Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 1

I've always enjoyed building things.

Before the integration, when the System came to Earth and destroyed the world, that meant nailing two-by-fours together into a barn. Or helping the team in my office put together an app.

After the integration, I'd taken to building magic swords and shields. After that, I'd grown rather fond of making power armor.

In general though, my projects seemed to get bigger and bigger every time I started a new one. And this project following the destruction of the world of Ladwick was no exception.

"You really think we can feed and house five billion people on a single world?" Prince Herius asked skeptically.

"Sure. My old planet did it, and we didn't even have magic," I replied.

I was still with him and the rest of the legion following the climactic battle with the Chaos Wolf. Ladwick was uninhabitable, but thankfully Prince Herius' dad had another planet kicking around he was willing to give us.

The problem was that the entire region of space inside the area controlled by the Vaust family was now outside of System space, following the cultivator victory in that region. That meant everyone who could flee had fled, and most of them were in my mystic realm at the moment. I couldn't exactly dump them out on this wild and untamed world with no way to feed our house themselves.

"I think most of them will move on, but with enough housing some should stay. Enough to make a proper fief out of this place." The prince shrugged and soon agreed to the plans I'd laid out.

In other words, this planet needed infrastructure, and it needed to be built as soon as possible. So I drew up plans for soviet-style block housing, mega farms, food silos, and just about anything else I considered essentials. It wouldn't be a fun place to live, but we wanted to keep low-level people out of the weather while they sorted themselves out, which was likely to be a disaster on its own and would test Prince Herius' leadership abilities every bit as much as the crusade on Ladwick had.

Building the structures directly would have taken me years of work, even with the help of the legion. So instead, I focused on building the tools that would build the tools that would then build the shelters.

My chief inspiration was those golem factories we'd run into back in Crownhill. I hadn't fully examined the bits and pieces of how something like that might work, but I knew what an assembly line looked like as much as the next guy.

This required puzzling out the entire supply chain from the first rocks to the final construction golems, but I had time before I needed to return to Crownhill, especially when using the time dilated space in Sanctum. News had come back from Bridget and Sakura, and despite my worries, it seemed nothing pressing had come up, even from those military men I'd been worried about.

So I put the time in. Even with that, it should have taken me years to get everything up and running. But I had five billion people stuck in my pocket realm, and there were at least a few million of them familiar with any trade I might need. I started tapping that resource immediately and handed out hastily made magical mining equipment.

Mostly, that meant wands that scooped up dirt, then transferred it to a bag of holding for sorting and relocation. These things weren't exactly excavators, but them were better than shovels. From there, a group of people with slightly different wands sorted out the raw materials I needed.

Then, from there the raw materials were processed by a few hundred thousand enchanters I'd drafted for the purpose. Naturally, I didn't start at that scale, but hired a few hundred, taught them what to do, then expanded until we started producing a golem every day. Then, I expanded production more until we were producing a golem every hour. By the time I was satisfied, we were making a new golem every minute.

My personal assistants showed up as I was surveying the enchanters as they worked. Normally, just Sakura was enough. But since she was back on Earth, it took Mimiko, Reluna, and Myrina all working together to tackle the same workload.

"No one has any idea what they are doing. These golems are far too complex for the average enchanter to comprehend," Reluna explained. The elven woman in wizard's robes leaned up next to me. I felt hard nipples pressing up against my elbow as she did so. Though Reluna might appear to be a scholarly hard-nosed student of the Dragon Lodge, in private she was particularly needy.

"That's alright. As long as they know their own jobs and build their subcomponents to my specifications, the construction golems should come out alright.

"Carter! Can you make me some magic whips? One that make a really loud cracking sound? Some of the workers in the mines are talking about taking longer breaks," Myrina said.

"We're not going to whip the workers, Myrina. Just remind them that the best farms and residences will go to those who help the most with our reconstruction efforts."

With no economy on this planet, handing out pay in gold wouldn't be worth much. So we were building infrastructure and handing that out direclty based on a contribution points system. It had been Mimiko's idea, since cultivator sects were apparently quite used to operations like this. Once the task was complete, workers could use their contribution points to purchase whatever they desired in a huge auction.

This also had the effect of filtering out who both wanted to stay here and planned on being a productive member of the society we planned to build. If Prince Herius was smart, he would make sure everyone volunteering now was well taken care of on his new world.

I chuckled and ran my fingers through the fiery redhead's hair as she stared at me with happy eyes. Myrina was attractive in the same way tornadoes were awesome. She was ferocious, unstoppable, and a whirlwind of destruction. Properly focused, nothing could stand in her way.

"I will see to it that Myrina does not whip them undeservedly, my lord," Mimiko bowed, hands tucked into her robes. Mimiko had a courtly appearance and a calm and placid smile that concealed a devious mind and powerful ambition. She was a cultivator, and these days a pretty good one at that. Through luck and happenstance, I turned her to my cause during the campaign on Ladwick, and she was proving a remarkable asset.

"Carter," I said, still trying to get her to call me by name.

"I will see too it, my lord Carter," Mimiko bowed again. Though her expression hardly changed, I sensed a hint of a smile and was pretty sure she was messing with me.

"Let's check in with Cyra and see how the golems are doing," I said.

We took a little trip to a nearby river delta. Carrying the three of them was about all that I could manage. Reluna and Mimiko clung to either arm as I flew, while Myrina climbed atop my shoulders.

