282: Chapter 283: Newcomers

The outskirts of the Shelter.

With the rapid development of the Alliance, this Shelter's status as a strategic center was beyond doubt.

Due to updates and restrictions in previous versions, players were no longer allowed to freely purchase or enclose land within several dozen kilometers of the Shelter.

The veteran players who had seized land early in the server launch now walked around with their noses in the air.

At the same time, to ensure the security and purity of the core area, this enclosed zone was no longer open to any natives.

Apart from the Ecclesiarchy monastery established by Sister Frannie and the administrative office of the Adeptus Arbites, there were no other native buildings.

Such a large expanse of open space had almost no additional facilities.

Consequently, the players spontaneously named this flat area, which was constantly expanding outward, Su Zhi Plaza.

It was currently the largest gathering place for players.

After a day of exploring and pioneering, new players would set up stalls here to recover and trade with one another.

And those high-level veteran players who were out campaigning would occasionally return here to have a barbecue at the open-air food stalls run by life-skill players and brag about their battle achievements.

Today, however, Su Zhi Plaza was very lively.

Because today was the day the third batch of newcomers would arrive, following the lifting of restrictions on the cloning machines on underground level B8 and the release of new recruitment slots!

In the center of the plaza, recruitment representatives from various legions were already in position, waiting for the massive airlock elevator that led directly to underground level B8 to bring the people up.

Under a massive neon sign on the east side of the plaza, Black Tiger A-Fu, the commander of the Hand of God Legion, and his deputy, Hunger Tycoon, were sitting behind a folding table, each wearing a pair of toad-style sunglasses, legs crossed, waiting with composure.

As one of the veteran legions established in the second wave, the situation of the Hand of God had always been rather awkward.

They did not possess a large amount of starting capital like the Baby Bus, nor had they found a decent exclusive base like the Brotherhood of Steel.

Therefore, in the previous main campaign against the insect swarm, the military merits and points that the Hand of God had snatched were far inferior to those of the other top guilds.

And in terms of progress in exploring outer star systems, they had also clearly fallen behind.

Fortunately, with the update of the latest version, the Hand of God Legion had gotten lucky and was directly assigned to the official establishment of the Astra Militarum by the system.

The faction leader Lin Li and the Adeptus Arbites had allocated them a massive amount of armaments and logistical supply subsidies.

Now that they had both money and guns, the only core problem facing the Hand of God was—a lack of people. To be precise, a lack of players.

Most capable newcomers were poached by those top legions with illustrious battle records immediately after creating their characters.

If the Hand of God wanted to expand their establishment, they had no choice but to do what they were doing now: have the high-level executives personally come down to Su Zhi Plaza to camp out and pick up the leftovers.

Nearby, two other legions were also shouting and waving flags vigorously. One was the Wings of Freedom Legion established by Captain Blood Pressure Gabriel; the other was the Hellfire Legion led by "I Love Tifa."

The recruitment booths of the three legions were right next to each other, with everyone glaring at one another, neither side willing to concede.

Yesterday, the leaders of these three legions had spent the whole day on the plaza fighting over recruits, nearly coming to blows over it.

As a result, by the end of the day, due to the siphon effect of the top legions, each of these three had recruited fewer than five hundred new players.

Fortunately, five thousand slots were released every day without fail. The current guild mission for the Hand of God was purely to pull in bodies to make up the numbers, so they had plenty of time.

Besides these three major legions with their commanders personally in charge, there were recruitment points for several top legions on the edge of the plaza. However, their attitude was somewhat perfunctory.

There was no one at the booths of the Baby Bus and the Brotherhood of Steel; there was just a broken wooden sign standing there. On it was a QR code, and next to it, written in crooked letters: "Scan the code to fill out the form, we select the best, take it or leave it."

It fully displayed the arrogance of big-name organizations.

Exactly at noon.

"Hiss—!" Accompanied by the sound of a high-pressure airlock, a section of the metal ground in the center of Su Zhi Plaza split neatly to both sides.

That massive open-air giant elevator, amidst a low mechanical rumble, slowly rose from underground level B8.

Several hundred new players who had just finished creating their characters appeared in the view of the veteran players in the plaza.

A-Fu, sitting behind the recruitment table, instinctively pushed up his sunglasses. Because the character customization system had been opened the day before yesterday, the style of this batch of new players was filled with strong characteristic features of the era.

A-Fu had actually prepared himself mentally. But when he truly saw the freaks walking out of the elevator, his eyelid couldn't help but twitch violently; he was struggling to adapt.

The scene was simply a dance of demons.

Walking at the very front were a few hulking men, two and a half meters tall, with bulging muscles all over, and not even a neck to speak of. Their chins were recessed, their necks were thick, and their trapezius muscles were towering—essentially people who were immune to uppercuts and could not be choked.

Beside them was an Ork with forgiving-green skin, two bull horns on its head, and a pair of fleshy wings on its back.

