Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 5

“Wait, this is a mis--“ I began, only to be cut off by the sound of gunfire. Thanks to my new racial bonuses, most of the bullets missed. I was certain these guys were good shots most of the time, but today half their guns jammed and they kept getting in one another’s line of sight.

As I understood it, fate aspect abilities like my race’s Probabilistic Favouritism passive were basically a battle of luck, similar to how my interactions with Lisette had been a battle of Charisma.

In this case, I had massively higher luck than my opponents. They were mostly E-Grades, while I was C-Grade. The massive luck difference meant the way they missed and tripped over themselves was practically comical.

When they landed their first shot, my companions had already dived for cover. Deflect caught the bullet and flicked it aside. I frowned and focused a minute to draw on ambient earth mana.

If these guys had been stronger, I would have killed them. This was clearly a misunderstanding, but I would have had no choice but to resolve it violently under more serious circumstances. At least avoiding all these bullets would let me level up my Dodge proficiency. I was going to need to evolve Deflect sooner rather than later.

They were truly fortunate I’d reached C-Grade, as I felt no threat at all from their pistol fire. Even if their bullets hit me, they wouldn’t even hurt as much as paintball before the System.

This was like battling children. If they forced me to actually kill them with the power disparity between us, I would have had to seek out Cyra for remedial training.

I used Shadowrealm Stride, vanishing from the real world and reentering inside the cave. There were more people than I thought within.

Five former policemen were holed up in the cave, fighting me, but there were also a dozen civilians. All these people were probably from Sheriff Drayton’s shelter. They’d gotten out after the Alpha Wolfman killed the sheriff and had assumed all was lost ever since.

“As I was saying. This is all a big misunderstanding,” I said as I appeared behind them.

“Get back! He’s using his werewolf teleportation powers!” one of the policemen shouted. “Give him all the silver bullets we’ve got!”

I frowned. Since when did werewolves have teleportation powers? I used the three earth aspect Mana Bolts I’d summoned and aimed for extremities. Fist-sized clods of mud struck hands and feet, tripping the policemen over themselves until half their number was a collapsed heap.

I grabbed the nearest man’s gun and twisted it out of his grip. The barrel deformed in my hand, and the firing mechanism twisted beyond recognition. The man kept trying to pull the trigger, and the gun would have exploded in his hands if I hadn’t used telekinesis to jam the firing mechanism, too.

Normally, telekinesis from my Master Artificer job wasn’t all that useful in combat, but here, the power disparity was enough that I could spare the focus for it. Now that I knew the trick, I turned my attention to the other guns and jammed them too.

“He’s using his werewolf powers to jam our guns! Use the silver knife!” the policeman from before said as one of his companions pulled out a crude knife lined with a row of silver coins cut in two and sharpened into a stake. He thrust it at me, but he moved so slowly it was like he was moving through honey. I plucked the knife from his hand.

“This dagger is terrible. Did none of you think to pick up the smithing job? Frankly, you should be ashamed to wield this thing.” I tisked as I tossed the crude silver knife aside. Though, despite my criticism of the knife, I was impressed somebody managed to make silver bullets from scratch after the end of the world.

“He’s using his werewolf powers to demoralize us! Don’t give up!” the policeman shouted as he dove for the knife.

These guys were certainly motivated. If I could talk sense into them, they might make good fighters for Crownhill. Maybe I’d just let them tire themselves out...

Before that happened, Bridget, Myrina, and Sakura came rushing in.

“I’m not a werewolf!” Bridget said as she kicked a man in the groin. He doubled over in pain.

“I really hate getting shot at!” Sakura swung her bat, shattering femurs with every swing.

“Rawr, I’m a big bad werewolf!” Myrina jumped on top of the most talkative of the policemen and bit him on the shoulder.

“Ahhhh!” the man screamed, doubling over with terror in his eyes as he collapsed to the ground and clutched his shoulder. The bite was just a light graze, but he stared at Myrina in horror like she’d torn his arm off.

That finally ended the fight.

"I won't turn into a monster. Tell my family I love them!" the talkative policeman said as he turned his gun on his own temple.

"You can tell them yourself after I've talked sense into you. You're not turning into a werewolf."

The man pulled the trigger, only to get a futile click. His gun was little more than a paperweight, thanks to me. If my telekinesis hadn't jammed it, my incredible luck level would have.

"Huh?" the man glanced at his weapon in confusion as he pulled the trigger several more times.

“Stop trying to kill yourself and listen up. We’re not werewolves, you dolts. We’re humans, just like you. As I was saying before you started shooting at me, we won the battle for this shard. The Alpha Wolfman and all his werewolves are dead. Most of them killed by my own hands.”

“T-then what is she?” the most talkative of the policemen pointed at Myrina.

“A menace to society, that’s what she is.” I stifled a chuckle as Myrina gave the man she’d bitten a toothy grin. “Don’t worry. She’s not a werewolf, and you’re not infected.”

