt.
This was the fundantal problem. The rcenary Guild wasn’t the Military Departnt; it couldn’t force anyone to do anything.
"Supervisor Jiang, I understand your worries. That’s why I said from the start that this plan might require you to take a huge hit," Lin Xinghai said, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.
After being led around in circles by Lin Xinghai, hearing those words again hit Jiang Rui completely differently.
He knew that whatever Lin Xinghai said next would be the real crux of the matter, and the part about "taking a huge hit" wasn’t just an expression.
"Go on," Jiang Rui said, swallowing hard. The words ca out with so difficulty.
"If you want to mobilize every rcenary Corps, the thod is simple: raise the mission rewards. For any rcenary Corps that goes to Guanghan City, they will receive 10 Points for every Ordinary Zombie killed, 15 Points for every Interdiate Zombie, and 20 Points for every High Level Zombie. Elental Crystals will be rewarded separately," Lin Xinghai stated slowly.
Even though Jiang Rui had braced himself, he couldn’t help but gasp when he heard Lin Xinghai’s proposal.
If they actually implented a reward system like that, the rcenary Guild could very well go bankrupt.
Normally, while they paid out large sums of Points for missions, they also received mission items in return.
By selling the collected materials to the Military Departnt or other agencies, the rcenary Guild could at least break even, if not turn a profit on Points.
But under Lin Xinghai’s proposal, every Zombie kill would be a net loss! It was easy to imagine that the total expenditure would be astronomical.
Take a Third Level rcenary Corps, for instance. On a single mission, they would kill at least 500 Zombies.
At the very minimum, assuming they only killed Ordinary Zombies at 10 Points each, the rcenary Guild would have to pay out 5,000 Points.
Of course, that was the number of Zombies a Third Level rcenary Corps would kill incidentally while on a normal mission.
If the Guild issued this kind of sweep-and-clear mission, the number of Zombies a Third Level rcenary Corps could hunt on a single trip would increase by at least five or six tis.
Wouldn’t that an the Guild would have to pay out 20,000 to 30,000 Points for a single trip by just one Third Level rcenary Corps?
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