The next few days passed without any incidents. Since all the survivors were working together, the only thing we have to worry about was strengthening ourselves. Because of my secret army, I was ahead of the others. At the end of the fiftieth day, I was very close to breaking my limit for the fortieth time. But the fact that I was constantly helping the other survivors also helped a little bit.

Claire, Harry, and the members of the council also broke their limits more than thirty times; they obtained new skills, and they also upgraded their equipment. However, I didn’t pay much attention to those; I was too busy training the elemental magic arrow and thinking of better ways of using it. Besides, what was the point of learning about the things they can do? Soon I would leave that place, instead of learning about the others, I focused solely on training.

Although that was my intention, few things were hard not to notice. The kids were one example of those things, aside from the council’s members, they were our most powerful survivors, and that fact made many adults feel ashamed. But that couldn’t be helped; they were always hunting monsters with Claire and me. It was a bit risky, but with their toys, a single one of them could be enough to offer support to a group of five survivors. They had a camera on those mini-helicopters, and they also had a lot of MP.

After the battle against Ann’s minions, our first goal was to make every survivor receive their third skills before the fiftieth day, and we succeeded. Our next step would train most of the fighters to fight together. We had four hundred fighters, and we divided them into four groups, the first group were the tanks, men, and women who focused on breaking their physical limits. Their gear was massive quadrangular shields, iron helmets which could cover most of their heads, breastplates, and spears made of steel. Against humans, that would be enough, but monsters were our enemies. So, the best option was to make all the tanks wear full plate armors. Although that could save their lives, it wasn’t something they could wear just because they wanted. They needed to get used to that kind of gear before using in a battle, and that would take time. So, for the time being, they would fight like that.

The survivors of the second group didn’t focus on a single parameter, but that didn’t matter, what was important was the fact they had support skills. Their main job was to offer support to the other groups, with their skills they could snare, slow down enemies, and raise an ally’s defense or speed. Skills were expensive, so it was impossible to form a squad with identical skills, at least for the time being. The survivors of the second group also had rapid-fire crossbows with them, they couldn’t kill enemies a hundred meters away from them, but they could slow down the monsters to give some room to the tanks to breath.

The third group was made of mages, survivors which focused on breaking their mental limits and received magic skills. From far away, they could decimate hundreds of enemies using fire, ice, thunder, wind. Their main job was only that, cause as much as damage as possible. That was why they didn’t wear any kind of gear, they only had rings which could slightly raise their magic attacks, and they also carried a lot of potions with them.

The last group was the snipers; they used the firearms we obtained in the north and the west. The survivors in this group had many kinds of skills. But since their marksmanship was way above the others, they were selected to this group. Besides, more MP had to be spent to create bullets. So, even though we had hundreds of firearms, we decided to use only one hundred. This group would focus on killing the flying enemies, while magic and arrows could hit flying enemies, gravity would diminish the damage. Firearms would lose some power, but not so much.

Sandra and the others also wanted to form four small specialized teams to move fast and silent to kill the most troublesome monsters. But the survivors didn’t like much that idea, these teams would do the most dangerous jobs, after all. In the end, we only formed one special team. Although it was a bit concerning, the members of the special team were also the council’s members, but Sandra wouldn’t participate, and Sabrina and I were also part of it.

Sandra would be our commander, and the kids would help her to see the battlefield. Although we divided our forces like we were about to participate in a war, I honestly didn’t think that we would use all our forces on a single big scale battle. But better safe than sorry, so, we created simple cellphones to communicate among ourselves. Although only the leaders of the groups would use it because too much MP was spent while using those cellphones.

In any case, one week had passed since all the survivors had started to work together. We finally finished the four towers around the hotel, which we planned to construct, and we also created ten meters tall, reinforced walls around the hotel. Those walls weren’t indestructible, but they could repair itself as long as there are survivors with MP inside the walls.

We accomplished a lot in just one week. So, the council decided to give a party and make all the survivors relax at least for a few hours. That day the survivors didn’t have to pay the taxes, and they could eat and drink as much as they wanted. Although the city was full of monsters, the survivors had to rest and let loose once in a while, after all, they were only humans. I wasn’t interested in socializing, I hadn’t a high tolerance to alcohol, and I had a clear goal in mind. So, I decided to meditate on my bed while the other survivors were enjoying the party.

Claire and the other just sighed when I told them my plans for the night didn’t involve the party, but they didn’t bother me. After all, I did my part and helped the survivors on the last seven days without complaining even a single time.

I didn’t know what kind of monsters would appear after midnight, so, I decided to let Silver rest until I grasp the power of the new monsters. In just one week he almost already gave me the amount of evolution coins I used to create him, I was more than satisfied. Not only that, but he also broke his limits four times.

Everything was going well, and because of it, I was almost sure something really troublesome was about to happen. That feeling was bothering me, and I couldn’t relax, so I decided to meditate. At midnight, I could finally hear that voice again.

