Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 40

I monitored the first clash on the wall. These enormous flying void bat-things came at us, each screeching this horrible sound. Looking closer, they were like dragons in miniature.

Thankfully, the barrier proved rather good at keeping them out, especially the magical turrets I’d installed. Those alone probably could have fended off the attack, but the defenders got a few shots off. Bullets were pretty effective against them, so I wasn’t too worried.

Several more waves of fliers came at us, all F-Grade threats and nothing to worry about. After there were a few particularly fast creatures about the size of a hippo charging the shields. Those things damaged the energy barriers, but a hail of projectiles eventually brought them down.

“Myrina, you’re with me. Bridget, Sakura, Reluna, you girls go deliver the wounded to Doctor Roswell. They’re on a time limit. I will hold the walls. Come back here as soon as he says you’re fit for battle.”

“We’ll be back!” Sakura promised as we split up and they continued on away from the wall, leaving me commanding the defenses with the majority of Crownhill’s lower and middle-rank fighters. Besides me, all the C-Grades were gone. If any C-Grades came our way, Myrina and I would have to be enough.

This fight was far slower-paced than the one against the Lich King and the dragon. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure I was needed unless something very powerful showed up. To prepare for that eventuality, I excused myself from the wall and found somewhere to meditate. I needed to recover mana in case something showed up that I needed to deal with.

Also, Sir Sandon’s soul was still following me around like a lost puppy, thanks to the jade chord tied around his waist and my wrist.

His current lack of a body was a problem only I could solve. The only question was how I was going to go about it. Could I have him take over one of the mannequins like a possessing spirit?

It was probably possible, however I wasn’t so sure he’d like such a body. It might be a good temporary solution, but he’d need flesh and blood eventually, which meant I needed a soulless body for him to inhabit.

I would have to think about it later. Maybe there was an unrepentant criminal somewhere in Crownhill or something.

“Wait here and stay out of trouble. If those void creatures are anything like Sharky, then they eat souls. Right now, you’re just a soul, which makes you extra vulnerable to them.”

For now, I would deal with the threat before me and hope my Fate Harbinger bloodline would lead me in the right direction. Ever since picking up that bloodline, I’d learned to trust my gut, and it was telling me things would work out for Sir Sandon.

So, I took the time to go through the prompt the System flashed before me while Sir Sandon gazed at the wall and the monsters flying around on the other side.

You have slain a Death Defier! Choose your reward:

Stat Boost: You can receive a permanent buff to your Legendary Death Defier title, improving its ability to boost your stats.

Absolution: You are marked with the unique system title Death Curse, causing monsters to be attracted to your presence and disabling your ability to gain experience points or System rewards from them. Accepting absolution will have this curse removed.

Personalized Training Quest: As a reward for your contributions, the System will generate a series of personalized training challenges for you, guiding you to greater levels and rewards. If you succeed, you may gain both rewards above and more besides. Fail, and you will lose your life.

I hesitated, looking over the three options. Taking absolution would be the safe choice, but it would leave Stat Boost on the table. My Death Defier title gave me a big boost, and it was one reason I could keep up with elites from the Arcadia Multiverse like Myrina and Cyra.

Cyra was currently doing everything in her power to bolster herself further. I needed to be able to keep up. Who knew what kind of hellish training she was undergoing?

As I understood it, she had the full support of the Samhain Clan and maybe even the immortal god-king of Glacia behind her. An improved title wouldn’t be enough.

Could the System match two enormous factions in terms of resources? I would just have to hope it could, because I needed this power.

“Hit me with your worst, System! I could use a training montage or two!” I shouted to the sky.

You have selected a personalized training quest! Now identifying appropriate challenges across the Arcadia Multiverse...

A series of symbols flickered in and out in front of me. I recognized some of the characters from the book I’d gotten and knew from my studies that this list of symbols was associated with a pause or delay. The word probably meant something along the lines of ‘please wait.’

I’d never seen the System take so much time before, and my Fate Harbinger bloodline sent a bad feeling crawling up my spine.

Personalized Training Quest generated!

Training Quest Part 1 of 10: A Test of Command

Voidlings have invaded your shard and will devour the souls of all you hold dear. Lead your faction to slay one million Voidlings. Rifts will continue to open until you have reached your kill count, or you have perished.

Current Voidlings Slain: (9,004 of 1,000,000)

The box winked out, and I jumped to my feet. I had expected to be pointed in the direction of a quest or to need to practice certain attacks, but it seemed like the System was throwing me off the deep end. And not just me, but my entire faction too.

