Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 20

We piled all my boxes right back in front of the basement door. If the enchantment on the door failed, they wouldn’t do much to prevent that ancient golem from breaking free, but the fact that it hadn’t followed us up here was proof enough that it was bound to the ruined city.

Once we were safe, we moved into the largest room of the new keep. We dumped out our bags of holding. My companions had grabbed a surprising amount of stuff for such a brief trip.

Each of the girls had a small mountain of furniture, appliances, and other odds and ends. Sakura sat atop a sofa like a queen. Myrina planted one boot proudly on her pile of miscellaneous loot. Bridget had even raided an ancient pantry and returned with what looked like a microwave that ran off mana.

I glanced down at my own findings. All I’d had time to grab was the book I still held in my hands, the Book of Sacred Knowledge.

“That’s all you got?” Myrina glanced at the book, lips drawn tight with pity.

Sakura winced, looking pained. “Carter, you can take one of my spare couches. You contributed a lot to the expedition.”

Bridget pushed the microwave-looking device my way, and even Myrina forked over some loot.

“Girls, I don’t need your loot. We all live in the same house. I’ll get to use it anyway.” I waved them off.

“It’s about the principle of the matter. Everybody’s supposed to get rich when you go on an expedition to a lost civilization,” Myrina replied.

“Well... maybe this book of mine is really important! It sure feels that way. I’m pretty sure touching it is what set off the alarms.”

Sakura gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Yes, you’re right. It’s a very nice book.”

“Yeah... I’m sure it will sell for a lot...” Myrina added, though she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“Next time we go down there, I’m sure you’ll get lots of good stuff.” Bridget planted a kiss on the top of my head as she scooted next to me and leaned over my shoulder. She poked at the controls of the magic microwave she’d nudged my way, and it activated.

“Hey, it still works.” My eyebrows raised in surprise.

“And here I thought I’d need to have our resident artificer fix it up for us. Can you figure out how to use it?”

I shrugged. “The control interface seems rather simple. These symbols right here look like food. I don’t recognize them, but they’re probably common microwavable dishes. Let me push here and run a little mana through here and...”

The entire device buzzed to life. It shook for a moment as shimmering light covered the chamber sealed within. The door popped open, and suddenly, something rich and aromatic wafted through the air.

I popped the door open to reveal something akin to a pie, but with more colors and a less dense feel to it. Long ago, this was probably what that ancient culture ate for lunch.

“Holy crap, this isn’t a microwave, it’s a replicator!” I set the thing aside and immediately started hitting other buttons. Sure enough, it could render a variety of foods based on the symbols that appeared on its display case. After I tried all the foods that had symbols, I started punching random inputs into what looked like a keypad. I tried simple three-letter combinations, thinking they’d be abbreviations for the controls to this device.

For some reason, the System seemed reluctant to translate this ancient language for me. This was probably the same language the System itself was created in, so maybe it was nervous about people understanding too much of its origins.

I examined the book again, and once more a distinctly different interface popped up in my vision explaining its title. If this was truly the culture that invented the System, they probably had already mastered the idea of mental interfaces. The one the book created seemed to work fine for me, so if I could just find a way to extend its properties over to the food replicator, I’d be able to control it just fine.

I suspected the buttons on the device’s surface were merely a backup if there was a problem with the interface. Sort of like how televisions came with their own buttons, as long as the remote worked, that was far easier.

I knew what I wanted to do, but I was at a complete loss as to how to do it. I didn’t understand the slightest thing about System interfaces, nor did there seem to be any physical device I could manipulate to interact with it. Like the System I knew, the actual nuts and bolts attached to the book probably existed in an alternate dimension. Even as a Master Artificer, interacting with that kind of stuff was well and truly beyond me.

Eventually, all our toying exhausted the replicator’s internal energy reservoir. I guessed it would probably recharge, given time, but we’d have to wait for that to happen. In the meantime, we moved on to our other loot.

“Do we have any other replicators? A food replicator is all well and good, but it’s no substitute for Bridget’s cooking. Did anybody grab something that makes tools?” I looked around. There were plenty of other devices, one of them a suspiciously phallic vibrating wand, but nothing along the lines of what I was looking for.

It probably couldn’t be helped. We’d looted apartment complexes and a church, not garages or workshops. The tools I wanted were probably stored elsewhere in the underground city.

