Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 64

“You want us to... what?” Larin asked, eyebrows stitched together.

We were back in her room, but we weren’t alone this time. We’d knocked on the nearby doors, gathering most of Team Seraphim together for one last team meeting. We were missing one member, but the others there were semi-present. Most were either hungover or drunk, but that was another reason I’d brought the biscuits.

“Be mascots, essentially. You will help represent a local store that sells enchanted weapons and equipment. Most of our customers are people from major clans looking to clear high-level dungeons or compete in things like the upcoming tournament, but who doesn’t like a few self-made adventurers? Especially crowd favorites like you lovely ladies.”

“We’re not crowd favorites anymore. Not after that humiliating defeat...” Larin grumbled.

I chuckled. “You’d be surprised. What do you say? I’ll pay you a thousand contribution points for a week’s work. And I’ll throw in some more fancy armor and weapons, too.”

“A thousand?” Larin’s eyes widened.

“Each.” I smiled. Eyes lit up around the room. There were two types of adventurers, as best as I could tell. Those that were rich beyond compare and those that were on the verge of bankruptcy at any moment. This group seemed the latter sort, despite their good equipment. They were probably from fairly well-off families, but if they were in their families good graces they'd stick closer to home instead of roaming Glacia in search of adventure.

In short, they were broke, and they’d probably lost everything when they were captured by Tharandul. The only reason they had good weapons and armor for the tournament was thanks to the gifts the Dragon Lodge gave them to help ease any lingering resentment they might feel.

“We need to talk privately to discuss the job.”

I nodded, left, and let them discuss. And sober one another up while they were at it. A knock on the door came a few minutes later, and Larin smiled.

“While being glorified mannequins isn’t exactly our most glamorous job, we’ll take it.”

Larin and I shook hands, and soon, I shook hands with the rest of Team Seraphim.

"Welcome aboard." I grinned.

"I have to ask, can you really get our gear in full fighting shape? I feel like if that could be done, the Dragon Lodge would have done it already, unless they intentionally wanted to sell us half-working armor." Larin asked.

"Tell you what, lets hammer out a contract. By the time we're done, you'll know I'm a man of my word. How's that?"

After that, they signed what most people back on Earth would call a modeling contract. They already had their armor sets, but I did some touch-up work on all of them, just as promised. I wanted their armor battle-worn but sturdy, and that meant fixing the structural issues. When I was done and they'd all signed on, they dressed up with me and struck a few heroic poses.

“What is that thing?” Larin asked, gesturing to my cell phone.

“It's like one of those jade crystal tablets people use for recording things. Personally, I like this better. It’s higher resolution and can store a lot more.” I pocketed the cell phone.

“Sounds fancy. Is this really all you needed from us today?” Larin asked.

I nodded. “For now. I have to rework some branding and maybe run a few things by Sakura. You can relax for now, but I’d like to see you at a shop called Doomblade’s Armory tomorrow at dawn.”

"Doomblade?" Larin frowned.

"That's right!" I nodded, then slipped out the door before they could ask too many more questions on that topic.

***

After making arrangements with Team Seraphim, I returned home and got to work. Turning my images into posters was actually a lot easier than I thought it was. Somebody with a painting job could put up a wall-sized photorealistic mural in just a few hours if given a good reference image.

I provided several recording crystals depicting the images I wanted to use. I also cleared things with Sakura in her office.

“Hey Sakura, I’m going to put up some new wall decorations in the shop, okay?”

“Huh?” Sakura turned bleary eyes toward me. She’d been staring hard at a contract as thick as a book sitting in front of her, and clearly, she’d been immersed in its contents.

“Remember what you said about brand image and buying that fancy golem? Well, I was listening. I’ll surprise you in the morning!”

“Huh?” Sakura asked again, blinking for a moment before passing out forehead-to-desk in her office. I’d seen the pose more than once back when I worked for her before the integration.

I rummaged around in Morgathor’s satchel for my camping supplies and found a pillow and a blanket. She didn’t wake up when I swapped the pile of papers for a pillow and threw a blanket over her, so she must have really been working hard. Hopefully, my little scheme would remove some of her burden. I could deflate the angry mob, though dealing with whoever had incited it would take more than this.

I stayed up most of the night making more products with Gobgob to help keep the shelves stocked. Sakura was running low on inventory, but for now, I had enough junk in my various bags of holding that I could make up for what we lacked, as long as Gobgob was willing to help. She and I touched them up to an acceptable level of quality. I still had dozens of cultivator rings I had yet to go through, and those seemed to fetch a higher price than I thought, thanks to the exotic materials used in them.

***

Morning came, and I was surprised to find Team Seraphim gathered at the front door before the angry mob I’d been waiting for had the chance to regather. That was for the best though. The ladies would do the best job dispersing it if it looked like they'd been working for hours by the time the protestors arrived.

