Chapter 64 - [Bonus Chapter] Now I Realize Everything!
“Keep pushing forward,” I shouted while getting deeper into the street. The path was already blocked by many fallen pieces of the nearby buildings, plus the still burning fire here and there.
But that didn’t stop me. It took roughly five minutes to get near the building those wolves tried so hard to crush inside.
My mind kept wondering about the identity of the treasures found in New York city. According to the records, there were not a few treasures that appeared here.
But the strange thing was that none of them appeared in this region. Besides, they should appear after the fifth quest is over.
Having treasures meant an immense boost to anyone’s strength. Be it monsters or humans, no one would say no to such a chance.
According to the laws of the system, balance must be maintained. So the greater the benefits the greater the risk. That meant any treasure appearing would be tightly supported and guarded by many fearsome advanced tier monsters.
Even the hybrid monster from before might be present in large numbers this time, and in full strength.
Despite knowing all that, I never felt any worry. I was sure that my current warriors might put up a good fight against the full powerful hybrid monsters. But I never planned to use them.
I didn’t want to lose almost every warrior I had just to get one single treasure. No matter how valuable that treasure was, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the loss of my warriors.
So the option I had was simple; I had to use my dragons. They reached level hundred already. Even faced with the hybrid monsters of tier seven and higher wouldn’t be an issue.
My dragons had six skills by now, including the immense boost in strength thanks to the bones they got from me. At this moment I didn’t feel any pain from giving them my bones.
But the moment I reached that building in the protection of my warriors, I couldn’t help but frown at what I saw inside.
“Stay back! Don’t come near or we will kill you!”
“This is your first and last warning. Don’t come near us!”
“Thanks for the help in pushing the monsters away, but we won’t share this emblem with you.”
“Sorry, but you need to keep going up ahead and leave this zone to us.”
“This zone is under the protection of our lion squad. You have to reconcile and leave or we won’t be polite anymore!”
As I saw it, the inside of that ten story building was transformed into a scene looking like a small castle. The front was covered by big and thick walls, reaching almost the heights of twenty meters from the ground.
Three rounded big towers appeared, two on the corners of the front segment of the castle and one just in front of the main gate.
The gate was made entirely of special alloy looking like dark iron. It was ten meters in height, twenty meters in width, and was shut tightly in front of my face.
As for those who spoke just now, they were a group of fifty people standing on the top of these three towers.
Just seeing this scene made my scalp numb. I knew this, I recognized this at first glance. How could I not recognize this tyrannical quest?
“Damn! So it isn’t the quest to conquer the city, but the quest of a dogfight between cities,” I cursed out loud without controlling myself.
What I saw in front of me was a trademark of a famous bloody quest, the fifteen quest. It was the same quest where the jumper gained his unique ability and met that dying angel.
It was a simple quest from the surface, asking people from various cities to be prepared for a cross-city battle. It was called the arena quest, a name not fitting the real scenario of this quest.
This quest proved how cunning and dirty these angels were. Providing humans with only pieces of the truth, while keeping the rest for themselves.
This castle in front of me wasn’t an exception, as I knew there were other castles spread all around the city. Each castle would appear randomly and without any prior planning, all surrounding something called an emblem.
The emblems were floating, semi-real objects that were attached to certain areas and couldn’t be moved. Getting a hand over one emblem meant this zone would turn totally under the control of people.
Boosting in all stats, decreasing the stats of the enemies, even turning the terrain in the favor of the defenders… anything was possible with these emblems.
I could already see how greedy everyone was towards these emblems. They usually appeared at quest fifteen, after a long journey of fight and struggle in between the humans and monsters.
Seeing this castle drove back old memories from what I read in the records and heard from the old man. The angels did a marvelous job to make sure humans wouldn’t stand united under a single powerhouse.
Using many tactics and quests, they managed to create a deep crater between human forces. Even the strongest forces never accepted the appointment of the city lords from earlier quests.
And so this quest came as a way to vent their anger and fulfill their desires. Who would reject such a chance? Gaining their hands over emblems that would turn small zones into their territory? Monsters wouldn’t be able to stand a chance against these forces, not to mention the already powerful city lords and their loyal forces.
