“But you said you won’t be bringing everyone with you, right? How will you choose?” Adrian asked.
“We won’t stop if you want to come and die because we can’t protect everyone,” Lily flatly said and turned to Almond, “What’s the plan?”
Almond thought for a second and got an idea.
At the same time, Galvaren and Frank arrived while carrying a huge chunk of ice with tens of monsters frozen inside and dropped them on the empty ground nearby.
“Wait a second,” Almond said as he turned to the chunks of ice and pointed his finger at them.
*Crackle!*
A burst of lightning crackled from this finger and zipped through the ice blocks, electrocuting all monsters.
[Congratulations. You have completed Rank Advancement Quest. You can now level up from 0 to 100 as a Gold-rank adventurer.]
Naturally, the level limit of this 4th floor wasn’t Gold level 100, but it was merely Gold level 10.
“You all kill the next batches and complete your Rank Advancement,” Almond said to his teammates as he absorbed the 38 spirits.
Lily and others nodded.
“Now, moving to the party recruitment,” Almond turned to face the super rookies. “Lily will evaluate you all based on your combat ability. In short, you all will fight each other.”
Almond had decided that instead of just recruiting one or two, it’d be better to make a solid team for a higher success chance.
“But you will not choose everyone, right?” Jian narrowed his eyes. “Then what about those who were not chosen? Can we still fight the normal floor boss during this cycle?”
“No idea,” Almond shook his head and added with a carefree smile, “But once we enter the Heroic Challenge boss mode, you can try to see if you are able to spawn a normal floor boss. If you can’t succeed, then I’ll give you all some good Super-rank items that you can use on the 5th floor.”
“You should know that Super-rank items will make things easier on the 5th Floor, and the 5th floor has good challenge spots that give juicy rewards.”
“I’m fine with that,” Finn nodded. “Let’s start right away. We’ve waited enough.”
“Yeah,” Amir said, eager to display his prowess.
“Lily, I leave to it you,” Almond said as she patted her back. “I am going to do tranquil meditation to recover. I need to rest my mind a bit.”
“Yeah, you didn’t rest enough for how you’ve fought in the last Heroic Challenge.”
…
As such, the grand recruitment process began, and even Jian joined it in the end.
The other party members of these Super Rookies didn’t join since they had no chance to be recruited. They had lower rank classes, not enough mastery of Mana techniques, and lower combat ability.
Almond wasn’t completely immersed in rest initially as he paid little attention outside to absorb the Spirits of monsters.
He had already dumped those 38 spirits into his Spirit Forge Factory, and he needed more to reach the required amount of spirit items to create an Epic-rank set.
Half an hour later, Almond had put roughly 324 spirits into the factory, and the first batch of 38 spirits were done transforming into items.
Since the spirits were gold-rank monsters, he got more rare-grade items out of them.
‘Good, this should be enough to craft remaining super-rank items so I can craft an Epic-rank set and more to give out to these people.’
Almond commanded his summons to join in the recruitment process, with Galvaren being round 2 as per Lily’s suggestion.
Lily had fought against Galvaren, so she knew he was powerful combat-ability-wise. She would observe how others fare against him and select members based on that.
Meanwhile, Almond took out his Magic Tent and entered inside before jumping on the bed and dozed off.
He needed to be in tip-top condition if he wanted to fight the Heroic Challenge boss.
…
Two hours passed by, and the selection was finally over.
The super rookies lined up before Lily.
“Galvaren, give me your suggestions,” Lily said. “Call out the ones that you feel are adequate.”
“Mhmm,” Galvaren swept his glance at the super rookies before saying, “Kira, the swordswoman.”
“Yey,” Kira grinned with a victory gesture.
“Come here, Kira,” Lily said with a nod. “You pass.”
“Noah, the swordsman,” Galvaren said.
“Yes, you pass,” Lily nodded. “But only because you have Metal elemental mastery. Your sword attacks are useless, so just focus on defending us.”
“…” Noah.
He calmly walked towards them with a wry smile and stood beside Kira.
“Kayla, the druid girl,” Galvaren looked at Kayla.
“Yes, you’ll become a good asset to the party. You pass,” Lily nodded.
Kayla’s cheeks flushed with excitement as she bowed, “Thank you.” Experience tales at empire
“Girl, you have some contrasting personalities,” Natalia wryly smiled as Kayla arrived and stood beside her. “You’re fierce when you transform into beast spirits but so meek in real life.”
“Ummm, I don’t know…” Kayla shyly said.
“The gunslinger Talia was good,” Galvaren said after thinking for a bit. “And yeah, that’s all that felt adequate to me, milady.”
Lily nodded and looked at the remaining ones. “Eliara the Steel Fortress, you pass. We’d also need your defense. You’ll work together with Noah.”
“Yes,” Eliara clenched her fist and grinned. She walked towards Lily and stood nearby.
“Finn, Ron, and Adrian, sorry, but you won’t be joining us. Your combat style will clash with Almond’s style and mine. Close-range against Heroic Floor Boss is playing with death, and you three are mostly close-range combatants that couldn’t counter Galvaren’s attacks.”
“Jian, you have a death resistance of 2 seconds, so you can live at 0% vitality, but your combat is not refined enough. You’re relying too much on both your classes’ raw power that comes from their skills.”
“Jemma the Waterloom Haze, you pass. Your water elemental mastery and your skill set will boost our control combo.”
“Xavier, pass. You have a penetrative long-range ultimate attack that can be useful.”
“Amir, we need your speed-buffs and wind enchants. They’ll be useful to Almond, but just so you know, you’re not a qualified combatant. You need to improve.”
Amir wryly smiled, “Yes, I will work hard. Thank you.”
“Emma, the same applies to you. We need your dangerous debuffs so you’ll join.”
“Phew, well, as long as I can participate,” Emma grinned.
“Mira and Anya, you two are good, but your combat style without Epic-rank gears will put you in danger, and we won’t have enough defense while you use your whip-based and close-range attacks. Heroic Challenge Floor Bosses are smaller in size. They are not giants like normal floor bosses. They are humanoids and have higher intelligence and combat style, which is why even though you all can fight against normal floor bosses, it’d be highly dangerous against Heroic Challenge Floor Boss without Epic-rank equipment.”
“And unfortunately, we don’t have enough Epic-rank items to gear you all up.”
…
The party was ready. The remaining people could go to the 5th floor for now.
Almond also woke up a few minutes later and contacted Lily to collect Epic-rank items from Natalia, Maya, and Marcus before entering the Magic Tent.
It was time to unlock the Epic-rank forge option and create some good Epic-rank items, including a Set.
Before doing what Almond said, Lily told the super-rookies who didn’t qualify to enter the party that they could either wait for an hour to see if they could fight the normal floor boss or they could continue to the 5th Floor and Almond would still give them Super-rank items usable on the 5th Floor once later after they finish Heroic Challenge enter there.