Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 56

I ended up spending most of the night adding security measures to the Mark One armor I was selling in the form of various curses. When I was done, I worked on a few more products to help fill the shelves and even started putting together a bit more of my Doomblade prototype armor frame.

We returned to our store to find the construction workers just finishing up renovations. As soon as they were gone, we started stocking the shelves. We set up a full row of Mark One armor as the store’s centerpiece, but there were plenty more of those shields and swords Gobgob and I made the previous day to line the walls. I also had my remaining older-generation suits of armor that were strictly enchanted with no extradimensional or power armor abilities. Those would make a decent line of goods for those on a budget.

“What do I need to do?” I asked Sakura as she put price tags on the various goods.

“We might need you for technical questions, but you’re better off staying in the back for now. Perhaps you can work on more products.”

I shrugged. “Sure. Gobgob can help me. I have enough odds and ends for a few more sets of Mark One armor that she and I can assemble with the tools on hand. Just don’t expect too many of them.”

Soon, the sign to Doomblade’s Armory was flipped from closed to open, and I was surprised how much faster people came in to investigate than they had last time. Before, there had been barely a trickle over a whole morning. Now, there was a small stampeed as soon as Sakura opened the doors.

"It's open, it's open! Quick, buy every set of armor they have!" a man rushed into the store

"No! He can't get to it first! The Phantomfist family won't allow it!" a woman clawed at the first man's shirt, dragging him to the ground. It was a pointless attempt to slow him down, because a dozen others were right behind them both.

"Limit one set of power armor per customer! No shoving!" Sakura yelled over the crowd.

I closed the door, glad this was her problem and not mine. If she really needed my help to keep order, she could call me. But from the sound of Myrina slapping people around, I was pretty sure they had it covered.

Gobgob and I were working in the back room, but I left the door cracked open enough that I could listen in to Sakura’s sales pitch. Bridget was at what passed for a cash register, and Myrina was hitting potential customers with a practice sword. I was a bit concerned about that last one, but the guests seemed pleased to discover even my most basic enchanted armor could handle a couple of basic attacks from a formidable Amazonian warrior.

The main attraction was, of course, the Mark One power armor. The people streaming in to check it out all had a look of great wealth and influence on them. I was a bit worried when two potential customers were early B-Grades, but Sakura handled the encounter expertly, and I didn’t even have to come out of the back room where I was working with Gobgob.

After showing her what I needed help with, I ended up getting increasingly involved with my next-generation Doomblade armor. As we finished up the batch of goods Sakura requested, more and more work went into that. The frame was already mostly done, assembled back on Earth. Reginald’s smiths had done most of the metal shaping as well. This set of armor I wanted for more than one or two battles, so all the power armor servos would be anchored to a heavily protected metal skeleton. The outer parts would consist of much more replaceable armor.

I wanted to keep the same impressive bulk I had before but with a flashier aesthetic. Something suitable for competing in a rather important tournament that was coming up soon. The more I worked on the armor though, the more I realized how many improvements I could make on my original design.

The biggest improvement would be enhancing the metal interface so the armor moved as I did. Having sensors interpret my movements within the suit worked alright, but fights on the level I intended to pull through required twitch fraction-of-a-second movement. Hefty defenses meant I didn’t have to be quite as fast as my opponents, but it did mean everything I could manage counted.

Perhaps I’d benefit from another tutoring session with Dane Delverson. He might know a few tricks I could use. I still hadn’t figured out how he made his golems so intelligent and lifelike.

By the time the day was winding down, Gobgob had answered every question Sakura came to ask, and all of the Mark One armor had been sold anyway. There wouldn’t be any more until Gobgob and I finished the ones we were working on. While we were a lot faster than any workers either back in Crownhill or over on Themyscira, that would still take time.

“You can handle this, right Gobgob? I’m going out to buy more stuff. Just a quick shopping trip.”

“Uh... if I have to, chief.” Gobgob wrung her hands together. She was pretty shy outside of the back room with me, but pushing her limits a bit would be good for her. My original plan was to have her running the entire shop for me, though now I realized it would take a lot of work to build her up to that. Thankfully, she had Sakura and Bridget for support. Myrina had so far avoided being too much of a bad influence.

