The Villain's Story

Chapter 968: Pheonix City.

Unfortunately for Alan, nothing ever went as he hoped it would. Somehow, information about his drops had spread faster than he expected, way too fast even. His communicator was ringing constantly from people trying to contact him and asking if he was willing to sell the Life-Core and Seed.

How had they found out so quickly? Alan had no clue. He had kept an eye on everyone inside the helicopter, but found nobody suspicious. Alas, Alan was stumped, and had even thought about destroying his communicator so that nobody could disturb him.

He nearly had, before common sense took over and he shut it down for the moment. Only for the communicators of his entire party from Twilight suffer the same fate. Worse, people on the expedition, those related to the Guilds and other organizations had all approached him, pitching their offers.

This would have gone on for a long while until Alan finally had enough of it and froze anyone attempting to get close to him to persuade him to sell. Had this stopped people? Yes. Had it stopped everybody? No.

He had seriously underestimated how valuable natural treasures such as these were, and Alan could only glare at anyone who tried to approach with killing intent, enough to make them nearly shit themselves before backing off.

On another note, aside from the annoyances he had to deal with. The looks he got from the expedition had changed significantly. Everyone had been told he was powerful, but now they knew it themselves, having witnessed it firsthand. Even Henry and Elaine had changed, and tried to avoid meeting his gaze. Honestly, he hadn’t expected to knock those two down a peg, but he was all for it.

Even Olivia had distanced herself a bit, with only Alexander being the same.

“Show off.”

He said, looking at the destruction far in the center of the canyon, as well as the display of lights Alan and the Terra King had released. Alexander shrugged his shoulders as he continued.

“Could have definitely handled that better, but no, let me just flex my power!”

He said it out loud, making it clear he wanted everyone to know Alan could have dealt with it discreetly, meaning he was far more powerful than what he had just shown. Alan snapped back.

“Talking a lot of shit for someone who would have caused a lot more damage than me.”

“Meh, it’s all relative.”

Could Alexander deal with the Terra King? Yes, but not as easily as Alan, in fact, it would take all of Alexander to finally fight on equal terms with the Terra King, and considering his destructive affinities of Lightning and Wind… if he was the one fighting the Terra King.

It would be a battle with his life on the line that would most likely have wrecked the entire canyon. Alan had managed to keep it to a small area, but Alexander would have consumed the entire Grand Canyon in a ferocious storm.

“Relative to what?”

Alexander didn’t answer and simply shrugged his shoulders. He kept looking at the sky, and the Grand Canyon as he sighed and promptly went back into the armored vehicle

Alan stared at him for a moment, before turning his gaze away. He didn’t want to worry about what Alexander was thinking about. Instead, he focused more on continuing with the expedition.

Everyone was simply enjoying a meal or two and packing up to continue. After this, some of the Military would still accompany the expedition, although the majority would go back, and the expedition would finally arrive at the true goal.

Phoenix City, a prominent mark of civilization before the invasions. Numerous dungeons had sprouted all around the city, and with limited personnel to handle them, they were unfortunately overrun. The city was a paradise for monsters, and not just those born from dungeons either.

The city and the area around it had become, quite honestly… an endless war. Phoenix City had been a mess during both the era of dungeons and the invasions, with the latter having finished it off for good.

From the Dungeons, two factions spawned, both in eternal conflict. A horde of dungeons gave birth to many beastly creatures that roamed the city endlessly. These beastly creatures were in an endless war with each other, as well as the other factions.

The second faction belonged to monsters also emerging from a dungeon, however, unlike the horde of dungeons spawning beasts, only a single, great dungeon had created this faction. It was a dungeon that produced robots, or more specifically, rogue automatons that wished to expand endlessly.

The third and final faction was, surprisingly, something present on Earth for a long, long while. It was naturally… insects. The mana concentration near the city had focused on insects in particular, forcing many to evolve.

Ants, Bees, Wasps, and many other creepy crawlies. They existed long before the other two factions, and had spent quite a significant amount of time fighting against one another, with the ultimate winner being Termites. The insects were naturally the most numerous as well. There were a lot of them.

The Three Monster groups kept each other in check, constantly fighting one another. Thankfully, they only seemed interested in expanding once they had gotten rid of the other two.

In addition to the three monster groups, there was one more special entity within the city, given birth by the Demons who had laid waste to it, sacrificing tens of thousands of human souls for an experiment, creating an enormous, curse giant made of flesh, metal, cement, and whatever else a city full of humans was made of.

It was restricted to Phoenix city, and was the only thing that the monsters avoided.

The expedition had a simple goal, a really simple goal, and what was it?

Get rid of them.

Ok, not actually get rid of all of them, as that was too big a task for a measly group like the expedition, but get rid of the ‘real’ dangers of them.