Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 49

I spent some time thinking over the problem of transporting souls over from the afterlife and acquiring new bodies. Since Mimiko and Reluna had proven helpful before, I picked their brains over once again.

“All things can be accomplished through ritual magic. Some skills can resurrect the recently dead, and some scholars have engineered rituals to replicate such abilities. I’m sure I have at least one in my books,” Reluna said.

I stroked my chin. “That would be a good place to start. Such a ritual will no doubt take adaptation, but once I see the basic theory, I may be able to design an item to enhance the ritual enough for what we need. That may solve the transportation issue, but leaves acquiring bodies a bigger problem.”

“The sects have their own way of resurrecting the dead. I will look into this as well,” Mimiko said. She glanced at Reluna, clearly still intent on competing with her.

“You both make it sound commonplace. Do people really resurrect the dead that often?” I asked.

“Not often, but it is certainly nice to have if the opportunity presents itself.” Reluna shrugged.

“Outside of space controlled by the System, resurrecting the dead is more common practice. Without its restrictions, the afterlife is more easily accessed by those with great power. What you call A-Grades can project their souls beyond their bodies fairly easily and pluck out a soul of their choosing from the afterlife. The trouble is that such methods only work for an intact and healthy soul. At nascent soul, I have decent control over my soul and can project it beyond my body without dying. Were I to die unexpectedly, I would retain conciousness a while here on the mortal plane and could hunt for a new body to possess,” Mimiko explained.

I frowned. I’d killed a lot of cultivators on Ladwick. Were they all hunting down new bodies right now? I felt bad for the locals. Perhaps I should have been more thorough.

“Do cultivators really resurrect themselves that often through possession?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, it’s not as useful an ability as we’d like. Most things capable of slaying a nascent soul cultivator or above also inflict tremendous soul damage. As a result, resurrection of the sort you seek is only useful for mortals or weaker. Anyone stronger would have simply found a new body themselves if their soul were whole enough to save.” Mimiko shrugged.

Now that I thought about it, Sharky had been really busy while we were on Ladwick. And he had quite an appetite for souls. Maybe the civilians there were safer than I thought.

“At any rate, the people I want to resurrect weren’t even D-Grade. Come up with any cultivator method you might know. If both of you manage something for me, I’m certain you’ll come up with something I can work with.” I glanced between Mimiko and Reluna and noted the competitive glare they shared.

While Reluna and Mimiko were working on the soul transportation problem, I focused on the new body problem.

If the people from Crownhill County Prison were still causing problems, I could have used the worst of them for this. Unfortunately, the Chain Brigade was working rather well. Nowadays, everyone in Crownhill was fairly law-abiding and cooperative. I suspected those with other plans had long since fled to the wilderness or left to become troll-breeders in the swamp.

It wouldn’t be too hard to hunt down a few people of questionable morals, hollow out their souls, and then stuff Ben and the others inside the hollow husk. Doing so felt a bit morally questionable, though. Besides, I was pretty sure Ben wouldn’t appreciate being stuffed into a body addicted to snorting troll orbs. I’d seen what that stuff did to people when overused, even if its healing effects were useful.

I kept trying and failing to develop an ethical solution for the body problem, so I filled the next few days with work. First, that meant filling out all the new rooms I had to work with, thanks to Reluna and Governess’ renovations while I was away.

After that, I caught up with some projects I’d been putting off. First, that meant getting Doomblade fully operational again. The suit worked, but I had a bunch of upgrades in mind that would bring it up to B-grade standards. I added those, then made a whole list of subcomponents that took advantage of my Kindling Architect job to make the task easier to break down.

As soon as I got together the right teams of people, I would start producing Mark Two power armor in bulk. It would be both better and easier to produce than the existing Mark Ones, which would go by the wayside.

But that was for later. Finishing my armor was fun, but not enough to take my mind off things. Truthfully, I’d expected Sakura and Bridget to be teleported home by now, but the System had gotten more relaxed about the integration than I realized and they were still on campaign in Ladwick without me.

I was eager for news. Hopefully, they were all doing alright. With all the strongest cultivators defeated, I couldn’t imagine anything left that could put up a fight.

“Uh... your imperial Carter-ness, sir... what are you doing?” Kyle asked as I stood in the center of the street warping space around me. To a casual observer, it would seem as though the city streets expanded and then contracted just a few paces from me.

“I’m bringing Crownhill into the future,” I explained as I worked. “A bit of magitech. Nothing to be concerned with.”

“Okay... but a few people have been getting nervous and would really like a full explanation on... that.” Kyle gestured at the corona of distorted space around me.

“Fine. I’m coaxing an extradimensional bubble in this direction, where I will collapse a chunk of pocketspace into real space,” I muttered, hands blurring.

“Okay. Got it. Extradimensional spaces. And we want those?”

“Very much so. I find them extremely convenient. And this one has a few goodies in it I think you guys will like.”

“Are they dangerous?” Kyle asked anxiously. Behind him, I saw a few other guards lining up.

I shook my head at the sight of them. All this just because I didn’t file a building permit. Well, if they were going to force me to be an absentee emperor, I could do renovations without filing paperwork with town hall first. It wasn’t like the land I was manipulating was in city limits yet anyway.