Looking further back, there were lizard-like creatures with six wings; there was a "Lao Da" who had adjusted his skin tone to the darkest setting and sculpted his facial features to look exactly like a certain famous basketball superstar, Kobe, from reality; and there were players wearing the faces of various celebrities like Jay Chou, Trump, and Daniel Wu, waving crazily in the crowd.

Even more outrageous was that mixed into the crowd were a few female players with two balls on their chests larger than watermelons, their centers of gravity so unstable that they could barely walk.

And at the very back of the line, there was actually a deformed dwarf, thin as a stalk of hemp and only one point four meters tall, following along!

The designs of this batch of people were even more abstract and freakish than yesterday's batch!

Looking at this magical scene before them, the group of legion recruiters who had originally intended to shout at the top of their lungs to attract customers were, for once, silent. The entire plaza fell into an eerie silence at the same time.

But the new players didn't care about that. Just like all the newbies logging into warhammer 40,000 for the first time, when they saw the real sunlight outside and felt the touch of the breeze on their skin for the first time, the crowd completely erupted!

"Holy sh*t! This lighting rendering! This physics engine!" A player with Trump's face rolled on the ground, grabbed his shoe, and sniffed it. "Has the virtual reality technology on this damn planet developed to this point already?!"

Beside him, a player with beast ears had his back to the crowd. He looked down and then let out a shocked scream: "Holy sh*t! Brothers! I just tried it, the urine in this game is actually salty!"

"You tasted it?!" Another female player with a tail was curiously swishing her furry tail behind her. "So this is what it feels like to walk with a tail; it can even help with balance!"

A-Fu sat in his chair, watching this group of new players in Su Zhi Plaza researching all sorts of human mysteries without any bottom line. And it was a group of strange-looking freaks doing the research. The scene was simply too painful to watch.

The deputy commander, Hunger Tycoon, turned his head in despair and looked at A-Fu: "A-Fu, how about... we just skip this batch today? If this bunch of demons and monsters are brought into the Astra Militarum barracks, I'm afraid those native auxiliary troops will be scared out of their minds!"

A-Fu took off his sunglasses and rubbed his sore temples. He took a deep breath. In his mind, he recalled the rigid expansion quotas set by the system, as well as the massive resource allocations that would be deducted if the quotas weren't met. He seemed to have made some difficult decision that betrayed his ancestors, gritting his teeth as he spat out a sentence: "Recruit! Why wouldn't we recruit?!"

A-Fu put his sunglasses back on: "As long as it's a humanoid creature... even if it looks like a complete freak, as long as it can pull a trigger, take them all in!"

As the elevator rose and fell time and again, batches of players poured from underground to the surface. There were more and more people in Su Zhi Plaza, and finally, some newbies who had played enough began to notice the legion recruitment points with banners around them, as well as the beginner's guide on the personal PV that kept flashing in their hands.

Of course, if creatures like players would obediently read a beginner's guide, they wouldn't be called The Fourth Calamity. Most people simply closed the PV interface and began to excitedly look around at the environment, looking for a guild to join.

"They're coming, they're coming!" Hunger Tycoon poked A-Fu next to him. Because his eyes had just been seared by that bunch of freaks, A-Fu was in a state of resting his eyes. Hearing the reminder, he opened his eyes.

He saw three new players of different heights and builds, but who all happened to have the same Jay Chou-style face, walking in unison up to the Hand of God recruitment table. The tall Jay Chou in the lead tapped on the table: "Big bosses, are you recruiting newbies here? Any newcomer benefits?"

A-Fu looked these three cloned faces up and down. Although it looked a bit awkward, they at least had all their limbs and belonged to the category of normal humans. A-Fu nodded: "We are recruiting. Our Hand of God Legion is currently offering limited-time benefits. As long as you confirm joining now, we will directly give you a free basic set of Astra Militarum flak armor, plus a standard-issue laser rifle."

The three Jay Chous looked at each other and nodded decisively: "Okay! As long as you give us equipment! We'll join!"

"Very good." A-Fu processed their registration on his terminal and pointed to the empty space behind him. "Go sit on that row of chairs behind and wait. Once we get fifty people together, we'll take you all to collect your equipment."

The three of them obediently walked to the back and sat down. A-Fu let out a long sigh of relief. To be honest, he had really been afraid that after these three guys sat down, they would start singing "The sparrow outside the window is chirping on the telephone pole" in chorus right there in the plaza.

The recruitment work proceeded very smoothly. Although the newcomers looked bizarre, the execution capability of The Fourth Calamity was truly beyond doubt.

The thousands of newcomers today were quickly divided up by the major guilds and groups. The few players who had modeled themselves as Orks formed a group, got a broken pickup truck, and sped all the way toward the radioactive wasteland in the north to find wild Ork tribes and pay their respects.

The Beastman players were entirely accepted by Bear Ridge.

As for those hulking, muscular men, they were, without suspense, dragged away directly by the recruitment representatives of the Brotherhood of Steel.

Of course, there were also many arrogant players who were not prepared to join any legion or guild. They planned to form their own teams to venture through this Warhammer Universe, or to become lone wolves.