Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 62

The next few days saw me alternating between working in the shop, working on my armor, and competing in the team bouts in the tournament. Ivanar had chosen our extras well, and I was pretty sure they could have made it through the team matches even without Myrina and me.

With Myrina and me joining them, the team matches were over before they began. Myrina kept trying to do something impressive so the crowd would come up with a new nickname for her, but the fights ended so fast she could hardly get more than a few good hits in. I had a tough time engaging fast enough to gather data that would help me improve my armor.

Thankfully, being part of a team came with the advantage of regular meetings to spar and practice. That, at least, gave me a few good fights against most types of fighters to make sure my armor was in working condition for the beginning of the singles matches.

Myrina and I were careful about our identities, so we didn’t spend any time outside our armor. Unfortunately, that meant we couldn’t get to know Ivanar, Agatha, and Dannar all that well outside of occasional practice bouts. Not that there was much to know when we were winning so quickly every day.

“If we can make it through today, we'll place in the main tournament's singles brackets for sure!” Dannar, our team’s archer, grinned as we met up again at the arena.

Our match after that was tougher than before. Most of the D-Grades had already been knocked out of the tournament, even if they were shielded by a powerful team. What few remained could punch well above their weight class, just as Myrina and I had once upon a time.

“Look sharp. These might not be pushovers,” Ivanar warned us. He was suddenly looking serious, which made me suspect we were about to get our first real fight of the tournament.

“A full team of C-Grades?” Dannar nodded appreciatively. He swapped out his usual quiver for something with a bit more magic on it. He’d been taking down D-Grades nearly as fast as Myrina with nothing but regular arrows. I was eager to see what he could do with magical ones.

Besides Kerrie, there weren’t really any archery specialists back home. She was still making do with regular arrows, but she was probably ready for something with a little more punch behind them.

"Not just any C-Grades. These ones are tough. I'd hoped not to run into this group until after we qualified for the main tournament There's no losers bracket for the team event, so if we lose, we're out..." Ivanar's expression was grim, but determined.

A moment later, the announcer called out each of our names, much to Myrina’s annoyance.

“I’m not Feisty Redhead! I’m the Unstoppable Reaper of Stylish Doom!” Myrina shouted in futility, fist raised and foot stamping into the arena sand.

Just like all the other times, the crowd didn’t notice, and the announcer continued unbothered.

“And on the left, we have a crowd favorite! The amazing band of all-star adventurers who’ve been making waves all across Glacia! After they were captured by a professor gone rogue, this band of fearsome ladies was thought dead. But not anymore! The System has seen fit to return them to us so they might continue their righteous crusade against the forces of evil!”

Across from us was a band of astonishingly beautiful women. I thought I vaguely recognized them, now that I was looking at the group. These five had all been prisoners in Tharandul the Healer’s vivisection experiments.

They’d been in pretty bad shape the last time I saw them, and truthfully, I hadn’t even been able to tell if most of Tharandul’s prisoners were male or female. I'd been exhausted following my sudden outbreak of full-body cancer to shake hands or take names.

Now, the group of five was very obviously female, and each of them was a beauty. I was glad to see they’d healed up well. The last time I saw them, they'd been caged and subjected to who knew what kind of grim experiment. Now, you could hardly tell they’d ever been hurt at all. That spoke of either exceptional constitutions, powerful healing items, or a highly skilled group of medical professionals. Given how the crowd reacted, it was a combination of all three.

The announcer picked up again after a brief pause. “Many adventuring bands retire after a close miss like the ones Team Seraphim experienced. Not these girls! The latest news is they are eager to prove that they’ve still got it. Let’s hear it for the ladies of Team Seraphim!”

One of the group of women blew a kiss at the audience, and the crowd went wild. Adoring screams rang down around the arena from all sides. I looked around us and realized for the first time since we started fighting, the arena was completely full.

But one thing drew my attention back to our opponents. And that was their armor. The two fighters in the front were dressed in Mark One power armor. Meanwhile, the three in the back were all wearing my older-generation armor.

