Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 53

Nakano returned with Sakura and me to Crownhill. I had hoped to be the one to show him around, since I thought he'd be impressed, but Sakura seemed even more eager. In the end, I just tagged along while she led the tour.

"This is the old office! You remember the place, right? Well, we turned it into a shelter and expanded from there." Sakura waved at the area around the obelisk. The courtyard had been rebuilt so many times you could hardly see anything of the old building.

Nakano made the right noises at the right times, especially when he saw the levels of Crownhill's adventurers. We had quite a few upper-middle-ranking adventurers, comparable to the Marketplace Collective’s best. More importantly, our C-Grades weren’t afraid of fighting. I could tell Nakano was worried for his own faction.

"Are all groups in the fourth stage of integration as powerful as you?" Nakano asked.

I chuckled. "Almost. But I think we’re a special case. The System seems to think we’re heavy hitters and has pit us against enemies accordingly. At least, that’s my guess. Don’t worry, though. We’ll lend aid to your people when your enemies show themselves."

That eased his fears a little. Afterward, he browsed the Obelisk’s goods, which were far more extensive than what the Marketplace Collective usually offered.

"Would it be possible to connect San Francisco's obelisk to your network, the way you’ve done with the others?" Nakano asked.

"I'm not sure. So far, it’s only worked for obelisks I’ve owned." I ran my fingers through my hair, but as soon as I said it, the System responded.

Your authority over San Francisco has been recognized, and you have been identified as the closest thing to their Shardlord.
Would you like to add the San Francisco Obelisk to your network?

It was strange for the prompt to come so late. I suspected the System had to debate whether or not I should be in charge of the place, only deciding now when Nakano mentioned it. Maybe Lyra had even put in a good word for me when I returned to Crownhill’s shard.

Writing the city’s constitution probably helped too. Like I had in Crownhill’s early days, I promised to guarantee that the laws would be enforced as written if existing institutions failed. In practice, that meant showing up and putting down any B-Grade who thought they could seize control with brute force. Hopefully that wouldn't happen too often.

In the end, I accepted. Goods could now be bought and sold all the way from San Francisco. A flood of new electronics hit the market, which was a huge boon for my magitech research. I bought everything available and was pleasantly surprised to see I got a hefty cut of the sales tax from San Francisco’s market too.

That revenue justified sending some of our staff to San Francisco on a permanent basis. Kyle was still there, which made him a good start, but I planned to send more guards in an official capacity to stabilize things.

Eventually, I left Nakano’s tour in Sakura’s hands and went to the Omykir shrine to make an appointment with the Goddess in Jade. She’d thankfully healed from her injuries and was ready to meet. After we agreed on a date, time, and world outside of System space, I returned to Crownhill to finish preparing aid packages and personnel to help San Francisco reach the level of our San Antonio colony.

By then, Nakano had wrapped up his tour and was making plans to infiltrate New Kyoto.

"I was reluctant to bring Kogai because I thought San Francisco would need his protection while I was gone. But if you’re sending more guards of this caliber, I’m much more comfortable pulling him away. I’ll send for him and a few other oni who’ve joined me. That will make infiltrating the city easier," Nakano said.

"I’m going too," Sakura added. "I already have a house there, I know my way around, and I know some important people. If you want to convince the oni here to stop tricking humans into slave labor, you’ll want my help."

Nakano stroked his daughter’s head like she was still a little girl, even though she was nearly as tall as he was.

In the end, all they needed was a handshake and a kiss for luck. I had high hopes for their mission, since its success would spare a lot of bloodshed on all sides.

Together, the two of them left for New Kyoto, and I turned my attention to local matters.

***

I returned to my farmhouse castle, where I found Bridget and Mimiko both at home.

In the kitchen, to my surprise, Mimiko was the one wearing an apron and kneading dough. Bridget sat in a chair, wiping sweat from her brow while directing her.

"Show me the dough. No, you need to keep going. If you pull on it, a little window should form. That’s how you know the gluten matrix has developed," Bridget explained.

She looked exhausted. Either the baby had finally gotten the best of her, or she’d learned not to push herself so hard while pregnant. Her belly looked absolutely massive, like she was about to burst. A spike of fear ran up my spine when I realized the baby was barely a month away. Judging by her appearance, though, I would have guessed she was a month overdue, not a month early.

I pulled up a chair beside her and rested a hand on her plump belly for a while. Peering through dimensions, I caught a glimpse of the baby. I’d been doing this practically every night to make sure he was developing well and that there were no complications.

"I think our son’s going to have your hair," I said.

