Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 50

I checked in on Nakano and was glad to see he was all right. He'd torn off a table leg and was wielding it like a club. A few of the other guests were wielding chairs and tables, but most of them were cowering in terror.

Many of the undead attacking were only D-Grade or lower, so it was strange to see C-Grade partygoers cowering in fear of them. But then I remembered how popular experience pearls were around here. Most of these wealthy elite had gained all their levels the easy way and hadn't been in a fight in their lives. Abusing experience pearls was frowned on across the whole of the Arcadia Multiverse, and this was exactly the reason on full display.

I started charging more holy mana spells, and they formed next to me while I took in the situation in full. Most of the undead were low-leveled trash, the same kind that Reluna and Sharky had been consuming in droves. But a couple of them were clearly elites from elsewhere in the Arcadia Multiverse.

The moment I made my entrance, I wiped out the front ranks of the undead with a single spell volley. Brilliant golden light flared all around me, and zombies burned to ashes. While they were dying, I turned back to the elites and scanned them one at a time, and felt them doing the same to me in turn.

Bonelord (Level 345)
Vampire Seductress (Level 335)
Lich Lord (Level 355)

The Bonelord was a skeletal brute. His body was covered in the rib cages of various creatures and wrapped around a humanoid form like armor. But the gaps between the rows of bones revealed only open air. There was nothing within that armor, for the armor was the Bonelord himself.

The Vampire Seductress looked a lot more human than either of her companions, though she was unnaturally pale. Her chalk-white skin was at odds with her dark eyes and hair. Most of all, her red lips stood out like they were stained the color of fresh blood.

Last was the Lich Lord, and he reminded me a lot of the Lich King. He was higher leveled than the Lich King had ever been, with more ornate robes flowing around a skeleton cloaked in a hazy miasma. Despite his level, he seemed less real to me than the Lich King had, like the spellcaster before me was only half a man, while the Lich King had been nine-tenths of one.

I cursed. As misfortune would have it, I'd missed not one B-Grade, but three of them. This was the sort of firepower meant to overthrow a faction on the same level as the Order of Sorcery or the Sages of Camlaan. However Walter and his friends thought their relationship with the undead was going to go, it would most certainly tilt in favor of these three.

"Nakano! Find Kogai and get out of here. I'll deal with these three," I yelled from across the room.

Nakano saw me even as he focused on bashing in the brains of a few zombies lunging toward him. I had cleared the room for a moment, giving him and the others the chance they needed to escape.

"Make sure you get out of this in one piece! Don't you go dying on my daughter!" Nakano yelled as he grabbed several terrified wealthy corporate elite.

Useless in battle or not, each of them that survived would be invaluable in making sure they could deal with those who set this trap up. Each of them had been just as slated to die here as Nakano and I had been, which made them natural allies once the dust settled.

"Look there, a strong one!" the Vampire Seductress said between pointed teeth.

"I'll take him. These humans are weak cowards, despite their levels. There was no need to bring six of us," the Bonelord said in a rasping growl.

He lunged toward me in a burst of motion. I replied by drawing a bone of my own. In this case, my Apocalypse Dragon bone sword.

A set of claw-like curved bones shot from the back of his hands and extended like a set of claws. My blade clashed with his claws and he gave me a little shove, but I shoved back. If we were equal level, he might have been stronger than me. But as things were, I held a stark advantage and threw him off me.

He recovered quickly, though I still carved a gouge out of his facial bones with the tip of my sword. He growled, clutching his cheek.

"You'll pay for that. I'll have your skull as my new face when all this is done. Then my power will surge to new heights!" the Bonelord growled.

I shot him in the face.

Thick beams of golden light shot from my off hand. I'd been gathering them while we crossed weapons, and him opening his mouth was the perfect opportunity to strike. I had hoped to go right through the roof of his mouth and smash whatever passed for a brain in that skull of his.

Unfortunately, undead biology didn't work like human biology. Putting a thumb-sized hole out the back of his head only made him angry.

"Attack, before Bonelord is overwhelmed!" the Lich Lord hissed.