“Welcome, all of you! And thank you for coming dressed for battle. There’s nothing to fight, but people will like it. Answer questions about your experience with the armor. I’ve got a few demonstration ideas we could run through too.”

I waved them through, and Larin blinked at a nearby wall.

“Is that a huge mural of me?” Larin asked.

“It sure is. He did that yesterdady evening. Actually the painter left just an hour ago. I had him here all night doing the billboard out back.”

“Wait a moment. Are those the people we fought in the arena? Doomblade and Feisty Redhead?” Larin asked, suddenly frowning. They were both staring at another image of Myrina and me in armor. At her insistence, we’d taken a selfie together. It turned out to be unexpectedly useful when getting these advertisements done.

“Yeah. They also work for us. I hope that’s not a problem?” I glanced over my shoulder at the five women innocently.

Larin and the others glanced at one another, clearly silently affirming a decision they'd come to in my absence.

“It’s... no. We’re professionals. Besides, it was just an arena match. Hell, maybe we can even get some sparring in with those guys. Their armor was from here?”

I nodded. “Custom made. And unlike yours, their armor was in fully working condition.”

Larin glanced down at her Mark One armor. She was already wearing everything except the helmet. Thanks to my repairs, she was moving better in it than she had in the arena.

“You don’t say...” She and the others seemed a little happier at that news.

With Team Seraphim on board and successfully portrayed as a counterbalance to Doomblade and Feisty Redhead, my work was mostly done. All that was left to do was hope things played out the way I envisioned.

I was giving Team Seraphim the tour when Sakura showed up. She wandered out of her office, still in her wrinkled clothes from the previous night. She rapidly blinked the weariness from her eyes when she saw me walking with five lovely ladies, and she approached with intense curiosity. Perhaps a bit too intense, considering I currently had five very attractive adventurers following me around.

“Sakura! This is the idea I told you about. I figured I’d try my hand at marketing.”

Sakura grimaced, and for a moment I expected her to chase Team Seraphim off with her club. But maybe she was too tired for that. Instead, she turned to me and said, “Carter, I’m not sure this is such a great idea...”

“Hi, I’m Larin. Leader of Team Seraphim.” Larin held out a hand for Sakura to shake.

Sakura froze momentarily, and I watched as her eyes widened and she switched gears. She reached out and shook Larin’s hand, gently at first, then increasingly firm as the seconds wore on.

“T-team Seraphim, you said? The... er... famous one?”

Larin laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. Some people say we were a fan favorite, but a bad early loss knocked us out of the team matches before the real fighting began...”

Sakura was holding Larin’s hand with both of hers now, and she shook the adventuer’s arm up and down with excitement.

“Oh, I’ve heard lots of... things... about you! It’ll be great to have you with us.” Sakura smiled wide, spending just long enough to glance over her shoulder and mouth a silent thank you.

I was glad Sakura liked the gift. I had been worried for a while, but thankfully Sakura's schedule was simply too busy right now for her to be properly jealous.

My next arena match with Myrina was coming up, and I needed to be there. So I left the rest of the job to Sakura and then went to the back room.

Myrina appeared looking completely exhausted.

“Long night?” I asked.

“Yeah...” Myrina yawned. “Working on super important schemes is hard work.”

“You too?” I chuckled.

"Yep. Tracking some bad guys down and giving them a stern talking to." Myrina smalled a fist into her palm, indicating exactly how she'd convinced people to start talking. Since the guards weren't breaking down the door, I figured it couldn't have been too bad.

"Anyway, what I've been up to was..." I explained what I’d been doing for the shop and how I figured bringing Team Seraphim onto our side would boost public opinion of Doomblade’s Armory. And we could even keep playing the bad guys like Myrina wanted.

***

Sakura finished up with Team Seraphim and then left with us for the arena. We parted ways outside the gate.

“Don’t be shy and bet everything!” Myrina gave Sakura a big thumbs up. Both she and I were already wearing our armor, but our association with Sakura in these disguises wasn’t secret.

“...Just don’t make me regret this, you two. We’re putting everything on the line,” Sakura said, nodding to us both.

We soon parted ways as Sakura went to the betting stands, and Myrina and I went to the waiting area for competitors.

Ivanar was waiting for us, and Agatha showed up shortly. We waited together until our match was about to start, but Dannar Sharpclaw, our archer and assassin, never showed up.

“It’s not like him to be late...” Ivanar muttered.

“Most teams kick off anyone who won’t shop up on time...” Agantha mumbled. “I-it’s the one requirement more important than anything else.”

“Something must have happened. He wouldn't abandon us,” Ivanar said with certainty.

