He realised what I wanted, and used the right method to start a bargain with me.

After all, without having a bargaining chip, they’d end up being under my mercy. And such strong dudes coming from a formidable race wouldn’t accept such treatment.

I liked how this dude worked, and how he had such quick wits.

“We both don’t want to see such a result,” I smiled before my smile vanished and was replaced with a serious look, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll give you more than what you deserve.”

“Stop th…”

“Remain silent and don’t speak a single word!” Toramos seemed quite annoyed by his group. They seemed to have a fish memory or something, forgetting about how their dude just died thanks to what he said.

“So you want us to lead your forces, right?” I liked this dude. He reminded me of Lily and Legend, even with the jumper but without his foul mouth and bad temper.

“That’s correct,” I nodded, “but you’ll follow my orders. And that’s not to boss you around, but it’s for your own sake.”

This time not a single one spoke and that wasn’t just because of what Toramos said earlier. That dude moved his head around, as if he was warning his group from speaking up again.

“You speak as if you fought against these dudes for a long time,” as expected from such a good dude. I really wanted to rope him in. How could I do such a thing?

I lacked generals, but the wisest and far sighted generals were like rare gems to me. I only got a few, too few to count on a single hand.

But trying to recruit this dude and take him from the Hescos was going to be a long term plan. I got first to impress him, and then waited for the right moment to take him into my side.

I wasn’t without hope actually. In such grand and mighty race eyes, they got tons of good seeds. And they would at some point mistreat this dude, and that would be my point of breaking through inside him and taking him to my side.

And who knew, I might end up having more surprises from other Hescos here as well, in addition to other contestants still surviving here.

“I indeed fought against them for many months,” I didn’t hide such facts from him. After all, this entire quest was monitored by many and wasn’t a secret.

“This…”

“You were locked up from getting into your zones…” I explained in brief what I did, aiming to impress this dude.

“You fought all of them all alone? And even invaded two of their homebase worlds? Damn!” He was indeed shocked by what I did. And I simply remained silent and didn’t say anything.

“But… That’s why they sent such a grand formation and new troops to meet us… But why did we get locked in the first place?”

“That’s thanks to me,” I pointed to myself in pride before adding, “and to your knowledge, it’s not just my efforts that made them this terrified.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your zone… It’s quite special.”

“In what way?”

“You saw the list of worlds we had to compete in, right?” I paused and he nodded, or that was what I thought from his suit upper part getting slightly tilted.

“There is a world in there, the twentieth world.”

“That’s the world our zone opens at… Wait, is this angelic world that special?”

“I don’t know,” I didn’t lie about that, “but anything related to that world meant real threat to the enemy.”

“Hmm… You said you cared about our zone, what does that mean?”

“I got blocked from getting to that world,” I slowly said before adding, “and that’s why I wanted to take control over this zone above all.”

“And you need our help in that?”

“Not just that,” this dude would ask for an easy life if he wanted to just do this task, “I want you to lead armies and help others.”

“Others? What others?”

“There are others like you,” I paused before adding, “I’ll take control of this zone. But the other seventeen zones will be handled by you.”

“This… Seventeen…”

“Don’t worry, I will arm you up with enough forces to take these zones down.”

I wasn’t lying. Just from the last batch of gears I got before coming here, I could arm tons of forces with my gears.

At the same time, these zones were like treasure troves for me. They were filled to the brim with fiends and other elite forces.

“Come with me,” I looked at the brutal fight in between the worms and didn’t care about the end result.

With my cube, I could tame all of them. But first I gotta take this dude and his group over the others, relief and rescue them before releasing them all over these zones.

I didn’t care about any of these zones. I got access to all the worlds back at my zones. Only this zone here got my utmost interest.

“Come,” I paused before adding, “open portals to other zones.

Right away

A portal appeared, and then I went through it.

“Come with me,” and all I did was to go down to the bubble shaped shield which protected the contestant down below and his group.

As for the fight going on here, I took more warriors and left them to be led by one of Toramos’ men.

Like that, I kept simply jumping around from one zone to another, rescuing those contestants, adding more warriors, and leaving one of the good men I acquired behind.

The Hescos got all their team members to be paragons. As for other races, they weren’t that great to begin with.

I left a few of the gained team members behind, explaining everything to Toramos who gladly took over this task.