Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 69

The next few days were relatively uneventful. Sakura talked some sense into Patriarch Darkbinding, and between intimidation and the limitless pockets Sakura could wield thanks to consistent arena bets, things were going well for us.

Sakura was even able to pick up another shipment of goods from Shadefall and back home, refilling our stockpile completely. Now we had plenty of enchanted swords, mana bombs, some of the Shadefall Clan’s summoned specters, and even a few guns to sell.

Back home, Reluna must have realized we needed goods and packaged up a stack of talismans to sell. She’d gotten more productive than ever since I taught her how to use a printer. Sakura agreed to sell her creations, and we’d give her a cut of the profits later. She'd have a nice nest egg set aside for herself when she made her way back to the Dragon Lodge after her stay with us.

For my part, I was just happy to have a lot more toys. More stuff on the shelf meant more stuff for Doomblade to show off in the arena.

The early matches of the singles tournament saw Myrina and me hacking our way through weak foes.

Weak was a relative term, though, since everyone we fought was impressive enough to earn or be invited to the tournament. Myrina, Cyra, and I all took down our foes over the span of a minute or less, but anywhere else they would have been formidable fighters. I would have been lucky to count any of them among Crownhill’s warriors, though I was pretty sure Kerrie, Kyle, Frank, Rick, and a few others could give these guys a good fight once they had a few more levels under their belt.

After a half dozen fights against the noble sons and daughters of the great clans, Myrina truly established herself as a dark horse contender. Sakura had made a fortune betting on Myrina every match, but those odds were getting worse as Myrina continued to dominate, showing no sign of stopping even as her opponents grew stronger.

My odds, on the other hand, were growing steeper, and Sakura was raking in a tidy profit every time I’d won, despite my constant victories. The reason for that was simple. People were catching on to the fact that I was relying completely on impenetrable armor, a heavily enchanted sword, and the occasional disposable talisman or mana bomb. This time, even the announcer commented on it.

“As many of our eagle-eyed viewers have noted, Doomblade didn’t use a single skill in that fight again! Is he holding back on us? Or does all his power come from his sponsor’s fancy armor?”

The announcer left the question open for the crowd to interpret, but anyone with ears could tell they suspected the latter.

“If it wasn’t for that armor, somebody would have taken him down already. Maybe I need to stop by Doomblade’s Armory at some point...” someone in the crowd muttered.

“Just wait until he's against the real opponents. They’ll prove all the fancy stuff in the world doesn’t make up for skill and training!” another replied with confidence.

Within the confines of my helmet, I chuckled. I’d been preparing quite a few tricks for just this of crowd. I was here to prove that success in the arena was up for sale on the shelves of Doomblade’s Armory, for any with the coin to spend.

Unlike the early matches, where I could win by just bashing my enemies into the ground with my power-armored fist, my latest opponents were at a level where they required actual countermeasures.

For a while, I’d been able to depend against the incredible defenses of the enchanted plates on my armor. Then I had to depend on my armor and the beefy shield and sword I made. But from here on out, I was finally going to get to show the crowd what I could really do.

I’d long since worked out most of the kinks in my Doomblade Armor, and I’d grown used to using it like the second skin I’d always envisioned it to be. I still didn’t have the natural knack for it Myrina did, but if I came up against a guy like me in this suit while I was running around all soft and squishy, I sure as hell wouldn’t risk a close quarters swordfight.

I'd need a few tricks to beat a magic user like myself as Doomblade. And those tricks were exactly the sort of thing I’d been working on.

I strode into the arena, where the announcer was already introducing my opponent.

“In one corner, we have Honored Scholar Jubalin Westwind! He’s a young wizard of great renown who joined the Dragon Lodge after being orphaned at an early age, and by all accounts is on track to become a rather important elder. Winning this tournament would no doubt secure his future among the Dragon Lodge’s armed forces!”

Across from me stood a lanky young man in a wide-brimmed hat that looked a lot like Reluna’s, though his was cherry red where hers was more of a bluish gray.

