Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 24

While peace had always been part of the plan, I’d known from the start that getting it by meeting the Lich King was going to be a long shot at best. He was already at least associated with a Chaos God, and by the looks of things, he was in deeper than I could hope to pull him out.

By attacking me, he’d triggered my backup plan. And that was to wipe out the bulk of his forces in one swoop, claiming the shard in my own name. If we were lucky, we’d find the Lich King’s phylactery before he could resurrect himself, or whatever he was using to house his soul now that his body was gone.

Notifications scrolled by dozens at a time. That battle had given me a few new levels, and I distributed my stat points in accordance with what the Theorycrafter back in the Mucaria pocket realm told me.

Congratulations! Your class, Sage of Forbidden Knowledge, has reached level 134!

Congratulations! Your race, Homo Fatum, has reached 133!

“Carter, there’s only one group of necromancers alive,” Bridget said as I poked through the Lich King’s remains. He had a bag of holding on him and had a couple of spellbooks. Some of them were even halfway interesting to me. Could I add a spell for summoning an undead to my racial skill slots even though I wasn’t an undead? It might bear investigating.

“You didn’t wipe them all out?” I asked curiously.

“No. We were hoping they would lead us to wherever they’re staying. If there are any remaining strongholds of the Lich King, this will be the fastest way to find them.”

“That’s a good idea. Continue as you see fit.”

“Of the three of us, Myrina is probably most accustomed to command,” Bridget suggested.

I grimaced, but nodded. “Alright. But make sure you’re there to give her advice. Remind her that I want to minimize casualties on our side. This is not the last battle we’ll have to fight.”

I'd been in enough Amazonian battles to know they were high casualty things. The average rank and file fighter wasn't nearly as disposable to me though. Given the integration, today's average fighter would in all likelihood be tomorrow's elite.

“Yes, sir!” Bridget gave me a military salute. And then, after wiping my cheek with her sleeve, she gave me a considerably less militant kiss. “I’m glad you’re okay. That battle looked tougher than you said it’d be.”

I chuckled. “The Lich King was stronger than I thought. But don’t worry, I had it under control the whole time.”

She gave my shoulder a pat. “Don’t be afraid to lean on us more in the future. While I like my levels, I like you a lot more.”

She left, and the sway of her hips drew my eyes as she departed.

I remained to help organize things, but after delegating away most of my tasks, I found myself roaming the site of the battle waiting for people to come back with news.

Most of the bodies had already been dead and rotting by the time they made it to the battlefield, so the whole place stunk of death. There were a few of Sharky’s Voidlings picking over the corpses. Those twisted monstrosities woven from resentment and human remains always disturbed me a little. Presumably, they disturbed other people a lot.

They wouldn’t obey orders, but they didn’t attack me either. That, at least, was a pleasant surprise. Normally, my Death Curse meant everything attacked me. But here I could concentrate in relative peace. Any scavenger that showed up to pick over the bodies was soon out-competed and devoured by the Voidlings.

I walked upwind of the mess and ascended a few flights of stairs until I sat cross-legged on the top of an old office building. Temporarily free of obligations, I have an opportunity to explore my quest reward.

Congratulations, you are now an Aethersmith.

An Aethersmith wields the kindling of creation to make something from nothing. Wield the power of true crafting bend dimensions and create magitech of incomprehensible complexity.

As an Aethersmith, you have gained access to the following job abilities:

• Extradimensional Perception: Focus and perceive dimensions beyond mundane reality, allowing you to fold space or manipulate mechanical components that do not exist in normal space.

• Enhanced Telekinesis: The ability to manipulate physical objects is dramatically enhanced, allowing for far greater mental dexterity and the ability to manipulate more objects at the same time, including those that do not exist in normal space.

• Psychokinesis: Your Telekinetic powers have been enhanced to grant direct mental control over temperature and other basic forms of energy.

• Access to the True Language: [Error. Language Blacklisted. This ability is not available.]

I frowned at the last listing. Apparently I’d been robbed of one ability I was supposed to get upon receiving this job. Considering the rarity of the Master Artificer job, this was probably not a job many people obtained in the Arcadia Multiverse.

I could hardly wait to try my new abilities, though. Extradimensional Perception took a moment to activate. Using it felt strange, like looking at something right in front of my face. I wasn’t exactly squinting to use it, but it took a bit of effort.

At first, I was disappointed. It didn’t look any different when active. At first, I thought I had failed, but then I looked down at myself. There were all sorts of wires hanging off my body, all stuck into me on a higher dimension. That had to be the System interfacing with my body. No wonder the integration had been so painful.

I tried to touch the wires, but I felt a sharp pain as soon as I gave one the slightest nudge with telekinesis. A moment later, I found myself blinking face-first on the concrete. I might have lost as much as a few minutes there.

So no messing with the System interface. That would be very dangerous. I had some hope that I could figure out which one of these wires gave me the negative effects of my System curse so I could remove it, but without careful study messing with them wouldn’t be wise.

Of more immediate interest was the entire room filled with stuff sitting on my left hip. There was another smaller one in my pocket. I blinked, peering through Morgathor’s Satchel from the other side of reality. I was looking at the physical space my bag of holding kept items in.

I tried to reach for them, but I couldn’t bend in that direction like a drawing trying to reach for the pencil on top of the page. But my newly enhanced telekinetic powers could. I reached for Doomseeker in the bag of holding, tugging on it with my mind. As though springing out of my bag of its own accord, it popped out of the bag’s drawstring like it was levitating out.