I had hoped to take the Bonelord out early. Without the tank of the group, I'd have an easy time with the other two. But since the Bonelord wouldn't go down easily, I needed to change tactics.

I dashed to the back of the room to put some distance between me and my enemies, then used the moment of focus to activate Mania several times in quick succession, bringing myself to Blood Frenzy levels in an instant. Somewhere out there, Sharky just got a big boost in power. Hopefully he and Reluna had sensed something was wrong in the city and were coming back our way.

I quickly cast Voidling's Embrace, and a writhing mass of void tendrils hauled themselves out of the floor from a rift in space, wrapping around the Bonelord and restraining him. I'd gotten lucky with the void monster the spell summoned this time. With all the little crevices on the Bonelord's body, these tendrils had a far easier time finding purchase than they would on anyone else. It would take him a few seconds to escape at least.

"Hush now, human. Why fight? Put down that sword and come into my arms," the Vampire Seductress spread her arms wide, revealing bare breasts and a beautiful face.

For an instant, I saw what anyone else must have seen when they looked at the vampire. Instead of an unnaturally pale creature of the night, I saw a beautiful and inviting woman.

I walked closer to her, and her kindly smile hid predatory fangs. The moment she had me in her arms, she'd bite and drain me of every drop of blood I had.

As though dazed, I let myself be guided to her chest. Her grin widened right up until the last moment, when she realized it wasn't me who'd been tricked, but her. A Sunlight Spear empowered by the Goddess in Jade's holy magic gift to me flung from my off hand.

I was aiming straight for her heart and would have killed her then and there if the Lich Lord hadn't saved his companion with a telekinetic burst of power that tossed her to one side.

"Idiot. Foolish girl. Not every man will fall for your charms," the Lich Lord said. Purple mist swirled from the infant skull embedded on the top of his staff. He cupped it in his hand and made a throwing gesture, which scattered the mist in my direction.

I passed through the shadow realm to dodge it and appeared beside the lich, sword slicing down at him. He was too slow to dodge, but brought his staff up to block. My dragon bone sword sliced clean through it and into his arm. My blade cut through the withered bony appendage just past the shoulder, and it dropped to the ground with a clatter.

To his credit, the lich seemed entirely unperturbed by the loss of an arm, and had even kept casting while I maimed him. From his remaining hand he shot a burst of black lightning, and from his open mouth he breathed out a cloud of locusts.

The lightning smashed through the Mage Armor spell I'd cast at the beginning of the fight, and the locusts were coming to scour the flesh from my bones with their hungry mouths.

But I had cast two spells at once as well. One was Sanctified Grounds, which I'd used to kill undead before. Packed in this room, the spell would cover most of our battlefield, at least until the building collapsed. I'd intended to cast it from the start of the fight, and now was as good a time as any.

The other spell was Eldritch Blight, which opened a portal to the void behind me. The swarm of locusts were struck with Corrupting Marks as soon as they appeared. They spread to each insect, detonating a moment later in a chain reaction that caused an explosion all the way back to inside the lich's mouth.

"He's strong! Where are the others? There were supposed to be three more B-Grades here!" the vampire hissed as she dug teeth into her own arm. Her blood pooled on the ground beneath her, but I could already see it writhing and shifting shape into weapons.

She attacked before I could finish off the lich, and I was forced to disengage and use Aegis of the Void to block flying blood spikes. The void swallowed the projectiles before the vampire even realized what was happening, and she cursed as she realized I'd disarmed her.

I'd fought against blood magic before and knew she'd keep flinging the same blood at me all day if she could. Now that she'd lost half her blood, she'd have to bleed herself again if she wanted to keep up the pressure on me.

I reached into my bag and grabbed a few supersized Mana Bombs and threw them at the lich. He looked like he was trying to heal himself, and a mana explosion would shatter whatever spell he was casting before he could finish.

Meanwhile, I jumped on top of the temporarily disarmed vampire. She drew what little blood she had left into a shield which she held with both hands. My sword swept up from beneath and attempted to slip by her blood shield, but that attack was a feint as I attacked with another Sunlight Spear.

"Help me, damn it! Get over here!" the vampire screamed in terror as I unleashed a series of attacks on her. It was all she could do to defend herself while my sword chopped out chunks of her blood shield.

