Amazon Apocalypse 7: Chapter 6

We returned to the castle, and from there went to Sanctum. Adrian and I were soon searching through Sanctum for the most impressive bug we could find. He stared hard at the empty city we walked through, which seemed eerie even to me.

"Is this place haunted?" Adrian asked nervously.

"I don't think so. If it is, don't worry. I have a spell. I call it ghost-bye-bye." I held up my hand like a gun, and a faint tuft of swirling blue light circled the tip of my finger. It certainly looked impressive, though it was more a product of Lightsculptor's Brush than any actual spell.

"Ghost!" Adrian said, pointing nearby to some rustling debris. I didn't think anything was there, but for Adrian's sake I made a show of blasting the area with a ray of magic.

"Looks like I got it! Keep an eye out for any more." I held my finger up again and more light swirled around it.

I ended up blasting a dozen more rustling piles of debris. Most were just trash being caught in the wind, but once there was some sort of low-leveled creature there. Adrian soon went from nervous to letting out a little giggle of joy with each spell. Soon any tension at the unfamiliar surroundings left him. He trusted his father to take care of anything dangerous.

Eventually, we left the area that had once housed Jade's refugees and made our way to unclaimed forest, though there were plenty of paths carved through here. The refugees had amended their supplies by hunting and gathering, and we followed those trails now.

My mystic realm had grown several times so I was sure there were genuinely unexplored regions, but we were looking for a bug, not some mythical beast or something. It couldn't be too hard to find something suitable.

Eventually, we came across a clearing where someone had harvested lumber, but left the job half finished. Many of the logs were overturned and started to rot.

"If I were a bug, I'd want to live under one of those." I pointed to the logs. I explained what little I knew about bugs and why they liked to live where they did. Adrian listened with rapt attention, then assisted me in turning over the big logs.

I'd been planning to do it all myself, but had completely forgotten he was born at level 24 until I saw him grab a tree trunk many times larger than he was and flip it on its side as easily as playing with his toy blocks.

A hundred bugs skittered for shelter the moment the log was overturned.

"That one looked promising." I pointed to one of the faster ones, which was a centipede-like thing as big as my hand. I made to grab it, but Adrian shook his head.

"The other kids had beetles and crabs," Adrian said.

"Alright, we'll keep looking for beetles and crabs then."

We searched the rest of the clearing and found several more bugs of various sizes, but none of them were beetles and I could tell Adrian was unimpressed. So I picked him back up, put him on my shoulders, and began searching again.

We were traveling when I heard a loud metallic ding sound throughout the area, followed by a beast-like roar. It sounded like a rhinoceros, but bigger.

"Monster?" Adrian asked.

"It's probably two beasts fighting. I'll check it out. I don't want them stumbling across us while we're looking for bugs."

I sprouted dragon wings from behind my back, and Adrian giggled in delight once more when he realized we were flying.

Soon, we were overlooking a clearing. It had been forest until recently, but the ongoing battle had stomped the area clear.

The rampaging C-Grade beast was easy to spot, and I hit it with a quick examine, then urged Adrian to do the same.

"See that thing down there? Concentrate on it and see if you can get the System to tell you what it is."

Adrian squinted, then shook his head. "Can't. It's too tough."

"Not showing up for you, huh? Guess it has some innate examine resistance. I'll share what I'm seeing."

Demon Rhinoceros (Level 78)

The rhino crouched low, flexed its hind legs, then charged forward with incredible speed that shattered a tree into a rain of splinters. Some of them took to the sky, and I quickly cast Mage Armor to shield myself and Adrian from the debris.

"It's really strong!" Adrian said.

"But what's it fighting? Do you see that too?" I asked, then pointed to a shiny little golden speck.

He squinted, but then he saw what I did.

"It's a beetle!" Adrian said excitedly.

"Seems like what we're looking for, right? Let's check it out."

"Looks dangerous..." Adrian stared at the rampaging demon Rhinoceros.

"Don't worry, we're safe in the air. I'm pretty sure something that big would have trouble flying."

The two of us circled the battlefield a few times. At first, the fighting seemed incredibly one-sided. The Demon Rhinoceros was destroying the entire landscape, whereas the beetle was just skittering left and right. It was a big bug, though compared to the rhino it appeared tiny and helpless.

But a closer examination revealed the little golden beetle wasn't as helpless as it appeared.

Fate-Defying Curse Beetle (Level 104)

Despite its furious attack, the rhino was not the stronger party. There was only one reason a beast like it would so relentlessly attack something stronger than itself. And that was because of a Death Curse.