I shrugged, which was a weighty thing in my full suit of Doomblade armor. “We’ll just have to win without him. You ready for that, Herald of Overwhelming Annihilation?”

I turned to Myrina, intentionally using one of her preferred pseudonyms. She brightened, but the moment was ruined a moment later when the referee called us.

“Team Feisty Redhead, you’re up next. If your extra fighter hasn’t shown up by now, you’ll have to go without him.” The referee waved us forward, and we marched onto the field.

And so we walked onto the field, one man down.

“I’ll just have to do the extra damage myself,” Myrina flexed her metal-clad limbs, ready for battle.

If I’d known we were going to be down our archer, I would have given her a projectile weapon of some sort. I couldn’t use spells without blowing my disguise, so if we ran into flying enemies, we’d be completely reliant on whatever offensive spells Agatha had at her disposal.

Fortunately, we weren’t unlucky, and the enemy team standing across from us in the arena was a group of mercenaries. All five of them were magic swordsman of one sort or another. I couldn’t keep track of the million variations of spellblades there were out there, but I’d met plenty on Mucaria. Most warriors who came here had aspirations of shifting their class into some kind of spellblade, after all. This batch of five was an example of some who’d succeeded with their class evolution somewhere around C-Grade.

Spellblade Mercenary (Level 187)

The others were of a similar level to their leader, though all were a bit lower. It was an impressive level for anyone not associated with a major faction. But at a glance, I could tell why no great clan had taken these guys in.

The leader of the spellblades was a lean man with a wicked smile. He had an unscrupulous glare behind his eyes that was barely restrained by a facade of civility. Anyone with moderately high charisma would have picked up on the bad vibes he was putting off, though without clear evidence the guards probably couldn’t arrest him for anything.

Still, I’d met plenty of his type before. He might have called himself a mercenary, but I was pretty sure he’d drop the act and go back to calling himself a bandit when he was outside a city.

“Well, well, well... if it isn’t the famous Feisty Redhead. Gotta say I’ve been looking forward to putting a brat like you in your place. What do you say, Feisty Redhead? When me and the boys win, what do you say we take that fancy armor of yours with us?”

He eyed Myrina’s armor with the look of someone who’d robbed pretty suits of armor off other warriors plenty of times before. I doubted most of them were living by the time he was done with them.

“I am not Feisty Redhead!” Myrina growled. She whirled on us. “That’s it, I’ll show these guys! You all stay back.”

“You want to take them on alone?” Ivanar asked incredulously.

Myrina cracked her knuckles.

Ivanar and Agatha looked doubtful, but I crossed my arms and trusted in Myrina. She was up against five people, all at a similar level to herself. But if she thought she could beat them, I believed her. Besides, it would play well with our secondary objective.

My keen eyes spotted the betting area where I saw odds on display. Given that most of the arena hated us and we were down a party member, the odds were two to one against us. Upon hearing that Myrina wanted to face all five of our opponents alone, our odds swiftly shifted all the way to five to one against us.

No doubt Sakura was getting quite a deal right now.

“Begin!” the referee shouted.

Ivanar looked like he wanted to rush in to help Myrina, but I held out a hand to stop him. He anxiously wrung his hands around the haft of his axe as he watched the fight.

“One against five? Girly, you’re just too cocky. Somebody’s got to teach you a lesson!” the leader of the Spellblade mercenaries rushed Myrina.

Myrina reached for her back and drew her sword for the first time since she’d entered the arena. Until now, she’d simply punched people or made do with makeshift weapons. Now she had a sword in her hands.

The sword she wielded was one of my creations. It was based on the general-purpose robust damage dealers for sale in Doomblade’s Armory but with a finer touch applied to them. It did nothing fancy. No geysers of flame or magical slashes. It was just a very good sword, and Myrina hadn’t parted ways from it since I gave it to her.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but a moment of silence seemed to pass over the arena as she drew her weapon. To onlookers, the blade was deceptively simple, with few adornments besides a row of ancient symbols that caught the light with a dull, white glow. I had chosen several symbols Reluna and I had found instantly drew our attention. These were big, important words that inscribed important names or ideas, though we had no idea what they were.

Others found their eyes drawn to the symbols as well, just as our gazes were. The thousands of microscopic enchantments lining the rest of the blade enhanced the sense of awe those symbols exuded and also provided much-needed structural reinforcement and supernatural sharpness.

The sword's aura of majesty wasn’t enough to stop experienced fighters in their tracks, and the five Spellblade mercenaries were still coming for Myrina. She held her weapon out to the side in an awkward and open guard that seemed impossibly foolish.

The lead mercenary seemed to sense his instincts flaring. Though his eyes told him Myrina was wide open, his gut was telling him something else. Between the two, he listened to his gut, which was probably why he’d survived long enough as a bandit to reach C-Grade.

