Chapter 74 - Going To Queens
As I moved my eyes around, I saw all of them raising hands in the air. Who was stupid enough to not accept such a bargain? Even if it was on the edge of the sword, the value of their lives was far more important than such useless past concepts of civilization.
“Go and throw these contracts over them,” I roughly counted them and almost two hundred and fifty people stood there. From the initial three hundred, fifty were killed in such a short time.
“Why me?” Isabella asked despite knowing the answer for sure.
“I’m the king,” I rolled my eyes and said the obvious, “which king will go and deliver things like this?”
“A king? Humph, who said you are my king?” she said in a teasing tone with no ill intention whatsoever. Without waiting for me to say anything else, she grabbed my contracts and went to the front.
“Just remember, you owe me one, ok?”
I kept signing the large number of contracts while she kept throwing them over the circle of myriad coloured fire. Anyone who signed a contract with me had two, not one contract to sign; one binding contract, and another for my channel.
They might be rogue and hard to tame lions for now, but later on they would become strong and one of my strongest and capable generals.
Binding them for the channel was a must. Not to mention I’d already use them sooner to conquer this city and the next one, they would also help me later on.
So having an eye over them was something I wouldn’t neglect, and also adding more excitement to my channel was also a bonus.
My current subscribers of the channel were going slowly up. Right now I am still swaying around six thousand subscribers.
It wasn’t a big number, but it was good for now. By adding more assets to my channel like these elites, the subscribers would have more videos to watch and share, more subscribers to come, and more influence I would get.
In just ten minutes I was done with all this. As for the various breaths surrounding them, they had to wait for ten more minutes for these to vanish.
During this time, not a single person came out from the campus. In exchange I saw many heads looking like black dots from far away.
They were all curious to meet me, and I was curious about their abilities and talents.
During this time I started to get to know my elites better. From their mouths I knew more about the status of the campus.
My knowledge from the records was wrong! There weren’t eight thousand people here, but fifteen!
From what I heard, once the apocalypse befell the world the scattered students all went back to here. Out of the original twenty thousands, only twelve thousand returned.
Then the difference came from the original students living inside the dorms at this point of time. They were also scattered over the city for fun and helping their fellow visitors.
According to these two hundred and fifty students, I learnt there were initially ten thousand from the local students. But after the first quest ended, the number dwelled from twenty-two thousand students in the campus to the current fifteen thousand.
What astonished me next was the fact that the entire campus was void of any emblems or castles. How could this be? This college was so massive.
But according to their words, they had people covering everywhere inside the campus for security.
That was it for the good news. As for the bad news, there were a lot of them.
First the large number of students faced huge waves of monsters. But in the end they lacked the knowledge to get materials from those monsters, or even gaining skills.
Beside that, most of the students were barely ten points above the lower level of the stat points; mostly at twenty points and weren’t equally distributed.
Not to mention that a large number of them accepted the blessing of the lower gods already, losing the chance to accept more gods in the future.
That might not be a big issue if the number wasn’t this large. But considering the fifteen thousand students in the big picture, I had to frown.
How could I solve this without wasting more time? The only option here was to take them with me on this trip. However I would lose many of them while facing monsters and other traitors.
Not to mention the trip to the other city would be far more dangerous than here.
For a moment I hesitated before I made up my mind. This wasn’t a tour or a school trip, this was the apocalypse. If they couldn’t survive, then it would be their fate not my problem.
“You’ll lead the others and go and teach them about our little tricks,” I turned to Isabella before adding, “after you finish, take them towards the east river and cross it to the Queens district. I’ll be in touch with you all the time.”
Isabella seemed to notice the same problem as I did. “Shall I babysit them or what?” she asked in a mocking tone, but her deep meaning was far more serious than her tone.
“Make them have a taste of what apocalypse is,” I seriously said before adding, “let them gain points and coins during the journey. They were living off the real apocalypse and enjoying a fake peaceful life so far.”
Isabella nodded in understanding. As for the other elites, they didn’t get what we two just chatted about.
“Also don’t forget to dispatch a group to collect their data,” I stressed over this point, “anyone with attributes above unique is considered a good seedling. Pay more attention to these and make sure they won’t suffer much.”
“Got it,” Isabella knew my way of doing things, so she got what I wanted to say thoroughly fast.