“And her?” he continued, nodding in Bridget’s direction.

“She’s not a werewolf either.”

“What are those ears on the top of her head?” the man insisted.

I brushed my hand and combed through Bridget’s ears. The tufts of hair-like blonde hair receded and lay flat momentarily before springing back into place. “She’s human deep down, don’t worry.”

“I don’t know...” the man eyed her cautiously.

Sakura sighed impatiently. “She’s not a werewolf. She just consumed the soul of a few werewolves to steal their powers. Look, you’re interrupting our monster-hunting date with Carter. We’ve got things to kill and other people to save. If you want to stay in this cave, go ahead. You could have made this whole thing easier on us by telling us what free supplies you want.”

From there, the band of survivors hesitantly asked for a few survival knives, a tent, and rations. We had all of it on hand and happily handed it off.

“By the way,” I said, just as we turned to leave. “You guys are survivors from Sheriff Drayton’s police force, right?”

“Aye, that’s us. After the sheriff was eaten, we took the civilians and fled. We didn’t want to draw too much attention, so we split into groups,” the policeman said.

“Well, I’m sure you have a way to contact the others. The next time you talk to them, tell them they can get more supplies in Crownhill. The roads should be pretty safe these days.”

I turned and left the former policemen to their own devices. They'd turned to an isolated enclave in the woods, and they seemed self-sufficient enough that there was no point in forcing them to return to Crownhill with us. We had a lot of their kind these days, with more turning up to buy supplies every day.

It would be a long time before I had true influence across the entire shard, so for now winning hearts and minds would depend on maintaining a safe and well-governed city all these small enclaves could look to for leadership. Still, there were a lot of groups like this one, and I probably wouldn’t have been so patient with other groups. But Sheriff Drayton and his men had fought with me against the Wolfmen. I owed it to them to reach out and offer a helping hand.

***

The rest of our monster hunt went by without interruption. Traveling the shard took considerable time now. So much so that even my companions and I couldn’t cover the whole place in a single day. Starting soon, I’d have to switch to the teleportation array network that more established worlds like Themyscira used. The only problem with that was that we didn’t have many people with the array technician job. People like Thulga. Maybe I’d have to do more recruiting on Themyscira.

A week passed full of little more than crafting, minor battles, and time with my companions. I reached level 123 with both my race and class thanks to the occasional party of necromancers and naga, plus sampling a few of my companion’s growing levels here and there. The week put me nearly a quarter into C-Grade. Maybe further than Cyra, though I hadn’t seen her level since before the battle at Valkyrie’s Watch.

I had twelve new skill slots to fill, and a few to finish upgrading too. For me, the monster hunt was more about honing my proficiencies than the levels. I got several them quite high, with a couple close to one hundred. Losing the racial bonus of Homo acceleratus at 100 slowed me down by a lot, so that was where I usually stopped focusing on a proficiency and started working on others.

Your Command Proficiency has reached 100!

Your Sword Proficiency has reached 103!

Your Spell Sniper Proficiency has reached 98!

Your One Versus Many Proficiency has reached 74!

Your Neutral Mana Proficiency has reached 94!

Your Fire Mana Proficiency has reached 75!

Your Earth Mana Proficiency has reached 67!

Your Speech Proficiency has reached 78!

Your Dodge Proficiency has reached 94!

Besides the ones I’d focused on, I also had a small arsenal of minor proficiencies that had cropped up during fighting. All of them would be immensely useful when it came time to pick up new skills and do some upgrades.

But I wasn’t the primary beneficiary of the lengthy hunting excursion. That was Bridget and Sakura.

With Myrina and I to guide them, both of them reached C-Grade. They held off on their racial evolutions until we returned to Crownhill, where they could make their selections comfortably.

“You want to go first, Sakura?” I called out as she exited the shower. Bridget was cooking, and I certainly didn’t want to pull her away from that.

“What do I pick, Carter?” Sakura asked.

Sakura Miyamotto’s racial evolution options:

• Homo hornus humungus supremus (Rare): Grow both your horn and your body to tremendous sizes, dramatically enhancing the effects of strength and vitality on your body.

• Homo barbarum brutum (Epic): Enhance your negative emotions such as rage to fuel your battle prowess.

• Homo barbarum malus (Epic): Crush your enemies before a will that grows ever darker, shattering their lives and defiling their corpses to bring them agony even after death.

• Homo Onius Perfectus (Epic): Refine your Oni bloodline to its pinnacle, enhancing physical abilities, mental stability, and control. You will evolve into a noble blooded oni.

I browsed through the options, and it seemed pretty clear to me what Sakura was going to pick. She’d probably just asked me for assurance.

