Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 23

The human construction workers were very nervous when we all came over in arms and armor. Most of them dropped what they were doing to look for cover.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a water spell?” I asked Liliana, who shook her head.

“I’m good at starting fires. Not so good at putting them out,” Liliana replied.

“Then we’re doing this the manual way. Everybody grab those buckets.” I led by example and snatched a dropped bucket off the ground. With it, I scooped a big load of water from the nearby stream, then heaved the water in it a full thirty yards to splash over the flames.

By then, it had spread out to be more like a faint mist than a splash, but I repeated the feat a few thousand times over the next minute. The bucket weighed practically nothing in my hands, and throwing the water in it wasn’t so hard once I got the hang of things. Pretty soon, I'd become the next best thing to a fire hose.

The other Black Knights did the same, and soon the flames were slowly dwindling. I could have cheated again by using the temperature manipulation aspect of my Kindling Architect abilities, but I’d nearly exposed myself once with those powers already, so I stuck with doing things the hard way.

As we worked on putting out the fire, the human construction workers slowly calmed down and eventually got back to helping us put out the fire. They were slower than us due to needing a bucket brigade, but between the two of us, we put the flames out.

Once the crisis was averted, I put down my bucket and approached the construction workers.

“Alright, so who’s in charge around here, anyway?” I asked.

The construction workers looked at one another. They were nearly all Japanese and likely came straight from New Kyoto. Eventually, the workers pointed to who must have been the foreman and nudged him forward to face me.

“I am Foreman Tanaka. Thank you for your help,” the foreman said.

“I’m Doomblade, and my companions here are the Black Knights. We killed the Oni already.”

The construction workers looked at one another uncomfortably.

“Then... it seems you are now in charge, Doomblade-sama. What are your instructions?” Foreman Tanaka asked.

“Just Doomblade. And my instructions are to do whatever you want. Go home, if you like. However, I would advise against it. Even if you make it back to Kyoto through the forests alone, the Oni might not like you spreading word of their lie.”

“Their lie?” Foreman Tanaka asked curiously.

“Yes, their lie. You and all your people have been duped. Allow me to explain...”

I quickly went through most of what I knew of New Kyoto and what was happening behind the scenes. I explained how the Oni were duping the people there into thinking they couldn’t level up past twenty-five, when in reality getting to the next level was as simple as evolving their race. It might be hard with the D-Grade evolution locked down an oni path in New Kyoto, but anyone who went to another shard would have more options.

“I hear a rumor that there’s a place south of New Kyoto that would be great for any human to level up in, just so you know.”

“I... you... this is all quite a bit to take in. I must apologize, but I can’t quite say I believe you,” Foreman Tanaka said.

I lay a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Believe me or don’t believe me. It doesn’t matter. Just keep an open mind and you’ll see the truth with your own eyes soon enough. My people will be withdrawing soon, but we will be traveling slow enough so you can come with us.”

The other construction workers were looking at me thoughtfully, but most especially, they were staring at Liliana and the other Black Knights without helmets. They weren’t actually humans, but they were close enough to it they could be fooled by casual observation. And just seeing them in person was proof enough that the Oni’s claim that only superior races like their own could break into D-Grade was a lie.

I left them to come to terms with reality while I spoke with the Black Knights and sorted through our loot from the battle. The Oni may have dressed and fought like barbarians most of the time, but that didn’t mean they were poor by any stretch.

After all, they had hundreds of thousands of people back in New Kyoto working for them as craftsmen. The humans there might only be low-leveled craftsmen, but quantity had a quality all on its own.

It seemed like every oni warrior had a bag of holding with dozens of weapons in it and a few sets of armor. The lower-level items were finely made, with metal chest plates crafted from what might once have been automobile components.

The higher leveled gear was made of more traditional materials across the Arcadia Multiverse, and I suspected many Oni routinely made trips home to Onibushi to trade large amounts of local goods for small amounts of foreign ones. That was a process I was very familiar with myself.

I sorted through the loot, claimed most of the food, weapons, tents, and other things useful for outfitting a military unit as property of the army as a whole, then handed out the remaining unique weapons and trinkets to everyone as rewards for various accomplishments during the battle. Going into our next fight, everyone would be much better armed and armored.

