Chapter 173

Leon spent more mana to reach Fortaleza faster, and thanks to it, he now had thirty-six hours to prepare for the battle. The monsters would come from the West, so all survivors in the city, being soldiers or citizens, were helping on the preparations for the battle, mostly erecting barriers and traps to stop the monsters' advance. Just like Las Vegas, a big part of the city was still destroyed, but the number of houses and other buildings that had been built over the last four years wasn't small either.

Most of the survivors frowned when they saw a piece of earth approach, but thankfully a few soldiers had heard that the Allied Forces of North-America had sent reinforcements, but even those frowned when they saw only three people and one of them didn't have an arm and a leg.

"Betty, keep an eye on things around me," Leon said and then started to summon skeletons. "Sasha, go find the leader of this city and ask him to bring as many mana potions as he can and equipment that raises recovery."

"Got it," Betty said.

"Yes." Sasha nodded.

Every second mattered, so Leon didn't waste time giving answers or asking questions to the people nearby. Fortunately, everyone who wanted to make a fuss or ask anything shut up as soon as the skeleton wizards and archers appeared. The number of trees around was surprisingly high, so Leon used that to his advantage. He cut their tops and placed steel platforms over them and summoned ten skeletons in each of those platforms. Things would be better for him if he had the chance to concentrate his forces in a single place, but he couldn't. The number of enemies was too big to march and attack a single point of the boundaries of Fortaleza.

With Betty's help, Leon used potions like there was no tomorrow. Still, in no time, he used the five thousand potions he had prepared over the last weeks, but at least things were going well in terms of preparations. Survivors didn't try to stop him, and Sasha was finally back with several survivors who were carrying carts filled with potions.

"Leon, this is Pedro da Silva," Sasha said. "He is the leader of the survivors here."

"Hi, Pedro, I would greet you if I weren't busy, but I am," Leon said.

"No problem," Pedro smiled. "Is there something we can do to help you?"

"Yes, use those potions on me, fast," Leon said.

With several hands to drop the mana potions on him, Leon managed to speed up the process of creating skeletons and those platforms quite a bit. In five hours, he managed to create ten thousand skeletons but still wasn't enough.

"We need more potions," Leon said. "I think at least three million monsters will attack this place, my skeletons can kill, but they won't be able to do much if the monsters outnumber them in 300 to 1."

"There are more carts coming," Pedro said. "However, we don't have many survivors with so many coins. In a few minutes. the survivors who have equipment who can increase your recovery will arrive."

Leon could only accept that, in the end, he was an anomaly who barely had any need to use his coins. Regardless, now he could use those coins he never used. It was better to use them to save lives than keep saving them for a moment that may or may not come. Leon took Sasha's hands and passed two million coins to her. She opened her eyes widely when she saw that massive amount of coins appearing in her status screen.

"Pedro, you and Sasha will go to the nearest dungeon and buy potions," Leon said. "You will need many hands if you want to bring those as fast as possible. Stock the potions here, Sasha."

After passing to Sasha the magic box, Leon started to meditate. Soon after Sasha and Pedro left, a few survivors came and lent their items to Leon. Most of them were rings that could raise his recovery by fifty. Unfortunately, he could only equip ten of those. But Leon also obtained an amulet and a circlet that increased his recovery by one hundred each. Thanks to those, with his recovery alone, Leon could create four skeletons per minute. However, it wasn't enough.

After covering the whole West side of the city with skeletons on platforms, Leon created several others behind the barricades the survivors created. After working for the next thirty hours non-stop, Leon managed to create almost one hundred thousand skeletons. Still, the odds weren't looking good. From 300 to 1, it became 30 to 1.

"How are the situations in other cities?" Leon asked.

"Survivors and citizens are working together to increase their defenses," Pedro answered. "They will have a little more time to prepare since the monsters will have to cross several natural obstacles before they can reach Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre. However, all of them will be attacked in the next few days."

"Do you have any idea what city will be the first attacked by the monsters?" Leon asked.

"The monsters will reach us first, and for some reason, Salvador, Rio, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre will be attacked on this order," Pedro explained. "However, the time between the attacks are more or less of a day… as if…"

"As if someone or something planned, the dungeons break very carefully," Leon added.

"…Yes." Pedro nodded.

Sasha and Betty looked at each other, trying to understand what was going on. However, it was impossible to reach any conclusion. In the end, they could only work hard now to save the city and think about it later.