Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 41

Sakura had to be in the primary manor, but unlike the others, the actual wards and defenses would make this one far harder to break into. Many of their wards even extended into the shadowrealm to protect against extradimensional attacks.

I could no doubt bypass them eventually, but that would take hours or days. If Sakura hadn’t been caught yet, she would be by then.

But if there was no way to do things quietly, I could always go in loud. A project like this called for a partner. Thankfully, I had one who was always eager to help.

I rummaged around for Sharky’s summoning circle and soon came up with the thick wire cord I was familiar with. I scouted for somewhere to set it down. Given the circle’s size, I couldn’t exactly duck behind a building and begin the summoning unseen. Something like this was bound to be noticed even when wearing my cloak.

Thankfully, the area surrounding the outer wall was clear, with level ground to provide defenders an easy line of sight. It was plenty spacious enough for an extra-large summoning circle.

A few servants noticed me working, despite my cloak. I wasn’t being at all subtle as I measured out a perfect circle and began Sharky’s summoning ritual. Surprisingly, none of them raised the alarm right away, though they did hurry past me and into the Rokubi estate’s defenses. They probably didn’t want the guards to slam the gates shut on them, but would raise the alarm once they were safely inside themselves.

Not that flimsy walls and a few mid-B-Grade guards had any hope of stopping Sharky. As my summons, his level grew with mine, and just like me, he was only a hair away from the A-Grade. Nothing short of the Rokubi family’s own A-Grade could stop him, which was exactly what I was counting on. If Sharky could keep that person occupied, then there wouldn’t be anyone who could stop me from smashing down whatever walls I needed to in order to find Sakura.

I needed everything I could get from Sharky this time, and at the same time, I didn’t want to make his origins too obvious. Sooner or later, the Rokubi family was going to get intelligence of me from New Kyoto, and there was no sense in making connecting those dots too easy.

Thankfully, Sharky responded well to various aspects of mana, and this time I chose an unusual series of aspects that would hopefully make him mistaken for some sort of naturally occurring void incursion.

I chose smoke, light, and shadow mana. All of them were associated with illusion magic, albeit completely different styles of illusion magic. Overcharging Sharky with as much of that as possible would help disguise him.

All the extra mana cost me nearly a hundred monster cores and exhausted me of my supplies for each of those aspects, along with a considerable amount of my own mana reserves. I prepared myself for a bigger fight while I completed the summoning.

When Sharky appeared, he was even bigger than normal. He looked like he’d grown quite a bit thanks to the feast on Ladwick and was probably still digesting it all. When I’d first gotten the skill to summon him, I’d been promised he could grow if properly fed. The System certainly hadn’t been lying about the growing part, though even now I wasn't sure if I'd ever truly satiated his hunger.

He shoved, squirmed, and tried to shove his way through, only for his summoning circle to be too tight to get anything more than his nose through it. Sharky had already been the size of a building before, but now he’d nearly doubled in size.

I snipped the summoning circle wire where I was standing and spread it wide to make more room, then I used a few spells with Lightsculptor’s Brush to fill out the rest of the expanded circle. It had to be about half again as large as it was before for Sharky to shove his bulk through.

He had a different look to him now. What I’d previously identified as a shark now had a distinctive otherness to it. Maybe it was just the odd combination of mana I’d poured into forming him, but now he had three sets of eyes on each side of his head, each of which had a sinister glow to it. In fact, his whole body glowed with a faint crimson light.

What had once been smooth skin was now decorated with scales, and his teeth were row after row of wicked fangs as long as I was tall. His mouth looked like a bottomless chasm, the same as always, but looking into it now, it felt just as bottomless as it looked. Anyone who gazed at Sharky’s form would have the distinct impression that getting eaten by him would rip their souls apart and render them down to their base components. There was no easy resurrection after such a fate.

“Good boy, Sharky! You made it through. You’re looking especially hungry today.” I rubbed the underside of his nose. It was all I could reach, given how large he was these days.

“Nom nom...” Sharky’s voice boomed throughout the courtyard.

“I need you to make a little scene. We’ll see who comes out to fight you. I’ll help you out with Mania if you need it.” I patted Sharky on the side, and he let out another mighty war cry.