I walked out front, whispered to Sakura for some funds, and she quickly transferred ten thousand contribution points to my medallion. Business really had been good for the day.

From there, I excused myself to buy more materials to enchant, but in truth, that was only half of my plan. I also wanted to hear what Cyra was up to.

***

I left a message in the agreed-upon location with the private investigator I’d hired last time I was in Mucaria, then went on my supply shopping trip. I was just buying swords and shields in bulk, so they were easy enough to find.

The guy I hired still wasn’t there when I arrived, so I sat down and waited for him where we’d be meeting. I found myself in a local tavern at a table alone. This place was in a cheaper part of town and had a rougher crowd. Most of the people were adventurers on guest passes going through Mucaria on odd jobs for the Dragon Lodge. There were also a few graduate students mixed in with a similar rough-and-tumble background.

The largest group was clustered around a recording crystal in the corner, showing the local news. While I’d been ignoring it at first, a name came up I recognized.

“We have with us Jazon Jestario, of the famous Jestario family! Tell us, Jezon, how did you and your team of questors clear the pocket realm so quickly? By all accounts, the pocket realm was completely infested with void creatures!” a newscaster asked with bombastic interest.

“Well, we all fought hard, but the real credit goes to a nameless crafter who joined us in our quest. We didn’t realize it at the time, but fixing the realm’s core was far more than a simple job of purging the tainted mana. Entire parts of the world’s core were rebuilt in their entirety! The artificers are still trying to figure out what he did,” Jazon explained.

“Seems to me like anyone with that kind of skill would have a very high-level job and be famous across the entire Arcadia Multiverse?” the newscaster frowned at Jazon.

“That’s just it. Nobody had seen him before or even heard of him. If anybody has, we all owe him our thanks. I don’t think any ordinary artificer would have been able to do the job...”

Jazon went on about the rest of our encounter in the pocket realm, but could only give a mediocre description of me. The rest of the recording crystal was a lot of speculation as to my identity, and it seemed like the prevailing theory was that I wasn’t a real person at all. They thought I was a ghost created by the System as part of the quest, since a C-Grade that could restructure a pocket world’s core in a handful of minutes couldn’t possibly exist in the modern era. To them, I must have been a soul fragment of some ancient and long-dead craftsman.

I shook my head at the confusion. Maybe someday I’d see Jazon again and help him lay the wild theories to rest, but for now, there wouldn’t be much value in contacting him.

I cut short any further thoughts on the matter when someone sat across from me. I looked up to find the private investigator I’d hired to keep an eye out for Cyra.

“So?” I asked curiously.

“You were right. Your girl’s pissed off some seriously powerful people.” He shrugged.

“Does she need help?”

He shook his head. “She’s reluctantly retreated to the safety of the Samhain Clan. They have a compound in the countryside about a day’s journey from here. Despite being famous for being sword-swinging savages, quite a few wizards married into the family. The God-King of Glacia among them. So long as she’s on her family’s compound, not even the largest clans would dare attack her. But that doesn’t mean they won’t work against her interests.”

I leaned closer, hands folded. “What kind of interests?”

And so he told me of the upcoming tournament and how Cyra was already one of several important people slated to win. He told me about how the winner would be granted command of the magical auxiliaries the Dragon Lodge would provide to the army of Glacia. This army would be commanded by Cyra’s brother, so the last thing the Samhain family wanted was a hostile clan gaining command of the auxiliary forces.

Slowly, the pieces started coming together for me. It seemed like one of the smaller players in this little competition between great clans was the Phantomfist family. They were a small but influential family under the umbrella of a much more powerful clan on Glacia. Their clan had a prince of their own who considered himself a rival to Cyra’s older brother.

The same was true for many other leading competitors. Cyra’s brother was risking a lot to make his expedition happen. This tournament represented the opportunity for him to rise to the highest ranks of the Glacian royal court as a returning conqueror... or come crawling back defeated and irrelevant.

