Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 26

Bridget and Sakura were waiting on the other side of the portal for my return. When Myrina came with me, it was a warm reunion. The fact that Bridget was only wearing her apron and Sakura was quick to disrobe the rest of her clothing meant the reunion took a bit longer than planned. Apparently, they weren’t as sore from the previous night as I'd been led to believe.

By the time I was done, I was finally feeling better after a week pent up in my armor. It was past morning, but Bridget had brunch for us to share, and we ate together before I gave Myrina her official assignment.

“Alright, Myrina. As I was telling you earlier, you have an important mission, should you choose to accept it.”

“Uh... what was it you were saying again? I was distracted at the time.” Myrina rubbed her head sheepishly.

I chuckled. After all, I’d been the one distracting her.

“Your mission is basically to be me. Or rather, be Doomblade. I’ve swapped out the custom internals from your Feisty Redhead suit and my Doomblade suit, so between that and the voice changer I’ve added, you should fit right in. There are mission briefing files built into your suit, so you can remember everyone’s names and what they were up to. I wrote up a training regimen and a rough plan to follow, but you’ll be Doomblade for the foreseeable future, so it’ll be up to you to lead the Black Knights to victory against Crownhill’s enemies. Got it?”

Myrina saluted. “Got it. And what should I do about this Liliana woman?”

“You and I will have a chat about that,” Sakura said, patting Myrina on the back. I left them to it.

With that, my Liliana problems were hopefully taken care of. I couldn’t imagine Myrina not driving Liliana away by being her usual self.

Myrina was my agent among the Order of Sorcery. Frank was my agent among the Sages of Camlaan. Sakura was my agent in New Kyoto. There was only one place left where I didn’t have someone working for me. It was time to pay some personal attention to General Marshall and his military men.

***

The last time I’d been working on this project, I’d arranged with Margaret and General Marshall to set up joint training exercises for our adventuring guilds and General Marshall’s military personnel. After checking my System menus and looking at my active quests, I saw quite a few smaller guilds and independent teams had taken me up on the offer.

I issued a new set of quests available to anyone who had completed a joint training exercise with General Marshall’s men. It was a simple one to come see me and answer some questions. I listed quite good rewards, so it didn’t take long for people to report in. I stayed in my apartment in Crownhill to make arranging for the meetings a little more convenient.

I spent the whole day going over accounts of events from adventurers.

“Did the military guys exhibit any unusual behavior during the joint training exercise?” I asked.

“They didn’t like the idea of us being in guilds instead of a formal military. They kind of looked down on swords and spears at first too, but I think they're coming around on that after seeing us in action. Other than that, they seemed normal enough. Well...” an adventurer clad in leather shrugged.

“Well what?” I eyed him carefully.

“They seemed like they didn’t know their own weapons all that well, is all. A few of them mentioned being recruited recently. A few weren’t even human, despite wearing United States Army uniforms. The whole thing gave me more of a thrown-together vibe than it should have. Their uniforms were wrinkled and dirty too. I never served, but my brother did, and I’m pretty sure they’d never allow that.”

I drummed my fingers against my notepad and jotted down another line. It really wasn’t much to go off, but perhaps I was reading too much into these little things. Maybe I was jumping at shadows and General Marshall and his people were exactly who they claimed to be. But could I really afford to be wrong?

I went through a few hundred more interviews, and most rehashed nothing more than a low-level adventurer group taking out a single low-level monster. All the adventurers I was sending out were D-Grade, and the same was true of the military men they were joining forces with. The only curious thing I picked up on was that a lot of the adventurers mentioned the same names over and over again.

It seemed like there were only two dozen or so military guys on this mission, compared to some two hundred low-level adventurers who'd accepted the quest. Maybe General Marshall was shorter on manpower than he let on? Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to expose too many of his people to me? I had no doubt that his people had orders to feel out my adventurers, just as I was doing to him.

By the fiftieth interview, things were getting boring. I’d long since stopped discovering new things to add to my notes and had taken to discreetly doodling in my notepad while my brain tossed out questions on autopilot.

Maybe I should have brought Reluna home too. She was probably having a grand time sorting through a mountain of data for me. Having her correlate small details in hundreds of interviews seemed like a great job to hand off to her the next chance I had.

For my part, I got tired of trying to put pieces together. It was time to get out there in person.

Normally, I handed off most of this adventurer business to Frank, but with him busy with the Sages of Camlaan, I would have to do it myself.

But I had to admit, I was actually looking forward to it. Crownhill had changed a lot since I was last running around hunting monsters and looking for loot. I was curious about what life was like for my average citizen.

And to do that, I had to form an adventuring party.

***

In my real identity, I went through a list of recent monster sightings. I selected a dozen candidates for a small team of D-Grades outside of one of the large guilds. I issued quests to take them out as I usually did, but this time I cut the rewards in half. That would ensure nobody would snatch them up before me.

