Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 46

I cleaned myself up in the shower. Sakura would join me in a bit once she got our living quarters for the next few days organized. I thought things were fine as they were, but after living in a castle with a bunch of women, I had learned no furniture layout was ever good enough.

I walked up and down the halls of the headquarters of Nakano's faction. I didn't like walking out my door and not knowing where I was, and after pacing up and down the stairs and cheating a bit with Shadowrealm Stride, I soon knew the lay of the land.

Once I had my bearings, I decided it was time to figure out who I was working with. I found a few people, introduced myself as Nakano's out-of-town consultant, and started asking questions.

Nakano's faction was called the Red Torii Group, which had been the name of the parent company Nakano used to control several buisnesses, including the one Sakura and I worked for. It was the most prominent faction of what was currently known as the Marketplace Collective.

The general figures I got were that the Red Torii Group had about twenty thousand people, mostly non-combatants and the families of employees. Their actual combat-ready forces were a quarter of that, though only a quarter of those were what I would have considered proper adventurers back in Crownhill, with the rest serving as militia.

That was about average for most of the factions in the Marketplace Collective. Together, they were only a bit smaller than New Kyoto. But the Red Torii Group punched far above its weight thanks to Nakano, who had imported a stockpile of off-world weapons, resources, skillbooks, and even warriors from Onibushi. His people had a serious edge in raw ability, and just looking around I could see a dozen humans training under the instruction of veteran Oni warriors.

Those warriors themselves were perhaps Nakano's greatest asset. Most were C-Grade or higher, and with Kogai's inclusion, the Red Torii Group was once again firmly the leader of the Marketplace Collective.

Not that the other groups in the alliance were slouches either. There were many wealthy, driven, and highly ambitious people who wouldn't let something as small as an apocalypse destroy the empires they had spent most of their lives building. Though a few had changed hands, many were still in the grasp of company founders and the loyal corporate drones who owed fealty to them.

Things had changed with the integration, and the factions were less structured around shipping products and paying salaries, and more around acquiring experience pearls. Someone had figured out a similar trick to what I had learned to make them, though the local process was more wasteful and needed more monster cores. Those things were as good as gold here and served as the local currency.

That invention was the key to the cooperation holding things together, since without a constant flow of experience pearls the bosses of the old world would have been rapidly overthrown by the people on the ground more willing to get their hands dirty and gain levels.

I suspected things might still shift eventually, since people who got all their power from levels alone were weaker than those who had powerful skills and high proficiency levels. But it would take time for people leveling through combat to catch up to those using experience pearls in bulk. For now, things were holding together, especially with Nakano bringing in Kogai and a few other powerful off-worlders to help maintain the peace.

From the rumor mill, the Marketplace Collective had been on the verge of falling apart during Nakano's absence. One of the other groups had declared the city's obelisk their personal property and started charging everyone else a hefty fee to use it. But when Nakano returned earlier in the week with Kogai as his enforcer, he quickly put the other corporate group in their place, ruthlessly wiped out their board of directors, and began absorbing their company into his Red Torii Group. As a result, things were a bit hectic at the Red Torii Group, but spirits were high.

What interested me most, though, was the technology Nakano's faction had in their facility, and I spent several hours peering into Sakura's father's top-secret research and development laboratories.

"You guys make magitech here?" I asked a group of white-lab-coat scientists and programmers.

"What? Who are you, how did you get in here?" one of them whirled on me.

"Don't worry, I'm a consultant." I held my hands up innocently, then gestured to the zombie-robot Frankenstein-inspired thing on the table that they had been working on. Doctor Roswell would have been impressed with their handiwork.

"I didn't hear anything about a consultant coming in here," the scientist said, staring hard at me.

"I'm also dating the owner's daughter," I explained.

"Ah, one of those consultants..." The man nodded, rolling his eyes now instead of preparing for a fight.