“Fan out! Surround her!” the lead mercenary called to his companions. Their team did so, spreading out around Myrina so they could all attack at once. It didn’t look like she planned to defend herself at all.

Heedless of the threat, Myrina turned away from her opponents and threw me a glance. Beneath her helmet, I was certain she was either winking or smiling. Maybe both.

“Now!” the enemy team leader shouted, sensing the obvious openings. Myrina was breaking every rule there was in a fight and doing things not even the least trained amateur would dare to do in the arena.

All at once, they charged. Five swords from all directions lunged and slashed and stabbed. And somehow, all five of them missed.

Weapons passed mere millimeters from Myrina’s cheek, thigh, waist, arm, and throat. But not a single one of them so much as touched her armor.

There was another moment of silence. Neither the crowd nor the enemy team could figure out what had gone wrong.

Then Myrina moved. Her foot hooked someone’s ankle. Her free hand grabbed a collar. And her sword swung wide at the empty air.

She twisted her weight, pivoting in the same motion that she tripped one of her opponents, then used the man she’d grabbed by the collar as a shield. In the same instant, the empty air she’d been swinging for was filled with a retaliating foe who brought his weapon to bear by instinct... only to find Myrina had known where and how he’d attack before he knew himself.

By the time he thought to strike, she'd already countered him. She swept his weapon to the side, redirecting it into his companion’s shoulder.

“Gah!” one mercenary helped in pain. Myrina shoved her sword forward more, skewering the foot of an enemy mercenary while catching his weapon in the hand guard of her sword. She finally finished her twisting motion, kicking another man in the gut while throwing the one she was using as a shield to cover herself to drive another back.

The sword she’d caught in her guard came loose, and she flicked it in the air where it spun end over end, landing point-down in the belly of the man Myrina had kicked to the ground moments ago.

The five-on-one battle became four-on-one. They struggled to regroup and attack her all at once, but she dodged them again. She could have shrugged off their blows on her power armor, but perhaps that would have made things too easy on her. Instead, she dodged two of them again. Another she punched in the gut with the full strength of her power armor. The blow caved in the steel chest plate he was wearing and knocked the wind right out of him.

For the final assailant, she swung her sword at him, missing him by a hair. Or at least, it looked like she missed until his helmet popped off after she neatly severed the chinstrap. With impossible dexterity, she tapped the rim of the helmet. She sent it tumbling off the mercenary’s head, where it landed in Myrina’s outstretched hand.

Myrina made a show of examining the make of the helmet that, a moment ago, had rested on the head of the enemy team’s leader.

“I would consider taking your armor from you... if it wasn’t trash.” Myrina dropped the helmet and stomped on it with a metal boot. Steel groaned and crumpled before deforming into a metal puck. She gave it a kick and sent it flying for an ankle, tripping one mercenary rushing in her direction. He fell on his face at her feet.

Fighting Myrina was always a strange experience. Battles with her never went to plan, which was why she got away with breaking all the rules. She had a showy style that relied on overwhelming natural talent so much that the more skilled her opponents were, the easier it was to make them look like buffoons.

These five mercenaries were no slouches, but Myrina had them tripping over one another and scrambling to their feet more times than they were swinging their sword at her. To onlookers, it appeared they swung and swung and hit nothing again and again.

Amateur swordfighters would be scratching their heads, thinking this was a match of bumbling idiots. Myrina was using no form or technique, and there were more openings in her stance and form than I could count. And yet, somehow, none of it mattered. Every opening her enemies exploited turned out to be a trap carefully engineered to tempt her opponent into a mistake.

She hadn’t been like this when we fought our wedding duel, but that hadn't exactly been a normal match. Plus, she’d been fighting as much as I had since then. Her style had evolved as mine had, and now it felt like madness incarnate. It was like an entire orchestra practicing different songs and filling the stadium with chaos. Yet, somehow, I knew there was a tune I could follow if only my ears were sharp enough to catch it. Perhaps a master swordsman could divine a method to this madness, but to me, and presumably, most in the crowd, it was impossible to follow.

“And the winner is... Team Feisty Redhead!” the referee declared. The remaining spellblade mercenaries were either bleeding in the arena sands, knocked unconscious, or too humiliated to gather the will to climb back to their feet.

I clapped my hands together slowly, and to my surprise, many in the crowd joined me.

“Feisty Redhead! Feisty Redhead!” the crowd cheered.

Myrina stalked back to me with slumped shoulders, despite the cheering.

“Let’s go home...”

<Note>
Sakura doesn't have time to be jealous right now. One day though, many years from now, she'll wake Carter up in the middle of the night after having a nightmare that Team Seraphim tried to steal her man.