Then, I put on that disguise cloak I’d made for my trip through New Kyoto with Sakura, strapped on a plain-looking rapier and armor, and generally made myself look like a D-Grade with big dreams. I figured putting myself at level fifty would be a decent number to aim for.

D-Grades were common enough that some wandered in from the wilderness every now and again, and there were enough that nobody kept track of all their names and faces, unlike C-Grades, who Margaret and the council kept an eye on.

My disguise was far from perfect, but since the cloak worked in New Kyoto it would hopefully work again here. Combined with my high examine-resistance proficiency, I planned to slip into this disguise with minimal fuss.

Once that was all set, I withdrew a portion of contribution points from my real name and made another pseudonym for myself at the Obelisk, similar to the one I had for Doomblade.

I had to think of a name for myself. Unfortunately, I’d mentioned the plan to Sakura and Bridget before leaving, who hadn’t been thrilled with most of my ideas.

“My D-Grade disguise shall be called... Aragorthian, Hero of the Dragon-scourge plains!” I declared hours ago, already coming up with a backstory where I had been the lone survivor of a group in the Torchdragon’s territory.

Bridget and Sakura looked at one another askance.

“I’ve never met somebody named Aragorthian. How about Aaron?” Bridget suggested.

“Okay, fine. My second choice was Herodric the Valiant, Champion of the Naga Swamps!” I grinned. I was proud of that one. And I could work in a backstory involving the Naga.

Sakura sighed. “You’re lucky your parents named you.”

“Maybe try Henry instead. That would work.” Bridget placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Too bad Myrina already left. She could appreciate a good name and backstory...” I grumbled.

To others, our shared penchant for long names and fanciful backstories might seem odd, but she had spent many hours winning me over. In my head, I knew why the names and backstories sounded ridiculous to Bridget and Sakura. But in my heart, I knew there were more important things than being boringly realistic.

In the end, I settled on Himmel. That was a hero name if I’d ever heard it. And while unusual, Sakura and Bridget said it wouldn’t be too strange as long as I stopped attaching lengthy titles to it.

Back in the present and standing before the Obelisk, the System registered my disguise as Himmel. From there, I went in search of my adventuring party.

“Looking for group!” I yelled while standing around the Obelisk. A few others were doing something similar, so I followed their lead and eventually wound up with a couple of people around my level.

“Hey, are you related to the Shardlord by any chance? You look a bit like him,” said a beefy warrior in heavy armor.

“Not at all. Our great Shardlord is taller and more handsome than I,” I hastily replied.

The beefy warrior laughed. “Ha! I didn’t expect humility from someone who had the System attach ‘the Hero’ to his name. How did you get the System to register you as Himmel the Hero?”

I straightened, adjusted my cloak, and gave my best heroic smile. “It’s just what everyone calls me. Anyway, are you interested in completing some quests?”

“For the right price, sure. I’m a freelancer, and a level 38 front-line fighter. I’m not part of a guild or any formal team, but I’ve got a few connections to other freelancers if you need to fill out a team. The name is Charlie, by the way. No fancy title,” the beefy warrior said.

After a bit of haggling, he agreed to become my team’s tank. With his help, we found a healer, a rogue, and a spellcaster.

We made hasty introductions. The healer was Abby, the rogue was Suzie, and the spellcaster was Meghan. They were all somewhere between levels twenty-five and fifty.

As party leader and the person responsible for hiring everyone else, we got lunch on me so we could all get to know one another. We told everyone about ourselves.

“I was hiding in the woods in my van until some adventurers from here found me. They pointed me to the city, and I found work picking up copper wire. I had a few fights with those big cockroaches while scavenging, and I slowly built up my levels from there until I could start taking quests,” Charlie explained with a shrug. His rugged shoulders moved like two small mountains. Despite his rough-looking exterior, he had a friendly air to him.

“I was in Crownhill since the start, but it took me a while to realize things weren’t going to go back to normal. I was a nurse before, so becoming a healer seemed natural,” Abby said. She was a brunette with short-cropped hair.

She and the other women all looked young, but it was hard to tell on anyone who'd reached D-Grade. Even seventy or eighty was fairly young for a D-Grade in most of the Arcadia Multiverse, so Abby and the other women could have easily been past middle age before the integration and still look too young to drink now.

“I was one of the girls taken by the Three Kings of Crownhill County Prison as prizes to give away to their men. No, I don’t want to talk about it,” Suzie said. She hid behind her dyed black hair and seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face. She had a younger air to her than Abby, but older eyes.

“I was a college student. I was also from Crownhill originally and am staying in the Shardlord’s free housing. For a while, I just stayed inside and read old books, but one day, I ran into this kind blue elf named Reluna. I showed her how to use a printer, and in exchange, she helped me get a spellcaster class. Its a rare class around here, and I figured it was a sign that I needed to get out here and help instead of hiding away all the time, you know?” Meghan curled her hair between her fingers as she spoke.

