Even if that bastard worked to protect his underwater gates for now, he left lots of his monsters unprotected.

The city changed now and the entire ruins outside the central parts were covered in densely packed monsters. Of course I watched how these monsters acted against the humans in the centre.

Weirdly enough, those humans never got attacked by those monsters. It was really weird. Since when monsters ignored humans?

That made me doubt those humans. If not for the sheer numbers there of humans, I would suspect they were traitors.

But I’d look for that issue later on. For now I’d just work towards reducing the enemy influx.

The sky gates didn’t pose any threat towards me. The only attacks came from the aquatic monsters and their continuous projectiles.

After taking control over the five gates in the sky, the attacks coming at me looked like there was a black cloud over my head, raining projectiles like a flood, not water.

But my shield was still standing against such attacks. At this moment, the consumption rate swelled up and exceeded one million stat points per minute.

It was a really terrifying rate, something I never saw except against strong and deadly foes.

“This can’t continue like this,” I noticed that with limiting the strength of my forces, the kill rate diminished to a dangerous level.

Even with the presence of my deadliest forces attacking all the time, the number of monsters kept increasing, not decreasing.

At this moment, I had to choose what to do. Either I’d set my forces free, attacking as they saw fit, and risking losing the human forces at the centre.

Or I’d find another way around. The first thing that popped in my mind was to retreat, and kill the monsters that would follow.

Despite this seemed like a good plan, I saw it was a passive one. After all I’d remain all the day here attacking and killing without acting to dominate the city.

The best action was to find a way to reach the down below lakes gates. If not, then I’d fight meaningless fights here.

Another choice was to go and seek another city to attack. But the mere idea of leaving such a cancer in the heart of my territory wasn’t pleasant at all.

So what should I do? I kept my chariot moving, trying to evade the incoming attacks as much as possible. But that didn’t help much, as the attacks came in a dense way that made it impossible for me to avoid.

Also the projectiles came in a strong momentum, enough to let them rise for hundreds of metres above the ground. Even if I tried to let my chariot fly higher, it wouldn’t make any difference.

“Hmm… They are coming from a big circle around the city,” I started analysing the situation better, in a much calmer mood, “they have to wait to bypass the central region first, then come and attack me.”

From what I noticed during the past few minutes, these monsters seemed to purposely avoid the central region. Was that intentional? Was that a trap set by that bastard?

I had three options now, either to retreat outside the city, keep roaming the city, or go towards the central region.

The idea of going to the central region was just alluring to me. I found the presence of that central safe zone irritating to me. But I couldn’t tell if that was a trap or not.

After all, if I went there, and that bastard was doing this show on purpose, then I’d be trapped from all directions. Coming out from this attack would cost me a lot.

I had to shut down a few gates before going to the central zone. But I tested my chariot against everything, yet I never put it to test against water.

I didn’t know if my shield could prevent water or not. Also going to the water meant I’d be the target of every single monster around the gate, even those still pouring out from the gate under water.

I didn’t know how long each gate would take to close up. Would they be like the surface gates? Would they take less than a minute or longer?

Well… there was no way to tell but by putting this under test. Yet Going there without preparations was a suicide act.

“Soulers… Attack!”

As I decided, I called upon my soulers outside the city. These dudes were so terrifying, and such a fight they would excel at.

The first response came in a mighty war cry that came from their direction. I saw waves of my soulers flashing in their black fog, flashing through the bodies of these monsters.

Yet as I watched closely, I was surprised to see the monsters not falling after the passage of any soulers through their bodies. It looked weird in fact, reminding me of a similar situation that happened not long ago.

“I’ll summon them,” as I recalled those strong badass folks, I opened my profile and went directly towards the section of summoning those monsters.

You are the owner of Albany city

You can summon up to one hundred thousand monsters to fight by your side

Each monster will need one hundred Yewan energy points or one thousand equivalent stat points

How much do you want to summon?

Looking at this dire situation here, I decided to summon one tenth of these monsters. “Bring me ten thousand monsters.”

Ten million stat points are deducted from your inventory

Where do you want monsters?

“Here,” I raised my glaive and added, “scatter them across the city in groups of a thousand.”

Done

In a series of flashes, ten places shone in bright white light before a large number of monsters appeared. Their bodies weren’t that bigger than the aquatic monsters, but these were ground monsters.

Earth was their turf and home. Once they appeared, they roared in succession before attacking all the monsters around.

Like my soulers, these monsters flashed through any aquatic octopus-like hybrid monster, killing them in a flash.