“Nom nom.”

Sharky descended on the estate like some great mythical beast. Were ancient humans to see him, they would consider him a herald of the end times and destined to bring about the destruction of the world.

And they were right in more ways than one. I was pretty sure he was a big part of why Ladwick had been rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Chaos Gods, and even me in that dragon form of mine, could destroy the atmosphere and scour the earth of all life, but only Sharky had been able to devour the souls of the naga warriors to create an army of ravenous voidlings that would continue to multiply with each kill.

A bell was ringing on the other side of the walls, so someone must have raised the alarm. I guided Sharky around, though I could hardly be seen given how much attention he drew. I scanned him to see what others were probably seeing right now.

Void Leviathan (Level 398)

The two B-Grades who’d stopped us before went pale at the sight of him as they took in his size and level.

“Sharky, knock down those walls! It looks like there are two snacks waiting there for you.” I pointed to the guards and the gates.

“Nom nom,” Sharky said as he swam forward unhurriedly. I expected a mighty clash as the two B-Grades struggled to hold Sharky back. I had avoided using Mania to strengthen Sharky further as I didn’t want him ending the fight too soon. We had an A-Grade to draw out first.

But I had overestimated the B-Grade guards. They were damn good at telling guests to screw off or sneering down at the day laborers coming into the estate to earn their pay, but when it came to an actual fight, they had no intention of risking their lives.

“Out of my way! Out of my way!” one of the guards shouted as he rushed along the wall. He seemed intent on fleeing the whole compound as he ran along the wall. He would probably jump off and start running once he reached somewhere far away from Sharky.

But Sharky was far faster than he looked. In an instant, he put on a tremendous burst of speed. The fleeing guard might have been able to run if he had been at an equal level to Sharky, but as things were, he hardly stood a chance.

The guard had already dropped his glaive as he fled in the hopes of moving a little faster, but he would have lasted a little longer if he had held onto it. He could have tried to make himself tough to eat with it, but as it was, there was nothing to stop Sharky from chowing down.

“Nom nom.” Sharky bit down on the guard’s armor. He let out an agonized scream for a brief moment before his body gave out beneath the rows of teeth that rapidly reduced him from armor, flesh, blood, and soul to a sticky homogenized mixture of slightly metallic organic goop.

Sharky circled back to the gates. The other guard had been a bit smarter and had fled into the estate’s defenses, so he would survive a little longer.

Sharky went back to my previous orders and slammed his heaving bulk against the gates. Defensive wards flared to life, knocking Sharky back. But he was undeterred. He backed up, moved forward, and slammed his heaving bulk into the wards again. This time, I helped him out a bit with Void Cannon and a little tweak of what defensive wards I saw near at hand.

The shimmering, magical bubble around the estate cracked and collapsed. Soon, there was nothing but wood and stone keeping Sharky out, and he rammed through both with his third charge.

With the outer defenses down, the alarm bells went off much louder. I would have thought the A-Grade in charge of this place would have come out to defend his home by now, but apparently the family A-Grade had better things to do than protect the servants and gates of his estate from a giant hungry void monster.

“Ignore the keeps and fleeing servants and go straight for the main compound,” I told Sharky, and he obeyed with hunger in his eyes. Small morsels like D-Grade servants were beneath his notice anyway, at least so long as he wasn't too hungry.

I split off from him then and ducked low. As I had expected, the manor had a similar enchantment defending its walls, like the one along the outer gate but concentrated on a smaller area. Sharky and I got through it in the same manner, and then the real rampage began.

Wood and stone splintered as Sharky smashed his way through it with one twist of his enormous head. An ancient-looking tower came crashing down. I was certain Sharky could have phased straight through the physical defenses if he wanted, as he’d often done during his days as a young ghost shark. But I’d given Sharky strict orders to cause a distraction, and Sharky was a consummate professional when it came to havoc and destruction.

“Nom nom.” Sharky’s rampage shattered walls, columns, towers, furniture, and everything else in his way. Nothing appeared to challenge his vast might.

Where was the Rokubi family’s A-Grade? If I’d known he were this inattentive, I wouldn’t have bothered summoning Sharky. I would have just kicked down a few doors, found Sakura, and gotten out of here myself.