“And in the other arena, we have Doomblade! Sponsored by Doomblade’s Armory, we’ve come to know him as a walking arsenal of quality magical equipment! While some might criticize his lack of skills, he makes up for it with brute power and deep-pocketed sponsors! Fans, you are in for a treat today. This is going to be the ultimate test between skill and money! Can the talented young Jubalin defeat Doomblade’s endless reserves of incredibly expensive gear and disposable items? We’re about to find out!”

More cheering ran through the crowd, mostly for Jubalin. It was rather funny how they were painting me. I’d entered the tournament through the open brackets, and yet now I was being made to look like the rich bastard smacking around a poor student who’d gotten in through the invitationals.

My image problems didn’t bother me too much, though. Myrina certainly seemed unbothered by her reputation as Feisty Redhead, and she even claimed she had a plan to fix everything, if she could be believed. I still had my doubts.

“Begin!” the referee shouted.

Jubalin began casting immediately. In the blink of an eye, he put up one of the most elaborate barrier spells I’d ever seen, and he wasn’t done. The outer shield shifted from a smooth bubble to something flatter and more ridged, like hundreds of honeycomb-like plates of magic. They grew thicker and thicker until they split down the center, forming two concentric barrier bubbles. Then the shields split again, forming a third barrier.

“Do your worst, Doomblade! Nothing can break through my barrier. This match is already mine. When I finish this spell, this fight is over!” Jubalin wore a cocky grin as he sat down and crossed his legs. He gave me a contemptuous sneer as he opened a book. He held it in one hand and an orange crystal in another. Mana gathered around him, making it clear he was casting something big.

It was probably a massive fireball that would engulf everything outside his shield. Either that or it was some sort of extremely powerful, unblockable soul attack that would bypass my armor. Whatever it was, I’d be in trouble if I let him finish casting it. Jubalin’s plan was clear. He thought his barrier spell would give him enough time to cast his finisher. My path was also clear. I had to break through his defenses before my time was up.

Luckily, I had several options for cracking Jubalin’s barrier. If I wasn’t holding back, I could use Shadowrealm Stride and walk right through it. I might even reach through a higher dimension to access the interior of the spell, then destroy it from the inside with a strategically placed mana bomb.

As Doomblade, though, I needed to rely on the weapons for sale in Doomblade’s Armory. The anti-magic swords were the most obvious solution. Any warrior with access to one would draw it here and try carving a hole through the barrier.

Those weren’t something I invented though, and for Jubalin to be so confident in his barrier, his spell had to account for such tools. I needed something more unconventional.

Thankfully, my defensive enchantments were pretty unconventional on their own. Or at least, the recent upgrades were.

I’d remade the outer defensive plates in such a way that they could absorb incoming spells if they were of the right aspect. And since I knew I’d be fighting a fire wizard, I’d put on the anti-fire mana plates. The barrier was also made of fire, which meant the plates would work just as well against that.

So, the first thing I did was walk right through his barrier. To the audience, it seemed as though I lowered my shoulder against the rippling crimson shield of fire mana and forced my way right through it. While what I did boiled down to exactly that, there was a complex interplay of mana occurring to make it happen. Fire mana pressed against me. My armor reinforced itself with that same mana and shoved back, then the cycle repeated with increasing amounts of mana flow until I’d passed all the way through the shield.

The process admittedly caused a little damage to my armor, so incredibly thick barriers like those protecting entire cities or powered by many magic users could still stop this strategy. But against a single barrier cast by someone my own level, my armor was more than sufficient. Hopefully, the audience would recognize the incredible feat of magical engineering for what it was.

“Did you see that, fans? Doomblade is really showing off that overbearingly expensive armor he’s wearing! If there was any doubt Doomblade’s Armory is the store for people who want to crush their enemies with the weight of their coin purse, let there be no more now! Throw your thousands of hours of magical training in the garbage, because shield spells are obsolete!” the announcer said.

