Amazon Apocalypse 7: Chapter 11

If my information was correct, and I was pretty sure it was, there was an Oni army headed toward Crownhill. Some remaining forces in New Kyoto must have assembled a teleportation array capable of reaching all the way to Onibushi.

In all likelihood, the city that was briefly in human hands had now been overthrown again and was once more in the hands of the big clans from Onibushi. Not that it would be that way for long. The Oni were about to realize they weren't the only ones to bring an army from off-world.

Eventually, Cyra radioed in to let me know she'd identified the Oni main column. She didn't get too close, since a helicopter was pretty easy to spot. But we had plenty of scouts nearby who were able to get much closer and lay eyes on the enemy.

"It definitely looks like an army from Onibushi. It's all oni, about four thousand of them. Mostly D-Grades and C-Grades, but with a few B-Grades," Cyra said.

"More B-Grades than we have?" I asked.

"Definitely not. The scouts spotted three. There might be one or two more they couldn't identify, but it shouldn't be more than that."

I nodded. Counting myself, Sharky, Cyra, Sakura, Myrina, Frank, and a few people from the legion, we had about a dozen B-Grades with us, with more in reserve protecting Crownhill.

From all the fighting on Crusade in Ladwick, I knew that even when you had the advantage of numbers, if the other side had more elite troops they'd still win. Only when the highest levels among an army countered one another could the lower-leveled people dictate the course of the battle. Even though a large number of C-Grades and D-Grades could technically overwhelm a B-Grade, that was only true if the B-Grade held still. Most of the time, they were fast enough to dominate even entire armies of lower-leveled fighters and withdraw the moment they needed to heal and recover.

"They're marching now?" I asked.

Cyra nodded.

"Then we'll hit them now and hit them hard. Close in on both sides. I'll target the strongest known B-Grade. You and Myrina can take the other known hostiles. Legate Asimi, have the legion take out the elites while we have the element of surprise. If the initial strike goes well, everything else should just be mop-up." I looked at my elite fighters and officers and quickly fell into a role I had grown used to while on crusade.

It was difficult to hide the movements of so many people, even through the dense forests separating New Kyoto and Crownhill. But the Nineteenth Legion was specialized in magic, so plenty among our number knew silencing spells. We also consumed various buffing and support items as we often had on campaign. Things like Bridget's biscuits were a helpful last-minute stat boost that would help deal with wounds the moment you got them. Plus, casting Mage Armor before a fight never hurt, and plenty of my people had picked up that spell.

We fell upon the forces of Onibushi like a pack of wolves on prey. Our spellcasters had charged their most powerful spells with the element of surprise and we unleashed a ferocious volley on our enemies. The spells landed and shattered the loose formation they'd been traveling in. Mere moments after the spells landed, one of the military base's remaining helicopters strafed over the formation. The people aboard threw off heaping piles of flammable and explosive devices.

Kaboom!

There was a tremendous crash, and the oni battle line was thrown into chaos. Only then did the Amazonian warriors and the Nineteenth Legion's melee fighters arrive. Meanwhile, our B-Grades targeted the enemy B-Grades.

My B-Grade was a tough-looking Oni veteran a bit over level three hundred. He had the look of someone who'd seen more wars than most countries, and from his position at the front of the army I suspected he was either the general or someone close to it. From the gold on his armor, I suspected he was also from one of the major Oni Clans.

I charged him, and to his credit he recovered his bearings faster than most. He was also lucky that some of the stuff the helicopter dropped next to him hadn't lit up. It was a type of crude napalm the soldiers had cooked up through a combination of Earth chemistry and Amazonian alchemy.

"An ambush? Damn natives. I suppose it's best we cull the fighty ones now!" the enemy general growled at me.

In reply, I breathed fire. He dodged, but I wasn't aiming at him. I was aiming at the improvised napalm at his feet.

It lit up in a great inferno, and the enemy general howled as it burned with supernatural intensity. B-Grades could handle regular fire just fine, but this wasn't regular fire. From the bright glare, it burned more like thermite.

Despite being on fire, the man still managed to draw a brutal-looking metal tetsubo as he charged me. I debated drawing my Dragonbone rapier and meeting him head-on, and if he'd pulled out a sword I might have. But I'd fought with Sakura while she wielded her tetsubo, and the aggressive and brutal fighting style of the weapon made it hard to have anything approaching an elegant duel.

So instead I took to the air and peppered him with spells from above. This guy had been flying when the scouts targeted him, but they'd also noticed he'd used an item to do it. He must have known not having a flying ability was a weakness in his skill set, since high-level battles were rarely confined to the ground.

He had covered that weakness with an item. Unfortunately for him, I'd destroyed that item with my first spell during the surprise attack. That turned what might have been a real fight into something easy enough I could have done it two hundred levels ago.