Back when I still carried my own Death Curse, I used Share Curse to inflict the curse upon a palm-sized golden beetle. That curse doomed the beetle to a life of constant strife as every other monster and beast in the mystic realm came to destroy it.

I'd assumed it had died and been devoured long ago, but apparently it had beaten the odds.

The beetle must have specialized in defense, because no matter how hard the rhino stomped or rammed it, the only thing that happened was a metallic bang that rang throughout the forest. It was like the golden beetle had a shell as tough as my strongest adamantium alloy.

"The rhino is going to crush it!" Adrian said as he pointed at the fight. His voice already carried sadness, and I had a hunch he had his heart set on taking the Fate-Defying Curse Beetle home with him.

"The mean rhino is bullying the beetle. What do you say we give him a taste of what it feels like to be on the other side of things?" I glanced up at Adrian, who looked at me nervously.

"The rhino is pretty big, dad."

"And your dad knows more than one spell. Watch this. Rhino-bye-bye!" I pointed my finger at the rhino just as I had at the ghosts Adrian thought he spotted. A flash of light split the air, and the rhino yelped in pain.

The spell I'd just hit it with was a burst of mud and air. It was loud, flashy, and impressive, but was more akin to a punch combined with a taser zap than my usual spells. Most of my abilities left rather ghastly wounds, and I didn't want my son to see such things at his age.

The rhino yelped again, looked around, and then eventually caught sight of me. I blasted it again. And again. By the time I blasted it a third time, the rhino got the picture and scampered off into the distance.

Meanwhile, we drifted down and circled the beetle. The little critter had a good sense for danger, and as soon as I approached its back opened up and it tried to fly off. It wasn't particularly stealthy or fast. As big as it was, the flapping of its wings sounded like an airplane taking off.

I easily caught up to it, and I grabbed the horn on its front. Restraining the beetle was difficult. Thanks to Reluna I was pretty good at restraining humanoid opponents, but figuring out how to tie up a beetle took a bit of creativity. Eventually, I felt like I had it restrained enough for Adrian to look.

The beetle was the size of the shield Sir Sandon carried, and it was larger than Adrian's entire body. It reminded me a bit of golden scarabs from Egyptian mythology. Its shell had a natural luminescence shine to it, like freshly polished gold. The effect was dulled by the fact that the beetle had been rolling in mud recently.

Despite its impressive appearance, there was something distinctly cowardly about the beetle. I'd expected it to want to attack Adrian at least, but the bug was too focused on running away to manage anything else.

Given its level it had to have at least rudimentary intelligence. Insects were slower to gain brains than other creatures as they gained levels, but C-Grade surely had to count for something. When I saw the mud hiding its shiny body, I felt certain the bug knew on some level to disguise itself. Being eye catching wasn't good for a creature inflicted with a Death Curse.

"I want it! I want it!" Adrian said, bouncing up and down.

I chuckled, but shook my head sadly.

"I'll admit it's a pretty impressive beetle, but you can't have this one, son."

"Why not?" Adrian pouted.

"It's the size of a dining table. It wouldn't even fit in the battle arena. It's also higher leveled than just about anything in the pocket realm. It's probably powerful enough that it would be forced out of the pocket realm as soon as it did anything akin to fighting."

"Then how's it here?" Adrian asked.

"That's a good question, and one that dives into the differences between pocket realms and mystic realms. The simple explanation is that they're entirely different types of extra dimensional spaces. If you figure out the detailed answer, make sure you come back and explain it to your dad, because I haven't figured it all out myself yet."

"So... no beetle?" Adrian's shoulders slumped.

"Not this one. Your mother would be very unhappy with me giving you a pet bug at this level. Maybe you'll be able to wrangle something like this someday. Come on, I'm going to let this one go and we'll follow it. Maybe it will lead us to something similar, but a bit smaller."

I let the golden beetle go and it took off like a rocket ship. We chased it from behind, but let it get just far enough ahead to think it had lost us. When it landed to take a break, we pounced again and checked the area for other beetles.

The first two times we were disappointed, but the third time we were lucky and found a log completely covered in familiar hand-sized beetles. I recognized them as the same level one giant beetles the Fate-Defying Curse Beetle had evolved from.

"How's that, Adrian? I think even that one is a little big." I pointed to one of the beetles, which Adrian reached out and snatched without fear. I'd already checked to make sure they couldn't bite and were non-venomous, so I wasn't worried.

"I'll take it!" Adrian examined the beetle, which filled both his hands.

I chuckled. No doubt bringing this to the kids' bug battling arena would be completely unfair. This thing was at least twice the size of the next largest bug, and it clearly possessed the potential to reach a high level.