"Anyway, I see you're trying to interface with a monster core here. While you've crafted a nice housing, you won't be able to do much the way you're set up now. You see, a monster core isn't just crystallized energy. It has internal structure. Here, do you have a whiteboard? I'll draw a diagram."

And so I educated a few of Nakano's people on how to properly construct a robot zombie golem. Really, the whole zombie part was unnecessary and could be replaced with a captured elemental, much as Dane Delverson had shown me back when I was learning from him on Mucaria. But this shard had a lot of zombies, so that's what these guys insisted on using.

It was an enlightening conversation. I learned a lot more about the magic half of magitech, while these guys were the opposite and had leaned further into the tech side of things. I had a lot to teach them, but I could learn a thing or two as well.

Out of the blue, I asked the people around me about something I had been thinking about.

"Hey, what do you guys think about power armor? Pretty cool, right? Think you'd like to manufacture some for me?" I asked.

The lab coat guy rolled his eyes at me again. "You're only the tenth guy to ask me to make power armor since the integration. This city is full of out-of-work programmers and engineers desperate to find a new living. Work like that would be a dream come true. But supply chains aren't what they used to be, so some of us have to make do with zombies." He gestured to the table in front of us, where a zombie squirmed as another technician shoved wires into its core in the locations I had indicated on the whiteboard.

"So there are a lot of people here interested in making power armor, huh? Maybe I should to hire a few of them." I stroked my chin thoughtfully as I departed.

***

After touring the Red Torii Group's headquarters, I met up with Nakano again for the shield project I was actually here for. He took me out to tour the defenses for his Red Torii Group, and also for the Marketplace Collective as a whole.

The Red Torii Group sported impressive concrete walls similar to Crownhill's, though less heavily defended. They had a primitive look compared to the rest of the facility, but that was unsurprising, especially when Nakano explained he had gotten the walls from the System as a reward during one of the earlier stages of the integration, much as I had when I converted Crownhill into a citadel by System classification. Many of the buildings had come automatically from there, but still needed that final touch.

"And that's where I come in. You need these walls enchanted to hold up against even B-Grade monsters. It should take me about three days," I explained.

"That fast? I thought you'd be here for months at least. How many people do you need to bring over?" Nakano asked.

"Just me," I said.

He looked at me skeptically.

"I have a technique for it. Don't worry. But I had another idea of merit while talking to some of your people. How tough would it be to start up a small faction for your daughter and me in the Marketplace Collective? We wouldn't be trying to make waves, just build and ship our products of choice. Sakura and I have a business that sells weapons and armor off-world, and I think this place has the right talent to put up another branch."

"Got a successful business with my daughter, do you? There is an empty office complex near here. It used to be run by a guy I didn't get along with, but he's out of the picture now. You can take over his office if you like. Hell, if Sakura and you promise to support me for chairman of the Marketplace Collective, I'll even give you some assistants. No promises about ships though, we need all of those we can get." Nakano shrugged.

"Ships?" I asked, brow furrowed.

"The bay is our biggest source of food now that we've raided every grocery store dry, and every major company has at least a few. The low-levels need food three times a day, and that's hard to come by at this point. Food is actually the biggest motivator for getting a few levels too, since it reduces your dependency on the stuff. My employees need to feed their families, and meals are part of their pay. But there are a lot of people in the city going hungry because we can only pull so many sea monsters out of the bay. I ship in some food from Onibushi, but it's expensive there and we have nothing worth trading." Nakano shook his head.

"Huh. Well, thanks for the headquarters. Sakura will set it up. Maybe we can do something about the local food shortage too."

We shook hands again, making our second deal. A lot of the old tech around here would be worth a fortune if it were sold on Glacia. I knew how valuable computational engines were, and those were lying about everywhere. But I was unsurprised Nakano had difficulty selling them on a feudal mercenary world like Onibushi. They wouldn't even know what they were.

I could have told him their worth, but there was no need. Soon, I would be taking all the old computers I could get my hands on. Once Doomblade's Armory was up and running, this area's lack of exportable goods would be completely solved.