I was pushing nearby space aside and importing a new plot of land from elsewhere for this project. All the best plots of land were already taken, so rather than overpaying for more space, I was just going to import land from elsewhere and install it here.

“Occasionally, void monsters show up in them, but I’ve taken precautions this time. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with them myself if they show up.”

Kyle and the guards behind him didn’t like my answer, but thankfully, they didn’t interrupt my work either. I was almost done, at any rate, so I wouldn’t have minded a few more questions.

To the eyes of Kyle and the other guards, it must have looked like the void opened up and swallowed me in a lightless gash in reality. They probably thought they were moments away from void monsters springing forth to devour them all. From my side of things, I sensed them drawing swords, pistols, and anything else they had on hand.

But there were no void monsters. Instead, a new chunk of the city sprung into existence, grabbed and moved here from the small pocket realm beneath my farmhouse.

“Done!” I declared with pride. This had been quite an accomplishment. Hopefully, I could repeat the feat at some point. There were a few more bits of the ancient architect city to grab, and I rather liked the idea of being able to work at scale.

Normally, I didn’t have the magical power to hoist something on this scale, but here I’d harnessed natural forces. The pocket space I was messing was in the process of breaking down. Pulling a piece off it was like pinching off a bubble from a large one. The hard part was directing it where to go, but for that, I used the System’s extradimensional structure like scaffolding.

Magically speaking, it was like I needed to lift a car. Thankfully, there was a big tree right overhead that I could attach a pulley to. Things wouldn’t always line up this well, but when they did, I planned to take advantage of the situation.

“What? Who... where?” Kyle asked as he and his comrades stared at there was suddenly a new city block where previously they’d been far apart.

“Check it out. This is my addition to things.” I rapped my knuckles against smooth glass and alien metal. “I think all the Rennisance-esque banners and cobblestone streets, Reluna and you guys added, look all posh and nice for the older parts of the city, but I personally prefer something a bit more futuristic.”

Truthfully, I did like Reluna's changes. It would be nice to have a part of the city meant to welcome outsiders, and I had a pretty good idea of how I would staff it in a familiar manner, though that would mean making mannequins that were a little more realistic for Governess. But I didn't think going medieval was the right choice for the beating heart of my city. No doubt the permanent residents would want something a bit more advanced, and that was what I planned to provide.

“What is this?” Kyle gestured at the chunk of futuristic ruins before us.

“This is a chunk of a city from a defunct alien civilization. Even I don’t know exactly how these things work. But I know enough to know that this part of the city housed most of their public utilities. See those cone things? I’m calling those shrinkspace storage centers. When full, they’d hold enough water to fill a lake, even though they’re only the size of a building.”

“You stole somebody’s water towers out of their city?” Kyle gaped at the buildings as I pointed them out.

“Oh, don’t give me that. You guys are constantly looking for loot in abandoned ruins. This city was abandoned, so I looted it. I’ll loot the rest of it, too, when I have time. Also, don’t poke around in that thing until I’ve gone through it. I’m pretty sure it’s the magical equivalent of a nuclear power plant. It might be best to put some tape over the entrance so people don’t wander in. “ I pointed to a building in the distance.

Kyle looked between me and the new buildings, then sighed.

“You heard his imperial Carter-ness! Let’s get some safety tape around this magical city that just appeared out of nowhere.”

***

A few more days passed. I laid claim to the most important parts of the newly important parts of the city and got that magical nuclear reactor online again. It generated a slow but steady trickle of mana from some mysterious metal rods that didn’t seem to be radioactive.

I ended up just walling the place off. I had a hunch that something was broken with it, or it would be making far more energy. It had probably experienced the magical equivalent of nuclear decay over all the years it had been sitting there doing nothing. If I had time, I would study it more or perhaps replace the magical components with a more mundane system.

The nice thing was that it was fully automated, and since it had spent who knew how many thousands of years quietly providing a trickle of energy without exploding, I trusted it to keep doing that for a while longer.

Originally, I planned on importing other chunks of the Architect city into Crownhill after I took a brief trip to verify they were safe. But it turned out importing a chunk of an alien city wasn’t such a simple matter. I was even given a fine.

“What’s this?” I asked as I stared at the slip of pink paper.

“You’re fine for not taking out a building permit,” Margaret said.

“Technically, I didn’t build anything. I pulled the buildings here from another dimension.”

But Margaret wouldn’t hear any of it. “Sorry, but the rules are the rules. Everybody’s got to follow them. And you did request we give you no special treatment.”

“I guess I did...” I grumbled a bit, but then paid the fine. It wasn’t like money was a concern anyway, given I got a cut of all transactions that happened at the Obelisk and that all the loot I’d dumped on the market was selling for hefty prices.

So I paid the fine, which unfortunately scaled with level, which meant my fine was roughly equivalent to the city’s total funding for a month. But the second part of my plan turned out to work particularly well, which was to have the people of Crownhill sift through Architect waste and figure out if anything was useful.

