Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 33

The heretics and I stared at one another for a moment. The barrier thundered once more, breaking the silence.

“I should probably go check on that.”

“Go with him,” Alpha commanded while glancing at Beta-male.

He saluted her. I turned, and he followed, though I could tell he wanted to grab me by the shoulder again. I made sure to stay just out of reach.

Once outside, I finally got a good look at who was hammering on the barrier and realized that Elder Blackhand had brought his own crew alongside him.

He was there and every bit as strong as Alpha, and by his side were five B-Grade elders from the Blackbeast sect.

Elder Blackhand (Level 352)

Black Beast Sect Elder (Level 271)

Black Beast Sect Elder (Level 250)

Black Beast Sect Elder (Level 223)

Black Beast Sect Elder (Level 202)

Black Beast Sect Elder (Level 201)

The force Elder Blackhand brought along actually seemed a touch stronger than the ones the heretics had brought, though that made sense, considering he came expecting a fight. The heretics just wanted to strong arm me out of my legitimately acquired goodies.

“Thieves! Rotten scoundrels! Hand over the artifact!” Elder Blackhand shouted from the other side of the barrier. He slammed his fist into it, and the energy wall absorbed and dispersed his blow in the form of a ripple.

Beta-male had also been taking in the cultivator threat, and though I could only see his eyes beneath all that metal, I was pretty sure he didn’t like what he was seeing.

“The barrier appears surprisingly sturdy. It should hold long enough for us to finish, at which point we can teleport away with the artifact,” Beta-male said.

“And what about me? The city? The remaining soldiers here?” I asked.

“You will slow the cultivators down sufficiently for us to escape unscathed. Your lives are a worthy contribution to a greater cause. If you have changed your mind about joining us, our price has just increased dramatically.” Though Beta-male’s voice was still mechanical, I sensed sly condescension in his words. The damn cyborg thought he had me between a rock and a hard place.

I looked up at my barrier, which was still holding strong, and would keep doing so until the monster cores I used as energy reserves were depleted. Unfortunately, I’d stuck a lot of B-Grade monster cores into that thing.

Damn it! Undone by my own handiwork.

I would have disabled it ahead of time if I'd known it would be a problem. I'd been hoping to see some unique way of bypassing my barrier, but apparently I'd built it too well and would need to let the cultivators in myself. For that, I needed a distraction of some sort. If I could get to the barrier controls, I could make the barrier appear to fail.

Thankfully, I had a skill for that. Despite being labeled as strictly an ability for making useless illusions, I’d often found it one of the most handy tools in my arsenal.

“Look there!” I yelled, and as I pointed, I cast light into the shape of cracks that covered the inside of the barrier.

Beta-male cursed and took flight.

“I’ll go reinforce the barrier! You reinforce it from where you are!” I turned and fled before Beta-male could stop me or question me too much.

I flew to the city’s edge with all speed, where I accessed the controls for the barrier. Once there, I stopped to watch Beta-male fly up to where I’d projected a crack in the barrier.

I let the illusion fade before he could study it too much, then worked quickly to make a real one. Elder Blackhand exerted considerable force on the barrier, and he would get through... eventually. I just needed to turn that eventually into immediately.

I cut several energy pathways, and the ripples with every blow were soon more like waves. The entire barrier quivered like a bubble on the verge of popping.

Meanwhile, I shouted orders through both my radio and the party system Prince Herius had set up. My people were already out of the way, but Abesa and Morin had naturally ignored my orders.

“Legate Morin and Abesa, get your people out of there! The barrier is about to pop?”

“Huh? What? Go away until after my massage is finished...” Morin replied, apparently completely ignorant to the fact that we were even under attack. Abesa didn’t even answer.

Somebody must have gotten through to their subordinates, though. Either that or the people on the walls considered all the shaking and trembling a very bad sign.

I waited as long as I could for them before letting Elder Blackhand finally pop the barrier.

“Ha, look how the cowardly adherents of the System scatter! Now, find the artifact!” Elder Blackhand said.