"That’s great, honey, but do you think you could convince him to stop kicking me in the kidney?" Bridget winced.

I chuckled and gave the baby a small nudge. He was going to keep kicking Bridget, just not in the kidney. This kid was going to be a strong one. Given Bridget's level, an adult F-Grade shouldn't be able to make her flinch, let alone an unborn baby.

I’d been trying to figure out if it was possible to pull the kid out trans-dimensionally, so Bridget wouldn’t have to go through the whole childbirth ordeal. Already, our son was a huge baby. I guessed he was nearly four kilograms and still not finished. With a medical professional's help, he could probably already survive on his own.

Bridget wouldn’t hear of it, though. He would come out when he was ready, no matter how big he got. Her being B-Grade was probably what caused the growth spurt. Hopefully it would make the birth easier too.

I spent some time rubbing Bridget’s sore back and shoulders, but Mimiko kept throwing me pleading looks. Eventually, I went to help her and quickly saw why she was struggling.

"You know, the last time I used this much mana for something, I used it to kill an army of undead a million strong," I said as I poured my power into Bridget’s pastries.

"Sometimes, quantity can make up for quality," Bridget said, fanning herself with a recipe book while eating peanut butter straight from the jar. I was a bit concerned by the fact that it was the fourth jar she'd gone through since I'd returned.

We didn’t have her special chef’s job from the System, so even with the two of us pouring mana into the dough, we couldn’t bring things up to Bridget’s standards. She kept guiding us from the kitchen table, but no amount of advice made it perfect.

On our third attempt, we finally produced something she considered barely acceptable, and we distributed it to the food banks in Crownhill, San Antonio, the treehouse village, the Omikyr villages, and several other small communities we’d encountered during integration.

I was impressed with how far Bridget’s food program had spread. She was feeding settlements I didn’t even know we controlled. I also had no idea when she’d found the time to establish a whole network of assistants to help her do it, but she had.

Apparently Mimiko had been one of those helpers, since the two of them were in the farmhouse together. My plan had been to take Mimiko with me, but Bridget’s state of pregnancy made me nervous about leaving her alone.

"Take Mimiko, I’ll be fine. I know she would like to see her own people again. Besides, Reluna just returned with you. She can help me in the kitchen. And Governess is always happy to lend a hand," Bridget said.

I scratched my head. "Okay, but Reluna’s been a bit… occupied lately. If you really need her, just have Governess reprogram her suit so its goal is to help you. She’ll be real helpful then."

I kissed Bridget goodbye and departed with Mimiko following close behind.

***

We took a series of teleportation arrays out of Crownhill, to Glacia, and then again to the borders of System space. Soon, we were on a space station with a dock, much like the one Cyra and I had explored while preparing to delve the dungeon where I’d gotten my mystic realm.

Once there, I pulled Mimiko out of Sanctum and told her where the Goddess in Jade had suggested we meet.

"The Ninefold Lotus Heaven Realm? Do you truly think we’ll even be allowed inside?" Mimiko asked, eyes wide with excitement.

"Is there something special about this… Ninefold Lotus Heaven?" I asked skeptically.

"Only that it’s supposed to be a sacred land for cultivators. It is what you might call a mystic realm, only one far older and more advanced than any artificial one known today. Countless powerful cultivators and sects call the Ninefold Lotus Heaven home. As a low-ranking member of the Black Beast Sect, I hadn’t even dared to dream of entry." Mimiko’s eyes turned wistful.

I grinned. "Great. I just hope you don’t get the cold shoulder again this time."

"Oh, don’t worry about me. It is a privilege to simply breathe the air in a realm such as this one..." Mimiko let out a hopeful sigh before returning through a portal to my mystic realm. It was far easier to transport her through System space when she was hidden there.

Transferring to a new teleportation network took some effort. I really should have swiped one of those heretic ships I’d looted during the Ladwick crusade for myself. My original plan had been to stop on Glacia and ask Grandma Luthrin if I could borrow one of the ships I helped loot. They should still be there.

But something in my gut told me finding a ship would take care of itself. I trusted those instincts, so I left with time to spare and just went where the wind carried me. A set of teleportation trips brought me to the border of System space, though not in the direction of Ladwick and the Vaust family’s ruined territory. That place was still scarred from the climactic battle between them and the cultivators.

This was another border region, though in much the same shape as I'd originally found the Vaust territory before the war. Walking through the space port, each step kicked up dust, and the maintenance closet was covered in cobwebs. This place wasn't exactly a tourist destination.