“It looks like this oni unit was planning on manning the castle here for months once they were finished. With these supplies, we can stay away from the citadel for the better part of a year without returning for resupply. More than that, there are plenty of building supplies too. I think we should take a hint from the Oni’s playbook and use these supplies to establish a forward base of our own,” I said to Liliana and my gathered officers.

“Where? Are we taking this castle?” another asked.

I shook my head. “We’re far from citadel territory, and besides those fishermen, it’s been mostly forest behind us. But I know from scouting this area myself that there are plenty of small villages north of here. Most were overrun by monsters or other races at some earlier stage of the integration, but there will certainly be survivors. Everyone we rescue will be one the Sages of Camlaan can’t. We’ll take these supplies and go here. There’s a mountaintop there that’s exceptionally well defended, but we’ll have to build the fortifications ourselves.”

“About that...” Katar glanced in my direction. “A few of the construction workers are interested in staying with is. Would it be possible to keep them?”

“As recruits or civilians?” I asked.

“Both. I think a lot of them know what’ll happen if they return to their oni masters with bad news,” Katar explained, wearing a grimace on his face. From what he’d told me about what happened to his own people, the citizens of New Kyoto were in a similar situation to his, only on a far larger scale. It was only natural that he’d empathize with their plight.

“Alright, but taking them with us will slow us down. We should get moving soon. I don’t know when the Oni will discover they lost their forces, but I don’t think we could beat a full army.”

I pretended my information was a hunch, and my scouting had been me merely walking around before joining the Black Knights, but I was a lot better informed than that. I knew the Oni of New Kyoto were more than a match for us as we were. Perhaps the full might of the Order of Sorcery could take them on, but not this small group of Black Knights.

With our plans made, we packed and got moving. There weren’t quite enough bags of holding to go around, but I pretended to find a crate full of them and so handed one out to every Black Knight and the new civilian baggage trail hiking behind us.

Even with the extra-dimensional storage, bringing them all along would have been slow going if not for a few trucks parked nearby. They’d been intentionally disabled by the Oni to prevent the human construction workers from taking off with them, but I showed off the power of percussive maintenance and got them running again.

To onlookers, I just kicked the trucks into liveliness, though the actual repairs were a lot more complicated. Hopefully, nobody would open the gas tanks or the hood and discover there were monster cores and a network of enchantments where there should be gasoline and engines.

We made it most of the way there in good time, with the Black Knight’s running and the human construction workers following along in their trucks. I kept the path clear enough for the trucks with a few big swings of my sword to cut down trees as we traveled.

We eventually arrived at the foot of the mountain I’d seen from above a few days before and noted for its natural defenses. We stopped for camp at the base of the mountain, where Foreman Tanaka nervously approached me.

“There aren’t many trees at the top of the mountain. You cut down many to make a path for us. Could we gather some now and put them in these magic bags of yours?” Foreman Tanaka asked.

“Splendid idea. I’ll have the troops help.” I appreciated the foreman’s forward thinking. I hadn’t even thought about gathering more building supplies since, for me, a trip down the mountain was just a short flight. But for ordinary humans, it was quite a hike.

It probably would have taken them a week to gather and process any significant number of logs on their own, but with my help and the aid of the rest of the Black Knights we felled around a thousand massive trees and stuffed the trunks into bags of holding. They weren’t dried or milled into logs or planks, but there would be no shortage of wood at the top of the mountain for a good long time.

I also learned that my big sword worked pretty well as a log splitter, if entire tree trunks counted as logs. If there was ever a time I needed to make firewood, despite having the ability to manipulate heat with my mind, I would be able to make a lot of it awfully fast.

All the other Black Knights were chopping wood at a slightly slower pace, and I had Liliana experimenting with drying wood. It was actually overkill for what we needed, but there was another reason to get everyone working hard besides merely gathering raw materials.

I saw the way the construction workers were looking at us. I was pretty sure the reason they were willing to follow us was because we’d pitched in with the fire. Now that we were pitching in with the manual labor for chopping wood, it was starting to click in their minds how unfairly the Oni had been treating them by comparison.

