Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 38

After finishing up the council meeting, I spread my dragon wings and took flight for the front lines. I actually didn’t need Mimiko with me, but she’d been diligently following me around like a lost puppy. I figured she was nervous in her new surroundings and didn't want to stay in a strange town full of unfamiliar faces.

Maybe I’d introduce her to Sir Sandon. She had a lot of resemblance to the Goddess in Jade’s statue, since both women were presumably descended from the ancient line of the Architects.

I was sure that Mimiko would attract plenty of male attention once she was no longer clinging to my sleeves. Even I, who was surrounded by talented and beautiful women, could see that she was beautiful beyond reason, even moreso than when we’d first met. I hadn’t asked, but I was pretty sure that was a side effect of reaching the nascent soul realm or that everlasting beauty pill she’d swiped when we raided Elder Blackhand’s most precious possessions. It had definitely done its job, from the looks of things.

That made sense, in a way. Without the restrictions the System placed on us, cultivators would probably gain even stats across all aspects of their being, including charisma. I had no doubt that she was expressing some of the same passive effects I gave off. She might even have abilities for it.

Flying once again made long trips short, and I made it to the edge of the shard in just a few minutes. When I arrived, I found the walls sparsely populated. I had figured Reluna and the army would be camped here, as were my original orders. But apparently not.

“We salute your imperial majesty!” said two soldiers I didn’t recognize once I told them who I was.

“At ease. And please, call me Carter,” I said.

“We salute your imperial Carter!” the soldiers replied.

I waved them to continue. I didn’t recognize either of them, but they had the levels and look to have been from one of the survival groups in the ruins of San Antonio.

“Sir, imperial steward and grand strategist Reluna leads from the front. Progress is slow, but we have pushed back the golem shard significantly under her guidance and even discovered a settlement of human survivors! That slowed us down even more, but the front lines are claiming more and more of golem territory. I’ve heard rumors that our scouts have even found the golem control and production facilities, and once they’re destroyed, things will be as good as over!”

“And have you found any more of our Omikyr friends? They look like normal humans but have antlers on their head. They worship these big jade statues of a beautiful woman.”

“Nothing like that, sir,” said one of the soldiers.

“But ti’s a big shard. Maybe we’ve yet to discover it,” the other added.

I thanked them both for their help. Perhaps it would have been too much to hope that I could soar through this place, smash the remaining golems, talk with the Omikyr, and then take a big step toward resurrecting Ben and the others who died during the early stages of the integration, as they’d helped resurrect me. The Goddess in Jade promised me there was something here I’d find very useful to that effect, and I was eager to get my hands on it.

***

After talking with the troops on the wall, Mimiko and I got directions to the main force, which was deep into enemy territory. The walls the golems had been building to keep us out had been reduced to rubble. As had most of the surrounding landscape.

As I took in the pockmarked countryside, I couldn’t help but realize how absolutely annihilated everything was. I thought the war zones back on Ladwick had been bad, but this was on an entirely different level. If I didn’t know Reluna was fighting golems, I would have thought she was waging war on rocks, grass, and trees.

Mighty boulders had been reduced to rocks the size of my fist. Green fields of grass had been reduced to burned and barren scrub. Mighty ancient trees were little more than piles of splintered wood. There were probably a few golems somewhere in that mess, but there was no way I’d be able to find whatever was left of them amidst the debris.

“Your servant is certainly thorough in destroying your enemies,” Mimiko said from over my shoulder, where she was riding on my back as we flew.

“Perhaps too thorough. Fortunately, I didn’t have any plans for this land. Still, just what kind of magic was she hitting the place with to pulverize everything this thoroughly?”

Had Reluna reached B-Grade? I found that hard to believe, at least with her class. She’d only just reached C-Grade when she came to Crownhill. Myrina and I had kept up such a pace, but only because we’d spent the last few months fighting everywhere we could, including on crusade, where the System showered us with additional experience points. Perhaps Reluna might reach B-Grade through her job, but definitely not with her class and race.

And even if she had reached B-Grade, I could scarcely believe she had spells that could do this level of environmental damage. I would be hard pressed to so thoroughly destroy my surroundings, even if that’s what I was going for.

The answer came to me when I finally caught up with Reluna. She was on the front lines with about five hundred soldiers, though I noted none of my best were among them. I had wondered about that when I noticed Kyle, Marcus, and Frank all back in town.

Rick and Kerrie, two powerful survivors, were both in the group, and the two of them had even made it to the early levels of C-Grade sometime recently. Of the other survivors, I only recognized Sir Sandon, captain of the Omikyr knights. Though ever since his recent death during the battle with the chaos god-possessed Torchdragon, he’d been in the body of a young human man named Sam.

