I reread the messages again before turning towards these monsters and the big rounded emblem rising a few metres off the ground.
“So each building here will give such monsters… Interesting,” I went to claim that emblem. The moment I did that, I felt a strange connection with something in the depth of the city.
It was kinda vague, but I definitely felt it.
“Rise!” A word popped in my mind out of my instincts and strangely enough, all the monsters here rose up as if they weren’t dead just now.
But the next moment, a message popped in front of my eyes.
[The first time for the owner of the building and the city is always free]
Free? That’s nice for the first try. I looked at my newly controlled monsters. It felt like my warriors.
“Go and help others in taking down other buildings,” I said and the next moment these monsters roared, turned around and started to run.
They looked like my soulers when running. Their bodies would turn slightly illusional, sometimes they would even emit a fog that covered all of their white haired bodies.
Would they also accept my stat points and evolve like my warriors? Would they lose my stat points after dying or I would send them back here?
I didn’t have any info about that. So I had to test them afterwards. But first let me evaluate their value.
As I followed them with my personal guards, I found them going to another building that wasn’t attacked by my army.
There I saw how valuable they were! Astounding fighting power! They simply acted like my soulers, yet in different ways.
First they flashed towards the other one hundred monsters. These ones were like big tigers with all black fur covering their bodies. They stood in their places until my boys reached them.
The best word to describe their way of attack would be: Dancing! They simply jumped around their targets, slashing with their sharp claws and biting with their sharp teeth.
Their enemies were taken by surprise, especially when my boys fought at a superb speed that left afterimages behind.
The one hundred monsters here didn’t take more than one minute to be cleared out. The previous building took me roughly ten minutes. That was a big difference in clearing the monster’s speed, proving their worth at least here.
“Come here,” as I took over this building and summoned the one hundred tiger-like monsters, I said to the two hundred of them, “try these.”
It was time to test if my stat points would work or not. Just as I expected, they ate the stats like my fallen gods. Then something new developed.
Each monster grew in size the more it ate. I calculated the amount to be enough to raise any warrior of mine to level one hundred.
Yet as they finished eating, they turned to me with gazes filled with pleas.
“Wanna more?” I asked with a surprised tone. I never saw any of my warriors do like this after eating all these stats. “Ok, but let me first test something out.”
Giving them more stats wasn’t a problem. The problem here was if after sending them back and recalling them again, these monsters would lose these stats.
If that was true, then it would be a great waste to use such a way to strengthen them. I selected five tigers, sent them back to this building before calling them again.
[You need to pay five thousand stat points for them to be summoned] yet this time it wasn’t free lunch for me.
“Take them,” I shrugged and then five tigers appeared. Before they vanished, each one swelled up in size to be over five folds of its original size.
The building here became slightly tight with all these big dudes. But when they came back, they were slightly smaller.
“So there is a tax for calling them back… That means giving them more stats won’t be safe.”
I didn’t know if this tax was deducted one time or every time I summoned them. Also I wasn’t sure if that tax was related to the time they would waste inside these buildings.
So I refrained from giving them any more stat points. Let them enjoy that previous meal as this would be their last meal for now.
As I got their support, I started to speed up clearing this city. At first things were going slow. But when I cleared an entire street filled with tens of buildings, I had an army strong enough to clear the streets in one go.
So the speed of my clearing started to skyrocket from here. I didn’t leave a single building without summoning their monsters. After a couple of hours, the entire city was covered with my boys, while I had tons of buildings to control.
[I saw a lot of monsters attacking buildings… Is that you?] Karoline seemed to be scared when she saw my boys.
[They are mine] I sent to her, [Just spread our people over and take all the buildings. I believe all of them are cleared off any monster]
[Ok]
As I got this problem sorted out, I started to think about my next move.
I had to see where the special buildings were. If I was the one who designed this city, then I’d place them all below the big mega gate in the centre of it.
I went towards that gate while waiting for Karoline and her forces to control the city. I had to do little repairs later to the region outside the wall. Also I’d need my forces to dig a trench and I’d buy some sort of burning material and fill that trench with.
This way I’d be sure that no one else would come and harass my precious city the same way I did take it with.
As I reached the central region, I found buildings there had many differences than the ones I claimed so far.
First they were all taller. The lowest building here was five stories in height and there were even some reaching twelve stories height.
Their surfaces were covered with shining materials, something like fire was brimming all over their surfaces. Some had weapons placed all over their surfaces, while others had strange symbols.