The replicator microwaves were particularly popular, but I already had several of those. Other contraptions, like magical ovens, stoves, and refrigerators, were also popular, but Bridget, Sakura, and Myrina had taken plenty of those during our last trip.

The real surprise came in the form of these coffin shaped things. Originally I’d taken them to be just that and ignored them. It was a bit strange for so many wealthy households to have a coffin just lying around, but I’d seen stranger things from other races.

It turned out they weren’t coffins, they were some sort of healing bed. When activated, the user could jump inside, take a quick nap, and wake up with all their old aches and pains healed and their body tuned to perfection.

The ones people had found wouldn’t help a B-Grade like me all that much, since my body was already in perfect shape. But to an E-Grade or lower with less-than-perfect eyesight or persistent back pain, the alien contraptions were a godsend. And within a week, people had figured out how to program them for cosmetic procedures.

I didn’t think I or anyone in my household needed that either, but when I came home later that day, Reluna and Mimiko were both sporting new hair colors.

“You both look great. Though for the record, you both looked great before too,” I said.

“But surely one of us looks better, right?” Reluna said, tossing her hair and revealing bare shoulders. She was currently wearing a bikini, even though there was no pool in the castle. I was pretty sure she thought they were merely an exotic and revealing local outfit.

Mimiko had also changed out of her usual robes and was wearing something better described as tape. I’d seen her watching a recording of a pre-integration fashion show. I would have to talk to her about not believing everything she saw on the internet, or whatever version of it the guys back in Crownhill had gotten running after the end of the world. People didn’t walk around wearing the outfits she saw in the shows she was watching.

“Reluna, I like your outfit more. Mimiko, I like your hair more. Okay, you ladies have fun!” I ducked out of the room and shut the door behind me. Hopefully, those parting words wouldn’t distract the two of them too much from their assigned task of figuring out how to resurrect the dead.

After chatting with them, I made my way up the tower to speak with Governess.

“How are you integrating with that golem factory?” I asked.

“You have thirteen new idle workers. Would you like to assign jobs to them?” Governess asked.

I accepted her offer and put the new golems to work. Two of the golems were even those C-Grade Gargantual Construction Golems. We’d run into those things at just the right time, since many of the old excavators Governess had been using were overdue for maintenance. None of them were built to be used as often as we were using them, so having a more replaceable alternative would keep us from running into trouble if they started breaking down before we found replacements.

“And what about the project... the other one?” I asked in a low voice. I wasn’t sure how close the System was listening, but Lyra probably was.

The governess flashed some images on my computer screen, which were brief summaries of the messages she’d injected into the System’s hardware.

Basically, every time my name showed up, she would do the machine equivalent of whispering, ‘You love Carter. Carter is the best.’ into the System’s ear.

Thanks to the presence of the modified node, whenever I killed something, built something, or generally did anything worthy of the System’s attention, it would have that little reminder whispered in the back of its mind.

I had no idea if it would do anything, but if there was even a slight chance that I could make the System like me more, I was going to take it.

“Not bad. Keep up the good work,” I said, congratulating Governess in her little machine hypnosis project.

"Do you have any other assignments?" Governess asked.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I recently added an old ruined city to Crownhill. See if you can clean it up for me. I'll have to fix some things manually, but if you could get the debris out of the way and get the buildings repaired, that'd be great."

"Your will shall be done, milord."

"Also, I want some construction projects done on the other parts of the city. I'm not sure what to call them, but all the quaint cobblestone areas with little medieval looking shops and cute banners? I want you to reserve a few of those for your own use. The shopkeeper job from the game you're based on still works, right?" I asked.

"It does, milord,"

"Good. I want you to reassign your mannequins. There's no need for them to do construction work now that you have golems that were designed for that purpose. With them, I want you to run a few taverns, inns, and general stores, just like in the game you're based on. Nobody in town has taken up that role yet, and I think it's a valuable service for passing adventurers. I'd like to have the more historic districts dedicated to that sort of theme. Visitors will feel more welcome that way, and there'll be no need for any citizens to work mundane jobs. They can live comfortably in the more modern districts."

Truthfully, headcount was the limiting factor to Crownhill's continued growth. I needed people to become skilled craftsmen or powerful fighters. I didn't need them sweeping streets, showing guests to their rooms for the night, or sitting at reception desks.

"Construction underway," Governess replied.

And with that, everything I had planned was underway.

After a few minutes more fiddling and working out specifics with Governess, I realized there was little more I could do for my house in Crownhill at the moment. Sure, I could start tearing down stuff and rebuilding it, but everything was working as it was. Besides, I didn’t want to push Crownhill into the future too fast. They were still getting used to Reluna’s changes to integrate them into the broader Arcadia Multiverse, and my changes to bring them into the future.

Unless I wanted to sit still and let myself worry about Bridget, Sakura, Myrina, and Cyra, I needed to keep moving. Perhaps it was time to check in with the Goddess in Jade again. Mimiko mentioned powerful cultivators often had experience resurrecting people. Perhaps she could point me in the right direction.


<Note>
Hopefully, the plan for Crownhill makes more sense now. Though Reluna didn't know it, her actions were leading somewhere!