176 Fine Gold Gears
After I closed the chat with the jumper, I suddenly realised something.
“F*ck! Wasn’t that the initial plan from the start?” I ended up returning to the plan I sat on before going to sleep. What the hell happened just now?
That damn jumper… He had a strange ability to make me get on my nerves without any reason at all!
“By the way… How did you get in here?” Before I opened the chat with Wryly, I looked at the team who were peeking curious gazes at me.
“We came thanks to Alex,” Isabella said while turning to the all shy looking Alex. and she nodded.
“She used her ability to jump to your chariot,” Angelica explained, “my girl is awesome, right?”
I understand now how that girl came to be here, but what about others?
“And you?”
“I threw a long rope to them to climb here,” Alex explained in her low tone.
“Did you kill your shadows before doing that?” I stood up before throwing my swords at their shadows.
And in the next moments, their shadows roared with annoying screams, telling me that my plans had already leaked.
[Act fast] I didn’t wait to listen to their excuses and apologies as I instantly sent a message to the jumper, [That bastard knows about you and our plan now. Destroy those ovens and retreat to a secure place and watch from far]
[Who was so careless to let that bastard know all that? You?!]
[Of course not! Anyway just act and let’s speak about this for later]
[I’ll act now]
“Sorry… We just came in a hurry without checking our shadows,” Karoline spoke for the rest of the team as she was the closest one to me.
For a second there I felt total rage upon such carelessness. But to be honest, I also shared part of this sin. I should have first scanned their shadows before doing anything else.
But come on… I was awakened in such an inhuman way and got to hear such bad news.
“You will give up half of your forces in the upcoming fight,” I said in a decisive tone. Guilty with intention or out of carelessness wasn’t the problem here.
I had to teach them that any mistake they’d make would be met with a proper punishment. In fact if I wasn’t in dire need for their help in the upcoming battle, I would have rather stripped them away from all of their forces.
“But boss…” the spearhead tried to speak up but a single gaze of mine silenced him and killed any intention to argue with me inside everyone.
“Get ready to move out,” I said, “we’ll head to that bastard and start the fight.”
“O… Ok,” everyone said in down spirit before looking at me.
“What?”
“Won’t you lower down the chariot for us to descend?” Karoline spoke again as the others feared to open their mouths.
“I’d prefer you would climb down yourselves the way you came here through…” I paused momentarily before waving my hand, “go, I’ll lower it now for you to descend.”
“Ahem…” Angelica cleared her throat before adding, “what about the extra forces? Where will we leave them?”
“Leave?” I blinked twice before snorting back, “they’ll be added to my own army. We won’t leave anyone behind. Go, you have less than half an hour to get ready.”
I watched them retreating back while I controlled the chariot to descend on the ground. After taking a deep breath to calm down my thoughts, I opened the chat with Wryly and sent a message to him.
[We’ll hit that army in three hours. Make sure you get there with whatever you got]
[Won’t that be a little late?]
[Don’t worry, I got things under control here]
[I believe in you bro, don’t disappoint me then] he sent this and I closed the chat with him. That dude was a real good Berserker.
[Where are you now?] As I closed the chat with Wryly, I sent it to Fang.
[I’m gathering up my forces to come to you]
[If you set your eyes over the grand prize then I have to give you bad news]
[What? Don’t tell me that Berserker got it! He has no power or authority to rival mine!]
[His paragon did, and compared to that dude you are the one without power nor authority] I laughed shortly before sending again to him, [This fight will have a great impact and lots of loot and benefits. If you want to come in you are welcomed, if not then there’s no hard feelings here]
He seemed to be slightly overwhelmed by the mention of that paragon. For five minutes he kept silent before sending:
[I got the agreement of my paragon, he will support me to claim this epic grade gate]
[Sorry bro, I already signed a contract with that paragon] I had a feeling he would do this move. But as he was faster to claim the first mega gate, he was slower here and lost this epic grade gate.
[This is unfair!]
[If you want to blame someone then blame yourself for not acting fast. Besides who said other gates won’t appear?]
[This region is turning to be more peaceful that you might think]
I knew what he was referring to. By the sudden interference of that human girl hero, the dragon archlord was forced to retreat away.
This region was leaning towards total control under our allied forces. [Who said I’d stop here and won’t expand beyond?] ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
[Do you plan to invade other regions?] He seemed a bit surprised by this. What? Wasn’t that the right course of action or what?
Pressing when I held the advantage, that was a simple logic dude!
