Starting as a pirate, he rose to become the strongest Shinigami in Soul Society.

Chapter 81 Dr. Genus: Your potion is garbage.

"What? Join the Hero Association, fight monsters, and get a salary?" Saitama asked excitedly, his face flushed.

He had never heard of such a thing before!

In other words, has he been doing voluntary labor for the past three years?

"That's right. Becoming a professional hero and joining the association will bring different benefits depending on your hero level and contribution. With your strength, teacher, joining the association should bring you a very generous reward!" Genos explained from the side.

"Let's join the Hero Association now!" Saitama said immediately with a serious expression.

He was terrified of being poor, and if he could be a hero and receive a generous reward at the same time, he couldn't think of any reason to refuse!

Before Genos could speak, Saitama looked at Bane and said, "Bane, let's join the Hero Association together?"

"I don't really care," Bane shrugged.

Zoro hesitated upon seeing this, but at that moment, Bang spoke up: "The Sword Saint Association has a great swordsman who is in the Hero Association and is my colleague."

"I see. Then joining this association is fine too." Zoro immediately agreed.

Seeing that his three "masters" had all agreed, Genos immediately said, "I want to join too!"

Bang actually has some concerns about the Hero Association, but at the same time, he also hopes that the Hero Association can develop in a positive direction. If it can attract more outstanding talents, perhaps there will be opportunities?

Of course, if he feels uncomfortable after joining the Hero Association, he can leave at that time, and he has no objection.

Seeing that everyone shared this intention, Bang chuckled and said, "I'm ranked third in the S-class of the Hero Association, so I have some connections. If any of you want to join, I can recommend you, but there are limited spots..."

As an S-class hero, Bang can naturally recommend people to join the Hero Association, starting with at least A-class, but the number of slots is limited to one per year.

Before he could finish speaking, Saitama interjected righteously, "No need. Didn't you just say the Hero Association has a branch in Z-City? They hold recruitment exams for new members all year round. Let's just go and participate in the exam!"

"I don't have time," Bane waved his hand and said, "From now on, I'll be focusing most of my energy on Bang-senpai's dojo, and I also need to cooperate with Dr. Genus, so I won't be participating in any assessments with you. Could you please recommend someone for me, Bang-senpai?"

Bann wouldn't stand on ceremony with Bangu. Relationships are about giving and receiving; how can you maintain a relationship if you don't bother people?

Soon, the group discussed it and decided that Bane would take the shortcut and go through an internal recommendation, while Zoro, Saitama, and Genos would go directly to participate in the Hero Trials. After that, Zoro and Genos would go to G City to visit the Sword Saint Association.

The main problem is that Zoro is illiterate and has a terrible sense of direction, while Bane doesn't have the time. If he were to go alone, they might never find him again. When Genos realized this difficulty, he immediately stepped forward, saying, "When there's trouble, a disciple should do his duty," and insisted on helping.

Anyway, Dr. Genus had already arranged to resolve Bane and Zoro's undocumented status at the House of Evolution. Now that Bane and Zoro have legitimate identities, they can naturally take public transportation, such as the high-speed rail, to G City, which won't take long.

For the next two days, everyone was busy with these trivial matters. Bane stayed at home alone, studying and memorizing the knowledge points in the "Tongyao". If he didn't understand anything, he would call Bang to ask. At the same time, he also took the time to compile a set of notes to give to Bang later.

The next day, Saitama, Genos, and Zoro went to participate in the hero assessment in Z-City.

As expected, Genos is an all-rounder, excelling in both academics and martial arts, and was directly hired by the association as an S-class hero, ranking seventeenth, which is the last place.

Zoro, like Saitama, got a perfect score on the physical fitness test. However, Saitama not only got a perfect score, but also broke all the records by a large margin. As for the two of them, one is truly illiterate and the other is a single-celled organism, they both failed the written test.

Based on his achievements, Zoro should have started as a C-class hero, just like Saitama. However, the Hero Association has a particularly outstanding advantage in his eyes: Zoro is a lightning-type psychic!

This is extremely rare, especially since the Hero Association found after a simple test that they currently have no means to harm Zoro. This greatly improved Zoro's rating, and after careful consideration, the association assigned Zoro to the tenth position in B-rank.

At this moment, Genos officially became a cyborg, Zoro was called the Thunder Swordsman, and Saitama, well, let's not mention him, the bald cape-wearing hero.

Bang, being a shrewd old man, didn't immediately introduce Bane to the Hero Association while Genos and the others were taking the Hero Association's entrance exam. Instead, he waited for the results.