The quest that should be a struggle between various city lords turned by the dirty machinations and underhanded schemes of the angels into a struggle between human forces under the same city lord. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
And that wasn’t all!
The biggest trick here wasn’t in driving humans towards this dark end of the tunnel, but the big secret about the reality of this quest.
It wasn’t a quest between humans, but between human cities and other races’ cities. It was the start of the big merge between Earth and other worlds in this apocalypse.
And to add more to their treacherous nature, this move must be done by the agreement of the humans themselves. It was simply linked to the emblems scattered all over the world.
I knew I couldn’t stop the massacre that was going to happen around the world, but at least I could delay its happening in this part of the world.
For the quest to develop into the merge between the four worlds and other scattered worlds with ours, humans need to activate more than ninety-five percent of the emblems at the time of the merge.
Activating the emblems wasn’t that hard to do. It was simply done by activating the effects of the emblems and linking them using blood. Like all other cases in the apocalypse, any benefits must be accompanied by a challenge and a price to pay.
The price of gaining such overbearing authority was the agreement of the merge between the various worlds. What did that mean?
Humans were still weak. Even after gaining the support from the gods, we weren’t anything compared with tyrannical races like the dragons, the intelligent monsters, the Selvators, the illusionists, and many others weaker races in these four worlds.
Letting this to happen this early meant one end for us, total annihilation!
I didn’t plan to act heroic, but letting the angels slip by their actions meant one dead end for me. Even if I was someone coming from the future, even if I was equipped with a lot of knowledge about the quests, even if I had a jumper by my side… I knew if this scheme was left to be completed, things would end miserably for myself.
“Sorry guys, but you shouldn’t have worked for the angels as traitors,” in front of the clear threatening words and strong stance of those humans, I didn’t show any sign of weakness.
One thing was for sure. If the angels decided to start the preparations for this quest at this time, then they should have issued a general quest for everyone.
But I didn’t get anything, nor did any of the people who worked under me. What did this imply then? The angels only shared this knowledge with their traitors and asked them to get a head on start before issuing the general subquest for everyone.
Having their dogs controlling the needed quota of the emblems at the start of the second quest would ensure their success in the merge. And I simply needed to stop that from happening.
I knew why they had to do that. I wasn’t the sole reason behind this. I was sure many people like me existed all over the planet. Resisting the angels and trying to do the best for our human race.
But I knew the sole weakness of the emblems… They needed time to be activated. The castle up front might boost the stats of everyone standing inside. But it wasn’t enough to make them invincible.
Each emblem had ranks like everything else. Starting with white all the way up to black. Even the lowest grade emblems needed at least four hours to be activated, and the black ones needed at least twenty hours.
So the angels had to extend the duration of the rest period for this plan to succeed. They also wouldn’t issue the general subquest until they were sure their dirty minions got the needed quota for linking Earth with other worlds.
They would make sure that all the emblems they needed for the merge would be already activated even before the start of the second quest.
Scary! They were such a scary foe!
But would I stand idle and let them do that?
“All form a defensive circle around,” I instantly started to issue my orders and organize my forces, “shield warriors, half at the front and half at the back. All Bulltors stay at the back and help in stopping any coming monster. As for the rest, pay your attention to the ongoing battles on both sides, heal everyone and release your arrows and magic to claim anyone you can.”
I arranged my warriors this way. However, from the general look of it, I planned to defend and not attack. After all, my main attack force in the eyes of those traitors were my giant Bulltors.
“Prepare for battle!”
“Activate the defensive shield!”
“Use the defensive gears inside, don’t let him get close to the emblem!”
Many shouts appeared from inside the castle, making me realize the fifty something traitors showed to me weren’t the full force of the traitors.
But no matter how hard they tried to resist, I was totally confident in my ability to conquer this place.
Despite that, I didn’t hurry to issue my overwhelming attack at the castle. This wasn’t the most crucial thing right now.
At the moment, I should pay more attention to something else.
[Tell me you still have connection with those fifty aces across the world]