There was a chorus of yells from the crowd, most unhappy with my recent feat. No doubt there were plenty of wizards in the crowd who were quite proud of their shield spells and were unhappy to learn about a suit of armor that could shoulder right through them. Alas, it seemed the hours of design and engineering that went into this armor would go unappreciated.

My opponent, Jubalin, the fire wizard, cracked his eyes open as I pierced his outer barrier. When I started pawing at his second letter of defense, he snapped the book he was holding shut and scrambled to reinforce the shield. The crystal he was holding in his other hand had been glowing brighter by the moment, but reinforcing his shield had slowed the other spell he was casting to a crawl.

“That thing you’re wearing might work against a dumb shield, but how about this?” Jubalin twirled his fingers, and the majority of his second layer of defenses dissolved. All the lost energy soon formed a barrier directly in front of me. When I moved left or right, the spell quickly oriented to block me.

If I were as fast as Myrina, it might be possible to slip past the barrier. But Doomblade didn’t work like that. I needed a more brutish solution.

So, I used the storage compartment built into my armor to withdraw three massive swords. They were the largest anti-magic enchanted swords we sold in Doomblade’s Armory, and one after another, I shoved them into the barrier before me.

Normal swords would have glanced off the barrier, but these swords let melee combatants combat magic users, particularly things like the Shadefall Clan’s phantom summons.

They would work just as well against magical barriers like this one, though. The anti-magic properties of the sword let the blades slip through through the barrier. It wasn’t easy, and shoving them through felt like piercing metal plates. But the full might of my power armor and a good shove let me slam them through one after another.

The effect of the swords was immediate. The barrier wavered and began losing integrity, leaving only the inner barrier active. By now, Jubalin was growing frantic. Both his eyes were wide, and he shot a glance to the brightly glowing crystal that would soon empower his match-deciding spell.

Before he could reinforce his barrier again, I leveraged the damage I'd done with several mana bombs and one of Reluna's talismans meant to destabilize enemy spells. To Jubalin's growing terror, his defenses started crumbling.

Left with only his inner shield, he pulled on the crystal he was using to empower his finishing spell and started using it for more immediate offensive action.

“Conflagration!” he shouted, waving his hand at me like he was trying to splash me with water.

Bright orange sparks flew from the crystal to his hand, and then to the ground at my feet. They passed harmlessly through Jubalin’s inner barrier, then ignited into a tremendous inferno.

I ignored the entire process, letting the anti-fire mana properties of my armor shrug off the damage as I started repeating my feat with the anti-magic swords, mana bombs, and a fresh talisman on the inner barrier.

Jubalin was truly frantic now, and his crystal dimmed a notch as he used its power to reinforce his inner barrier. The walls were much thicker now, like a waterfall of mana instead of a stable bubble. I hadn’t thought it’d be possible for a single magic user to throw up something like this, and I realized I’d have to revise my earlier opinions about how much my armor could endure. There were always exceptionally talented people out there, and it seemed like Jubalin could throw up a barrier on his own that was comparable to what I’d expect from a group of wizards or from city defenses.

The inner barrier was too strong to force my way through, and it healed as quickly as I could damage it with my anti-magic swords and other tools. Jubalin was constantly taxing my armor and blinding me by engulfing me in a never-ending wall of fire.

I could grunt and strain with my weapons and armor, slowly draining him of mana and winning the match by attrition. But that wouldn’t be good for showing off what all the new gear from Doomblade’s Armory could do. So instead, I took three anti-magic swords and rammed them close together to form a triangle. Another talisman from Reluna helped open up a hole in the barrier the size of my fist. Then, I waited for Jubalin to cast another fire spell at me and tossed in an entire handful of Mega Mana Bombs.

They all detonated at once, disrupting Jubalin’s spell as neutral mana exploded in his face. Jubalin coughed blood thanks to the sudden backlash of having his spell broken mid-cast. His concentration flickered for just a moment, and that was enough for me to completely shatter his barrier spell by using my anti-magic swords like pry bars.