***

We returned to the pocket realm. Bug in hand, Adrian and I joined the older kids in their arena.

"Who wants to battle?" Adrian hefted his bug aloft, and the other kids gasped at the size of it.

The beetle was huge by any standard. More than that though, after a quick cleaning its surface was as shiny as polished gold, and horns jutting out of its body looked incredibly fierce. By any measure, it was the most impressive specimen of a bug any of these kids had ever seen. Despite being a bug, it had a certain majestic look to it that caught the eye. Without the cowardly aura of its much higher-leveled cousin, the bug looked positively kingly.

"What kind of beetle is that?" one of the older kids asked.

Others echoed the sentiment. Adrian repeated his challenge a few more times, and eventually, someone volunteered.

"I'm not scared of some baby with a big bug!"

The voice was familiar, and I realized it was Peter, the kid who'd knocked over Adrian's castle.

Adrian eyed him with grim-faced determination, especially when Peter pulled out a large beetle only slightly smaller than Adrian's own.

The match began with tense anticipation. Adrian's beetle was on one side, and Peter's was on the other.

"Begin!" one of the older kids began the match by dropping a piece of monster core in the center. Both beetles rushed toward the core.

The crowd of kids had grown by now, and the cheering reached a fever pitch as Adrian's golden beetle locked horns with Peter's. They pushed, shoved, and then in a burst of monstrous strength, Adrian's golden beetle tore Peter's off the ground and flipped it into the small moat on either side of the battle arena.

"Winner, Adrian!" the older kid refereeing the match said.

Peter stared in shock, both at Adrian and his beetle. He seemed so taken aback that he'd lost that somebody else had to rescue his drowning beetle for him.

"Who's next?" Adrian asked.

Another challenger came forward, and once again a sliver of monster core was placed in the center of the narrow strip of sand. Adrian's beetle faced off against a crab this time, but claimed victory once more and feasted upon the monster core shard.

Next was a large black beetle owned by the kid who'd previously been refereeing. It resembled a rhinoceros beetle, but seemed bigger and fiercer than anything I remembered seeing before the integration.

"I raised this beetle from a larva myself and fed it monster cores until it was as big as my fist! Yours may be bigger and shinier, but mine is a lot stronger than it looks!" the older kid said.

The two beetles clashed, and this time the moment lasted several tense seconds. But then the older kid's beetle lost its footing and was tossed aside just like all the others, to the shock of the crowd.

"Even the previous grand champion didn't stand a chance! Just where did the little kid find that bug!?" someone in the audience gasped. Others repeated the sentiment, murmuring in shock.

There were more challengers after that, but Adrian's new beetle won every time. I ended up placing down a low-level entire core in the arena instead of just a sliver to keep the other kids trying their luck.

A few of them swore their crabs or bugs had evolved after winning a few battles and consuming core slivers, and I hoped to witness the phenomenon with my own eyes. Unfortunately, if I wanted to see that I'd need to perform the experiment myself, since Adrian's beetle seemed intent on not losing so much as a single match.

Like every grand champion, Adrian's beetle soon accumulated a number of dedicated fans.

"Look at the size of that thing!"

"It threw the crab outside of the whole arena!"

"It's the beetle king! All hail the beetle king!"

Each match ended as swiftly as it began. Adrian's beetle tossed the others aside in one decisive move, then claimed the prize. After a series of thirty wins in a row, Adrian and his beetle were declared the grand champions. I was pretty sure the other kids just wanted a way to stop Adrian's bug from winning all the time, but it was nice to see the look of pride on his face.

He looked down at his beetle, then looked up at me.

"That big one we saw would have won even faster."

I chuckled. "Yeah? Well maybe you'll find out someday if you can catch it."

Adrian wore a thoughtful look on his face. And I suspected he was thinking of how to do just that.

<Note>

This chapter had me looking at some of the beetle fighting matches people have. Rhinoceros beetles are pretty popular for the sport, it seems. You can even order the larvae online, as they're a popular pet since the beetles are non-venomous and don't bite but are very large and look impressive.

Apparently, collecting rhinoceros beetles is pretty popular in Japan and it was one of the inspirations for Pokemon.

I have a few more adventures with Adrian and Carter, some involving swordsmanship, fishing, survival, and other stuff. I'll probably just skim over most of them unless you guys really want more, since if they all take a full chapter it'll end up being a good 25% of the book of just Carter and Adrian. I could be convinced to write out one more chapter like this one though.

Just trust that Carter is spending time with his kid, even if it doesn't make it onto the page.