I hadn’t accounted for my training quest endangering everyone else. But perhaps this was for the best. These Void creatures gave good experience, and I knew for certain we’d lost a few elite during the fight with the Lich King.

I knew I hadn’t seen the last of the Chaos Gods and their minions, and the next time they struck at us they would do even worse. My people needed this challenge as much as I did.

So, I flipped through my interface for Crownhill and issued a settlement-wide quest for slaying these Voidlings. There would be hefty rewards in the form of money, enchanted armor, and skill books for everyone who performed well.

I heard shouts of surprise and delight from up on the walls, and a few people turned back to me and waved in thanks before engaging in the battle with twice the ferocity as before.

I jumped up back to the walls again and handed off many of my remaining disposable items. Mostly, that meant mana bombs. A single Mega Mana Bomb could kill a dozen of these Voidlings, assuming they were grouped together.

I had balked at the one million figure at first, but given how most of this incursion was F-Grade or E-Grade, it wasn’t too scary. My people were making steady progress against the horde, despite thickening numbers. More fliers arrived, but there were plenty of rabbit-sized creatures that charged the walls with ferocious savagery.

I saw Sharky in the distance, still fighting from where he’d gone to buy us time. He seemed to have no qualms about eating a few of his own kind. In fact, whenever one voidling was wounded, its comrades would often prefer to pounce on it than keep coming for us. He, on his own, did the work of a C-Grade fighter.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t fit on the walls and had no ranged attacks, so he wasn’t able to join us in our defensive line and ended up getting surrounded. He fought on until he was destroyed, but went down doing what he loved and eating as many of them as he could. His sacrifice bought us much needed time to brief our defenders and activate the shields and magical turrets I'd installed. I’d resummon him as soon as I could, but by then the battle would hopefully be over.

Despite the voiding’s best efforts, my people were well-defended. As long as there was nothing that could break through the walls, the voidlings didn’t stand a chance. I could sit here from a comfortable command position and wait for the first part of my training quest to be completed.

The moment I had that comforting thought, a ferocious roar split the air, and something the size of a building came lumbering from the Torchdragon’s lair.

It was roughly the size of a dragon. In fact, I was pretty sure most of the thing was a dragon. More precisely, it was the flesh of the Torchdragon I’d just killed two times over. Instead of a Chaos God and two spiteful wizards piloting it, its flesh writhed with thousands of worm-like creatures. The situation was clear. The fleshy part of the dragon’s corpse was being supported by void creatures.

The thing was well and truly dead, and all that was left of it was a boneless heap of skin without a heart and with entrails dangling behind it like rope. A swarm of things were wearing it wrapped around their shoulders like a cloak, and the sight of them and the mangled corpse was truly disturbing.

“I swear, the next time I kill a dragon, I’m burning the corpse right away...” I grumbled as I rolled up my sleeves. I turned to Sir Sandon’s ghost to tell him to wait, but when I looked, he was gone. The green chord tying him to my wrist was undone without me having sensed it at all, and now the rogue spirit dove into the fray alongside everyone else as though he were still alive.

“Wait! Sandon!” I yelled, hoping to remind him he was dead. But my warning came too late. A void creature climbed the wall, shrugging off the incoming bullets and magical projectiles to get in range of swords and spears. But Sir Sandon was the first to reach it.

He faced down a D-Grade void creature in the shape of a giant lizard. It saw him as easily as I did, and lashed at his ghostly form. Sir Sandon swept his spectral hands through the beast, and his hands struck it like he was still physical.

He’d dealt a few blows, but Sir Sandon was without his sword in his ghostly state. Normally, this beast would already be dead, but fighting it as he was would be more of a challenge.

Fortunately, others saw the void lizard biting and swatting at nothing and sensed the moment of opportunity for what it was. One of them got lucky and put a spear through the creature’s eye, and soon one more kill was added to my growing count.

Sir Sandon flashed me a look, and though I could barely see his face, I sensed determination. The message was clear, dead or not, he would still fight as long as he was able.

I turned my attention to the dragon puppeted by the worm-like creatures. If that thing had even a fraction of the strength it had in life, it could topple our walls with ease. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Thankfully, dying and having all of its bones and heart removed had weakened the corpse considerably. It was both slower and much weaker than its living counterpart.

Defiled Wormpuppet Dragon (Level 98)

The thing was peak D-Grade, but nowhere near its former strength. Even so, I didn’t want it to reach the wall. Looking to my left, Myrina had jumped to the base of the wall and was clearing out the horde that had slipped through the magical barrier, relieving pressure on that side.