[I won’t stop at this area, so it’s better to stick around for longer] I sent over before adding a hidden threat to him, [Anyway I got that paragon who seems to be excited about cooperating with me. I don’t hold any preferences here, so first come first served]
[Alright…] he paused for a few minutes before sending again, [I’ll place my bids over you. Let’s try and conquer more regions together]
I smiled in content when I read his response. In fact I held low hope in his agreement over this. After all, expanding over other regions would put him not only against other races’ archlords but also against his own race’s archlords in these regions.
Not to mention expanding the area would also put us against much higher ranked people like Senators or even Paragons.
But when I thought about it for a minute, I got what just happened.
It seemed Fang’s paragon had already selected him to be the flag bearer of the Selvator race in this continent.
After all he told me before that his paragons already ditched this part of the world.
So the paragon he was following was such an ambitious dude. He didn’t refuse a free meal like this.
Alright… as things got sorted out in such a way, all I had to do now was to make sure that the illusionist archlord wouldn’t escape.
If he did, I’d be screwed! Such a hard to counter fellow was simply a headache.
“I should check the market then,” knowing that the highest advantage of that bastard was his stealthiness, I had to look for something to counter that.
Even his unique ability to form shadows wasn’t that threatening at this point. It wouldn’t get him away from my sword, yet his stealthiness would.
So as I had enough time here, I started to scan the market for anything that could help. This time I saw many things sold in the market rather than the earlier phase of the apocalypse.
“There are many fine gold grade gears here…” I noticed the presence of such strong gears in the market in abundance.
Before the common grade there was only silver at the past quest. Looking at the astronomical amount of coins that I got, I started to consider something else.
“I should equip my entire forces in such strong gears,” as I decided, I started a shopping spree that I never planned before.
I knew the number of my forces was slightly over three hundred thousand fighters. But I lacked any details about their preferences.
How many melee? Thanks? Mages and archers? Were there any assassins here?
As I wanted to know, I sent a message to Karoline. As expected she knew more information about the troops here.
[We have almost half of them as melee…] She started to tell me the details about the troops and I nodded in satisfaction.
Among all the team I gathered, Karoline came with such an organised mind. Even compared to the jumper in that regard, she would exceed him by leaps and bounds.
As she narrated in detail what I needed to know, I started to buy almost all the gears that suited my fighters.
Doing this boring thing made me consider something else. “I need to start an organisation that will handle the information of everyone following me…”
It wasn’t only limited to knowing their fighting preferences. I needed to record their stats, attributes, classes, skills, and gods blessing them. Such info might seem easy while considering a few thousand, but right now I have a few hundred thousand.
And that number had a great chance to multiply soon, especially after going north.
Knowing such info would help me later on to determine the best course of action for them. It was common to find humans using their stats wrongly while picking up their fighting roles.
Not to mention I planned to select those with special attributes and start pushing them down the road of cultivation with me.
After all without cultivation, humans wouldn’t survive this sh*t in the later stages.
Of course the first name that popped in my mind to lead such an organisation was Karoline. But alone she wouldn’t be able to do miracles.
Also I needed to find something that would help her in her job. I might need the help of the Bringold impact in this matter.
Purchasing things directly from the market looked a dull thing to do, but it went smoother than I expected. In less than half an hour I already bought enough to equip almost all of my forces.
Of course I paid roughly four fifths of my entire wealth, but coins started to lose their importance to me at this point.
How ironic that was! In the past I was ready to do anything to just acquire one million coins and live like a rich man.
And now I was simply throwing away billions without batting an eye!
Was that what a tycoon would be? Or was that how invincible prodigies live their lives?
I shrugged while not feeling like I worked that hard to acquire these coins. For a moment there I also questioned myself… If getting coins was this easy for me, why couldn’t others do this before in my past life?
I didn’t know the answer, but something told me that if I looked inside the wealth of my team, I wouldn’t see anyone like me except for that jumper.
“We are ready.”
After I finished buying all these and before I could look for anything that would counter that stealth ability of the illusionist race, my team climbed up as Angelica said in a loud tone.
“Good… You have a task to do for now,” I said before taking the rope on the edge of the chariot and simply jumped down below. “Come down here,” I shouted while noticing the strange looks over their faces.
“Aren’t we going to head out right now?” Sara asked in doubt as everyone got down below.
“Are they coming for us?” the spearhead asked and I totally ignored their questions.
*Clang!* *Clang!* *Clang!*
After all, showing them in action was the perfect explanation for their puzzlement.