The discovery of the replicator made me want to go right back down there and start searching again, but the damaged golem rendered that difficult. Maybe it would shut down again, given time, and later we'd be more careful about not waking it up. Even if that wasn't the case, I just had to be patient. Another fifty levels for me and my companions, and we could face it without fear. By then we’d likely have finished off the Naga and the undead, and I’d be able to lump that hunk of rusty junk onto a pile with the entire shard worth of hostile golems next to the Torchdragon.

After sorting and identifying everything we could, the girls set about decorating our new place. I’d thought an entire castle would take them months to fully fill out, but I’d underestimated my companions once more. Apparently, they’d been saving general goods from their trips through San Antonio because, within an hour, the place looked fully furnished. And by all accounts, they were just getting started.

I went into the basement to begin constructing a new workshop for myself, along with a cell tower-like building for my gaming computer managing all the construction. My new workshop only needed wood, so it’d be done in a few hours, but the tower would take a few days. I’d move everything over when the time came.

As I made my selections, new dialogue popped up on the game interface once more.

“Task scheduled, m’lord. We have salvaged equipment that fits your specifications for the cell tower. May we utilize it in construction?”

I frowned a moment, shrugged, and then selected yes. With all the mods I’d downloaded into this game, I wasn’t too surprised by anachronistic dialogue. Sure, a medieval governess shouldn’t know what a cell tower was, but I’d probably accidentally added it in at some point. There was a lot more information being spoken aloud now too, instead of just on-screen prompts.

Maybe that would bare investigating, but only when there was less on my plate. The complex web of enchantments that made this game able to control construction equipment was quite elaborate and only barely worked. I was afraid poking around its inner workings would break it, and putting it back together was a task I couldn't afford at the moment.

I was just finishing up when Sakura ran down with a stricken look on her face.

“Carter, it’s terrible!” Sakura said, clutching her chest.

“What? What’s wrong, Sakura?” I asked, running my hand along her body to check for wounds. She tumbled forward with tears in her eyes, and I caught her. I was a moment away from channeling Mania and springing into action.

“The curtains don’t fit the hangers I looted! Not having curtains will ruin the whole look Bridget and I are going for in the castle!” Sakura groaned.

“Oh.” I dropped Sakura, worries gone as she fell on her ass. “Alright, I’ll deal with these curtains.”

Sakura perked right back up as soon as I agreed to look into things, and the trip took me into the castle, which was already much transformed from when I’d last seen it a few hours ago.

“Here, look! These are curtains from that ancient civilization underneath the farmhouse. They make such lovely fabric, but they weren’t designed to fit our hangers.”

I frowned, looking at the fabric and trying to remember how the curtains had been hung up in the abandoned city. There had been some sort of recessed sliding mechanism built into the wall.

“Can’t you use normal curtains?” I asked Sakura. “The shelves are already filled with priceless ancient artifacts from a fallen civilization. Do we really need the curtains to be special too?”

She clutched her chest as though pained, but slowly nodded. “If... if we have to. Just until we can kill off that stupid robot and loot the proper hangers. Now the only problem is that we don’t have anything in blue.”

I chuckled. “Alright. I’ll get you your blue curtains. I’m certain if I search the Obelisk, I’ll find some. Anything else you need?”

Sakura brightened. “Yes, actually!”

And then she promptly handed me a list of several hundred household goods, ranging from a washing machine to a life size stuffed unicorn.

“I was due for a shopping trip again, anyway. Might as well chat with the guys back in town...”

“There’s no need to rush back. We won’t be done with the bedroom for a while yet. Have fun with your friends in town, dear!” Bridget waved me goodbye.

I received two rounds of kisses on either cheek, then left for Crownhill. The town had once been a lengthy drive away, but now it was just a short skip around the corner. Between the destruction of the lava elemental and the construction of the road up to my farmhouse by the teams of remotely controlled mannequin puppets, going back and forth between Crownhill and home was little more than a brief stroll. Though, the fact that I could jump down entire flights of stairs in one leap was certainly helping.

Pretty soon, I was back in town once more. People waved and greeted me, and eventually I bumped into Margaret.

“Carter, there you are! I missed you earlier, but the prisoners you had us interrogate are talking now.”

“Huh?” I frowned, scratching my head.

“The necromancer girl? And then the others you brought back after they tried to assassinate you?”

“Oh, them. Did they actually know anything useful?”