Reluna stood near the three of them, though she sat atop a strange box looking thing. Four D-Grades held sticks coming from the box, from the sweat on their brows they’d been carrying both it and Reluna for a while. I landed among the army’s commanders and made their presence known.

“I see you’ve all made good progress,” I said, appearing in a blink as I shifted from the shadow realm and back into real space. To the others, it would look like I’d popped into existence out of nowhere. I was wary of coming down from the air, since I probably looked like a dragon from far away. Given recent events, I expected looking like a dragon would get me shot at, and I knew Kerrie, in particular, was a very good shot. It was better to simply appear in front of them.

“Huh? What? Carter!” Reluna jumped from the padded seat she’d been riding on, which from up close I could tell was a palanquin. It was the sort of thing I would expect an empress to ride in.

“Uh... Carter! I was just keeping your seat warm for you. And yes, it vibrates.” Reluna gestured to the palanquin. I climbed up and took her place, which was admittedly pretty comfortable. Reluna must have decided going without her favorite chair while on military campaign would have been too big a sacrifice. Nonetheless, the vibrating massage was a little much when I was trying to talk to people, so I had to turn it off.

“So, just what have you been doing while I was gone?” I asked as I reclined on Reluna’s palanquin.

“Ooh!” Reluna clapped her hands together, smiling widely. “Why tell you of my deeds when I can show you?”

Reluna directed my attention to the far distance, where there were several buildings of the shape and style that I’d looted with Myrina, Bridget, and Sakura. Things had gone rather well during that expedition until I accidentally set off the wrong defensive ward and called the golems down on our heads.

“Observe, an enemy encampment!” Reluna gestured widely at the humble array of cottages.

“Are there enemies in there?” I asked.

“Possibly. But that doesn't matter. When we go to war, we go to crush our enemies and see them driven before us! You entrusted this mission to me, and I promised we would obliterate the enemy until no stone lay stacked upon another. Centurion Kerrie? Prepare to fire.”

Kerrie notched an arrow to her bow, as did many others. I noticed instead of arrowheads, Kerrie had a rolled up scrap of printer paper at the end of her shaft. The other archers were sporting similar armaments.

That had me curious, and I leaned off my seat for a better look.

The arrows struck the lonely cottages and exploded with fiery intensity. When a half-dozen struck the cottage, it exploded in a spray of shattered stone. The tree standing nearby fared no better. Now I knew where all the rubble I’d seen on the way in had come from.

“Again!” Reluna commanded, and more explosive arrows rained down. And then they triggered again. And once more after that.

Pretty soon, the small row of cottages was completely annihilated until there was nothing left. At some point, someone started playing loud battle music, presumably on Reluna's orders.

“Enemies vanquished!” Reluna said, brushing her hair aside nervously as she did so.

I didn’t respond, and my hands were folded in contemplation. Where were the defensive golems from before? Destroying the cottages had to trigger the alarms as easily as activating the wrong enchantment.

"Hold on, I don't think you're done yet," I warned.

Reluna shot me a knowing smile, as though daring me to ask. I bit my tongue and we both waited patiently.

I didn’t have to wait long. A few of the golems came loping toward us from the woods. I scanned the most prominent types, which were the same as I remembered.

Guardian Golem (Level 58)

Pest Control Golem (Level 64)

The guardian golems were big, bulky, barrel-chested things with huge arms that came down to the ground. They ran forward on their knuckles as much as their feet, like gorillas with an inflated upper body. The pest control golems were smaller and more nimble creatures, more like spiders than men, though still bigger than me.

Back when I’d first seen them, they’d been terrifying, but after my adventures on Themyscira, Glacia, Mucaria and Ladwick, I’d grown a lot. They seemed smaller than I remembered, though no doubt they were still quite fearsome to all the D-Grades standing near me.

Or at least, I thought they should be. Looking around, the soldiers seemed unphased, like the sight of these big golems charging towards us was something they'd seen a thousand times before. And Reluna even looked excited as she rubbed her palms together and smiled.

“Activate the explosive talismans!” Reluna ordered, and as the golems charged, the ground exploded. Hundreds of talismans scattered in front of the army activated one after another, blowing up like landmines.

The golems charging us were shredded. Only a single one made it through the extremely extensive wall of explosives, and by the time it did, it was scarcely more than a head and a single arm.

“I’ve got it!” Reluna declared as she swept her sleeves wide. And out of those sleeves came a dozen more explosive talismans. They flowed around her like they were carried on an invisible current, then stuck to the almost-dead golem. A moment later, they exploded just like all the others until nothing was left of the golem's head but rubble and scrap.

