The jumper seemed to get annoyed with us as he went aside and took a corner for himself. Others kept talking about how they’ll distribute forces among themselves, which direction each would take, and started to plan out their grand movement plan.

After a few discussions with them we all decided to extend also to the southern Connecticut state as well. It was near and wouldn’t be that damaged from the upcoming crisis as far as I knew.

As they kept themselves busy with all that, we finally came to Albany’s city outer borders.

“What the hell is that?!” The first to notice the strange situation here was Alex. She still carried her cautiousness even after all what happened.

“Is that… The city we are going to take?” Angelica looked at everyone before she stopped at me. Also the others did the same, and the jumper moved from his away spot and came closer to us.

“They didn’t waste their time during the second quest,” I couldn’t help but suspect one race was able to make such changes on such a scale.

What lied up front was totally different from any city I visited before. Unlike the familiar scenes of ruins and destruction, this city looked like a bustling city from mediaeval ages.

Or to be precise, it was just a smaller image of what big cities would look like one hundred years from now!

The city had walls, big and mighty looking walls that would prevent anyone from intruding inside. The walls were at least twenty metres tall, with a breadth equal to half its length.

They circulated the entire city and a large area outside like they were hugging this piece of land. One main gate was there while dozens of cylindrical towers were scattered all over the walls.

As for the city itself, instead of the sights of damaged and burned buildings, the entire city was filled with three up to five stories of weird looking buildings.

The buildings were all built out of red and black ores, while golden lines flashed across the outer surface, flashing from time to time.

I knew what this style meant. These buildings had self defensive mechanisms that would prevent its destruction even if they were directly hit by anything.

An Organized and well built city was in front of me. And it wasn’t emptied at all! I could see lots of silhouettes of many races walking inside the wide streets, giving me a familiar image of what life would be in the future.

But this wasn’t the future! How could someone do something like this here?

One race popped into my mind when I thought about it. A race who was so arrogant to see themselves above all, so wealthy to have the financial backbone to spend extravagantly over such a city, and had a lot of influence to be reassured this city wouldn’t even fall no matter what!

Dragons! They were dragons! I’d bet with everything I got precious over this!

“Who did this?!!” Isabella looked at me as everyone else.

“Have you ever seen something like that before?” even the jumper seemed to not live to see such a sight before.

And I couldn’t help but nod, then pointed to the sky where a big gate was.

“There is a mega gate up there, that means one race controls the entire city.”

“You know who is that race, boss?” the spearhead asked and I nodded.

“Drags,” I said and their eyes flashed with an understanding. As for the jumper, he firmly nodded, agreeing with my guess.

“They are the only ones crazy enough to do something like this,” he said.

“So what are we going to do now?” Karoline asked, “will we concede this city and retreat?”

“Not a chance,” I first stopped my chariot, then opened my chat and sent a message to Wryly.

You gotta be kidding me! Bro, are you blessed with luck or what?

Are you coming or what? As expected, he was overjoyed with what I just told him. Just a few hours from my leave, I found another mega gate waiting to be conquered.

Wait, please wait… I’ll lead my army and come to you

Good I then looked at the jumper and that dude retreated couple of steps while asking in fear:

“Why are you giving me that look?”

“You know…”

“Know what?”

“You are the only one able to go inside and bring us news.”

“No way!” he firmly shook his head, “dealing with those cowards is much different than dealing with those maniacs!”

I knew he referred to the illusionist as being the cowards and dragons as being the maniacs. He got a point indeed, but among everyone else, he was the only one able to do this task.

“Why not go ahead and smash the walls with our strength and armies?” Sara asked and others nodded in agreement. Even that shameless jumper nodded as well.

“That’s a great idea indeed,” he said but I shook my head, refusing such a plan.

This city was like a real fortress. They knew nothing about its terrifying defences! The mega gate up there would provide protection over the entire city.

Forget about my chariot and armies, even with Wryly’s help we would end up wasting days to just break the walls!

The only way to overcome this city was by crushing the main gate it held. But that also meant we would have to clash with the elites of the drags.

This city’s presence told me a lot about the reasons why that human girl lost. That dragon archlord wasn’t blindly retreating, but he was leading her into a trap.

She was coming this way, and the presence of this city here wasn’t a coincidence at all. I doubted the dragons would have enough resources to build more than one city in such a state of the apocalypse.

Even having one city was considered a mighty feat without a doubt.

So that archlord drew the human girl away from her main forces and base. Then he turned over her and crushed most of her forces.

This might seem a brilliant plan, and it was! One race could have such a brilliant mind to pull such an impossible feat.