Experimenting further, I pulled off the tattered remains of my suit. There was little enough of it left anyway, so if I ruined these scraps, it would be no major loss.

I held the scrap of cloth aloft and pushed with my mind. Slowly, the shirt shrunk in on itself, pushed into nothingness. All that was left was a tiny pinprick.

I could pull on the scraps of fabric and peer at the rest of it from the inside though, and from that perspective it looked much like sticking my eye to a bag of holding. I experimented with a few bits of rubble, and sure enough, my shirt now met all the requirements of a basic dimensional storage item.

Not bad. This alone could make me a pretty penny, since custom storage items were quite rare. As I understood it, the only reason D-Grades could afford them was because there were a bunch of dungeons that dropped them. Without that, they’d be impossibly expensive. But surely there was a market for one of a kind unique storage items made to exact specifications?

I pushed my shirt into the other dimension a little further, and when the last of the scraps of cloth slipped through, the hole in space vanished. I caught a brief glimpse of my shirt drifting away before it rapidly faded from sight. Apparently my new extradimensional senses were quite myopic, and I struggled to see anything out of arms reach.

Still, the uses were immediate. I was already packing just about everything I could onto my enchanted equipment, but being able to fold extra components into a higher dimension would give me far more room to work.

Mentally, I went back over my original golem designs. I’d have to see if there were any garage shops in the ruins of San Antonio because maybe, given a few modifications, those ideas weren’t so far off anymore.

The conquest of San Antonio went surprisingly smoothly, and over the next few hours we came to really dominate our new territory. I kept expecting someone to rush back to me and tell me where the Lich King and his allies would be making their last stand, but it never happened. Instead, I just received a notification.

Congratulations! You have defeated the Lich King’s faction of undead!

The survivors flee your wrath, and most are already beyond your reach.

Note: Due to your title of Shardking, additional quest options are available for you.

Instead of merely the options to enslave or exterminate any survivors from the Lich King’s camp, I had a whole list of quests I could issue. The factions I was fighting were bigger now, and it seemed the System had given me new tools accordingly. I could hunt down individual groups and force them to become tributaries to a growing empire, offer a quest that would prove their new loyalty to me so they could join me in full, or a huge number of other options.

After poring over them, I made two selections. One for my people, promising contribution point rewards if they secured and patrolled territory, and another for each of the survivor bands like Dan’s, all scattered around the city. I promised them a meeting with me, the new ruler of their shard.

No doubt most would be reluctant to reveal themselves, but I’d simply do the same thing here that I did in Crownhill. First, I’d get Margaret’s radio show on the air over here. Some signals probably leaked through, though having to bounce through that narrow corridor between our shards weakened it. That could be fixed by setting up another transmitter over here though.

The other thing to do was to repair the Obelisk. Thankfully, I knew just how to do that, and even had some scrap materials from my last repair job if I needed them. As long as I found a few old calculators sitting around here somewhere, I could fix this one up too.

I told everyone on our radio line that I was relocating to the center of town, by the broken Obelisk. True to Wendy’s story, there was the war-torn remains of an old survivor's camp there. Nestled toward the back was a run-down old card shop. The walls had been scorched by fire, but the sign still stood. There were even a few packages of playing cards sitting on the shelves.

I picked up the bits of scrap I needed, especially from the broken rubble of the old Obelisk. It looked like someone had hit it with a hammer until it shattered like glass. It was probably destroyed in haste before it could fall into enemy hands.

Thankfully, unlike Shadefall’s Obelisk, this one had been broken for weeks instead of years, so must of the rubble was nearby. With my newly enhanced telekinetic powers, I could reach out to all of it and send it drifting to its proper location. The repair happened far faster this time as I was maneuvered thousands of individual fingernail-chunks of stone into position.

Melting them turned out to be remarkably easy. The telekinesis I was familiar with now let me heat or cool things with as little as a thought. I could even make sparks of electricity if I wanted. These enhanced powers made me a walking toolbox, and given a moment to concentrate, I could assemble and disassemble most things without so much as a screwdriver. The entire time I fixed the Obelisk, my hands were stowed neatly in my pockets as the materials for the job hovered around me.

You have successfully restored an Obelisk!

You have been registered as the owner of this Obelisk. Transaction taxes will be credited to your account.

Your faction possesses another Obelisk nearby, so this Obelisk has been added to your trade network. All Obelisks in your trade network will draw from the same currency accounts unless otherwise specified.

I accepted the default settings. While items didn’t transfer from one Obelisk to the next, the money I had did.

Repairing the Obelisk had even granted me access to the materials inside it. There was a lot of food packed away in here of the kind we hadn’t had access to since the earliest stages of the integration. Basics like chicken eggs, butter, fresh milk, and a dozen other kitchen staples appeared. I bought a little of each for Bridget.

And, as luck would have it, somebody raided something far more valuable than the garage shop I'd been hoping for. Maybe there’d been a few people interested in home robotics, or maybe there was some startup based in this area that had been destroyed by the end of the world.

All of them were listed as cheap, since tinkering with gadgets after the apocalypse was a terrible idea when there were monsters ready to eat you if you didn’t level fast. I purchased everything and shoved it in Morgathor’s satchel. Everything I’d ever read about servos and motors buzzed around my mind.

The next time my people and I faced off against an enemy army like this, we’d have a very special surprise in store for them. My enchanted armor alone already put my people a cut above other fighters. How much better would power armor be?



<Note>
Power armor was always planned! It has nothing to do with the fact that I've been playing Space Marine 2 all day for the last few days...