“No!” Jubalin cried out in anger. He scrambled to stand, but I knocked him back on his ass with a kick.

“Surrender. It’s over.”

“It’s not over. I can’t lose here! I’ve beaten too many rich assholes like you to give up now!” Jubalin glanced at the crystal in his hand. While the energy in it had dimmed considerably, it clearly had more to give.

I saw the idea in my opponent’s eyes and knew what he planned.

“That’s a bad idea. That crystal could kill you or break the barrier protecting the audience.” I tried to talk sense into Jubalin, but his eyes were those of a madman.

He poured fire mana into the crystal, leaving himself defenseless. On a battlefield, I would have sliced him in two to stop him, but this was an arena fight. I had no idea how to stop this foolhardy young man from making the biggest mistake of his life without killing him.

“Give me that!” I demanded. I shoved my sword in the dirt and reached for the crystal.

“No!” he scrambled in the dirt to keep it away from me, still channeling mana all the while. I snatched his ankle, dragged him back toward me, and finally wrestled the crystal away from him. Doing so broke a few fingers, but that was a small price to pay to stop an explosion that would release this much fire mana. I would be alright thanks to my armor, but if this thing detonated, Jubalin would surely die.

“Are there any bomb squads here? I need somebody to diffuse this thing.” I yelled to the crowd as I held up the crystal. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how to bleed off the fire mana. I could have done it in a blink if I wasn't in disguise.

Looking closer, this thing had way more mana in it than Jubalin could have snuck in during a match. He had to have been filling this crystal with mana for months if not years. I was surprised the tournament staff let him bring it into the arena. This thing had even more mana in it than the monster cores in my power armor.

“Give it back!” Jubalin jumped for his crystal, catching me off guard.

His broken fingers slapped the crystal, knocking it from my hands and to the ground. There, he wrapped himself around the crystal to stop me from taking it back.

This suicidal idiot!

That thing was basically a live bomb, and it was nowhere near as stable as my Mana Bombs. Those wound mana around a core in a delicate but stable pattern that only triggered when I wanted it to. That crystal could explode or one minute or one hour, there was no telling. It was just an explosive with no safety or means to control the detonation.

I gave Jubalin another kick to force him to uncurl and drop the crystal.

“Oh, look at that! Seems like Doomblade isn’t shy about kicking a man while he’s down! Look at him thrash poor Jubalin,” the announcer said with more than a little disapproval.

The crowd started booing me.

“I’m saving his life! Referee, that thing is going to explode!” I waved to the referee, who glanced at me, then at his timepiece. He shrugged and waved me to continue.

I cursed again. Apparently, there were no enchanters among the tournament organizers. Or, if there were, they considered this part of the show.

So I picked Jubalin up and tossed him in the air. I two-handed my sword and gave him a smack. That finally forced him to release his grip on the crystal. He went soaring toward the edge of the arena, and the crystal went flying far above him.

I raced after Jubalin, catching him just as he was about to crash head-first into the side of the arena. In his already weakened state, he’d probably snap his neck. But by the time I caught him, I realized I should have gone after the crystal instead.

The brightly glowing point of light sailed over the walls protecting the arena and brushed against the mana barrier protecting the audience. It must have cracked upon impact, because the moment it struck, the crystal shattered and started spewing fire mana.

Kaboom!

Fire filled the air, engulfing the nearby shields and coating them in flame. Thin cracks ran through the barrier, taking it from sturdy to the edge of breaking in the blink of an eye. As I watched, chips of mana fell away like broken glass, dissolving as they fell and letting thick globs of fire mana seep through onto the crowd’s side of the arena.

“Damn it!” I cursed again as I rocketed toward the heart of the explosion. It wasn’t a proper detonation, and the mana didn’t quite release explosively. If it had, it could have taken out a good chunk of the crowd. Instead, the crystal stuck to the shattered remains of the barrier and sprayed fire mana acted like it was throwing thick and sticky napalm in all directions. It would burn whatever was nearby and keep burning until it was ash. Nobody below C-Grade would survive such a thing.

