Chapter 180

"The job is done, and thanks to you, the Atlantic Free Nation became our allies," Tom said. "It looks like they will have five represents, and those five will contact the other international leaders when the time comes. I also gave them the phones to do so. What's the plan now?"

"I guess you guys should return to New York," Leon said. "It will take a few days for the survivors to collect the dragons' hearts for me, even though they are gladly doing that since my zombies are protecting their borders. Anyway, Sarah said that she was short-handed, so you guys really should return as soon as possible."

"Got it, see you next time," Tom said.

In the end, Tom and the others mostly worked to buy the mana potions Leon needed. In any case, there weren't really needed since the zombies could protect the survivors while they rebuild the cities that were destroyed and work to prepare for the next fights. Unlike Leon had imagined, they were working hard to the next time be able to protect their hometowns themselves instead of being saved by a stranger.

"I guess I will make the zombies disappear after one week just in case and tell them that the zombies have an 'expiration date.' That will work for the best."

That would work in order not to let the other nations rely on that skill too much. Besides, Leon couldn't leave Las Vegas every single time something unexpected happens. The countries working together had to solve that themselves, obviously, Leon would help but once now and then. Otherwise, everyone would rely too much on him.

"I'm going to investigate the areas around the dungeons of this continent." Leon declared. "What are you guys going to do?"

"We will accompany you, obviously," Betty said. "Amanda will get mad at us if we leave you alone for a second."

"Yes," Sasha nodded.

Leon couldn't help but shrug. Even though his little sister was quite scary but at the same time cute when she was angry, he didn't feel that intimidated. It was hard to understand why they were so serious about such a silly job.

South America was too big and had more than three hundred dungeons, by Leon's calculations, the survivors would need one week to collect all dragon hearts, so he didn't have time to investigate every single dungeon. But in the end, he didn't have to. After flying for a few hours, Leon found one of the places where the dungeon breaks happened. It was a moths' dungeon, the creatures were quite scary and ugly up close, but they were weak against fire and electricity... However, Leon wasn't interested in that. He got interested in the massive crater, which was in front of the dungeon.

"Did a meteor fall here?" Betty asked.

"I don't see any meteor..." Sasha said.

The crater was massive; it was more or less two kilometers large and five hundred meters deep. Leon and the others moved to the center of the crater, but they didn't found any meteor. A meteor didn't fall there; a monster created that crater with a powerful attack.

"This is weird... if an attack of a monster caused this, the impact should have been felt at least in Porto Alegre. But the survivors there didn't mention earthquakes or anything the like…"

Leon investigated several other dungeons, some had no weird things nearby like craters, but some had. In some mountains that were nearby dungeons in Chile, Leon found several of them that had been destroyed in part by something.

"What could have caused all of this?" Betty asked.

"I don't think that even dragons can destroy mountains so easily," Sasha said.

After searching for a few more days, Leon also found something even more suspicious; he found craters that had been filled with sand. As if someone was trying to hide their actions…

"Jesus Christ… I thought that only brain-dead monsters were the cause of our problems, but that isn't the case."

If a monster caused the dungeons breaks and destroyed mountains and opened craters, it was a very smart monster since it was trying to hide the things it did. It was still very weird, why it would go so far to cause dungeon breaks and destroy several places only to conceal its trails sloppily? It didn't make any sense…

Although Leon didn't want to rely too much on his zombies to clear dungeons, he would use them to observe the dungeons for him if they could, but they couldn't.

"We have to monitor all the dungeons in the world to avoid such disasters again… but, it is impossible to put cameras near them to watch them in real-time."

Most places where the dungeons appeared got destroyed by the wave of monsters, so there was no electricity. Thus they couldn't use vigilance cameras. The only viable solution was to create a camera that works by sucking mana from its surroundings. Still, according to Sarah, the people studying the choppers were having a hard understanding of its mechanisms.

Maybe Leon could ask for the Russian leader to monitor the dungeons, but that was unreasonable, even if he still had control over some satellites, it would be impossible for him to watch a thousand dungeons.

"You look troubled, Leon," Betty said.

"Shouldn't you feel troubled, too?" Leon asked.

"Usually, that would be the case, but after seeing thousands of dragons destroying my hometown, I reached the conclusion that some things are beyond human understanding," Betty said.

"… Who are you, and what did you do with the real Betty that I know?" Leon smirked.

"You will need to try harder if you want to make me mad." Betty looked away.

Still, Betty had a point; some things were really beyond human understanding. However, Leon didn't want just to accept that so readily. He wanted to find out who or what caused the dungeon breaks and who or what made monsters appear on Earth.