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nThis came as a surprise for him. He never expected for other traitors to be inside his people. He thought, in a wrong way indeed, that the angels fully trusted his capabilities.

nBut he didn't know how treacherous and meticulous those angels were. They never trusted anyone, it was a fact I learnt from dealing with them so far.

nAs he got a stable source of income and many other treasures, he stopped nagging me.

nSeeing the smooth progress of people there made me happy. That ore would become one of the cornerstones of my futuristic power.

nBut leaving the spearhead there wasn't good. It was an insult to his capabilities. So I sent a message for him, asking him to go to the campus leading his best men.

nAs for the ore mining process, I asked Alex to leave her castle and go there. Of course I wouldn't let her go alone, I also sent a word for her girl, Angelica.

nI tried to act as a messenger of peace here between these two. If Angelica managed to take Alex back to her embrace, I would have cleared two nuisances off my back.

nThe first castle I reached was just at the middle of the street parallel to the east river. It didn't hold much resistance and I conquered it in no time.

nAs I left a few warriors over, I started to jump from one spot to another. According to the jumper, there were forty castles in Queens alone.

nI could never cover them freely this way. But the good news was in the lack of the dense waves of monsters like before.

nEven around the castles, monsters weren't as much or fierce as in Manhattan.

nAs I started my part, I sent a message for Isabella to dispatch a group of those she scanned here. I asked her to make spearheads lead them, and if possible she should send most of them.

nAccording to her, she scanned almost three quarters of them so far and gathered their info. She asked for one more hour to finish scanning, arranging them into teams, and gear up those who were worthy.

nOne hour wasn't a short time, but I had no other choice but to hold back when I conquered my fifteenth castle. At this point, I already cleared the left side of Queens, and was close up to Brooklyn.

nI was just near a large bridge that had its upper half of steel and the bases of cement. I didn't know why, but this city seemed to have many steel bridges that suited the apocalypse.

nAs I had nothing else to do, I sat inside the castle and sent a few warriors around to kill anything. As for my four dragons, I had to send them a couple of minutes ago back to the college campus.

nWhat I noticed though was the low number of traitors holding these forts. It seemed that at the time of the apocalypse, most of the traitors were positioned in Manhattan.

nDidn't know why, but it seemed absurd in my eyes. What? Did they go shopping? Or for seeing Broadway shows?

nThat was ridiculous!

nAnyway, that decreased a lot of pressure on me. From what I could see, the rest of New York could be conquered in the next four to six hours, given the help of the incoming army.

n*Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!*

nJust as I was resting, half awake and half asleep, a series of mighty explosions occurred not far from here.

nI jolted awake and jumped on my feet to see something amazing! Just a mile away from my place, many huge explosions happened. I could count at least ten big clouds of bright red fire rising high in the air, with pure whiteness in their hearts.

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"This…

" I tried to recall if something this big happened in this part of the city. But from the records I read before, nothing mentioned anything like this.

nThe answer came swiftly in the next few minutes. I could see dark spots flying on low level, opening up their fire and raining down everything on the ground.

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"Helis? That's the army!!

" It hit me! That was the US army! The army must have finally reacted from the early shock of the attack of the apocalypse.

nAt the start, everything advanced that made human civilization unique was lost. The military wasn't an exception for that. Most, if not all, of their big guns depended on chips to run.

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"That's…

" I used my skill to see far away and I could instantly count dozens of big sized helicopters.

nAt this moment, if not for the lack of my warriors, I would have gone there and helped. For unknown reasons, just seeing humans fight for their lives in such a big and mighty way made my blood boil.

nI wanted to go there! I wanted to fight with them as well!

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"Hell, why are they taking this much time?

" as the sounds of explosions continued, and the horizon began to be painted in dark orange red colour, I couldn't help but curse at those kids coming here.

nI sent a message to Isabella and she replied instantly that she sent all of the forces my way. From the initial fifteen thousand, only twelve were proven to be pure and not traitors.

nI didn't mind or even think about that. I only asked about how long they were gone and she said something around three quarters of an hour.

nThat meant they were nearby! I instantly recalled the spearhead. He was the one leading them here. Without any delay I opened the channel and saw the feed coming from him.

nThe moment he appeared on the floating screen in front of me, I recognized the place he was in. He was just at the bridge. That meant he wasn't that far away from here.

nHe stood in the middle of a large number of people, shouting and distributing orders like a mighty general in battle. He was fighting against waves of monsters at one end of the bridge.

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"They are trying to cross over… Damn!