In the end, only a few mid-B-grades showed up. I gave Sharky one last set of orders.

“Take your time toying with them unless somebody more powerful shows up.”

The Rokubi family A-Grade was probably off on a mission somewhere and I’d gotten lucky for once. Normally, things went the other way, despite all the points I’d put into my luck stat.

I left Sharky to draw all the attention while I searched the manor. I could run through the manor looking for Sakura without drawing any attention at all. Sharky’s attack meant everyone was running for their lives, so one more cloak-clad figure doing the same hardly attracted any attention.

I ran past dozens of people and found a doorway to something that looked like a dungeon. If Sakura had been captured, that was probably where she would be held. I raced down the stairs, stopping just long enough to grab a ring of keys hanging on the wall.

I raced through several rows of cells, some of which were occupied, some of which weren’t. A few prisoners sat up at the unfamiliar face running through the hall. No doubt they’d heard the commotion upstairs and were wondering what was happening.

Eventually, I found a familiar face, though it wasn’t Sakura.

“Kogai, is that you?” I asked.

“Huh?” Kogai sat up where he had been lying in the far cell. It was hard to recognize him because his face was swollen, and the rest of him was covered in bruises. Apparently, whoever had thrown him in here had beaten him up first.

I started testing keys one after another and eventually came across the one that opened his cell. I tossed him another of Bridget’s healing biscuits.

“Do you know where Sakura is?” I asked.

“I know where she might be,” Kogai answered between bites of biscuit. “But first, there are a few guys locked up in here with me who don’t deserve it. Can we let them out?”

“Where’s Sakura?” I insisted.

Kogai pointed up and to the right. “Other wing of the manor. It’s a sort of guest house. There are a couple of people who look like you there. Non-oni, I mean. Based on what you’ve said, that should be wherever the whole newly integrated world invasion project is taking place.”

I tossed him the ring of keys so he could free whoever he wanted, then slipped right through the walls in the direction he said Sakura might be.

I darted around several corners in search of her, and sure enough, I eventually caught sight of a human. To me, she looked like a young Japanese girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. I could see the family resemblance and guessed she was one of Sakura’s younger cousins.

At the moment, she was looking around and probably wondering what all the commotion was about. She saw me and wore an expression that seemed to be hoping for an explanation.

“Have you seen someone named Sakura anywhere? She’s an oni, but her outfit is more similar to business casual from Earth than what the other oni are wearing.”

The young woman nodded and pointed behind her.

“She is speaking with my uncle, who I think is her father. He is under house arrest,” the young woman explained.

“Thanks. And get to cover. This whole thing will blow over soon.”

I rushed past her in the direction she’d indicated and made my way up a set of stairs. I found myself ascending to the top of a tower. It had the look of a gilded cage to it, and I suspected Sakura’s father had been staying here a while.

But why was he locked up here?

The thought brought new light to the Miyamoto Clan in my eyes, and new respect for the Samhain Clan.

Despite being spread across the stars and married into all sorts of powerful families across the multiverse, the Samhain Clan had remained united in purpose. Any conflicts were small-scale and petty things, mostly confined to vassal rebellions like what Kyrina faced during the Shadefall rebellion.

In contrast, the Miyamoto Clan was smaller in scale, more closely based, and yet far more dysfunctional.

The first thing Kogai did when he suspected he had a family member in the city was challenge her to a fight. The first thing the Rokubi family did when they learned Kogai was in their compound was beat him to a pulp. And now I was learning that Sakura’s father had been placed under house arrest by his own family.

I heard Sakura’s voice before I saw her. She wasn’t being quiet, and she appeared to be arguing with someone.

“We have to leave! Come on, I’ll bring you back to Earth,” Sakura said.

“I gave my word to stay here. I’m not leaving,” replied a stern male voice that carried a subtle aura of command that had nothing to do with levels or the charisma stat. I knew that voice. Back when I worked for Sakura, we’d have to watch videos sent to us by Sakura’s father, our company’s owner and CEO.

I never thought I’d be meeting him like this. I ran fingers through my hair and straightened my clothes. This time, I really would be meeting Sakura’s family.