He could jump pretty well, but I was fast and nimble in the air and could hit him where he couldn't hit me. Pretty soon I'd struck him a dozen times with simple spells. Between the fire and all my passive spell effects, this guy was a dead man walking. I could simply ignore him while I dealt with the rest of the army, but he was strong enough to take out a few of my elite troops before my spells took him down, so I opted for a more aggressive strategy.

"I, Mokuranu Tishani, refuse to die on some backwater newly integrated world!" The enemy general reached into a bag of holding at his side and grabbed what looked like a wine bottle. The only difference was that instead of wine this was full of healing potion of the highest quality.

He smashed the bottle over the top of his head, letting it drain over his armor and his burned skin. He licked his lips, getting no more than a few drops. It was horribly wasteful, since most of the potion just ended up on the floor. An average healing potion contained no more than a mouthful of liquid, so that wine bottle had likely contained a hundred potions worth or more.

Despite the waste, it did the job it was intended to do and staved off this Mokuranu fellow's inevitable death, though he would still die once those afflictions stacked high enough to overwhelm whatever healing items he had.

He did the smart thing and ignored me, despite the death from above I was raining down on him. Instead, he targeted one of the weaker B-Grades from the Nineteenth Legion. I recognized them by face, but not by name. They were one of the soldiers who hit early B-Grade while training on Prince Herius' new world, rather than while fighting under me.

Mokuranu Tishani rushed the unfortunate B-Grade and looked like he planned to take off his head with a single swing. Voidling's Embrace stopped him just in time. I restrained him for a moment, scanned him for weak points, then cocked back my arm.

Golden light came to life in my palm, and with a mighty heave, a spear of sunlight shot down, straight through the eyehole in Mokuranu Tishani's visor, through his neck, and out his groin. When Voidling's Embrace faded away, he swayed back and forth for a moment before I snapped my fingers and detonated my corrupting marks. Just like that, the Oni army's most powerful B-Grade was dead.

The other B-Grade battles were finishing up quickly. None had been as fast as I'd been, but enough of our extra B-Grades were free that those people swept through the Oni ranks, preventing them from forming any credible defense.

Cyra waded through enemies like a giantess. Her sword was even bigger than normal, and when she swept it men would go flying five or six at a time. Myrina seemed to be everywhere all at once as she flipped through the air. Anywhere she landed was obscured by a fountain of blood and flying body parts.

Frank was holding the line near a contingent of his adventurers. He wasn't causing as much havoc as the Samhain girls, but the presence of him and his adventurers was an anvil to their hammer, and between the two of them they were grinding a large portion of the army to dust.

Reluna made herself the magical equivalent of a machine gun as she swept over the battlefield from a safe distance along with a number of other powerful spellcasters doing something similar. Sakura was in back, mostly sitting this fight out for fear of friendly fire. But the real terror in the ranks was Sharky, who was devouring Oni warriors like a whale devours krill, and with just as much effort on his end.

The Oni looked like they were ready to fight to the last man right up until the moment they saw him bearing down on them with a big, toothy smile. That was when the calls for surrender started going up.

We'd planned to show no mercy if that was what it took, but the major clans of Onibushi were known to pay a good ransom price for the safe return of their captured warriors. Crownhill didn't exactly need the money, but there was another reason to let the warriors of Onibushi go besides money.

We'd just dealt them a swift and crushing defeat. Once the higher-ranking Oni clans realized turning our cities into resource-producing vassal kingdoms wasn't viable, they would hopefully give up on their ambitions and pay us for the privileged.

Slaughtering a few thousand of these guys in a war was just doing business, and I didn't want to create too much enmity with such a powerful world. Onibushi was the best place in the multiverse to hire an army of mercenaries, after all. Conversely, that same attitude would keep them from holding a grudge. The mercenaries of Onibushi were famous for turning yesterdays enemies into today's clients.

There was, however, one guy I wanted to deal with. The scouts had spotted him among the army too.

Truthfully, I'd been hoping he'd die in the fighting. But I knew from events on Onibushi that Sakura's grandfather was good at diving for cover at the first sign of danger.

"Come out, Takano," I said as I gave a supply wagon a kick. There was no response.

"You survived the battle. Your army has surrendered. We're not doing mass executions, we're ransoming everyone. As much as I might personally dislike you, I do like your son and granddaughter. You won't die by my hands today." I gave the supply wagon another kick.

Eventually, a pile of bags of holding shifted, and Sakura's grandfather poked his head out from under them.

"Ugh, what happened? I was knocked unconscious after bravely defending General Mokuranu from a giant shark monster." Takano straightened his crooked helmet.

"I'm sure you did." I rolled my eyes.

"Now that I think about it, that monster looked identical to the one that attacked the Rokubi estate. I must have caught its attention at some point..." Takano looked nervous at that.