" At such a realisation, I knew the angels weren't planning on letting my new army come here without pressure.

nOr was it the attack of those helis?

nI didn't care about the reason at all. I sent a direct order to the spearhead, simply saying one thing:

nSend a group to take over the castles while you are holding the bridge

nAs I sent this, I waited for five minutes before a group of youths appeared. They were around a thousand, looking warry and covered in monster's blood.

nBut the look on their faces was brimming with delight, pride, and challenge. Their fighting spirit seemed to ignite during this short trip here.

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"Boss, we are here,

" one of them said, a tall youth with tanned skin. He looked like the leader of such a group, and I only nodded to him.

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"Stay here,

" I said while another wave of explosions rang across the other end,

"don't think of coming. That battle is way above your abilities for now.

"

nIndeed they looked stronger than before with all these gears and weapons. I could tell their stats were higher as well just from their speed and the look of confidence on their faces.

nBut that ongoing fight over there was literally hell in its true ugly face. They wouldn't survive such a warzone for now.

nAs they took over the castle, I instantly summoned my warriors back before resummoning them out.

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"Let's go,

" I didn't delay any further. The army seemed to attack in waves, each would release hell over that part of the city before retreating.

nThe reason was obvious; they lacked ammo. The bombs might be causing damage to the monsters, but I knew even before reaching there they wouldn't enough to kill the monsters.

nI went straight to the bridge linking Queens to Brooklyn. The distance of the fight seemed almost half a mile away from this bridge, or slightly longer.

nThe bridge had a sign stating that it was the Pulaski bridge. I never heard about it before.

nAs I got to Brooklyn, it was obvious things were different here than in Queens. The familiar sight of densely packed monsters appeared again in front of me.

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"Go,

" I didn't hesitate to give the order for my little boys,

"kill anything standing in my way.

"

nThe warriors alone were enough to create a massive gap in their numbers. But with the aggressiveness of the dragons, it was more like a massacre.

nAs I went deeper, I lost my sense of time and direction. I only moved forward towards the site of the explosions. The closer I got, the louder these explosions became.

nI could clearly see the thick tongues of fire rising in violence towards the sky. But that wasn't enough to kill these monsters.

nThe bombs might be helplful in weakening the monsters using fire, light, and heat. But it wasn't enough to take their lives.

nWhat these bombs mostly could do was to throw the monsters apart and break their formation. Other than this, even with bullets raining like snow balls from the helis, they wouldn't be able to kill the monsters.

nThey needed the system weapons, system stats, system gears… simply put, they needed to integrate the system advantages into their weaponry.

nI knew that from the records and the old man's rich stories about such ironic facts. What made this ironic was that by the time the thick headed military personnel got to realise this, they already lost most of their power.

nIt wasn't the military gears alone, but the biggest blow was by losing the military factories and the genius minds who could make such a theory possible.

nSo it remained only a theory. The biggest hurdle was the loss of the factories. After all, to build a tank or a heli from scratch, one had to spend a lot of time, effort, and use many resources.

nAnd all these couldn't be done outside special factories designed for such a thing.

nAs I got closer, I could finally get a clear look at what was going on. I stood at one end of a high levelled street, looking at the ongoing brutal hellish fight at the other end of it.

nA distance of almost five hundred metres separated me from there, but even from such a distance I could feel the heat and the brutality of that fight.

nMonsters came in endless waves, aiming to break through a densely packed line up of big tanks. The cannons of these tanks never stopped firing, even turning the metal of their big cannons into bright red.

nAround the tanks, a lot of military personnel were scattered. I didn't need to use my special skill to know they were fighting using their firearms, their useless firearms.

nDamn! How thick headed those military personnel could be?!!

nShaking my head in disappointment, I started leading my warriors to the frontline. At this point, even with the help of all my warriors I had to act.

nI used my two swords and started to attack right and left without any restraints.

nI didn't need to fight my way through. But I was worried these idiots would launch an attack in my direction, mistaking my little boys for monsters.

nSeeing me in action was enough to knock some sense into their thickened skulls. And it also felt great stretching out a bit.

n*Roar!*

nI could now pierce any monster's flesh with my current strength stat. It felt nice to do so. As I advanced, the fire started to grow scarce while the monsters became more focused on me.

nThe sight behind that thick line of tanks and soldiers wasn't clear yet, but I could see a shadow of a subway station not far off behind.

nWere they trying to prevent monsters from reaching there? But what made such a station unique in the first place?

nGetting over the damned first line took longer than I expected.. What I appreciated though was for these soldiers, tanks, and helis to stop their blind firing spree and focused on areas away from me.

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