Chapter 427 - The Tower (1)

While Arnold was busy recking the firenewts, something was going on in s different corner of the world. Something that was deemed to be weird even in a world that had seen it all. So far only dungeons had been popping up all over the world. But this time, something other than a dungeon appeared out of thin air in the USA in the shape of a tower.

No one knew what it was and how it got there right in the middle of the recently rehabilitated New York. The sudden appearance of the 900-meter tall tower sent shock waves across the world. No one was sure what was going on. First, a dungeon spawned a living Island, and now there was a tower.

Just like the time Cetus was spawned in the world, the appearance of the tower also came with monsters. However, this time these were low levelled monsters that even a group of C rank warriors could handle. Thankfully, New York was still under construction after Arnold had Shyok terraform the wasteland into a land even more beautiful than the garden of Eden, so even when this beautiful land was cursed once again in the form of the tower, there weren't any significant losses in terms of property damage.

Still, half of the city was destroyed when the army of creatures attacked. But there were already enough warriors stationed there to take care of the mess before it got worse. However, that wasn't the end. The tower kept spawning monsters at regular intervals, once every 6 hours and each time the horde kept getting harder and harder to contain.

Non-fighters like the child, elderly and pregnant women, were immediately evacuated while those having the slightest combat experience willingly stayed behind to protect their city. They had gone through a lot of rehabilitating the city and they weren't going to give up on it so easily. Not again.

It wasn't like the Syndicate was doing nothing either. Upon the initial discovery, they didn't waste any time sending their best warriors to investigate the tower and if possible, take care of it once and for all. Even though Johnny was on the verge of retirement, he threw on some combat gear and head towards New york under Nicole's command.

The sister of Deathless had been appointed as the country's first-ever female five-star general and the only one to be appointed after world war 2. Nicole had successfully replaced both Johnny and Arnold as the nation's weapon and was known for her no mercy policy as well as having an impenetrable defence unlike before. Well, at least she was becoming more and more like her brother in that regard.

In the meantime, an emergency cooperation request had been sent to Arnold. Talos received the message instead of Arnold, only to inform them that Arnold was in Korea handling some private affairs. But Talos ȧssured the syndicate that their message will reach Arnold as soon as possible and the master would get there to help them as soon as he was done taking care of things in Korea.

Talos' words were quite reassuring because he was known to be Arnold's right-hand man-, no robot. Also, everyone knew about Arnold's travelling abilities so, they were sure Arnold would be there before the day came to an end. Moreover, they had already taken care of three waves of monsters and had enough people to take care of a few more waves at least.

Either way, it took Nicole and her army of warriors a couple of hours to reach New York and they arrived at the right time. The black tower had spawned a fresh batch of nasty monsters and this time, they were Gargoyles.

"Mages and Arrches get in position!" Nicole yelled at the top of her lungs, "Support units, buff them up and the rest of us will protect them. Go! Go! Go!"

It wasn't the first time Nicole had seen these rocky basta*ds. In fact, she knew them quite well. Well enough to know that the Gargoyles weren't the real threat that they needed to handle. But it was the one controlling them. As terrifying creatures the gargoyles were, they had a huge disadvantage.

The gargoyles were creatures who couldn't think of their own. They were cursed to do a master's bidding to survive. Because of this reason, they were fairly easy to kill if their master was a moron. But even then, they were known for their instinctual nature of causing pain and carnage around them.

They were also a pain in the bu*t to kill because they knew how to take advantage of their ability to fly against humans and would often attack from a distance where the warrior's weapons were either completely useless or did very little damage to them.

"Johnny, please take care of things here why I search for the one controlling them," Nicole mumbled before rushing towards the tower.

"Don't worry, we'll handle these stone creatures. You do what you got to." Johnny replied and started concentrating energy into his punch, "I may be a brawler by class, but that doesn't mean I can't take care of those flying a*sholes."

With that being said, he jumped up as far as he could before unleashing the punch onto the incoming swarm of Gargoyles. Whoever their master was, certainly did not foresee this to happen and just one punch destroyed a tenth of the gargoyles.

The only downside to this was that a punch like that consumed quite a bit of energy. Johnny had to use it sparingly especially because now the one controlling the Gargoyle was aware of what Johnny could do and would be on the guard against him. But it gave the warriors the morale boost they needed, after all, they had been fighting monsters for 18 hours straight and were tired both mentally and physically. 

Meanwhile, Nicole was rushing towards the tower at maximum speed. She had gained the attention of quite a few gargoyles and now they were rushing to stop her from getting close to the one controlling them. Because if she killed the controller, everything would be over and the Gargoyles would turn into actual stone statues. 

But even the swarm of Gargoyles couldn't stop her from reaching the tower. If the controller was surprised with Johnny's ability to take down one-tenth of his gargoyle army, they were in for a shock as Nicole destroyed half of them in one swoop of her hand. Thanks to training in Arnold's private dungeon, she no longer needed to use her mana sparingly as she had a bigger mana pool than even Arnold did. She could be as destructive as she wanted without being scared of running out of mana and fainting.