The air smelled like dust and burned paper, but the battle was over as soon as it began. The golems had been blown to smithereens without even touching our soldiers.

“Back to your stations! Get the printers working for the next round! I see more cabins in the distance. We’re moving forward ten paces, then doing it all again!” Reluna said.

“Yes, Supreme Strategist Reluna!” a few of the soldiers said.

Then, soldiers began hauling out printers and feeding paper in with all speed. They pulled out scissors and craft knives, and like a bunch of grade schoolers working on an art project, they started cutting, gluing, and decorating the newly printed talismans. They were even using glue-sticks, and the power source for the talismans seemed to be low-grade monster cores ground into a fine dust.

“So... folly or genius?” Reluna asked, once more embarrassed as she toyed with her hair.

I eyed Reluna, then the rows of printers, one of which I recognized as mine, from the barn. Reluna really had been busy while I was gone.

My sharp gaze made Reluna nervous, and she braced herself for a scolding.

“That was... fantastic!” I said, suddenly jumping from the palanquin and pulling Reluna into a hug.

“R-really?” Reluna said, sounding almost like she was in disbelief.

“Really,” I said, running my fingers through her hair. “I’m beginning to think I went in the wrong direction with my own magitech. I went for bigger, more complicated, and more powerful things like power armor. Perhaps I should have focused on mass-producing something simple and effective. And from the progress you’ve made, these talismans of yours sure seem effective. I didn’t think you’d be this deep into the shard.”

“If you must know, I was at the top of my class in talisman-making.” A heated blush covered Reluna’s face as she basked in my praise.

“If I was giving a class on war, I’d give you top marks there as well. Granted, this strategy probably wouldn’t have worked so well on a real army. These golems are too mindless to develop a new strategy, but in this specific circumstance, it seems the ideal tactic. And you even brought along a bunch of low-level soldiers so they could gain the easy levels. Very forward-thinking of you.”

“Er... yes! That’s it exactly. The others did not have the eyes to see my scheme through to its fullest anyway." Reluna's cheeks turned from light blue to purple as she blushed harder. I was about to give her another right embrace when a gentle cough from Mimiko brought my attention to her.

“If I may be so bold, my lord... but what about the loot?” Mimiko asked.

As she spoke, she kicked aside a piece of rock. As it rolled, it revealed a dim golem's eye, still glowing with faint residual light.

“Loot? What is loot before overwhelming magical power?” Reluna asked, hands on her hips and chin thrust toward the sky as she held my right hand in hers.

“What is the point of battle without loot?” Mimiko countered. At some point, she grabbed my left hand.

Suddenly, I found myself in a very precarious situation. Magical explosions were fantastic to watch and make. Who didn’t love them? Reluna was right about that.

But, on the other hand, getting loot after a battle was also a lot of fun. Mimiko was right about that. And Reluna’s method of explosively dealing with enemies left little loot worth collecting.

This was quite the conundrum. I pulled both women close to me while I considered my options and tried to decide between the two.

“Hmm... loot... magic... which do I love more?” I muttered to myself.

Reluna and Mimiko both waited with bated breath.

Eventually, I shrugged.

“Screw it! I’m not choosing. I want both loot and magical explosions! Reluna, I’m going to help you redesign your talismans.”

And so that’s what I spent the next hour doing. Reluna seemed impressed by how skilled I was in the art of talisman making, even though it wasn’t my official job. But magic symbols were universal, and my Kindling Architect job gave me an overarching understanding of both the magical and mundane that let me do the job of a talisman scribe well enough.

Pretty soon, we had a functional prototype, at which point Reluna introduced me to the true source of her newfound power. Mass production.

Unlike most of my creations, which need whole teams of enchanters to assemble and empower, Reluna had focused on making her talismans simpler and better. A series of printers could do ninety percent of the work in making the talisman in seconds.

The final stage was as simple as cutting, sprinkling on some monster core dust, and then gluing it together. That kind of work required no technical skill and could be trained in as little as fifteen minutes.

I could think of a few ways to bolster her efforts further. A simple die would eliminate the hand-cutting process, and a few machines that were well within my capabilities to make could automate the gluing and monster core sprinkling. But for now, we stuck to her way of doing things.

“Behold, our masterpiece! We’ll call it a void implosion talisman.” I held the new scrap of paper aloft.

Reluna clapped. “Marvelous. You are a worthy apprentice for me.”

I laughed. “Alright then, since I’m just the apprentice, let’s see the master show us how it’s done.”


<Note>
Somebody should tell Mimiko and Reluna that there is more than one harem slot open. Maybe they'll figure it out eventually.