According to Bang's initial estimate, Genos, Zoro, and Saitama, whom Bane and others called "invincible," should all be able to pass the test and become S-class heroes directly.

In this way, his recommendation of Bane would have a stronger effect.

With one S-class classmate as his junior brother, one S-class classmate as his apprentice, and one S-class classmate as his friend, plus his own powerful recommendation as the third-ranked S-class class member, Bang believed he could easily secure Bane a place in the top ten of the S-class rankings.

As it turned out, after waiting for two days, good heavens, the weakest disciple became an S-rank, while the strongest, "Invincible Under Heaven," only managed to get C-rank number 388! And if it weren't for his special superpower, the other one would have also gotten to C-rank number 300 or so.

This completely stunned Bang, who was waiting for good results!

After much agonizing reflection, Bang decided to stop waiting. At least there were Bane's apprentices in the S-class, which was enough. With Bang's strong recommendation, it might not be enough to directly elevate Bane to the top S-class, but it should be no problem to get Bane into the S-class hero roster.

After preparing Bane's information, Bang went directly to the headquarters of the Hero Association in City A. As the third-ranked S-class hero, he recommended Bane to the association and explained the connection.

Meanwhile, Genos, who had already gone to G City with Zoro, also strongly expressed his opinions to the association, praising his teacher Bane and mentioning Saitama, the teacher who had suffered "unfair" treatment.

However, the association ultimately only considered Bane's recommendation and did not pay much attention to Saitama.

After some discussion, Bane successfully joined the Hero Association and became the seventeenth S-class hero. That's right, Genos became the eighteenth, and Bane became the second to last.

The main reason is that the association is unwilling to offend the other S-class heroes for Bane's sake. After all, he is a newcomer, and directly assigning him to a higher position is tantamount to stepping on the other heroes to rise to the top. How can those heroes feel comfortable about that? He has to produce some results first, right?

Only Genos didn't mind, so the association ultimately placed Bane before Genos.

Bane's hero name is also quite outrageous. Considering that Bane also possesses dark-type superpowers and his only verifiable achievement is killing the black rancher, a Demon-level monster, the association gave Bane the hero name "Black Demon Killer," implying that Bane possesses dark-type superpowers and can crush Demon-level monsters.

Not a single mistake, not a single poem, not a single post, not a single piece of content, not a single look!

Bane, who was studying diligently at home in Z City, had no objections to this arrangement. He didn't care about the title or anything like that; he could change it later when he had time. His main focus right now was learning martial arts from Bang. In his eyes, the association was just a platform to communicate with other strong people. As long as he was S-rank, that was fine to avoid being discriminated against. After all, the association's atmosphere wasn't great, and only S-rank heroes were given special respect. He didn't have Saitama's broad-mindedness to not care about other people's discrimination. He was afraid that he would lose his temper and destroy the association.

Rankings and such don't matter.

A few more days passed, and in the deserted area, at Saitama's house.

At this moment, Ben was lying on the sofa, holding "The Essentials" in his hand, reading it diligently. In the past few days, he had read the book several times and was almost completely mastering the basic knowledge points.

Zoro and Genos are not there; they have already gone to the Sword Saint Association. Thanks to Bang's introduction, they received a friendly welcome at the Sword Saint Association. Zoro even called yesterday to say that it was a great place and that he would be studying there for a while and wouldn't be back for some time.

Genos naturally ended up living with Zoro at the Sword Saint's Guild.

Saitama, on the other hand, once again entered a state of idleness. Apart from going out to the streets to complete his C-class hero quotas, he spent his days at home watching TV series and playing games.

Just as Saitama was watching TV and Bane was reading a book, the phone that Bane had placed on the coffee table rang.

Saitama casually grabbed a handful of the item from the table and tossed it to Bane without even looking at it.

Bane answered the phone and asked, "Doctor? Any progress?"

"Well, there hasn't been any real progress in your body sample research yet. I'm contacting you today to tell you that I've figured out what happened with the RC cells you gave me," Dr. Genos said on the other end of the phone.

"Really? How is it? Is it valuable?" Bane immediately sat up and asked.

"It's not entirely worthless, but you could say it's a piece of junk," Dr. Genus commented immediately, followed by a long string of scientific explanations and descriptions that Bane couldn't understand at all.

In short, this RC cell has some merit, but not much. Considering the other technologies of the House of Evolution, it doesn't have any significant value and can be rated as "garbage".

"Damn it, I sold my house!" Bane cursed after hearing this.

Although he was mentally prepared, he was still somewhat disappointed with the result.

(End of this chapter)