I shook my head, certain there were Oni far less deserving of death than the man in front of me. But family was family, and they died while this guy got to live. "Now that you mentioned it, a powerful wizard told me he cursed you to be chased by a giant shark monster if you don't behave. Now get out of there and get with the other prisoners before anyone realizes you hid in a wagon during the fighting."

Takano realized that would end rather badly for him. The oni didn't take accusations of cowardice lightly. Takano had spent much of his time on Earth though, so he felt comfortable wiggling Oni social conventions as much as needed to get whatever he desired.

***

After disarming the prisoners and leading them away, we went on to New Kyoto. Lots of Oni had died, and if we didn't wipe out the Oni loyalists left behind and take out the teleportation array, Onibushi could easily just send another army. While I was confident in the Nineteenth Legion, I had no intention of competing with an entire planet in a war of attrition.

Thankfully, ransoming prisoners was a well-established process in the Arcadia Multiverse, and there were plenty of middlemen very familiar with the Samhain Clan. Cyra and Myrina handled the process, with Sakura to facilitate any negotiations. My attention was entirely unnecessary on that front.

The bulk of our forces carried on with me to New Kyoto. The walls were even less manned than they had been during the void monster attack, and from the heads on spikes lining the walls, I realized what happened.

The oni who'd agreed to cut ties with Onibushi and help govern New Kyoto as an independent city had all been executed. In the eyes of the invading army, they were all traitors.

It was unfortunate, since without them New Kyoto would be too weak to stand on its own. I would have been more upset if they were true subordinates of mine, but New Kyoto was set up by treaty as an independent vassal state with near-full autonomy. Given the losses to their leadership, they would no longer be able to sustain such an arrangement.

I blew open the gates. There were only two people watching them, both hostile. They died before they knew what hit them. The Oni really had left nothing more than a skeleton crew here in the city.

"Go house to house. Bring everyone of decent level to the town square, especially if they are an Oni. This time, I'm going to be a lot more thorough in severing connections to Onibushi."

"Sir!" Legate Asimi gave out orders and my troops marched through the city. Once again, they made good on their house-to-house training to gather up various suspects.

We ended up with a rather large group of people in the center of the city, some human and some not. It used to be that only Oni made it over level twenty-five in this city, but since I showed up that trick had been broken and some of the locals figured out how to evolve their race as a human.

Going over everyone with a fine-toothed comb to discern the collaborators from the unfortunate locals was a process that would take weeks I didn't have. I'd get to it, but for now I'd a cruder but faster solution.

I made my announcement before the gathered crowd, though it hadn't been very long since my last one. Most were people my soldiers rounded up, but a lot were spectators poking their heads out of windows and doors to see what was happening. I projected my voice for all to hear.

"The army from Onibushi has been destroyed. Henceforth, New Kyoto is no longer a vassal state. It's a territory under my direct control. You see those banners on the walls? Those are mine. Anybody here who wants to be ransomed back to Onibushi, speak up now. If you don't, you'll never return home."

Those ominous words made a lot of the Oni among the crowd speak up, and I set them aside where they'd be led to meet up with Cyra, Myrina, and Sakura for the ransoming efforts.

The other suspicious individuals, mostly humans, stayed where they were. But they wouldn't be staying in New Kyoto until I had the time to sort them out. Instead, we marched them all into Sanctum. As far as I knew, even if they built a teleportation array in there they wouldn't be able to get directly to Onibushi. They'd have to find an exit and put the teleporter somewhere in normal space.

From there, everything was more of what we'd done on Ladwick. As far as my legionaries were concerned, this city was no different from the many we'd conquered together. The locals were even thankful to be freed from the tyrannical reign of their previous conquerors, just like when we'd been driving off roving bands of cultivators.

Legate Asimi and the legionnaires knew this process by heart. Within just a few hours we restored order to a chaotic city and instilled some faith in their new emperor. That last part was really the only change from usual. On Ladwick, I'd just be the legate planning to rule on a temporary basis. But here, my people would run the place indefinitely.

I didn't plan to be here personally, but I spotted some of the people who'd served as stewards in my stead on Ladwick and picked the most skilled of them to administrate New Kyoto until this whole mess was cleaned up and I could come back to set up a proper government.

Since this was going to be a true city of mine going forward instead of a vassal state, I would need to build a palace. It would be like the arrangement I had set up in San Antonio, but a bit more involved since this was such a bigger city.

With all that said and done, I gathered the bulk of my men and set off for the next target. Camlaan's army was probably already waiting in the field and wondering where all their allies were hiding.

<Note>

As I mentioned before, I don't think I can do the Saturday post. Sorry guys.

I may have to take Monday off next week as well, since I have to get some last-minute review and editing stuff done before sending book 6 off for proofing.

I think I have some artwork I can share with you guys, so you won't get nothing. We also skipped over the usual "What do you want to see in book 7?" posts, so these might be good days for that so I can hear from all you guys about what you liked/didn't like/want to see more of. Maybe a short story too if outlining/family stuff takes too long?