After signing myself up for that little side project, I got to work on the walls. Nakano stayed around to watch, and he was very impressed by the way I used Lightsculptor's Brush in combination with magical attacks to scour extremely detailed enchantment patterns onto the walls in the blink of an eye.

Since he was watching, I worked fairly quickly and proved myself a liar. It didn't take three days to finish the enchantments on the headquarters' walls, just one.

"The easy part's done. Your outer walls aren't nearly so clean. I see they're mostly made of debris."

"The System was not as kind to the Marketplace Collective. We have established a wide perimeter around the habitable part of our city, but it is being constantly breached. You will not be able to focus on enchanting while working on it. I can spare some men to defend you while you work, but it will still take much longer." Nakano gestured to the distance, where a second, much more poorly defended perimeter stood.

"You need new walls. Looks like most of your outer walls are upturned cars and piles of debris. It'll be easier if I just build something new, but we need to clear out the undead first. That was the other thing you brought me here for. I may as well get started on that now."

***

I picked up Sakura and Reluna, who had only now cleaned themselves up after our little fun time in the bedroom earlier. After telling Sakura about my plan to open another branch of Doomblade's Armory, we had a meeting about how we were going to clear out the undead. Kogai joined us.

"Nakano said I get to kill a bunch of them too," Kogai said, then sat down alongside us in the cafeteria of the Red Torii Group's headquarters.

"Sure. Sakura and Reluna planned on sweeping this side here. If you could help them out, that would be great." I pointed to a map of the area I had printed out. One nice thing about a big business like this was that there was usually at least one working printer somewhere. I was able to take a few pictures from above with my phone and get them on paper within the hour.

"What are you doing here? You're not going to steal all our kills, are you?" Kogai eyed me warily. I was certain he had taken in our group and knew I was the only one who could handily best him.

"I don't know, I do really want to spend all day hunting down random low-level zombies. If you want me to hold off, you're going to have to make it worth my while..." I said in jest, but Kogai took my words seriously.

"Alright, alright. If I find anything good, you'll get a share. Just let me have this, okay? It's been way too long since I got to cut loose!" Kogai pressed his fists together and bowed his head.

I wasn't about to say no to free stuff, even if it was likely going to be junk. In the end, I nodded and agreed to grant Kogai the privilege of doing most of the menial fighting while I focused on building enchanted defenses for the Marketplace Collective.

Pretty soon, Sakura, Reluna, Kogai, and I found ourselves on the perimeter of the civilized chunk of the city. Everything beyond where I stood was ruins, though not uninhabited ruins, as far as I could tell. I spotted the shadows of living humans in buildings of various sorts, along with other things here and there. Some probably never joined up with the Marketplace Collective. Others were likely leftovers from earlier stages of the integration.

The hard part of this little adventure would be figuring out what was holding up the integration from progressing past its current stage. But there were plenty of undead to kill before I could even get a good read on where the most powerful hostile entities might be located.

"The strongest enemies go to whoever can kill them first!" Kogai laughed like a madman, then took off running. Meanwhile, Sakura and Reluna stuck closer to me.

"You two, just focus on keeping enemies off me while I figure out how to turn this mess into a wall." I stared down the heaping pile of old cars and debris while Sakura and Reluna engaged in small-scale fights. I was wondering why they were not fighting more when I realized this was all a normal adventurer ever had to deal with. I kept forgetting I was free of my death curse, so there was no need to fend off constant wave after wave of dumb monsters.

If I had the chance to double back to Crownhill, maybe I could grab Ben in his dragon form. He ought to be big enough to leave his volcano, and he would have a death curse on him thanks to being resurrected against the System's restrictions.

I vaguely remembered inflicting a random beetle in my mystic realm with my death curse shortly before I got rid of it completely. If that thing was still alive, it would work as well.

While putting together enchantments in my mind, I decided to build the tools I needed for this job first. Those same earth-shaping wands I had made in bulk on Prince Herius' world would do just fine. Maybe some of those construction golems as well. I didn't have access to the same high-level labor force I had back then, but this was a smaller-scale project.