Up to now, they hadn’t reacted much, but as I suspected, as the days wore on that

Once at the top of the mountain, I told Foreman Tanaka what we needed for our fortress.

“A bridge wide enough for one of those trucks we left at the base of the mountain. Three checkpoints with towers up the side of the mountain, and a large fortification at the top with a barracks and mess hall. Outside, there should be a training area. You and your workers will also need shelter as well.”

Foreman Tanaka took a few notes, drew up a few plans while I watched, and then got his people to work. I felt a bit awkward at the fact that the job they were doing for us was basically the same as the one the Oni had been forcing them to do, but they seemed happy to build stuff one way or another, and this time I would ensure they were well rewarded for their hard work. I would also make sure they had as much high-leveled help as they needed.

From what I gathered, the lack of heavy machinery and the Oni’s insistence on traditional architecture had made work on the castle they’d been putting up go much slower than it needed to. Naturally, I threw both those requirements out the window.

Since there were no cranes, I heaved most of the framework and pillars together myself. With the help of me and the black knights, the basic shelters went up fast enough we never even needed to pitch tents atop the mountain.

By the second day, all the heavy labor was already done, and Foreman Tanaka was extremely polite when he told me that the other Black Knights would only get in the way from there on out, so I set the Black Knights to drilling and scouting.

It struck me then that it had nearly been a week since my last trip home, and I was suddenly feeling a little homesick. It was laughable, really. I’d stayed away for months at a time before. But my feelings didn’t lie.

“The workers just finished a cozy fireplace and bedroom for the resident sorceress and Knight commander. That’s me and you by the way,” Liliana said. Her sorceress robes seemed particularly loose today, and they hung extremely low over either shoulder.

Liliana hadn’t been shy about her interest in the mysterious Doomblade. Maybe I’d worked her over too hard in the interaction chamber because she seemed attached to me at the hip.

I hadn’t even had a moment to myself over the last few days. I was lucky I built an extra-dimensional porta-potty into my armor, because if I hadn’t, Liliana definitely would have caught me taking it off at some point. I had a hunch that was exactly why she’d been sticking around me so long. She was just waiting for the chance to catch me slipping, and there was no telling how she'd react to my true identity.

She rubbed her barely-restrained cleavage against my armored forearm, and I immediately regretted installing so many touch receptors in my armor’s exterior. I closed my eyes and tried to think of all the times she’d annoyed me over the last few days, but there was only so much I could do.

Objectively speaking, she was an eager and beautiful woman throwing herself at me. And it didn’t look like she’d take no for an answer.

I pinched my brows, not that it did any good with my helmet in the way. This was exactly the reason why I’d wanted to foist this job off on Kyle or Marcus. Weren’t crazy goth girlfriends what every fresh-faced eighteen-year-old dreams of?

I liked to think my tastes had developed a bit past that point, but biology was saying otherwise at the moment. Maybe I should have taken some inspiration from Reluna and installed a little something extra in this suit, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been pent up for an entire week.

Thinking of what Reluna was doing reminded me of that chair I’d built for her, which was the wrong line of thought to go down at the moment. I tried to shift my focus onto what else was happening on Prince Herius’ world, where Cyra, Mimiko, Reluna, and Myrina were all still working. What I wouldn’t give to have any of them here with me now. Hell, maybe I could foist this job off onto one of them instead of Kyle and Marcus.

I had the thought and was going to dismiss it when I realized I couldn’t find a good reason to. The bulk of the work getting these Black Knights set up was done. Why not hand off the job to someone else?

I glanced at Liliana and immediately knew who I could throw her way to put an end to whatever she thought was going on between us.

It was time to bring Myrina home.

“I’m going on a scouting mission. I’ll be back by nightfall tomorrow. Just keep drilling the troops as usual. I’ll have our next target when I return.” I shrugged Liliana off my shoulder and made my way down the mountain.

<Note>

Truthfully, I'm most excited to check in with Reluna. How much work did she get done with Carter's "productivity device" encouraging her?