The rest of the trip would have to be completed using a shuttle. Thankfully, there were plenty in port, some for rent and some for sale. This time, I planned on buying. It took some time to find the dock owner, who had paging through a booklet filled with nubile females of several races with a bored expression on his face. He seemed completely shocked to have a customer, but after flashing some coin he took me seriously and started showing me what he had for sale.

"You sure this is the one you want, kid?" the dock owner asked.

"Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get me to buy it, not talk me out of buying it?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Well, yeah. But I’ve got much nicer and more expensive ships back that way. This old hunk of junk is just something somebody found adrift and towed to port to sell. It sat here for a year before he realized it was worthless and stopped paying docking fees. I’ve been planning to get rid of it ever since." The dock owner shrugged.

"You ever been inside it?" I asked.

The dock owner shook his head. "Nope. Can’t even get through the door. The outer markings suggest it’s probably the work of one of those heretical splinter System groups, so I wouldn’t want to fly it in System space anyway. It's only good for scrap metal."

"I’m certain this is the one I want. It’s giving me a good feeling," I said, admiring what would soon be my new ship.

"Fine... fine. Now, show me some of those fancy adamantium coins of yours again. I think three hundred of those should be sufficient for a... uh... specimen like this." The dock owner shook his head, as though he still couldn’t believe somebody was buying what he considered scrap metal.

I handed him the money without even haggling.

He struggled to hide the ecstatic look on his face. I was certain he thought he’d gotten the better end of the bargain. But deep in my gut, I had a strong feeling that even if I’d paid a thousand times more, I would still walk away with the better end of the deal.

The ship was a rust bucket, no doubt about it. According to the dock owner, it had been found in a decaying orbit around a gas giant, where it had floated for who knew how many thousands of years. The exterior was caked in grime, dust, and rust, making it hard to tell what the ship was even supposed to look like. Most people who saw it flying would probably assume it was a naturally occurring asteroid. But with my senses, I could tell there was more here than met the eye.

I had already tried to enter it using Shadowrealm Stride, only to find the ship was just as solid in the shadow realm as outside it. That only made me want it more. There was, however, one thing I could see from the shadow realm, and that was the name inscribed on the ship’s side.

"Hello, Oraculum. What secrets do you hold?" I ran my hand along the ship’s side.

At my touch, the ship seemed to stir. Like a groggy-eyed giant, it quivered as though just waking from a long slumber. Something extended toward me, not physical but spiritual, like an open hand.

I accepted the invitation, and immediately a chunk of my mana pool vanished. Anyone who wasn’t a spellcaster would have collapsed, and even I was shocked at how much power the ship drained so swiftly. An instant later, I vanished from the port railing.

It was like taking a teleportation array, but executed with mechanical precision. No wonder the dock owner had never managed to get inside. There wasn’t a physical entrance.

He was right about there being no life support inside, though. The interior of the ship was as cold as space. Its engines had gone dead long ago, but the mana it drained from me was enough to spark a few dim lights nearby.

The good news was that the ship was far larger on the inside, just as I’d hoped. From the outside, it was only a little bigger than my last rental, about the size of a minivan. But from the inside, it was closer to the size of my castle, not counting whatever decks or hidden chambers lay beyond my line of sight.

I walked the empty halls, stepping over withered skeletons in unfamiliar uniforms, their bones caked in dust. Not all of the uniforms matched, and few of the skeletons had been intact.

It looked like there had been a battle here, long, long ago. But whoever won hadn't did so in good enough shape to fly this thing somewhere other than to a nearby gas giant.

The interior was a fixer-upper, and not just because the ship needed a corpse disposal service. The interior was a mess.

But one thing caught my attention on the consoles and the uniforms around me. Everything was written in the script of the Architects.

I turned and scanned the bodies with Analyze.

Ancient Decayed Corpse (Legendary)
Ancient Decayed Corpse (Mythic)
Ancient Decayed Corpse (Divine)

Each body displayed an incredible rarity, which I suspected meant they had belonged to very high-leveled individuals. I wasn’t sure exactly what level they had been, but I was certain that undead faction I’d been fighting would pay a fortune for corpses like these. Maybe it would be a good way to get them off my back about all the ones I’d killed. But I'd save that for later, after I’d kicked the undead off my planet completely.

One thing was certain. This ancient ship had been sitting in that gas giant far longer than the dock owner thought. It was almost certainly a ruin from the golden age of the Architects.

<Note>

I tried super hard not to make a big deal out of Carter finding this ship. I wanted to keep it lowkey. Yeah, he found an old ship and fixed it up, so what? Alas... well, give it until next chapter.