For the same race to possess two treasures of the same calibre in one city and in such an early stage of the apocalypse was something I never heard of before or even imagined!

“They got the support from their higher ups,” it was the only explanation I could give in such a weird case, “but what are they trying to do?”

*Roar!*

Just as I said that, the beam of light which fell directly over the head of the monster started to get smaller. At first I thought it was fading away, but gradually I realised it was getting fiercer, being concentrated from a size of tens of metres radius to a thickness of a closed fist.

That was a great amount of condensation if you asked me. And once it reached such a scale, the monster roared in another painful way.

“Are they trying to kill it?” I couldn’t believe even my own words when I said them. Killing the monster just after summoning it? That would be insane!

“No, they are messing with its senses,” the jumper seemed to see something I couldn’t. He pointed at the direction of the monster before adding in a panicked tone, “a distortion effect item… Something to mess with the senses of the monster and make it not see the illusionists!”

He didn’t stop there. He took many things out of his inventory, strange items, different kinds of weird gears, and even many grenade like items that I recognised.

“F*ck! You have the grenade of death in your inventory all this time and didn’t tell me?!!” I was shocked when seeing these little grenades that were shimmered in dangerous red light.

“They are my last card to survive,” he rolled his eyes before adding, “plus it’s not time for you to worry about them! We have an apocalyptic level monster heading our way right now!”

He was right indeed. That monster once got hit by the beam of light, it started to shake off its massive head before turning its head away from the castle.

It looked like that beam turned the entire castle into a deserted place in the monster’s senses.

And now? The monster was attracted by the massive numbers of the monsters coming towards us. So the end result was very simple… It was coming in our direction!

“So what?” Unlike what the jumper might have thought, I shrugged as if this had nothing to do with me.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” The jumper left everything he took on the ground and jumped to my neck. Again I felt his strength squeezing my neck, yet it didn’t look that domineering like before.

“Calm down,” I pushed his arm using my own strength, “we aren’t in such a desperate situation yet.”

“Indeed we aren’t!” He seemed to take my words as a joke. He laughed in a sarcastic way that I didn’t care about.

“After we survive this, I’ll take half of your precious grenades,” I pointed at the grenades scattered at the ground.

“That’s of course in case we survived this sh*t!” the jumper snorted and I shrugged in a carefree way.

“Watch and learn,” I turned to the front, looking at the incoming thousands of monsters and races in my direction.

I had to admit, this move was really cunning. It was like my move of the bubble that took me out of this death game with a simple move.

And just like my brilliant move, they also used another one to take themselves out and force me back directly into the sour spot of the game.

But who said the game was over or it was a checkmate? I still had my own moves to play.

“Running away?” The jumper stood next to me while busying himself, arming every single inch of his body with anything he could carry. “Is this your answer?”

“No, it’s that one,” I simply motioned my head to a certain spot. The moment the jumper saw what was happening, and once he connected the dots, he couldn’t help but gasp.

It was the first time for him to show me such a reaction since I knew him!

“This is…”

“A brilliant move?” I completed what he couldn’t say.

“A silly and risky move,” despite his rude answer, I was slightly glad he returned to his old nature.

“Silly or risky doesn’t matter, we want to kill our enemies and not lose our lives in the process,” I simply said while steering my chariot to move in her intermediate form away from the incoming enemy wave and that gigantic monster on their tails.

I wasn’t trying to run outside the city, instead I was moving in a wide arc, almost taking the illusionist castle as my centre.

It was a wide circle where it extended from one shore to another! It was big enough to take almost an hour to cross it in one full circle.

And as the chariot was moving in her intermediate speed, it was enough to keep the distance between us and the racing enemies behind fixed.

“Won’t you accelerate a little?” the jumper seemed to grow tired of this useless chase, “that monster… it only had a big body and little brain it seems!”

I knew why he was frustrated. When the monster first chased us, he thought it would attack the monsters and then come to kill us.

But up till now, the monster showed one hell of a weakness… It’s slow compared to all of us!

“Not now,” I shook my head and the jumper got my intentions.

“When is it then?” he asked, “this is the third round already!”

I looked at the direction of the central castle and said, “at the fifth circle we’ll move.”

“Fifth!!” The jumper was startled by my answer, and yet I didn’t change my decision. I knew this would consume around five hours here doing nothing, but in fact that was wrong.

I wasn’t just running in wide circles. Even the keen senses of the jumper couldn’t get that the circular course we were running kept getting shorter with each lap!