“Let’s go,” as the sounds of battles became scarcer, I knew my warriors and forces were about to finish their task, “let’s get them to know their future king.” ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Again with that nonsense,” Isabella rolled her eyes and smiled. For a second there her face beamed with such a bright smile.
Even if she acted this way, she seemed to be happy, happy for being on my side from the start.
Who wouldn’t be? After all I was now walking a path that not a normal human being would walk usually in such dire times.
Before moving again, I used these minutes to look for something necessary. I found an item in the market used to add people as friends and allow many things like chatting, exchange items, and even sound and video calls.
“Here, accept my invitation,” I instantly bought it despite its astronomical price of one million coins. After all this was a one time gadget and it would allow me to use its features for unlimited times.
As she accepted the friend request, I checked it and made sure it worked properly. Then I started to move.
As I walked among my warriors and with the strongest of those survivors becoming my lackeys, the rest inside the campus couldn’t have any dreams of going against me.
Things went on smoothly after that. I bought a bunch of compasses and gave them to Isabella for scanning the people here, looking for traitors.
I also gave her the orders to kill them by herself, and made sure to take her loot from their bodies. As for the loot, half would go for me, the rest would be left for Isabella to strengthen anyone worthy of support.
As things stabilised and everything began to move in clear order, I started to move again. This time I led my warriors and dragons towards the east river, heading straight for the big bridge.
Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge was a marvel to the eye. When looking at it amidst the dim world and the clear signs of destruction all around the city, that bridge seemed to be made especially for such an era.
The road wasn’t smooth, after all dense packs of monsters tried to stop me and my little boys. But they couldn’t. In one hour I finally managed to set foot over the bridge and started crossing it.
The bridge wasn’t clear. There were a lot of cars scattered in both directions. Some were left intact, yet others appeared to experience heavy damage coming from monsters.
But what they all shared was the strange irregular parking, even most rotated and had their front looking for the river instead of the bridge itself.
And all had their doors opened, giving me the impression that the drivers and the ones who were inside these cars had to leave in a hurry.
If I tried to cross the bridge when the next quest started, then I doubted this journey would be in such a smooth way. Avian monsters weren’t here yet, not to mention the aquatic monsters as well.
If any of those were here, then trying to cross this bridge would be a disaster.
Crossing such an old cantilever bridge made me reach the long island city block of Queens.
“It’s time to get more castles,” I didn’t enjoy the amazing sight anymore and started to move towards the nearest castle.
According to the jumper, he already scanned the Queens area and moved to Brooklyn. I had to admit, having the scout mission was the easiest and most suitable one for that crazy dude.
At the same time, I started to ask Isabella about the situation at her part. I couldn’t hold the large number of castles here alone. I needed more of the army to move out and if they would come, they surely needed my support.
It seemed that Manhattan was cursed with monsters. Queens wasn’t that bad. Streets weren’t void from wolves and hyenas, but they weren’t even close to half the number or density shown at that island.
It must be the difference in size. After all, Manhattan island was smaller in size compared to other districts in this city.
As I knew my army would come here soon, and those monsters didn’t put enough pressure at all on me, I ordered my little boys to go and kill everything in their path.
[We found a lot of traitors so far] The answer I got from Isabella wasn’t a surprise. Such a large number of survivors wouldn’t come without infiltrating them from the angels.
[Out of the three thousand people we scanned, five hundred were traitors]
[Kill them all] I sent in cold blood, [I’ll transfer more coins for you if you needed]
[No need, most of them were wealthy little bastards] her message told me their fate was already sealed. [We also got a lot of things. I’ll send your share once I’m done]
[Keep the gears] I sent to her. [Make sure many are well armed. The monsters from your place to the bridge are really dense, but I’ll clear the rest inside Queens]
[Ok]
In fact I had no use for such gears but this one. What was the benefit of selling them for a low price? It was better to arm those kids and turn them into strong forces.
Just as she was busy handling the situation at her end, I also checked through the video feed on the spearhead.
He led many of his people and started to widen the gap I found. The ore was sparkling in pure scarlet red light, making the scene closer to being a scene of hell.
During past hours, they managed to mine a few ores. The tools they got were all purchased from the market at a low price. That stingy spearhead complained a lot for the lack of coins, but I gave him a compass and released him on the people he had.
In my eyes, having such a strong person was enough to lead an entire army at this stage.. He found a good number of traitors, and got to clean their inventories as I taught him.