MarvinKnight

Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 61

Added 2024-11-15 16:00:10 +0000 UTC

It soon became apparent why the open bracket featured team matches first. There were a lot more competitors than I’d been expecting.

The row we were in featured thirty teams just like ours, all of them waiting for their opening match. The bench we were grouped on served as a line while also giving us front-row seats to the team matches.

The stands were much fuller now than during the arena fights. Where before, there had only been a few scattered clusters of people filling up the bottom rungs. Now there was a substantial crowd. I’d noticed the city streets growing more populated with each passing day as people from other regions of Mucaria or from other worlds entirely all trickled in to watch the big event.

These were still early days, though. There were no mobs of fans or huge celebrations. Most of the people stepping onto the field in the open brackets wouldn’t make it to the main event. But I needed to if I wanted to see Cyra again.

Our team watched and analyzed the first matches together, and most of them were a complete stomp one way or another. As a team full of C-Grades, we had a decisive advantage over most groups, and the early rounds shouldn’t have been any problem at all for us. I was surprised to note that team composition was similar to what I knew from games, and most teams had an armored front-line fighter leading the others. In this scenario, that would be me.

I watched the ongoing matches with a careful eye. Most ended in less than a minute, but others went on longer as mages created barriers or healers kept downed party members in the fight longer.

While fighters were expected to pull their punches in the tournament and not intentionally kill their opponents, C-Grades were also expected to be able to take a lot of damage and still keep fighting. The only real rule was no decapitations or magical attacks that would completely destroy the target's body.

What rules there were seemed lightly enforced, and I only once saw a referee call a foul. I shouldn't have been surprised. The open brackets were full of the unimportant people. No doubt they'd get more serious when the sons and daughters of the great clans started showing up.

About an hour later, our first match was called.

The referee raised his voice, shouting into a handheld enchanted device that resembled a megaphone.

“Now announcing Ivanar the Minotaur, renowned fighter of the arena! Alongside him is Agatha Argestine of the Golden Sunbeam Lodge, Dannar Sharpclaw of the local Rangers’ guild, and Doomblade the armored warrior, and Feisty Redhead! Those last two are the dangerous duo who made a splash in the arena recently.”

The announcer then introduced our opponents, who were considerably less impressive and were already shaking in their boots. Only their leader, the tank of the group, was C-Grade. But he was lower level than any of us.

The match began, and they forfeited before we even had the chance to fight.

“Aww...” Myrina grumbled.

“To the back of the line again,” I said, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her back in line.

We waited for our next match, were announced again, and then similarly met with a forfeit when we vastly outmatched the other team. This repeated several more times before we finally got a real fight.

“Against Feisty Redhead's four-time unchallenged team stands Adventuring Team Darkwind! These five brave companions were the first to discover the new dungeon in the northern swamps and reaped the incredible first-time clearance titles the dungeon provided! They may be young, but each of them is full of fire and ready to fight!”

I surveyed the band of young C-Grades. They all looked like youths, but given that they were C-Grades,, there was a good chance that they were older than Myrina and me. We readied for the battle for the first time that day, and I stepped to the front.

“Let me take the front,” I said.

There were nods all around, and both teams fell into position.

“Begin!” the referee dropped a flag, and both teams sprung into action.

I rushed to counter the enemy tank. As the only C-Grade, he was the only real threat. The other guy was a big man in armor wielding a mace, and he seemed to think he could get through my armor with his weapon.

He took a big swing at me, but I held up my hand, grabbed his mace head in my fist, and wrenched it from his grip. Then I punched him in the stomach and knocked him to the ground, where he wheezed and struggled to get up. I planted a boot on his chest before he could do so.

I looked down at him a moment, surprised at how quickly I'd taken him out. Was that really all he had? Didn't the announcer call him a famous adventurer or something?

“Let me up or else!” the C-Grade adventurer underneath me growled.

“Or what?”

“My girlfriend is a member of the Phantomfist Family! Bet you’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”

I chuckled. “I sure have.”

I bent low and knocked him across the jaw, leaving him bloody and only semi-conscious.

The Phantomfist family had caused Cyra and I a lot of trouble, so anyone who was calling on their name in the hopes of making me tremble in my boots deserved a punch to the face.

That was all the fight I got because by then, Myrina and the others had finished the D-Grades off, and the referee was declaring our victory.

“Woohoo! Undefeated! I, The Supreme Warrior Goddess of Overwhelming Destruction, am undefeated!” Myrina loudly proclaimed to the arena.

“Let’s have a cheer for Feisty Redhead and her team!” shouted an announcer high in the stands.

Cheers went up, and more than a few were chanting Feisty Redhead.