"I picked this location because it'll make great farmland. It's got fertile soil, temperate weather, and a natural harbor thanks to that rock formation off the coast." I pointed out the various landmarks as we hovered in the air. Beneath us, a dozen four-story tall golems plodded across the ground shaping raw earth into great mounds.

After they were done, somebody would go through with one of those mining wands and hollow out the inside to turn it into a livable structure. We could get fancier when there were more golems working, but for now I was pretty limited. Perhaps the locals would turn these things into a storage lot when they had a season or two to get real homes together, but for now they would suffice.

"Rock formation?" Myrina held a hand over her eyes and peered into the distance. "You mean the island with the huge fortress on it?"

I stared at the rock formation I'd seen from afar several times. I'd always dismissed it as a piece of geology. But now that Myrina pointed it out, I realized it wasn't a natural formation at all.

The stone was smooth and uniform, like concrete but likely conjured through magic rather than poured. The angles transitioned from vertical inclines to level horizontal places far too quickly to be natural. Those had to be castle ramparts. And the peaks scattered across the island were crumbling towers.

The whole thing looked like it had been abandoned for ten thousand years, placing it as slightly older than the other ruins I'd seen elsewhere on this planet. This world had been inhabited once, though by whom and when I wasn't sure. If I were staying, I would have looked into it, but I'd be returning to Crownhill soon, so the mysterious origins of this world were up to Prince Herius to figure out.

"Looks like some ancient ruins..." I muttered, and suddenly I had three sets of eyes all locked on the castle.

"Adventure awaits!" Myrina drew her sword and pointed it at the ancient ruined castle. Mimiko was also eying the ancient ruins hungrily. Even Reluna seemed interested in what she'd find.

"Let's find Cyra first. Then we can do a little exploring," I said, taking us to the ground.

***

We found Cyra near the beach, where she was wrestling with a sea monster.

"Damn tentacles!" Cyra grunted as she hacked off a flailing limb.

Her foe looked like a horrific spawn of the deep, like the sort of thing from the void where Sharky came from. It thrashed in the surf, struggling to fight in such shallow terrain. Despite that, its slimy limbs whipped through the air like living lashes.

Thanks to the afternoon light, I saw the sharp hooks lining the tentacles flashing through the air. This thing was desperate to dig those barbs into Cyra's armor and drag her into the water, but Cyra was expertly fending off every blow with sword and shield.

The monster lunged, and its mass of wriggling limbs filled the air with a splash of salty water. It almost grazed Cyra's thigh, and for a moment, I thought we needed to rush over in a hurry. But my worry proved baseless as Cyra engaged the beast again. She stepped closer, stomped on the tentacle, and skewered it to the sand with her sword. Then she jumped back and drew a new blade. From the three other tentacles nailed to the beach, this wasn't the first time she'd made such a move.

By the time we arrived at her side, Cyra pinned the last tentacle and was moving toward the head for the final kill. She dispatched the sea monster with one swift and efficient strike behind the mound of eyes on the top of its head.

Then, she wiped her brow and sighed, turning to look at us. She must have sensed our approach but had been too focused on her fight to react.

"That thing looked tough," I said.

"Third one this afternoon," Cyra said. "This is one hell of a planet our father had in his back pocket."

The God-King of Glacia was as much Cyra and Myrina's father as he was Prince Herius'. But the prince had been raised as Glacian royalty, whereas Cyra and Myrina were both following in the footsteps of their mother as Amazonian warriors of the Samhain Clan.

"How strong was that thing?" I asked curiously. I'd been too far away to get an examine, but Cyra had fought it long enough to guess its power even without getting a level.

"High C-Grade. There are a few B-Grade ones too, though they are bigger and have a tough time approaching the shore. Given that I've seen B-Grades, there might be an A-Grade monster somewhere in the deep oceans. That makes me think I know what this world was to the Dragon Lodge."

I stroked my chin, nodding along in thought. The Samhain Clan kept forests in their territory and let them fill up with monsters. We'd fought some giant insects outside Shadefall's walls in a similar reserve.

"This whole planet was left abandoned as some sort of giant monster breeding project?" I asked.

Cyra smiled in agreement. "Luckily, the land seems pretty safe. I imagine some A-Grade came through and killed everything worth killing on land, but had no interest in underwater battles."

I sympathized. There were few things worse than fighting a giant sea monster underwater. It was their element, not ours, which would make such fights incredibly tedious for little reward.

Mentally, I made a bunch of revisions to where we should put down cities. We would definitely want to avoid the coast. A single B-Grade sea monster could be a disaster for the entire city.

It also meant traveling by water was completely out of the question. Thankfully, Prince Herius and I had already planned on putting together a relatively advanced teleportation network.

We helped Cyra haul off her kill, and I used my mystic realm ring to send it to all the hungry refugees in the mystic realm. I wasn't sure how sea monster tasted, but hungry people could eat just about anything, and I knew a few groups had already started rationing supplies.

After, we told Cyra about the fortress we spotted in the distance and how we planned to take a peek. I had always planned on flying everyone over, but that was doubly important now considering how unpleasant a swim would be.

"The golems will run themselves a little while longer. Let's check this place out," Cyra agreed.

<Note>

Hey guys, so I'm not 100% on starting here, but I do want to reintroduce the characters. And having a brief few chapters on Ladwick will buy me some time to finish plotting the extensive Crownhill arc.

Basically, this and the next 2-3 chapters might end up getting cut if I find a better place to start later on, but for now, they work well enough.

There's no real schedule right now, since I'm just getting started. Also, I may have to move again, so I want to get some chapters stocked up in case I need to take some time off to pack/unpack.