“That thing’s enormous! Where’d it come from?” asked a young man off to my left. He seemed no older than Kyle and Marcus, and I didn’t recognize him. But he was high in the D-Grade and fighting close by my side. For that, he was worth knowing.

“What’s your name, warrior?”

“Sam, sir!” he replied.

“Well, Sam. Watch me take it down.”

Myrina taking pressure off the walls left me free to rain Mana Bolts down on the Wormpuppet Dragon, and I did just that. Pretty soon, I was casting Eldrich Blight and Soulchain Nexus too, whenever I had a moment to spare.

I mixed aspects around, eventually settling on light aspect attacks drawn from Doomseeker’s monster cores. That and fire seemed the most effective at slowing the Wormpuppet Dragon down, though the dragon hide was resistant to fire so I stuck with light for now.

A wave of Corrupting Marks swept through the horde of void creatures from my Eldrich Blight spell. They were like a tide of hands as they rushed toward us, climbing over one another to build a ramp that led to the top of our wall.

The roar of gunfire was slowing. Despite all the additional ammunition we’d acquired from the conquest of San Antonio, most of our gun-users were already running low again. A bullet could cut through five F-Grade monsters, but this was one of those cases where there were just so many to kill that five wasn’t enough. Even the weakest fighter on the walls probably had a hundred kills to their name by now. But by the time this onslaught was over, they’d have to kill all they’d slain already a hundred times over.

“How many kills do you have, Sam?” I asked the young man fighting by my side.

“Nearly three thousand!” he said with pride. “I’m sure it’s nothing to you, sir, but if I keep it up, it'll buy me one of those fancy sets of power armor the elites are walking around in these days!”

Sam grinned from ear to ear, probably imagining himself in a set of my Mark One power armor. I checked the leaderboards for the quest reward I’d set up, and sure enough, Sam’s name was in the top ten. I’d listed a set of armor as a reward for everybody who achieved such a rank.

But even with ambitious young warriors like Sam, we’d still barely cleared a hundred thousand Void Demons. Given the level disparity we shouldn’t have struggled, but as the test to join the Dragon Lodge had shown, enough weak attacks from F and D-Grades could overwhelm even a C-Grade.

My people needed more from me. After the Wormpuppet Dragon collapsed, the thousands of arm-length worms taking shelter within the mass of flesh fled for their lives. Now that they were clear, I wasn’t about to let them escape.

I jumped over the barricade, getting close as I breathed Firescourge Breath on the lot of them. Alien flesh crackled and sizzled, burning away to nothing. I swept Arcane Blade through three giant lizard creatures, then cast Eldrich Blight again.

A few big guys shielded the others with their bodies, and I needed to deal with them. Using Voidling Embrace was a bit of a risk given what was fighting, but when I summoned the tendrils to restrain the other voidlings, they still obeyed me and did so.

My stats were shooting up thanks to Soulchain Nexus, and Lifesteal had restored my health to full. I still didn’t feel like I was in peak condition, but so long as I didn’t go wild with my spells, my growing stats would bolster my resource pools as fast as I was exhausting them.

By clearing the walls, I had merely hoped to push the enemy back and give our people time to regroup, rearm, and, in a dozen cases, finish up their evolution to D-Grade. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could tell we would even be getting a new C-Grade in a few minutes, thanks to all the fighting.

Victory seemed to just be a matter of time if I could keep this up continuously. We were close to a hundred thousand dead now, but I’d spread enough Corrupting Marks through Soulchain Nexus that weaker enemies way in the back of the Void Demon army were dying before they even reached us.

All was well... until the fabric of reality ripped open right in front of me.

“Look out, sir!” Sam yelled from up above the walls.

I turned at his warning, and something big gazed at me from the other side. It was as white as paper and looked like a malformed humanoid skull with a horn in the center. Its mask-like pale face had a permanent sneer, with six slits arranged in two rows of three that resembled eyes.

As it stared directly at me, it stretched out an arm in my direction, despite the fact that the opening was too small for it to squeeze through. Time seemed to slow, and my heart raced faster as the hand approached. I was frozen still as a statue as it reached for me.

The arm was as large as a car, and adorning its unnaturally pale flesh were the agonized ghostly faces of thousands of people, all locked in a silent scream.

“Hyaaaa!” Sam jumped from the wall with a battle cry, driving his spear into the giant wrist. It barely seemed to notice the attack, but the act of bravery lit a fire in my heart.