Myrina sagged, and I patted the top of her head consolingly.

“I’ll show them. I’ll show them all!” Myrina cocked her fist at the crowd and shook it, and I could sense she planned to show her evil side again soon.

***

The day's fighting had been underwhelming. After all that waiting, we ended up solidly trouncing our opponents without even getting the chance to show off what we could do.

We parted ways with our companions shortly after the final match with the promise to meet up tomorrow for the second day of team fights. Myrina walked next to me, brooding all the while.

“Still figuring out how you’re going to take revenge?” I asked her.

“...Maybe,” Myrina grumbled in a way that confirmed my suspicions.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I know of somebody who can help you vent your frustrations. Maybe several somebodies. Don’t look, but somebody’s following us.”

Myrina stiffened and almost turned anyway, but I wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“Not too hasty now. We want to catch them by surprise.”

“So we can beat their secrets out of them?” Myrina asked with growing excitement.

“So we can beat their secrets out of them,” I confirmed.

If Myrina weren’t with me, I would have taken a few swift turns and used Shadowrealm Stride to lose my followers. Getting out of my armor was easy for me, thanks to my Multipurpose Glyphs.

But that trick wouldn’t work for Myrina. She needed to take her armor off the old-fashioned way, which would surely give our identities away. I needed my Doomblade secret identity to last, at least until I fought her in the arena.

Which meant a confrontation was in order. Fortunately, Myrina was well suited to the task.

We took a few wrong turns and waited for the people tailing us to follow.

“It looks like they’re just here to stalk us. I doubt they’re interested in a direct confrontation.”

Myrina reached for the sword magnetically attached to her back. “Well, they’re going to get one anyway.”

“The alley up ahead is long. As soon as they get to the end of it, we’ll double back and catch them before they can get back out on the street. On three?” I asked, nodding my direction back the way we’d come.

“One... two... three!” Myrina whirled on her heel, going from a casual stroll to a mad dash in the blink of an eye. I raced behind her to catch up.

Myrina must have been in an even worse mood than I thought, because she didn’t hold back against our stalker in the slightest. The man turned, eyes widening as he spotted both of us charging toward him. Myrina took his leg off just below the knee, preventing him from running any further as he collapsed face-first in the dirt.

“Ha! Who thought they could get me, the Herald of Irresistible Annihilation, with one wimpy low D-Grade assassin? Pathetic!” Myrina ground her boot into the small of our stalker’s back. He was D-Grade but not a particularly impressive specimen. He wasn’t a combatant, so maybe he was a professional sleuth? I’d hired a private investigator myself, so I knew there were plenty of them ready to work here in Mucaria.

“I’ve got him. There’s one more up ahead.” I pointed, and Myrina turned her head. She kicked her prisoner over to me, and I replaced her boot with my own. A few seconds later, she returned dragging another one-legged stalker.

She tossed both her captive and his severed leg in my direction. Our two stalkers were still conscious only by virtue of their level. Normal people would be dead from losing a limb, and even most at F or E-Grade would be reduced to agonized gibbering.

I cleared my throat, glancing at the two men on the ground. “Gentlemen, I suggest you start talking. My companion isn’t in the best of moods.”

“Don’t listen to him. Come on. You both seem like the loyal and brave type! You’ll never sell out your employers no matter how much pain you’re in, right?” Myrina waved a hand to hush me.

Sadly for Myrina, the two men started gushing their secrets in just a few seconds, no interrogation needed.

“Mercy, mercy! I work for the Phantomfist family!” one spy said.

“Aww...” Myrina sighed in disappointment.

“Figures. Damn, that guy we beat works fast. And you?” I glanced at the other spy.

“The Darkbinding family. They wanted me to discover the identities of you two. They're interested in your armor and also trying to find leverage so they can blackmail you into joining their mercantile alliance.”

I asked the two of them every question I could think of, and Myrina also threw in a few. The Phantomfist family I’d been hearing plenty of, but the Darkbinding family was newer to me. The former I knew to be a run-of-the-mill combat-focused clan who.

The Darkbinding family fought less with their fists and more with money and magic. They were distant descendants of a Dragon Lodge Gold Medallion student and had been leveraging that for the past five hundred years to establish themselves as powerful merchants in Mucaria. While their current scions were only bronze or iron level, the many businesses they owned meant they had little trouble sustaining a position of prominence, particularly in the magical armor business. They weren't too happy with Doomblade's Armory showing up and making their wares overpriced second-rate goods.

After answering all our questions, Myrina returned their severed legs to them. They’d need to hop their way over to a healer to get them reattached. The added sense of danger would hopefully drastically increase the market price of spying on Myrina and me. We would still need to be careful about our identities if we wanted to keep them secret.