But that dude forgot totally about me! He planned it well, so well but he made a simple mistake… He overlooked my threat from his perspective.

What? Did he think I wouldn’t be able to come and crush his precious city?

Or did he think high of that illusionist archlord? I recalled the group of elite dragons who guarded the illusionist bastard when I found him.

So this was the big plan that the bastard of the dragon race put forth. He placed the illusionists to keep me busy while he worked his magic against the human girl.

Then after killing her, he would be all free to play with me.

Smart… But not enough. Your man was killed by my hands, and your precious city would fall also in my hands.

Then what would you do? A simple mistake of underestimating me made this entire plane turn upside down!

The human girl would come here and find a shelter instead of a deadly trap. As for that dude… He would be the prey I’d hunt on the honour of establishing my base.

“Can’t we attack it?” Everyone was speechless from my firm response.

“It’s well protected,” I shrugged, “even if we kept hammering it day and night, I bet we’ll waste one week to just crush these walls.”

“Even if it takes a week, we have to do it!” the jumper said but I also shook my head.

Dude… Don’t try and fool everyone else! You were so smart enough to know there must be a hell of an army stationed inside!

What? Would that army wait and watch us attacking without interrupting us? Just a single pause and the protective shields would regenerate, bringing us back to ground zero.

“There is an army coming here,” I started stating the bad news one by one, “not to mention this city is already filled with an elite army, one not like anything we’ve met before.”

“And?” the jumper crossed his hands, “don’t tell me we can’t crush them!”

“We can,” I firmly said, “but that needs little planning from our side.”

“Are we going to lure the army out?” Angelica asked, “or go and crush the incoming army first?”

“Neither,” they didn’t know the entire plan of that archlord we were fighting, “we have to first bring this city down and we’ll start with that thing up there.”

I pointed at nothing else but the mega gate in the sky.

“What are we waiting for?” the jumper shrugged, “drive your thing and let’s take it.”

“Do you believe they will leave it unprotected?” I raised one eyebrow. That dude was trying to act as simple minded as a fool here!

Don’t tell me dude you didn’t notice those big cannons installed all over the city to defend its sky! Or you didn’t notice the faint shimmering of the shield surrounding even that mega gate!

Or you didn’t see the winged race that was in the tens of thousands inside the city!

“We have to do it another way,” I didn’t reprimand him for such a low act.

“Like what?” Sara asked, “are we going to hit it or not?”

“We will,” I nodded, “but not from the sky. We will dig deep down below first, come inside from underneath their defences then we will go and crush that gate.”

They looked at each other in doubt and shock. Of course this was a weird plan but they didn’t know this plan was so famous back in my days.

So it wasn’t weird to see deep trenches surrounding any big city to defend it. This one didn’t have such a thing, so we were safe to use that deadly tactic to crush the city.

“We are human geniuses, not some gnoloms or Burteks,” the jumper snorted and I only smiled in confidence.

“What are gnoloms?” Alex asked.

“And who are those Burteks?” Leo asked as well.

“They are races famous for digging fast in any mountain,” the jumper explained while moving his hands as if they were claws scratching over the ground, “they have sharp claws that would eat anything, even the hardest steel.”

“Wow!” the spearhead was impressed by them, “can’t we get some of them? If we had few of them then excavating that ore mine would have been a walk in the park!”

“We will dig using tools and magic,” I ignored all these useless comments and talked about the main topic again.

“And where are we going to get such things, genius?” the jumper crossed his arms in a challenging way, “you know the market doesn’t have a decent piece of pickaxes or hammers!”

“I have my own ways,” of course I had. The Bringold impact would solve any problems like these. “But you need to go and arrange your forces. The task of digging will be a hard and tiring process that will take a couple of days to end.”

“And what about you?” The jumper was like always, fixated on myself.

“I have something else to do,” my eyes flashed in determination. If I had to win over that dragon archlord, then I had to step into cultivation before the big battle would erupt.

As for the risk of him leaving his chase and coming here to help the city, I wasn’t worried a bit about that.

After all that human girl would never allow him to do anything without pressure. She was my own vanguard unit, helping in delaying him until we finished from here.

But to do so, I needed a little help first.

You need to tell your paragon that a message and a helping force must be deployed to that girl’s aid I sent it to Wryly and he just answered with a good piece of news.

He already sent one of the best private units he had to help her

Bravo! Then tell them to deliver this message… No matter what, don’t let that dragon bastard flee away with his forces. Keep him busy chasing you down… Got it?

This… Are you crazy?

Just do it I evilly grinned, we will hunt down a nice drag at the end of this battle