“No wonder Reluna left for Crownhill...” I muttered. It seemed like I was getting roped into the court intrigue she’d hoped to avoid. Under most circumstances, I would have avoided the problem too, but some things were worth getting dirty for. Or rather, Cyra was worth getting dirty for.

“Consider this a bonus. And a request to keep your ear to the ground in case you hear anything more.” I said as I passed him four hundred contribution points.

“You’re the boss.” He shrugged and soon departed, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Cyra didn’t think I could handle this short of conflict, and so she’d put up walls between us. But I would prove her wrong, no matter what it took.

***

I blew the rest of the money Sakura gave me on more components for enchantment, both to restock the shelves and for my personal project of rebuilding my Doomblade armor. The metals here were of inferior purity, but there were a couple of innately magical alloys I wanted for this project.

When I was done, I returned to our shop. Sakura was closing up when I arrived.

“How’d we do?” I asked.

“Counting what I gave you, we did about a hundred thousand in profits.” Sakura wore a pleased smile.

My eyebrows rose. “A hundred thousand?”

That was ten times what I’d gotten when I was running the place. Clearly, Sakura could wring much more out of our customers than I could.

“Things went very well. We’ve nearly sold off our entire stock. I wasn’t sure how much you’d be coming back with, so I found a contact who’d deliver stuff in bulk to us from Glacia. We’ll private label it and resell it in our own store. It won’t be as good as your stuff, but it should at least fill up the shelves.”

I nodded. “I think Gobgob and I will have our hands full enchanting what we have. But I’ll look over your deliveries to make sure they’re high enough quality to get our stamp of approval.”

“So... a night on the town to celebrate?” Sakura suggested hopefully. But I was already shaking my head.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do, and not just on stuff we’re going to sell. If you ladies want to go out, I can point you to a good restaurant. But Gobgob and I are going to work through the night.”

“Aww.” Sakura gave me a hug and a kiss before we parted.

I assigned all the work on existing products to Gobgob. Meanwhile, I focused my full attention on my new prototype armor. It was bigger and better than before, and this thing would hold up to a lot more hits. And give a lot more hits too, while I was at it.

I added five times as many servos as before. This new suit would have a much greater range of motion, with greater speed and accuracy to boot. It would also be more modular than my previous models. Only the inner skeleton would be connected to the extradimensional servos and the core enchantments of the armor.

The outer layers of the armor would be replaceable so I could go into each fight looking fresh. Perhaps I could even fine-tune the outer enchantments based on what my opponent could do. Armor enchanted to resist physical damage from someone like Myrina would look a lot different from armor tuned to resist Reluna’s frost magic.

One thing still bothered me, though. The sensors the armor used to detect my movements and match them were just too slow. I needed something a little quicker. I would have to centralize the servo controls and create an interface allowing me to interact with them as quickly as I could think.

I could already manipulate computers directly through minute inputs of energy against specialized surfaces. That was a useful quirk of how magic, technology, and an Artificer’s job powers interacted that I suspected very few people could take full advantage of.

But I did so. The result was a crude brain-machine interface that could only be piloted by someone who had an Artificer job, which would make it quite difficult to sell, but this armor was really only for me. Eventually, I’d simplify these tricks to make my Mark Two power armor, but for now, this system would serve me well enough.

I hardly even noticed the sun setting, and I definitely didn’t notice it rising again a few hours later. But by the time I was done, a one-ton skeleton of steel and titanium had been fully covered in a mess of wires, motors, and magical diagrams. It also now weighed three tons and was tall enough I had to cut a hole in the ceiling to get the full suit to stand upright. Thankfully, nobody was using the overhead space.

“Looks very intimidating, chief,” Gobgob said as she joined me in gazing up at the monstrosity of metal and magic in the shape of a man.

I gave the armor a firm pat on the thigh. “Welcome back, Doomblade. I have big plans for you.”



<Note>

A lot of you guys called this ages ago, but yes, Carter will be competing in the tournament as Doomblade.