I’d known this was a possibility ever since I started selling power armor. I’d heard more than once that it was being used in the arena, but I hadn’t expected to come face-to-face with my own handiwork so soon.

Praises rang down from the crowd overhead.

“Melaria, I love you!” a rabid fan screamed.

“Natasha, kick these losers to the curb!” another yelled.

“Larin, I will pay ten thousand contribution points for your socks after the match!” shouted a third.

I looked over our opponents and was surprised to see most of them were in very high C-Grade, somewhere between 170 and 190 for most of them. As a spellcaster, I’d be confident on taking them all on. Less so as a melee combatant. Having Myrina with me evened the odds, though. I turned to her to see what she thought.

Myrina, for once, was silent. She was tense all over, and her fingers twitched with eager delight.

“Myrina, are you alright?” I asked over the radio.

“This is perfect! Nothing establishes a villainous persona better than being the underdog that suddenly crushes a few fan favorites. Don’t hold back!” Myrina giggled maliciously.

“Begin!” shouted the referee, and soon the battle was joined.

Dannar loosed several arrows in quick succession. I read the enchantments on them as they flew past me. Two would create localized explosions. The third would make a smoke cloud. He planned to cut the enemy party in two so we could engage one side and overwhelm them quickly.

It was a good strategy overall, but our enemies were experienced fighters. Their group’s frontline combatants responded instantly. One held up a shield, and its reach expanded with a golden glow that surrounded her comrades, forming an energy shield not unlike what I’d seen many spellcasters create, only this one was far stronger. The explosive arrows bounced off the shield before they could even detonate as the magic of the shield siphoned away their power.

“Crap.” Dannar cursed.

“I’ll disable that,” Agatha said, hoisting her staff aloft and channeling mana through it. A beam of bright purple light struck the shield-wielding adventurer, and the energy barrier began fracturing starting with the point of impact.

Ivanar took that as his opportunity to charge in. He lashed out with wild swings of his axe, but just like when he tried that trick on me, his opponent showed no fear.

She lowered her shoulder, trusting in the armor she was wearing to shield her. And since she was wearing my Mark One armor, it did.

Ivanar’s blows glanced off her gear without leaving so much as a scratch. He tumbled backward, rolling to his feet but going from a charge to a backpedaling retreat in a single exchange.

Our line would have collapsed entirely if Myrina and I hadn’t rushed forward to cover the others. The other woman wearing Mark One armor tried to slip by me to take out our archer and support mage, but I blocked her.

“Out of my way!” she yelled as she swept her sword at me. Despite her small stature, there was a lot of force behind it, thanks to her armor. But I was wearing power armor too, so I didn’t budge.

My reply came in the form of a fist to her cheek. The blow to her helmet knocked her off balance, and I followed it up with a sweep to take her legs out from under her.

She let out a wheeze, but I wasn’t done. I grabbed her by the ankles, twirled, and threw her at the other woman wearing Mark One armor, sending them both sprawling on the sand in a tangle of limbs.

“You alright?” I called Ivanar, who was recovering now that I’d given him a moment to breathe.

He panted, regained his footing, and brought his axe back up into a defensive position. He flashed me the briefest of nods before diving back into the fight.

With me reinforcing Ivanar, the two frontline fighters had difficulty getting through our defenses. Behind us, Agatha and Dannar were exchanging a hail of arrows and magical projectiles with the other back-liners.

It was clear both of them were completely outmatched by their opponents, and by all rights, they should have been completely overwhelmed. But the enemy backliners had a much bigger concern in the form of a relentless red-headed attacker.

“Ha! Too slow!” Myrina cried as she grabbed what looked to be the group’s healer. She wrapped her arms around the woman’s waist, then flipped the woman overhead and herself backward, driving her head-first into the sand so hard that when Myrina let go, the other woman was buried upside down up to her chest in the sand.

She was on top of the other two in a moment. The spellcaster switched targets from Dannar to Myrina, but Myrina swatted the resulting bolt of magical energy aside with a contemptuous backhand.