If I did so in a big move or all of sudden, then the enemies would notice this. So I was cautious to slightly deviate the chariot’s course a few metres every few minutes.

That might seem like a slow deviation, and that was why I needed the entire five laps to complete what I wanted to do.

The remaining two laps went without much suspense. It seemed that many monsters reached their limit and once got tired, they either slowed down and got devastated by the ongoing behemoth behind them, or they scattered across the city in an attempt to run.

“This might be bad,” at the start of the fifth circle, the jumper said in warning.

“We’ll move soon,” I said, “hopefully we won’t get discovered.”

“Told you, it’s a risky plan,” he rolled his eyes in discontent. Why did that damn bastard keep grumbling all the time?

“Any plan is risky at this point,” I shrugged, “get ready. We’ll need your precious grenades soon.”

“This…” he seemed to not see this coming.

“What? Didn’t you plan to use them all to survive?” I asked while giving him a deep glance.

“But you already have a plan!” he argued.

“And in my plan I need your grenades!” I said while not flinching an inch.

“I won’t give,” he was about to store away his grenades, while his tone showed his deepest regret of taking them out.

“If you won’t, then I’ll use my privilege and empty your entire inventory!”

“I dare you do that!” he shouted in pure rage.

“I already did it once dude! I dare you to test me again!”

We stood motionless, eye to an eye, head to head, as if we were enemies and not friends and allies. Seconds passed and even when I was challenging him in such a stance, I was keeping an eye over the general direction we were heading towards.

“We are getting closer to the right point to move,” I said, “either you voluntarily give me five grenades now to use or I’ll empty your goddamn inventory out!”

“F… Five? Didn’t you just say one?” he held his grenades like he was holding a precious part of his body! Dude! Come on! I didn’t have time for that.

“I order you…” as I got tired of hammering such a steeled brain of his, I had no other choice but to force him to do it.

“Alright alright,” but he hurriedly interrupted me, “I’ll give you three, alright?”

“Are you bargaining with me?” I gave him a cold gaze that made him retreat a couple of steps.

“Why are you giving me such a look?” he said and I was already at my limit with him.

“I order you…”

“Alright alright, just stop it, please,” he said before he gave a long glance at his grenades before throwing five at my direction. I swore I even saw a single tear coming down from his eyes when he did that!

Dude! They were precious, no doubt about that. But who said they were one of a kind? I knew of a few ways to get them later on, and you must be aware of that too!

“You should have done that from the start,” I stored them at once inside my inventory.

In fact I only needed one, but who said to not try and tease that hard to get more from that bastard? If he was always getting on my nerves, then the pleasure of getting things out of his inventory by his own will was my response to that.

The grenades of death were a very brutal item. Single one was enough to cause small-scale devastation equal to a limited scaled single attack of the star weapon of the angels.

Their only drawback was that once exploded, they’d only hit a small zone of five hundred metres radius for ten seconds. That might be considered a weakness, but compared to other items like these, this was an insignificant weakness.

After I got what I wanted, it was time to start my next move. Yet it didn’t start from my direction, but at the direction of the illusionist gate.

*Boom!* *Boom!* Boom!*

Loud explosions occurred in that direction in a span of a few breaths alongside few rumblings and the signs of brutal fighting happening all of sudden.

“Your boys have started,” the jumper pointed in that direction, “shouldn’t we join them now?”

“Of course,” I evilly smiled while turning the direction of my chariot sharply to head directly towards the illusionist gate.

Up in that direction, all my warriors appeared miraculously there in a big formation. The first attacks came from my shield warriors, causing enough devastation to crack the doors of that big castle open.

This was my plan, the one I started in response to the brilliant move from the illusionists. Once I started running, I began to slowly deploy my own warriors in a few numbers with each few hundreds of metres.

I sent them instructions through one of the illusionists using the contract between me and them to relay messages. From all my warriors, only Gollems stood behind to operate the big ballista on the deck.

Even the illusionists, I scattered them with my warriors as well. Their mission was simple; move in a few numbers and gather near the direction of the illusionist gate.

I told them to move during my fourth lap, but it took some time for them to move. Once they attacked, it was no time for me to hide my intentions. So I steered my chariot and drove it towards the direction of that castle and gate.

The warriors were in enough numbers to hold their ground against the army inside the castle. Of course the illusionists weren’t prepared for such a move. They mistook my actions earlier and thought they already pinned me down.