So I got to building. I was pretty sure I had at least one core from an Earth elemental. We had killed a few during our adventures, and I had bought plenty more. After shaping a bit of clay, I had a decent-sized construction golem on its feet.

In a lot of ways this one was simpler than the things Governess made, but I had learned a thing or two after working on Prince Herius' terraforming project and could put together a construction golem capable of moving cars and pouring in enough mana to sculpt earth like laying concrete.

By the time I finished a second and third golem, they had finished one side of a dirt- and gravel-colored wall that covered an entire street corner.

"Knock down those buildings in our way, then pour the debris here to fill the center of the wall," I instructed the golems. It wasn't actually for them though, since the controls for the crude golems were based on mana, not words.

I spoke for the benefit of my audience, who had gathered to watch the golems work with fascination painted plainly on their faces.

"You... you made those things?" someone finally spoke up.

"Sure did. I'm making another one right now." I pointed to a half-finished construction golem. This one was the biggest of the group and nearly as large as the huge C-Grade things that had scared my shard to death when we had seen them. It would be as tall as a building when it stood up, but flat on its back it was not so intimidating.

"We tried to make something similar early on, but ran out of robotics parts ages ago. I didn't even think it was possible to just make them out of dirt..." said the same man from before.

I turned and got a good look at him. He wore a pair of thick glasses with tape in the middle holding them together. His clothes were loose and baggy, but did little to conceal an emaciated frame. He had the look of someone who had lost a lot of weight against his will.

I suspected food was a problem locally, despite all the attempts to fish in the bay off to one side of the city. No doubt Nakano was buying food when he could and bringing it over, but while Onibushi had farms, food was not what they were known for. I suspected they imported it in exchange for mercenary work, just like the rest of their goods. It would be too expensive for Nakano to buy much.

"My name's Bill. I was a robotics engineer before all this. I heard through some former colleagues that you're hiring for some sort of magical armor project. I don't need much. Some rice, beans, and maybe a place to sleep would be nice though..."

Bill stood there awkwardly, as though already expecting rejection. I looked him over and realized why this guy looked so ragged compared to the workers at the Red Torii Group and other major associations. His level was just too low.

Bill (Level 3)

I hadn't seen anybody that low since the refugee camp by the military base. These were the kinds of people who hadn't fought at all. The only reason this guy could even walk, given the shape he was in, was thanks to the free stat points the System gave out early on.

I reached for my bag of holding, grabbed one of the lunch boxes Bridget had prepared for Sakura and me, and tossed it to Bill. "Eat that. If you're still feeling ambitious after you've got a full stomach, maybe I'll have some work for you."

Bill gobbled everything down in the blink of an eye. He had eaten half of it with his hands before he even realized there was a spoon. It was nothing special to me, but to a starving man it was heavenly.

I worked on my golem for a bit more, but when I looked up at Bill again he was already filling out his clothes better. He looked like he had been eating well for a month, not just a single meal. I had forgotten how good a chef Bridget had become. Maybe saying her food was heavenly was no longer an exaggeration.

"It's like my entire body was in pain and I didn't even know it. Now it's gone..." Bill looked down at himself in wonder. He rubbed at a scab on his face, and it flaked away to reveal flawless, unblemished skin.

"So, you want to learn how to put together a very basic golem?" I asked.

"Oh, hell yeah! You know, there are a few other people who might be able to help out too," Bill replied.

<Note>

Does anybody know if Red Torii Group is an actual company? I changed this a few times based on google searches and nothing came up for Red Torii Group.

Anyway, yes, the other major factions in the city are Google, Facebook, and Amazon. If Jeff Bezos shows up (which I'll try to avoid) I may have to do some glazing. He throws cool parties for authors who sell over a certain amount. I've never been invited, but maybe reassuring him that his space ships are not at all phallic in design and to ignore the haters will finally get me that invite.