“I think you already know the right choice, Sakura,” I replied. “I doubt you want to turn into a giant, and you don’t want even more of a temper to fight against. Nor do I think defiling the corpses of your enemies is part of your idea of a good day. That only leaves one option, doesn’t it?”

“Do you think the other one will be mad if I suddenly become a noble-blooded oni?” Sakura asked.

I shrugged. “I think it’d be the opposite. They’d like you more for it.”

We both glanced at Myrina, who was the only one of us in a position to know.

She shrugged. “If you can beat them up, they’ll like you. If you can’t, they won’t. They’re simple like that.”

“Alright...” Sakura nodded. “Here goes...”

She tapped her screen and a bright white light enveloped her. This was the first time I saw a racial evolution from the other side of things. I looked on curiously as Sakura’s silhouette shifted and changed. Bridget finished dinner, but instead of rushing to the table like we usually did, she came over to join us and watch Sakura complete her transformation.

A few minutes later, the light faded, and Sakura was changed.

She was about a head taller than me now, but the extra height really suited her. There was a certain lithe strength lining her body now that had an immense feeling of elegance. A male oni probably would have looked like a brawny bodybuilder, but Sakura had the build of athlete. A world champion women’s boxer from before the system might manage a crude imitation of Sakura’s physique.

“Sakura, you have two horns now!” Myrina pointed at Sakura’s forehead.

Though it was the last detail I noticed, it was the most obvious. During the transformation, Sakura’s horn had split in two and spread to either side of her forehead. The process seemed to have shrunk both proportionally, so the horn no longer jutted out quite so much.

Sakura reached up and felt her head. “Huh. That’s a relief. They’re shorter too. Good. The big one from my old Homo hornus humongous race was really annoying me. I kept getting my horn caught on doorways.”

“How does your temper feel? Worse? Better?” Bridget asked.

Sakura smiled. “I haven’t felt this in control of myself in a long time. Not since I was human, certainly.”

Bridget shot her a lovely smile. “That’s really great to hear.”

We all turned to Bridget, who blushed.

“Looks like my moment is here, huh?” Bridget asked. She flicked her fingers through an invisible screen, and suddenly, her details appeared before me.

Bridget Larsen’s racial evolution options:

• Homo lupus huntus (Epic): Embrace the wolven half of your soul, learning to fight and hunt as the wolves do.

• Homo sapians lupus (Epic): Combine human and wolf linages, providing unique bonuses to social, tracking, and combat abilities.

• Homo luna lupus (Epic): Lunar wolves howl at the moon and draw power from that distant light. You too can draw upon it for strange, empowering magic unique to lunar wolves.

• Homo malladictus arma (Epic): Become a hunter specialized in wielding cursed weapons. Cursed weapons will pose dramatically reduced danger to you, and you will have an easier time spreading afflictions.

We discussed the various options before eventually settling on Homo maladictus arma, or the cursed weapon racial specialization. The reason for that being that we already had a legendary cursed dagger for her to wield, and given my Master Artificer job and our abundance of funds we wouldn’t have too tough a time arming Bridget with the best gear money could buy. This seemed like the sort of racial ability that scaled directly proportional to wealth, and that was a problem easily solved.

The affinity for afflictions from cursed weapons intrigued me. Would Soulchain Nexus spread Bridget’s weapon afflictions in addition to my own? Could she land critical hits by using my Corrupting Marks? If our abilities synergized, we could wind up more powerful together than we would be alone.

Bridget did her racial evolution. The change wasn’t nearly as apparent as Sakura’s. With blonde hair and a bright smile, she looked like that beautiful young woman I remembered before the integration. Given how lovely she’d always looked, multiple racial evolutions had had little to improve on. Her clothes did a good job of concealing the well-toned muscles hiding beneath her skin, and wearing an apron with her hair pulled back, she hardly looked like she could fight. She still had the hint of wolf ears at the tops of her head, but they were easily hidden or dismissed as just a faint memory of werewolf heritage in the distant past.

But despite the evidence of my eyes and ears, there was a certain fierce gleam in her eyes I knew would make anyone with good instincts think twice about trying anything on her. For a moment, her shadow flickered to that of wolf. Then, just as suddenly, it returned to normal.

My soul had expanded to wield a weighty fate. Perhaps Bridget’s had expanded to wield a more beastial one. I would have to ask Lyra if I ever had the chance to speak with the local reaper of the System again.

“Alright, ladies, it’s about time we visited Cyra again, don’t you? We all need more skills, and enough of our people have returned home that we don’t need to worry about Crownhill being undefended anymore. What do you say to another road trip?”

“Let’s go see Cyra again!” Sakura said, still looking at herself in a nearby mirror.

“I would like to see that auction house again. Misa is skilled at buying things, but I think I need to make the purchases myself to find the best cursed weapons for myself,” Bridget said.

“And I wanna see if Grandma Luthrin beat up some council members yet!” Myrina rubbed her hands together.