“The fiftieth day is over; in a few moments, all survivors will receive rewards based on their actions.”

I received the rewards, but before I could do analyze them, the hotel began to tremble.

“What the hell…”

My instincts were right; not only new monsters would appear, something would change in the city. No, something was already changing. While the earthquake was still happening, I heard the voice again.

“The doomsday tower appeared, in fifty days this tower will destroy this area and all survivors in it. To survive, you must reach the last floor of the tower and complete this area.”

As soon as the voice disappeared, the earthquake stopped. In any case, those were pretty serious words. The countdown wasn’t telling us that something would happen in one hundred days, it was telling us that we would die in one hundred days and now we only had fifty days to reach the final floor.

‘The tower probably caused that earthquake. I guess it will be easy to find this tower; it made the entire city tremble after all.’

While I was putting my rewards on my backpack, Claire appeared with the kids. Some of them were crying, while they were brave enough to face monsters, an earthquake was something beyond their understanding, and the unknown tends to scare even adults.

“Calm down, it already stopped and won’t happen again,” Claire said while patting the kids’ heads. “What are you going to do, Ethan?”

“I’m going to wait until morning, while I can see very well at night, I don’t dislike sunlight. How’s the situation in the lobby?”

“Everyone received quite a shock thanks to that message.” Claire frowned. “But they didn’t panic, although no one was interested in enjoying the party anymore.”

“I see.”

In any case, I decided not to think about anything until I see what changed with my own eyes. So, I just resumed my meditation. The best thing I could do at that moment was to prepare myself for more gruesome battles. Honestly, since I knew that we were in a race against time, I wasn’t worried anymore. I thought something even more troublesome would occur, but it seemed that I was worried for no reason. I was pretty sure that we would face more dangers on that tower, but I was already ready for that. I would put myself in dangerous situations to obtain the strength that I wanted anyway. The countdown meant nothing to me; if I succeed, I will survive and become free in this new world. If I fail, then I didn’t have the right to live.

Claire noticed my lack of concern, and she seemed pretty worried, but what worried her, even more, was the fact that she couldn’t see the changes with her own eyes until morning. Because of it, she didn’t sleep that night, and she looked like a caged lion.

At five in the morning, most of the survivors were already in the lobby, and they could clearly see the new and the tallest building in the city: The doomsday tower. Maybe it was because we were in the center of the city, but the tower was only five hundred meters away from us. The tower was massive, and I could easily tell that somehow the tower was ten kilometers tall and one kilometer wide. It looked pretty ominous because the tower didn’t seem to reflect a lot of the sunlight, as if a shadow covered it.

The survivors looked hypnotized by that building, but the council’s members were already preparing to leave and investigate. The last members to join them were Claire and me.

“Pretty scary, right?” Harry said forcing a smile. “I feel shivers just by looking at that.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We will use three jeeps to obtain information about the new monsters.” Sandra answered. “After that, we will investigate that tower.”

The ones who would investigate the changes were pretty much the members of the special team and Sandra. Well, I would also make Silver join us. He was big and strong than most of us, he would help a lot.

To speed up the process of exploration, Sandra put me, Claire and Rose on different jeeps. The other members would only offer some support to us and protect the vehicles from attacks. I would be on the first jeep because I have a lot of ammo and I could shot many bolts in just mere seconds. I would be the one who would kill the small fries and clear the path. Besides, I had to be the first one to see the new monsters to see what they could do and what skills they possessed.

Rose would be on the second jeep, and her job was to kill the flying enemies. Claire on the last jeep would be responsible for killing any monsters who may try to attack us from behind and to make sure that we would be able to retreat if we find any problems along the way. But there were a few problems, I couldn’t see any monsters on the sky, and I couldn’t see any monsters on the radar.

‘Something is off…’

I couldn’t trust my brain to make a decent plan, but I could trust my instincts, and my instincts were telling me to be careful. So, I warned the others just to make sure that we wouldn’t face any casualties as soon as we leave the hotel. That would be disastrous, and we would have to cancel the operation.

Thanks to the safety of the hotel, we couldn’t feel the changes. But as soon as we stepped out of the building, we noticed one thing.

“Wow, it’s only six o’clock,” Harry said while frowning. “How can the city be this hot already?”

“I guess summer finally arrived,” Rose said while splashing some water on her head.

She was right, even within the walls we created, I could see the hot air around us like one person can see in deserts and arid regions. To make matters worse, Silver was losing HP every minute because of that heat. Because of it, I decided to leave him behind and create something to protect him from the sunlight as soon as I return.

In any case, if in the winter we faced monsters from cold regions in the summer we would face monsters from the tropical areas. But where were those monsters? As soon as we opened the massive gate of our fortified walls, I discovered why I didn’t see those monsters. Thanks to two fireballs that suddenly appeared in the air and were coming toward us.