His people scattered. Beta-male must have made himself scarce sometime after the barrier failed. I scanned for him and saw him hastily erecting some sort of light projector around the entrance to the Sanctum Mystic Realm. He activated it with haste, and when he did, the entrance seemed to fade into the background until it was incredibly difficult to notice. That was some sort of illusion casting device, and I hadn't planned on the heretics having such a thing.

I grit my teeth again. Complex plans like this one always seemed to have issues where you least expect them. I needed to expose the heretics’ hiding spot somehow.

I rummaged through my satchel until I came across some black cultivator robes, then hastily put them on. I used the same trick I’d honed during my brief adventure with Sakura and Mimiko to disguise myself as a cultivator. I wasn’t sure how well all the elders accompanying Elder Blackhand knew one another, but my hope was that in a fight like this, they’d be in battle before they even had the chance to question me.

I slipped into the shadow realm, targeted the weakest of the elders, and then appeared next to him.

“Behold! The pathetic adherents of the System are hiding something behind an illusion formation over there!” I said in my most cultivator-ish voice.

The elder didn’t even so much as blink at my appearance as he darted forward, eager to be the first to retrieve the prize. No doubt doing so would lead to hefty rewards from Elder Blackhand.

The moment the elder discovered the portal, he did a little excited dance, then smashed the projector hiding the portal. But his excitement was short-lived because Beta-male and the other heretic were waiting on the other side of the portal.

“Arrgh!” the elder yelled, getting off little more than a scream and a few flashy abilities before the heretics killed him. In his final moments, he did that thing cultivators often did and triggered his own core to explode.

Kaboom!

A big chunk of Lady Velicia’s manor vanished in a massive explosion. The heretics had tried to be subtle, but there was no hiding that. The death of one elder had alerted the others, and soon Elder Blackhand and all the others were descending in force and the real battle had begun.

With Elder Blackhand in the lead, he rapidly forced Beta-male and the other heretic guarding the door aside. I heard a tremendous crash and knew Beta-male was fighting for his life against the far superior cultivator. It wasn’t going well for him.

I approached, but stayed out of harm’s way. The heretics certainly hadn’t paid for me to get involved in a fight on this level.

I surveyed the city, which had taken surprisingly little damage. No doubt my mystic realm would be in far worse shape though.

As the last cultivator entered the mystic realm, I realized I could walk right up to the entrance. With a tap, I activated the control interface on the stone throne and zipped the portal shut.

“Huh. A few missteps, but that actually went rather well...” I muttered to myself as I looked around. Granted, I wasn’t exactly done yet, but the eleven B-Grades fighting to the death in my personal mystic realm would take some time. I had a bit of time to kill. What should I do in the meantime?

I decided to hit up Mimiko. I’d gotten good enough with the wizardly communication devices to tap out a quick message.

‘You busy?’ I asked.

Her reply came back to me in a series of flashes. I really needed to make more cell phones. Nice as these morse code rods were. I preferred text messages.

‘Nobody’s home. Come over,’ Mimiko said.

My eyes were drawn to the flying pagodas hovering in the distance.

Damn. I should have thought of that!

In a flash, I took flight, carrying the throne as I did so. I needed to get it out of Mundwise anyway.

I dropped it in a lake as far from the city as possible. I would pick it up later. Whoever won the battle between the heretics and the cultivators would probably find a way to break free of my C-Grade pocket realm. If I really wanted to trap them, I would have needed to level up Sanctum to B-Grade.

But this way, when they got free, they’d be well clear of Mundwise, massively reducing any collateral damage they caused in their escape.

In the meantime, I continued flying all the way to the flying pagodas in the sky. Originally, I’d thought they were in a very low orbit, but upon closer examination, I suspected they were using some sort of anti-gravity enchantment.

I picked the biggest one and entered it. The inside of the pagoda reminded me of ancient China, complete with lacquered wood and dividers of woven reeds. This place felt more like a palace than a spaceship.

I wouldn’t have even dreamed of trying to go into space with something made out of wood. The walls here were completely reliant on magic barriers to keep them air-tight. But somehow, the cultivators of the Black Beast Sect had made it work.