***

We ended up looping around the city a few times before sneaking into the apartment Sakura had Bridget get. It made a good place to take our armor off. From there, we rejoined the others for the last hour of the work in Doomblade’s Armory.

I’d spent most of the last few days hidden away in the back rooms with Gobgob, so I hadn’t seen the front of the store too often until that moment.

Once again, I was shocked by the line going out the door and the immense crowd filling the storefront. Three-quarters of the shelves were empty, even though I’d helped stock them myself that very morning. Even the enchanted equipment that Sakura ordered in bulk to fill up the empty space was being bought up.

“Hey, no cutting!” said a stuffy-looking man standing in line near the front door.

“Oh, we work here,” I said, trying to slip past.

The stuffy-looking man looked at our grubby, sweat-stained clothing and tilted his nose up.

“Unlikely. Wait your turn in line like the rest of us!”

Myrina and I ended up circling around back to get through the front door. Looking at the crowd, everyone seemed better dressed than I remembered. This was a nicer part of town than my original location, so we had to dress accordingly. The workers Sakura hired even had uniforms. I wasn’t sure when that happened, but Myrina and I grabbed a few of them from the back room and changed.

“Excuse me, do you think this sword can penetrate blessed cultivator robes? I want something that will go through in one quick lunge,” a woman asked, gesturing at a sword.

“Anything can if you shove hard enough!” Myrina said.

I shrugged, stepping in to answer any technical questions this customer might have. “Well, let’s try it.”

I reached into Morgathor’s satchel and pulled out some of the robes I’d taken from the cultivators’ I’d killed.

I held the fabric up and offered the woman the sword. The cultivator combat robes were a bit deceptive in that they looked thin and lightweight, but were often made of incredibly rare animal hides or very tough fish scales. They didn’t seem as fond of real armor as denizens of the System were, but they still worked in their own way.

“A shame. I’m thinking I need one of these as a sidearm. I’m going to be with the auxiliary forces soon.” She shrugged her shoulders.

I studied the woman closer. She seemed young and about as far from a fighter as I could picture. She had a pair of round spectacles resting on the tip of her nose and a messy mop of brown hair. To me, she seemed the type to have her nose buried in a book, not on the battlefield.

“It’s not the sword. It’s your technique. Here, let me show you.” Myrina grabbed the sword and took a stab of her own, going right through the robes I was holding up.

Myrina ended up giving a quick lesson on swordsmanship. Myrina wasn’t quite as good a teacher as her older sister, since much of what Myrina knew came naturally to her, but she could tell when someone was holding a sword wrong.

“Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t seem like someone eager to fight. Why are you going off to join these auxiliary forces the Dragon Lodge is sending off to who knows where?” I asked as Myrina finished up her quick lesson.

“Oh... it’s a bit embarrassing, really.” the young woman shrugged. “I borrowed a lot of contribution points to get through my studies. I used to have a good court wizard position lined up back where I grew up, but my king’s lands got invaded and conquered, so I’m on my own now and in considerable debt. Luckily, the Dragon Lodge will pay it all off for me so long as I attend a single military campaign! It’s a bit scary, but what else can I do?”

I frowned, stroking my chin. “It seems to me like a spellcaster such as yourself would be better suited buying armor than a sword.”

She shrugged. “A sword is cheaper. My hope is that a blade will keep an enemy back a few paces. I don’t need to kill them, just be threatening enough they hesitate to charge me while I cast a barrier spell.”

I poked around the shelves before coming across one of my old sets of enchanted armor. These were the outdated kind, but that wasn’t stopping them from selling. Fortunately, there were a few left.

I grabbed one and presented it. “This would be more suitable if you’re going into a war zone.”

The young mage took a step back, like the armor was a live snake.

“Oh heavens no! T-that price tag... I don’t dare even touch it. I could never afford to pay for it if I broke it.” She backed away from the armor and me.

I checked the price for the first time and nearly dropped the armor in shocked surprise. Sakura was charging ten thousand contribution points for this single set? No wonder it was still sitting on the shelf despite the crowd.

I put it back and went for some of the stuff she’d ordered in bulk. Every piece demanded a four-digit sum.

Eventually, I went to the leather goods. These, at least, were just a few hundred contribution points. I picked something simple off the shelf. It was a set of leather armor with metal plates riveted to the inside. The price point was also very low.

I looked left and right, and after making sure nobody was looking, I used my Mana Bolt trick with Lightsculptor’s Brush to flash a few simple defensive enchantments onto the largest of the plates.

“Here, I found this in our discount bin. Ignore the listed price. It’s ninety percent off.” I passed her the armor, and her eyes widened.