Truthfully, I’d only had them imprisoned because I would have felt bad executing them after they were thoroughly defeated and I'd promised to spare them if they surrendered. While some might say I was leaving experience points on the table, I felt it was important to be a man of my word. So into the dungeon they went. But if they actually had some strategic value, I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down.

“Come with me and we can get answers straight from the source.”

Margaret led me through several buildings to a nearby apartment complex. I recognized it as one of the ones Lisette had used to imprison the wives and girlfriends of her subordinates. I had removed the guards on the place, so I was surprised to see them back again.

“We’re going to see the first one you captured. We improved her living conditions in exchange for cooperation. The guys you captured are still in cells, but we were able to confirm her reports through them.”

We entered the apartment and ran into a young woman reading a book who looked much removed from the necromancer I’d captured. Instead of the pale makeup, spikey hair, and black lip gloss she’d worn before, now she wore plain clothes and looked perfectly normal.

“Carter, this is Wendy. She knows all about what’s been happening in San Antonio lately.” Margaret gestured to the young woman, who set her book aside. “Wendy, I want you to tell Carter everything you told me.”

Wendy nodded, biting her lip. “It all started with a young man who would one day be known as the Lich King...”

And then she told me the story.

Once there was a humble card shop owner and his son. They were struggling to get by, but they managed. The son had just finished high school when the integration came and the world ended.

As with us, those early days were tough. Lots of people were dead, and many more died in the first few hours of the integration. That first day had more casualties than any other in all of human history.

But bit by bit, people figured the System out and learned what it could do, and among the fastest of them was the card shop owner and his son. They were a well known location in certain table top gaming communities, and many of their regulars had been among the first to adapt to the idea of levels and abilities. In short order, the run-down old hobby shop swiftly became a rallying point for some of the fallen city’s best and brightest talents. They even completed the much-envied settlement establishment quest and were granted an Obelisk by the System.

The card shop owner and his son welcomed all to join them, regardless of background or other allegiances. At first, this was a blessing as survivors from all corners of the city rallied to the common cause of securing food and shelter. But good times didn’t last forever.

Eventually, they discovered other bands of survivors, but the card shop was the biggest and the strongest, and naturally that drew some resentment from the other large groups. Two in particular. The former mayor and the police department was one contender. The other was a local gang that had risen to prominence among the violence.

Neither group were particularly fond of the card shop and the influence the Obelisk represented. It was by far the easiest way to store food, since it needed no power and could perfectly preserve things. And keeping food was among the least of its many uses. With how welcoming and open the card shop was, it was easy to sneak men straight into the heart of their shelter.

When the card shop’s most powerful left to confront the other races the System threw their way, their enemies disabled their shelter’s defenses and attacked.

All the weak and low-leveled people who’d joined up with the card shop were killed, either in the initial surprise attack or in the monster hordes that came rushing in afterward. Nobody was sure which group launched the surprise attack, but by the time the sun rose the following day, the card shop owner was dead, and the Obelisk was destroyed.

With the destruction of the Obelisk, all the food they’d gathered from the local supermarkets was inaccessible, leading many to starve.

When the card shop owner and his powerful allies returned, victorious at last over the other races, they found everything they fought for rotting in the sun as monsters picked over the corpses. From then on, the major human factions turned on one another. The card shop owner’s son turned to darker powers as he utilized an item he’d acquired in his conquests. He gained the power to raise the dead into a mighty army, which he sent out against his enemies.

Horrified by the sight of undead hordes, both the gangsters and the mayor’s police squadrons united to put the card shop owner’s son down. Most of the smaller shelters were ignorant to the cause of the conflict and merely saw hordes of undead they needed to fight. Dan’s group was among these smaller bands.

Eventually, either the gangsters or the mayor succeeded and killed the card shop owner’s son. He died, but not for long. Upon his death, he made a pact with an otherworldly entity, who showed him how to cheat the System and gain the legendary title of Death Defier as he reanimated his own body and returned to life as the man now known as the Lich King.

“And that’s all I know... I used to talk with some guys from the card shop, and that’s where I got the magic stuff.” Wendy shrugged her shoulders, eyes darting back to her book.

I glanced at Margaret, who nodded in confirmation. She’d confirmed the story with the other prisoners.

“Interesting...” I rubbed my chin in thought. “You know, I think it’s long past time I finally meet with this Lich King in person.”

<Note>
Bonus chapter!

Also, one of you guys in the comments called the necromancer chick Wendy, and I couldn't think of a better name, so we're going with that. Thanks.