Just as Mimiko promised, the place was practically a ghost town. The halls were as empty as my mystic realm had been.

But unlike my mystic realm, which was currently being trashed, this place was full of treasure. I sent another message to Mimiko to find out where she was. She’d probably spent a lot of time here, so she would know where the best loot was.

This place was quite massive, roughly on par with the entirety of Crownhill, but in the form of a structure that had multiple levels both above and below. If I’d come here to loot this place on my own, I’d be completely lost.

Thankfully, I had Mimiko to help me. I exited the shadow realm next to her, appearing in a flash. I’d stumbled onto a few more C-Grades still wandering the nearly empty halls, but very few, considering how large the ship was. Thankfully, I was familiar enough with Mimiko’s reflection in the shadow realm that I avoided them and went straight for her.

“You made it!” Mimiko said, not surprised at the least when I suddenly materialized in front of her. “These doors lead to Elder Blackhand’s private vaults. It’s protected by a powerful formation, and I have no hope of breaking into it on my own. Can you do it? Naturally, the majority of the rewards are yours to take. I only wish for the opportunity to take three items of my choice.”

“Deal.” I pressed my hands against the vault and stretched out my Kindling Architect senses. The formation Mimiko spoke of was a series of alarm wards, barriers, and what was probably a lock. They were a tangled web of magic that would take ordinary enchanter months to unwind if not years.

I cheated and simply folded all the protection wards into another spatial dimension, where they were no longer present to be triggered. Enchanters would probably call that cheating, but it accomplished in seconds what would have taken months.

I stepped back, half expecting Myrina to kick down the door. She loved kicking down doors.

She wasn’t here in person, but I was sure she was in spirit. I decided to try it and smashed my boot into the lacquered wood, shattering it to splinters. It had a rather satisfying crunch to it. Maybe that’s why Myrina liked kicking down doors so much.

“Go on and take your picks,” I waved to the two rows of shelves that lined a long and wide hall.

Mimiko looked like a kid in a candy store as she stared at every item on the shelf. She took them in with wide eyes and an even wider smile. At first, I figured we’d been here for hours, if not longer. I would have offered to let her pick from the collection after we stole it and made our escape, but she ended up making her selections surprisingly quickly.

“I will take the meditation mat, this cultivation manual, and the everlasting beauty pill,” Mimiko said.

“Sounds good to me. Anything else worth taking here before we leave?” I asked.

“Leave?” Mimiko blinked. “But there are nine more pagodas left to loot?”

I laughed, smiled, and pulled Mimiko into an embrace. To think I almost left before looting the other pagodas. She was a woman after my own heart.

Mimiko blushed, and returned the excited hug in the spirit with which it was given. Then, we parted and continued our looting adventure.

I took everything Mimiko didn’t want and poured it into Morgathor’s Satchel. There were a couple of cultivator storage rings loaded with goodies as well, and I slotted them on my fingers until I felt like an award-winning rapper. When I ran out of fingers, I found a gold chain and started threading extra storage rings through that.

After, Mimiko led me to the treasure rooms in every one of the other pagodas. We only made our way through with any decent speed thanks to shadow realm stride. The way Mimiko navigated us through the inside of each flying pagoda suggested she’d planned these routes already. I suspected she’d been thinking about how she was going to get her hands on these treasures from the moment I sent her back to the Black Beast Sect.

“Look! Thousand year ginseng! Heart-flower herb! Body-Strengthening Ointment!” Mimiko said, identifying the strange cultivator treasures one after another.

“I don’t know what those are, but I’ll take them. Into the bag!”

That process was repeated nine times. Mimiko took her cut, which was really a tiny fraction of everything we looted. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what I would do with most of this junk, but maybe they’d work well for bribing more cultivators. Or, at worst, I’d break it down for raw mana to fuel my magitech creations.