There was a flash of silver and steel in the crowd, likely powerful people moving to protect the crowd behind them. But the crystal was still on my side of the rapidly fracturing barrier, and only I could stop that.

I squatted low, then jumped high to heave myself over the wall and grab the crystal on the other side of the barrier. The fire scorched my gauntlets, and the sheer quantity of fire mana was enough to break down even the specialized fire-resistant plates lining the gauntlet. I was lucky my real hand was a solid foot of steel away from the inferno otherwise I would have suffered serious burns. The temperature control system in my suit was rapidly becoming overtaxed as cooling fluid boiled off through tears and cracks.

I grabbed the crystal, spun, turned, and hurled it back into the center of the arena. The crystal continued spewing fire in all directions, and I raced back to Jubalin. He was well and truly unconscious now and helpless before the fountain of fire mana he’d unleashed. I turned my back to the slow-motion explosion and shielded him.

The crystal continued burbling fire mana for nearly a minute. By then, B-Grades had already mended the shield and evacuated the audience, and I could see the arena medics were busy dealing with audience injuries. I dumped Jubalin near their tent. They could get to his broken fingers after they fixed up all the people he’d nearly killed with his irresponsible antics. Strangely, he had no burns, which likely indicated some innate resistance to fire mana. Maybe a bloodline or unique title.

“I just received word from administration, and Doomblade has been declared the winner of this match! Now, I know what you’re thinking, but our experts say the explosion that nearly took out a chunk of the crowd was not Doomblade’s doing.”

There were more boos from the crowd as the announcer declared my victory. I was beginning to think this announcer had a grudge against me.

“You’re welcome,” I waved to the crowd with my heavily singed gauntlet. It didn’t quite move correctly, which meant it wasn’t just the replaceable outer plates that had taken damage. I’d need to stay up late rebuilding it. The announcer continued a moment later.

“But let’s hear it for the hero of the hour who rushed in to protect the crowd without a moment’s hesitation! Competitor Cyra Samhain!”

There was a wave of cheers as a familiar figure stood awkwardly at the front of the crowd, exactly where the explosion had been. She wore a shield that looked like it was in even worse shape than my gauntlet, and parts of her hair had been singed.

“Cyra! Cyra!” the crowd cheered. Face blushing, she made a hasty escape.

I chuckled. If I couldn’t get the credit, at least she would.

As luck would have it, the place she’d gone to escape attention ended up being the same path I was taking out of the arena. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since this was one of the few competitor-only areas. She turned her head up as I walked past.

“That was a noble thing you did. You didn’t have to save Jubalin. He’s quite well-liked in some circles. He is young and passionate, and though he entered Mucaria an orphan, his talent has won him a lot of friends,” Cyra said.

“And it was noble of you to stand before the crowd. I saw a lot of D-Grades and E-Grades there. Without you to protect them, there wouldn’t have been enough for the medics to heal,” I replied.

“I did what many others should have.” Her posture shifted, and she seemed a little warmer to me than the last time I’d seen her. But nowhere near the warmth I remembered. I sensed my moment and took it.

“I can’t help but notice a few of your clanswoman who’ve been placed out of the tournament have been seen arm and arm with their conquerors. I’ve even seen a few of them getting dinner at a lovely spot I know. We’ll face one another in the arena soon. What do you say to a night out with me after the fight?”

Cyra tilted her chin up. “Nice try, but I told you already. My heart belongs to another.”

“Then why isn’t he here with you?” I demanded.

“I... that’s my fault,” Cyra admitted. Then her eyes grew fierce. “It’s also none of your business. We’ll face one another in the quarter-finals. Chatting here doesn’t mean I’ll pull my punches on you there.”

I chuckled, then rested my burned gauntlet on Cyra’s shoulder for a moment. “When I win, you’ll be eager to see more of me. I’m sure of it.”


<Note>
Myrina intentionally picks fights and insults people left and right, and somehow Carter is still the badder guy completely by accident. Such is life.