Just when I arrived at one of them, I noticed a stronger batch of monsters gushing out of these buildings as if they felt my threatening presence.
“Go… Kill them all!” without any hesitation I ordered my grand army of monsters to attack those defending the buildings.
These monsters were similar to the ones I had but had bigger bodies than the basic status of all monsters I gained. But compared to the two hundred I spent my stat points over, they were lacking a lot in size and power.
The first clashes proved that these monsters were an advanced version of normal monsters. They could be elements in attacks. Thunder, fire, water, ice, and even light and darkness… Myriad of elemental attacks landed over my monsters, killing a good deal of them.
But who said they could stand against such grand numbers of my forces with their low numbers?
Even if they were advanced and evolved versions of monsters, they were limited in numbers. Each building brought out only a hundred of them, something that couldn’t even be compared to my tens of thousands of monsters under my lead.
This fight didn’t last more than half an hour. The first advantage these evolved monsters showed was crushed later by sheer numbers and the participation of my ace forces like soulers and fallen gods.
“Let’s see what these buildings are all about,” as I cleared the entire battlefield, I took over the emblem of the first building.
[You gained control over the Albany city recruitment building]
[Here you can use coins, stat points, gears, or anything of value to hire mercenaries to fight on your side for specific period of time]
[You can spend a few more and unlock the recruitment interface. Doing so will enable you to summon mercenaries to any place you are at and let them fight for you. But that will cost extra for each mercenary]
[Do you want to pay one million coins per month to open the recruitment interface in your profile?]
I looked at these messages and couldn’t help but agree. I had to check these mercenaries. If they were strong enough, then I’d be able to spare lots of trouble for me later on.
As I opened my profile, I found an icon for this building. Opening it delivered a long list of names in front of me.
It was a very detailed list, statint the strength, the age, the race, the experience in apocalypses before this, and their win rate in any fight they participated in.
Damn! It was like a detailed portfolio for them. Yet many were in red colours, few were in silver, and rare were green.
[Sorry, your current level, class level, cultivation level, and apocalypse progress don’t match the specific requirement for this mercenary to hire]
I selected a red named one who belonged to the Bulltor race. He was strong enough to be considered a big boss, even much stronger than the dragon archlord I killed before.
But it seemed each one of them already set conditions to be hired. What was that system? I loved it!
After trying this many times over the red names and getting the same answer, I decided to select a silver one.
[This mercenary asks you to send your information to him to check. If he agrees, he will work for you]
What the heck?!! It was now an interview with me instead of with him? Damn!
I found a long list filled with many fields that asked about my current strength, achievements, and everything related to my current progress in the apocalypse. I looked at this list and decided to give it a try.
[Do you want to save these answers for later lists?]
“Do it,” it took me roughly ten minutes to fill all these fields. In fact I’d prefer to fight that archlord dragon dude once again instead of doing such a boring task.
It was nice to have such a feature ready for use. Or else I’d directly abandon all the silver dudes thanks to this boring task.
[Do you want to auto fill this list?]
“Yes!”
“Do it!”
“Fill that b*tch over!”
“Indeed!”
As I had such a service, I misused it and started a spree of sending applications for all the silver dudes.
In fact those silver ones weren’t that good compared to the red ones. But they were nice. I estimated their strength to be on par with my jumper or even slightly better.
Imagine having an army of jumpers… Damn! That would be cool!
But after I spent an hour sending requests and auto filling the lists, I got no answer from anyone so far. As I got no more silver dudes, I arranged the filter to show only the green ones.
This time I had to see bad performing dudes in front of my eyes. Many had a loss rate close to ninety percent in any task they participated in!
Their strength wasn’t better than anyone from my personal team. Should I recruit them?
Comparing these green dudes with the red or even the silver mercenaries made my excitement prior to this to die down.
I couldn’t accept half assed dudes just because they were available! If I had to pay, then I’d get the best thing I could have.
So as I had nothing else to do here, I decided to close this interface and go to visit the next building.
This one had big heavy swords hanging all over their surface. I got a guess that came true when I got the system messages.
[You gained control over the Albany city war embodiment building]
[Here you can use coins, stat points, gears, or anything of value to buy rage auras in the form of small potions. Once consumed, anyone of your forces would gain a hellish increase in all his stats, making him far more powerful than before for a single day]
Damn! This was the building Wryly’s paragon asked for!
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