Between my sword and Sunlight Spear spells, she could have lasted a long time just defending. But I was trying to finish things quickly and had been preparing another barrage of holy magic with Mana Arsenal.

Two masses of swirling golden mana bolts struck her from behind and the sides in a teeming mass of spellfire that lit her body up like a torch. Each spell was weak individually, but there were so many of them coming from so many directions that some were inevitably critical strikes.

"Ahhhh!" she let out a wail of pain.

The Bonelord finally struggled free of my tentacle trap then, and he rushed me with shoulder lowered for a tackle. I slipped into the shadow realm to avoid him. Meanwhile, the vampire was rolling on the ground as she burned in golden fire.

"Pull yourself together, it's just a bit of holy magic!" the Bonelord shouted at the vampire. But she couldn't even respond as she screamed.

I knew things were far worse than her companions thought. It wasn't just the holy mana she was dealing with. That was bad, but my holy saint title made me a natural enemy of undead and made it even more effective. But my normal damage over time effects were effective on anyone, even undead. Hemorrhage, Destined Death, and Corrupting Marks were all eating the vampire away from the inside. At this point, it was just a matter of waiting for her to die.

I reappeared in the far corner of the room and rummaged around in my pockets. I was looking for a seal that would come in handy about now, and as luck would have it my fingers brushed against it.

The Bonelord turned and rushed me again, and this time I met him with a charge of my own. He swept his claws at my throat, but I ducked low and slipped underneath him. I dodged and weaved until I was behind him, jammed my sword through his back to nail him to the floor, then took the item I'd just pulled out of my things and hefted it for a moment before targeting the hole I'd made in the back of the Bonelord's head at the beginning of the fight.

The item in my hand was none other than the Divine Seal, attuned to the Goddess in Jade. It had been a fine item for taking out Dramonar's undead and the Lich King, and now it would serve me well again. I'd left it a bit behind in levels lately, but I imagined it would still hurt an undead a lot.

I shoved the seal straight through the Bonelord's head, figuring if that wasn't a weak point, I'd make it one.

"Gah! What did you do?" the Bonelord yelled. His head made a metallic rattling noise as the Divine Seal jingled around in his head. His body glowed with holy light that reacted badly to the bones his body was made of.

The Bonelord's panic grew as he felt the pain intensify, and soon he was clawing at his own face, tearing his skull open as he screamed in agony and desperation, trying to tear free the item I'd shoved inside him.

Then, I turned to the lich, who had already seen me take out both his comrades. Three against one, this group thought they had a chance against me. But now that it was just me and the lich, he knew he was as good as dead. The moment the Bonelord went down, he turned tail and fled. But he wouldn't escape me that easily.

A single spell from the lich blasted away the side of the building. The roof had already caved in from the sheer forces unleashed during a B-Grade fight, so it didn't take much to send the rest of the building crumbling right after.

The lich cast several defensive spells and conjured a spectral monster like Sharky with just as many teeth but a far less lovable personality. The spectral monster charged me and the defenses flared to life as the lich scrambled to activate some sort of teleportation item that would get him away from me.

I charged another Sunlight Spear, this time forcing all the mana into the spell I could to overcharge it. The resulting beam of golden light shot right through the spectral monster, punched through three separate defensive wards, and skewered the lich through the heart. The life-saving talisman he'd been clutching fell from his hands and sputtered out before it could fully activate, and a moment later the lich met the same fate as the vampire with a barrage of spellfire.

From there, it was a simple matter of casting Disassemble three times in quick succession, putting my defeated enemies out of their misery.

Congratulations! Sage of Forbidden Knowledge has reached level 399.
Congratulations! Homo Fatum Deus has reached level 399.
You may proceed directly to the A-Grade, or accept your rank-up quests for class or race evolutions.

<Note>

Whew. Been a while since I wrote such a lengthy fight scene, but I felt like finally hitting the level requirements for A-Grade deserved all the details. All in all, I think Carter took care of the three undead B-Grades pretty quickly. Though it would have been a much tougher fight if there had been six of them instead.