I struggled to break free of whatever had stunned me, and like a drowning man, I latched onto Mania. I pushed myself all the way to Blood Frenzy in one swift motion, and the shackles of that strange mental state dissipated in an instant. But Sam was not so quick.

“Crap!” He yelled as the hand twisted and grabbed him instead of me. His face went pale, and his eyes went wide in terror as the arm sucked the life right out of him.

“No!” I yelled.

I unleashed a frantic series of attacks, from Arcane Blade to dozens of Mana Bolts. None left a mark on the hand, but they drove back the horde of voidlings trying to swarm me while I was distracted.

So, I shot it with a Void Cannon instead. My spell slammed into the rift it was reaching its arm through, and it exploded like a magical barrier. The portal slammed shut, severing the otherworldly abomination’s arm in the process.

I grabbed Sam’s limp body from the thing’s clutches and dragged him clear while fending off Voidlings with Arcane Blade and Mana Bolts.

With the portal closed, I jumped back to the wall and took cover. Thankfully, my forces were back in the fight in full, and they handled the wave that plagued our wall on their own from there.

But it was too late for Sam. His soul had already departed his mortal body, and he breathed no more.

I closed his unblinking eyes.

“Damn it. If this had happened just a few minutes later...” I cursed. I’d been certain Sam had been about to reach C-Grade, and I would have gotten another elite fighter on the team. With a little more power and a few more tricks up his sleeve, he probably would have survived that thing. I hated seeing his life snuffed out before he could reach his full potential.

But then I felt Sam’s hand twitch, reaching up for a moment before falling. I blinked in surprise, looking up to see Sir Sandon nudging the body like he’d nudged his own earlier that day.

“He’s gone, Sir Sandon. There’s no saving him. I just hope cutting off that grasping appendage from the void saved his soul, though I have no idea how to retrieve it as it is now...” I let out a long sigh, then suddenly had a realization.

“Wait. Lie down for me, Sir Sandon.” I gestured the Omykir knight to lie down until he matched the position of Sam’s body. He did so, and the two forms overlapped.

It wasn’t a perfect fit. Sir Sandon had been a bit taller than Sam had been. And they’d been entirely different species of humanoid to boot. But I knew it was possible, somehow. I just had to squeeze Sir Sandon’s soul into Sam’s body.

I frowned in thought, grabbing Sir Sandon’s soul with telekinesis and squeezing like I was compressing him. At first, I thought it wasn’t working, but then something clicked into place like magnets snapping together, and Sam’s body jerked once, then twice.

“It’s working! I’m not sure what to do now. Sir Sandon, can you hear me?”

He gasped, and Sam’s heart restarted, though it beat erratically. I gave it a hand until it beat smoothly, and slowly, Sam blinked his eyes clear, though there was a much older soul behind them now.

“I feel... strange...” Sam said, though it sounded more like Sir Sandon to me.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Sir Sandon. Those things killed the young man who owned that body of yours last. You can repay him by killing them.” I stood to face the onrushing army, and Sir Sandon joined me.

“I’m something called a Death Defier now. And it appears I’m afflicted with a rather nasty curse.” Sir Sandon frowned.

I laughed and took his hand as I helped him to his feet. “Welcome to the club. Come on, there’s a battle to win!”

At first, he seemed clumsy, unfamiliar with his own abilities. I was curious about whose powers he would have and was surprised to see Sir Sandon using a bit of both. Perhaps physical abilities that affected the body stayed with it, while magic and divine blessings remained with the spirit. Sir Sandon would be a subject of much study once I finally figured out how to contact Ben and the others.

An hour later, Bridget, Sakura, and Reluna returned. I added them to my party, and the fighting on the walls grew easier. A few more rifts with those big guys opened up, but each time I blasted them with a Void Cannon.

By the time we hit four hundred thousand kills, I had spread enough Corrupting Marks to snap my fingers and kill a hundred thousand Voidlings all at once.

That gave me a bit of a breather, and with more powerful C-Grade reinforcements, the last half million kills went by before the sun had set.

1,000,000 Voidlings slain!

Training Quest Part 1 of 10 completed!

Your Death Defier title has been improved to grant marginally better leadership bonuses.

Reward: Access to Training Quest Part 2 of 10. Beginning now...


<Note>

Whew. Long chapter again. I wanted to chop it in two, but couldn't find a good place to cut it. Anyway, Carter's finally making progress toward his promise to save Ben and the others. Too bad Sam had to bite the dust to free up the spare body.