They all turned to me, waiting for my backstory. I took a heavy sip from my water and let it clank against the table.

“I was born during a solar eclipse. My parents were stranded on the top of a mountain when my mother gave birth to me, and I’m told that when it happened, some sort of feral rage overcame the animals beyond my parents’ cabin. Bears, bobcats, and other creatures threw themselves at my mother, and my father had to beat them back with a wood-splitting axe.

“But when I was born, the possessed woodland creatures fled in fear! Even from those early moments, I knew I was destined to become a hero. As a child, my parents brought me to a fortune teller. When she tried to read my fate, her crystal ball shattered at her touch, and she said my fate was too powerful for her to peer into. When the apocalypse came, I was prepared. I took a broom and slew my first zombie and hacked my way past enemy after enemy, saving townsfolk left and right to help establish an early shelter.

“From then on, I was known as the bane of monsters and evildoers on my shard, and a hero to the people. It is a heavy responsibility, but one I endure with a solemn heart. Someday, I will reach beyond A-Grade and protect all the worlds in the Arcadia Multiverse.”

I nodded in satisfaction at my disguise’s backstory. While not as grandiose as I had planned, it lent a certain air of adventure and mystery that my new companions would no doubt appreciate.

“...Right. If you don’t want to tell us about yourself, that’s fine,” Charlie chuckled. “Anyway, let’s hit the easiest of the quests you have lined up first so we can get to know each other’s fighting styles in a low-risk fight."

“Good idea. I'm eager to see us all in action." I stood, twirled my cape in a move I'd practiced, then swiftly departed. After reaching the door I doubled back to make sure everyone was following me.

***

Our first three quests turned out to be pretty boring, at least to me. We killed a big rat, a large snake, and one of those fire-breathing squirrels.

“That’s the most quests I’ve ever completed in a single day! Damn, I gained two levels! I thought you were crazy doing so many quests at once for so little reward,” Charlie laughed as he inspected himself. His armor looked tighter than before, and I figured he’d dumped as many points as he could into strength.

The ladies were just as excited about their new levels. I even had to fake a level-up for myself. It was nice seeing them all so happy. I kind of miss the days when I could gain so many levels in a single day. Or at least, when I could gain so many levels in a single day without being part of a world-destroying apocalyptic battle filled with Chaos Gods and alien invaders.

As the highest level present by a long shot, even in my disguise, I felt it appropriate to give out a few tips.

"Charlie, we could really use you standing more over here during most of the fight. And we don't actually need you getting hits in with your sword. Just keep that shield between you and the monster. Meghan, be a little bolder with your spells, or choose ones you aren't worried about hitting Charlie with. Suzie, you should pick up a scouting ability. Most of your utility will come in handy before the fight actually stars. And Abby? Great work, just keep focused on Charlie," I said.

Charlie dusted his armor off. There was a bite-shaped gouge deep in the leather.

"You saved my ass out there, Himmel. Gotta say, I wasn't expecting much from you after all your big talk. You moved faster than I could blink and took that things head off before it took mine. I really owe you one," Charlie held out his hand.

I grinned and shook it. "Don't beat yourself up over small mistakes. At worst, you would have lost an arm. Who knows, you might have looked good with one of Doctor Roswell's zombie prosthetics. Don't take my tips as criticism, you're doing a great job already. I see the makings of greatness in all of you."

I wrapped an arm around Charlie's shoulder, though doing so required me to lean upward quite a bit. The girls were easier.

"Have to say, Charlie is right. I was about to bail when you started telling us that obviously fake cartoon-level origin story. I'm glad I stayed. This is the first group I think I want to stick beyond a couple of missions," Suzie said, arms crossed and shaking her head when she saw my aghast expression.

"Me too," Abby smiled brightly.

"And you two? I would hate to lose either of you." I glanced at Charlie and Meghan, who both nodded.

"I can stick around. This is a good group we've got here. Better than any I've teamed up with before. This might even be worthy of being a permanent group," Charlie shrugged, but there was a spark of hope in his eyes.

"Mhm." Meghan made a noise of agreement.

“I'm glad we're all getting along. Since we beat these last few monsters so well, I have a new challenge for us. How about instead of just taking out monster-hunting quests, we take them on while doing that other quest? The joint training exercises with those military guys. I’m sure you’ve all seen it.”

“Yeah... I guess we could give that a try. It’s one of the rare quests the Shardlord lets us freelancers and small guilds have.” Charlie shrugged as he loosened the straps of his armor.

“Perfect. We’ll meet at the same place where we had lunch tomorrow. I’ll make all the arrangements.”

<Note>

There was both a Frieren reference and a World of Warcraft reference in here. I've been tempted to do more, but I prefer to keep them subtle so people who don't get them just read over them.

I'm debating how much page space to give Carter's adventurer friends. I like seeing Crownhill from the ground level again, but I don't want to spend too much time here. I'm going to try to keep it brief, while still showing the most interesting stuff.