Myrina drove her fist into the mage’s gut, then snatched the staff from the mage’s hand in the same motion.

She used the staff as a club to swat the other team’s archer in the side, cracking the staff in the process.

“I see swords on you. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to use them?” Myrina taunted the two remaining back-liners.

Both opposing women drew swords, and Myrina turned to face them with her own sword still sheathed on her back.

Instead, Myrina finished snapping the staff over her knee until she had two evenly broken pieces. She twirled both in her hands and soon met both her opponents at once with nothing but a pair of sticks.

Even together and wielding real weapons, it was clear they stood no chance against her. Myrina forced them both back. One second it seemed like they were on top of her, then the next the two of them had to yank their weapons back to avoid stabbing one another. Both received a bonk on the head from Myrina’s sticks for their efforts. Their helmets rung like bells, dispersing the force of the blow but not the noise.

The rest of the fight could hardly be called a battle, as Myrina toyed with the back liners. I kept swatting the front liners aside, preventing them from targeting the rest of our team.

The fight had actually ended up turning rather one-sided, besides that first moment when Ivanar, Dannar, and Agatha were almost overwhelmed. Now we were the ones doing the overwhelming.

Up in the stands, the crowd had gone silent. Clearly, the outcome they weren't witnessing what they expected. I actually felt a bit bad smacking around the crowd favorites as I was.

These ladies had gone through something terrible and then entered this tournament to prove they still had what it takes to fight. It was their misfortune to be matched with us.

“Surrender,” I said to the armored woman currently trapped under my boot.

Her reply came in the form of a curse.

Up in the stands, someone started booing.

I shot a glance at Myrina and let out a sigh. It seemed like one way or another, we would end up the villains here. I might as well make it count. So I channeled a bit more of that original Doomblade spirit I’d embraced when messing with Sakura, Bridget, and Myrina back when I’d first made the persona.

“Little lady, why don’t you just stay down?” I pressed my boot down on her back a little harder, pinning her in place.

She cursed me again, this time with real fury in her eyes. With a sudden surge of strength, she wriggled free of me and took a swing with her open fist. It connected, but my defensive enchantments dispersed the energy, and after a swift retalitory strike she was back where she started, face-down in the sand.

I kicked her and her companion around a bit more. Ivanar tried to help, but he grew exhausted since it was simply too much effort for him, given that his attacks did practically nothing against the power armor. Dannar and Agatha stood helplessly as they tried to contribute where they could while I restrained the two front-liners. In the back, Myrina was doing the same to the three rear fighters. The battle was over and now it was just a matter of getting these ladies to surrender.

It took a lot of work and several minutes. Between the two of us, we eventually knocked Team Seraphim around so much none of them could climb to their feet anymore, which finally signaled our victory.

“And the winner is Feisty Redhead’s team!” the referee declared, much to the crowd’s anger.

“Boo! You suck, Feisty Redhead!” somebody shouted from up high. It was followed by a series of similar shouts, and I realized we’d truly been cemented as the bad guys in this fight.

Myrina stepped up next to me, hands on her hips and leaning back as she breathed deep. “Ah. Smell that anger and frustration? It's what they deserve for using the wrong name for me.”

“I can hear it, if that’s what you mean,” I replied.

“Anger turns to fear, and fear turns to respect. That’s what every good tournament villain knows!” Myrina sounded terribly smug, like she'd just done something impressive. Flying bits of rotting fruit flew in our direction as we spoke.

“I don’t really see why you’re so happy. We’ll need to repair our image after this, or it might affect the shop’s sales. People know I’m Doomblade, and it doesn’t take a genius to see our armor is from there.”

Myrina elbowed me in the side. “No! None of that. Just keep up what you’ve been doing. We make a perfect team. Just follow my lead, and everything will work out alright. Trust me, I have a plan.”

My stomach churned at the thought of Myrina and whatever plan she had in mind. I had a feeling I was really going to regret this decision. But what was life without a few blunders here and there?

“Alright, Myrina. As long as it doesn't knock me out of the tournament before I'm done with it, lead the way.”