Pillar of Yita

Of course, Silver Weslan and the teams of various sizes under Elite’s factions are just as eye-catching as in past years, but these two guilds have unique styles that ordinary people simply cannot learn, let alone the fact that Zhang Yu felt his own opinion might also be biased—considering Elite’s style is not well-regarded by the public anyway.

However, a utilitarian approach to competition does not necessarily lead to good results. The defeat in the Murky Domain has already illustrated many problems; conservative strategies often seem awkward and disjointed when facing the aggressive offensives of top opponents.

But the bigger issue now is, if you’re not utilitarian, you might not even survive domestically, not to mention qualifying for international competitions. To prevent excessive internal consumption, the war between Invokers is also limited. In international disputes, countries often select guilds and teams with the highest points in a season to participate in the war.

Zhang Yu sighed. Ultimately, the problem boiled down to a decline in overall strength. If it were Silver Weslan or Elite, the issue wouldn’t exist, but how many Silver Weslans or Elites are there in the China Competition Region? Besides, even Silver Weslan faced problems of no successors after the retirement of the legendary Invokers of this era.

Could those newcomers they trained really hold up the situation after the retirement of the veterans?

However, in his heart, Zhang Yu was not as anxious as most people.

Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity for professional headhunters like themselves to make their mark?

Though it was widely believed that the Grand Guilds and professional clubs were not keen on recruiting outsiders, it was actually just a rumor that everybody repeated without really knowing the truth. Otherwise, why would the Super Competitive League bother to establish transfer seasons and transfer rules? In reality, there’s always personnel movement between the Grand Guilds every year—of course, as long as a guild doesn’t have significant issues, the positions of its top Invokers usually remain stable, as they are the pillars and foundation of the guild.

And it is for this reason that such rumors arise.

Of course, indeed, guilds like Silver Weslan and Elite, and even second-tier guilds, have their complete talent development organizations, and Super Competitive gaming is after all different from traditional sports. Due to the tight binding of Invokers’ identities and qualifications with clubs, it naturally makes sense for the Grand Guilds to prefer using ’their own people’ as a precautionary measure.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t absorb new blood from the outside. Industry insiders are very clear about the intricacies involved—there are two prerequisites: the movement of non-core Members, which is the main work scope for most headhunters like Zhang Yu, and those second-tier, somewhat talented Invokers, along with the special Life Professions that the Grand Guilds need.

In the New World, the guild structure of this era is far larger than most people can imagine, with their subsidiaries and branch guilds often spread across two worlds and multiple regions. These branches need a large number of people to replenish their ranks, and these non-core Members are not all cultivated by the guilds themselves.

Thus, a significant portion of new Invokers entering Eteliria each year are actually absorbed into the Grand Guilds in this manner, and these non-core Members, after years of trials, can also potentially become the true core and high-ranking officials of a guild.

The guild is like a huge organism that carries out its hematopoiesis and metabolism in this way.

The job of the headhunters’ guilds is to identify potential Invokers needed by the Grand Guilds and introduce them to the appropriate guilds.

Of course, Zhang Yu’s work is a bit more advanced.

Being handpicked by Elite to be the guild’s royal headhunter was not for handling these trivialities. There were already hundreds of junior headhunters working for Elite’s lower-tier guilds, while top headhunters like Zhang Yu were few and far between.

His job was to find those true geniuses in the wild, and absorb them into Elite before the competitors could discover them.

However, his work over the quarter could only be described as passable, at least that’s what Zhang Yu thought himself. Influenced by conservative sentiment, the major events were filled with a drowsy air, making it even harder to find standout talents.

Perhaps there were some subtle flashes of brilliance, but these were of little help to his work.

What he was looking for were things that truly captivated the heart—

Every time he thought of this, Zhang Yu involuntarily recalled Alcas’s battle. It was the reason he entered this profession; the debut of the ID Loofah made many realise that even the Grand Guilds hadn’t encompassed all the finest talents.

But getting nothing out of the major events, Zhang Yu felt somewhat frustrated. He opened the community forum as he usually did to see the latest trends. Recently, the community had been strictly censoring posts, leaving those in the industry puzzled. Still, there was some information available—of course, this ’information’ did not refer to the so-called ’geniuses’ flooding the popular posts. Zhang Yu had seen enough of those to ignore them completely during his career. If he might have had some expectations at the beginning, by now, he could look past them without a second glance.

Most of them were actually not even as good as those he found with ’some flashes of brilliance.’

What he was looking for was actually the general sentiment in the community. These underlying messages often contained a lot of useful information, and he could use them to anticipate the movements of the various guilds. After all, for headhunters, sniping talent was an important part of the job.

It was at this moment that Zhang Yu saw a new email.

The sender of the email somewhat surprised him:

Lonely White Field.

He remembered this ID, but that memory was from long ago.

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