My only regret was that we weren’t able to raid the cultivator armories and supply depots. Those would be prime targets during an extended war. The Black Beast Sect cultivators were far more decentralized than my forces were though, and all of their diciples were expected to be self-sufficient with their own equipment and supplies. We took what we could, but that wasn’t enough to really show the enemies down. They were more like a feudal army in that respect, rather than the imperial-style one I commanded.

I also debated scuttling the pagodas. With Mimiko to guard me to whatever passed for an engine room, keeping these things in the sky, it would be all too easy to send them crashing to the ground.

I didn’t do that, though. Leaving the cultivators trapped on this world would create an issue for Mundwise that would last generations instead of years. If the cultivators had an escape route, they’d eventually use that escape route to leave. I settled for just taking a quick peek at the anti-gravity enchantments, which were remarkably well done. They had a strange organic feel to them, like they’d been assembled through trial and error rather than assembled logically from a modular design, which how I did my enchanting work.

It did mean these enchantments were incredibly efficient, though, so it was worth taking a copy for myself in case I ever wanted to build a spaceship. Thinking it over, a low-orbit satellite system over Crownhill might be nice for surveillance purposes. With my eyes, I wouldn’t even need a telescope, just a good vantage point.

“We make a good team,” I said, raising my hand to Mimiko for a high five.

“We truly do, Carter.” Mimiko must have misunderstood the gesture, because she raised her hand to meet mine, then intertwined her fingers with mine. It felt a lot more intimate than the high five I planned.

As she leaned in close to me, I realized that might have been the first time she’d spoken my name and addressed me directly. I was impressed. She’d come a long way from our first meeting.

“These past few weeks have been the greatest in my life, in more ways than one. I’d like to continue to serve you if you’ll allow it. I promise I can be of help, and I’m willing to serve in any capacity you wish. Any way at all...”

Her eyes met mine, and she pursed red lips like she was about to lean in for a kiss.

I froze, thinking for a moment.

Mimiko was certainly beautiful in all the traditional senses of the word. And she’d risen far in a short time. In the blink of an eye, she’d gone from way behind to nearly on par with Bridget and Sakura.

But at the end of the day, my every interaction with her had been one of the clearly defined benefits. Most of the time she was staying with me, I’d been giving her spirit stones to remain on her best behavior. I could certainly get along with her well enough, but what would happen if somebody came along and offered her a better deal?

With that thought running through my head, I reached up with my other hand and fondly ruffled her hair. The movement also brought her to a stop so her lips could come no closer to mine.

“I’d be happy to have you work for me, Mimiko. You’ve proven yourself capable and resourceful, and I can always use people like that. I’m certain you’ll make a good subordinate.” I stroked her head fondly.

An embarrassed flush soon blossomed across Mimiko’s cheeks. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes could no longer meet mine. For a moment, I thought she would be angry with me. But the expression faded an instant later, replaced by a tightly controlled mask of frozen features like the face of a beautiful statue.

“This humble disciple accepts your offer of sanctuary. With the treasures I hold, I don’t dare remain with the Black Beast Sect any further.” Her voice seemed colder now, and much more distant.

I nodded. “Then let’s ditch those robes of yours. I’m sure I have something that’ll fit you. And remember, you did good work for me, Mimiko, and those who work hard for me always get rewarded.”

“As the honored elder wishes...”

<Note>

Mimiko got friendzoned. Too bad.

I’m still undecided on a romance with her for the same reason Carter is right now. She’s very rewards-motivated. But maybe if she can prove she’s loyal in spite of temptation, she can join the harem. Otherwise not.

But this part did go on longer than I thought, and while the other girls got a decent amount of screen time, I think the lack of an ongoing romance arc makes it feel off for some people. Giving Mimiko a little more space might fix that. I'll need to rewrite / rethink things. A few tweaks to Mimiko's introduction scene to make her more worthy of being a love interest might be just what this half of the story needs.

I might even pull a fast one on you guys and change my mind and say the book 5 cover is actually Mimiko. I haven't actually given a description of the Goddess in Jade's real body, so I could always have another piece of art done of her later. Jade seems to be playing less of a role in this book than Mimiko so far, I'm thinking about it.