The Innkeeper

It seemed that all of a sudden, Earth was in chaos. In the most well executed and efficient manner in the history of the planet, regimes fell and new rulers took their place. One would think that the ICPAs would resist the change, but ironically, it was the ICPAs that led most of the rebelling armies. With an in-depth understanding of the regions they policed, they knew exactly what to do to seize actual control rather than simply protect them.

At the rate that things were progressing, even though all the family heads' spies were killed, it would only be a matter of time till someone else with a golden key escaped to the Inn. Yet that was a matter for the future.

Right now, all eyes were on the massive screen as the first joint assault on the zombie horde was about to begin. Earth was in the lead with the highest number of points, and as for the person with the most kills… It was neither Alexander nor Cara Deathsworn. It was the soldier wielding the gatling gun - NPC1. But no one focused on him, or why he had such an unusual name. Their focus was on the fact that Cara had a total of 51 kills now, while Alexander had 53. Alexander had quickly taken the lead from her, and by denying her kills kept her total behind his. The audience had inadvertently dubbed the two rivals and could not wait to see how things continued.

The assault was not as coordinated as Crawford-41 would have liked, but the fact that everyone agreed to attack at the same time was already good enough for him. A total of twelve thousand five hundred going up against anywhere between thirty to forty thousand, not to mention less than ten hours left, gave them abysmal odds. He could not believe the Innkeeper thought such a difficult ordeal was a game.

To be fair, Lex himself was caught unaware by the number of zombies. When he was designing the games, he ensured that all zombies above the required level would be ejected from the game zone. Yet, while he tried to estimate how many zombies would be defending each point, he grossly underestimated the numbers. He expected that the devils may beef up defenses after they found out about the games, but this seemed a little too much. Fortunately, the game had an upper limit to the number of zombies based on the number of participants. Otherwise, if an army of a million zombies showed up in one of the future games… Lex shuddered internally just thinking about it.

As Alexander and his troops neared the zombies, he realized that the mass of zombies could no longer be called a horde. From a random mix, the zombies had turned into an organized fighting force. Zombies with long range were mobilized in the back, protected by several groups of zombies, with a clear advantage in close combat. In the air, massive undead birds circled as they kept a close eye on the approaching prey.

For better or worse - most definitely worse though - this was the enemy they had to face now. Still, everyone remained undeterred. As dangerous as zombies were, on the ladder of demons, they were at the very bottom - as Alexander had learnt in a crash course the Jotuns had provided him. Their individual fighting force was usually weaker than the average cultivator. So long as they approached this systematically, they could still win.

A green flare went up in the sky, indicating that the Jotuns had begun their assault. Unlike Alexander and the other Earthlings who planned on using long range combat to weaken the enemies, they directly charged in. Based on what Crawford-41 told Alexander, considering their equipment and training, the Jotuns were expecting to go through the whole games without a single casualty. The limited time was truly the only difficulty they faced in this war.

As advanced as they were, looking through a scope that aimed his newly assembled mortar, Alexander could not help but think the Jotuns were a bit pretentious. Why not use the advantage of technology?

He fired the first shot, using actual physical ammunition this time, which prompted several other teams to fire as well. The Earthlings watched from a safe distance as the first of their artillery hit the zombies and, with the energy of a bunch of teenagers playing video games at midnight, started taking more shots.

Even the 4000 other Earthlings were taking a similar approach. Under the supervision of a few soldiers who were also trained as spirit-tech engineers, the soldiers created a minimal version of a catapult. As primitive as the device seemed, its ammunition was the latest technology and pride of Uncle Sam.

They loaded what looked like a moored mine into the catapult and fired freely. Relatively speaking, the massive metal ball flying through the air was slow and easy to target, which is exactly what the zombies did.

Amongst the many other kinds of attacks, a bone-spike was the first to hit the metal ball, and instead of a fiery explosion, the ball burst into hundreds of smaller balls that quickly fell into the crowd. The zombies made no effort to avoid the falling balls as they lacked the momentum to be dangerous, and just watched them when they finally landed on the ground. For a split second, it seemed as if nothing would happen.

Then one of the balls released an annoyingly loud, sharp screech. As if activated by the sound, each of the balls suddenly absorbed a massive amount of spirit energy and launched towards the screeching ball, as if pulled by a magnetic force, and ripped through the zombies in their path. When all the balls finally reunited, they trembled, and then caused a massive spirit explosion!

The force of the blast absolutely eviscerated all the zombies within a hundred feet, and the traveling spirit shock-wave killed many more zombies by crushing their zombie cores with an overload of spirit energy.

Many things on Earth could be disputed, but no one could deny that the Americas had the greatest talent in making things explode.

On the beasts' side, similar to the Jotun army, they decided on an upfront charge. The elephants took the lead, breaking through the zombie ranks, allowing the rest of the beasts to attack freely. At a glance, there seemed to be little to no tactic being employed by the beasts. Yet the truth was, with their incredible strength and defense, this was their best play to begin with.

The wolves were close behind the elephants, and attacked with extreme prejudice! Despite lacking in technology, in the simplicity of their savagery, they were keeping up with the Earthlings in number of kills. In less than a minute, over a thousand zombies were already dead by the combined armies.

At the Inn, the mood was extremely positive, as humans and beasts alike rooted for those they supported. Despite their initial intimidation, it seemed like the zombies were bound to lose.

But as hopeful as Lex was that things would continue to play out this way, he doubted the devils would give up so easily. Perhaps if Pramod had not joined, Lex could believe that the trend for the battle was set, but he could not believe the devils had him join just to let the zombies be slaughtered so easily.

Without even realizing it, they hit the four-hour mark. At exactly this time, there was an announcement across the battlefield.

"Two treasure chests have been placed at opposite ends of the battlefield. Each chest contains 100 tokens that will be absorbed by the first 100 contestants to reach them. One of the chests contains tokens that will fill the owning participant's endless spirit energy and physical stamina for the duration of this match, while the others will give the owner a secret advantage during the next game."

The announcement ended as abruptly as it came, but the words had an abrupt reaction. The most immediate effect was on the soldiers, who were momentarily stunned by what they heard. But pausing in battle was extremely lethal, as the zombies did not bother to stop attacking, pushing them into a precarious situation. The second reaction was by the various commanders.

The repercussions of the announcement had varying levels of effect, not only on this game, but on the next one as well. Most importantly, endless stamina and spirit energy would allow them to gain a massive number of points, while a secret advantage in the next game would also put them at an advantage.

Almost as if it was rehearsed, all the armies immediately retreated. The announcement said that the chests were in opposite directions, but their specific location was unknown. Everyone sent out their scouts and drones. Even the flying zombies were sent out by Pramod to search for the chest. Only Alexander, who had satellites in the sky and got a live feed of the entire map, immediately knew where the chests were.

By the next game, everyone would know about his satellites and he would lose the advantage, but for this game, they played a critical role. Immediately he set out towards the nearest one, while pretending to send out scouting units.

Just as the mood on the battlefield had immediately changed, so too did the mood in the coliseum when a man covered in blood came running in, wearing a look of panic. He looked around till he identified Fateh, one of the five Nascants, and ran towards him.

The man tried to whisper but those nearby, as well as Lex who had the power of the Host Attire, heard him when he said, "war has broken out on Earth!"